by Lisa Unger
“Selena,” her mother said. “Are you listening?”
“Sorry,” she said, snapping back from her thoughts.
“You need a lawyer, sweetie. You should call Will.”
“I already did,” she said. “He’s meeting us in an hour.”
Which hurt. It hurt to call him, her kind, handsome, successful criminal defense attorney ex who was a loving, faithful guy. Right. Why would she want to spend her life with someone like that?
Her mother pushed a strand of her gray-blond bob behind her ear, looked down at the table between them.
“When I look back on the mistakes I made in my marriage, I’m ashamed,” she said. “I thought I was protecting you girls. I turned away from the truth, made excuses for a man who didn’t deserve it.”
“I’m not doing that,” said Selena. She didn’t like how defensive she sounded, felt. “I know who he is.”
On the kitchen counter was a framed portrait of all of them—Selena, Graham, Stephen and Oliver, Marisol, her now ex-husband Kent (another cheater), Jasper and Lily. It was last Christmas. They were all relatively intact less than a year ago.
“Those days, you tried to stay together for the children,” she said. “But now we know how toxic it can be for children to grow up in such an ugly marriage.”
“Mom, please,” she said. She didn’t really want to talk about her mother’s marriage, how maybe it was a poison and even now they were all still feeling its effects. “We’ve been through this. You did what you thought was right. And I’ll do the same.”
Cora reached for Selena’s hand.
“You girls are strong,” Cora said. Her hand felt frail, but her grip was tight. “Stronger than I was.”
Was that true? Did it require more strength to stay in a bad marriage, or to walk away?
“What does that mean?”
“That you won’t make the same mistakes I did. You don’t have to. We’re here for you, to support you in making a change.”
Selena found that she couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. She didn’t want her to see how scared, how uncertain she was. The rest of her life was like a cliff she was about to walk off, hoping she had wings.
“We tell the girls who come to the shelter that our main objective is to give them time, space, safety to find a new way,” said Cora. “Many of them have nothing. You have everything.”
Cora and Paulo volunteered at the woman’s shelter in town, and Paulo took shifts at the suicide hotline. They were the kind of people who helped others, asking nothing in return, both of them. But the reference irked her.
“I’m not a battered woman, Mom.”
She thought of how she’d thrown that robot at Graham and he’d just stood there and taken it. It wasn’t the first time. Once she’d slapped him hard across the face.
“There are all kinds of abuse,” said Cora. “I wish someone had said to me, hey, I’ll help you find a way out of this mess. So that’s what I’m saying to you.”
Selena didn’t know how to respond, the words thank you were so tangled up with fear and her injured pride that she just couldn’t push them out. So she just got to her feet.
She had to go meet Graham and Will at the station where they were scheduled to answer questions for the police. She and Graham had agreed not to talk about his affair with Geneva. Graham had deleted all the videos from her computer and from the web application for the camera.
If the police really come looking, they’ll find the files, and know I deleted them, he said.
He was right. She’d researched this. Apparently there was software like Oxygen Forensic that allowed the police to recover deleted files. Or they might access those videos from the camera company, which likely stored them on their cloud. They’d need a warrant, of course. She was praying that it wouldn’t come to all that.
Why did she let him do it? Why didn’t she make him come clean to the police? Because she couldn’t. She didn’t believe he would hurt Geneva. But those videos would start a narrative, one that was too familiar, too easy for the police to make dark assumptions about.
Don’t give them anything, Will had concurred. Make them come looking. Don’t answer any questions beyond what you’ve told them already until I’m present. Not a word. Are we clear?
Won’t that make us look like we’re hiding something?
It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It only matters that you don’t say anything that they can use to hurt you and Graham.
Will’s cool practicality was one of the things that always annoyed Selena. She was so hot—quick to anger, eager to fight, work it out, make up. He was so measured with his words, calm to the point of being lethargic. That easy tone of his voice was soothing to her now.
We’ll get this managed. Don’t worry.
Maybe that’s what he said to all his clients. Because how could he know? Maybe he just thought he knew them, knew Graham. They’d formed a kind of friendship over the years, accepted each other. Selena, too, had come to enjoy Will’s wife—now ex. Bella had left Will for another woman. Poor guy. Selena still saw Bella in Saturday morning yoga sometimes. She had a svelte, strong body—so did her new girlfriend.
“Selena,” said her mother again, snapping her back. She couldn’t seem to keep her focus. “Are you listening?”
“No,” she said. “Sorry.”
Her mother, who suddenly seemed tired around her gray eyes, a bit washed out, repeated herself.
“See him through this if you must,” she said. “But don’t stay. It’s not worth it. He won’t stop. You always think it’s going to be the last time. But it’s only the last time when you leave him.”
Her stomach bottomed out, looking at the grim expression on Cora’s lined face. She saw there how bad, how ugly this could be. The cheating was bad enough, a life-rupturing event. But now a girl was missing. She and Graham were hiding things from the police. Something toxic had leaked into their life. Everything they were, everything she’d planned for them to be—it was all cast now in a bruised shade of gray.
She gathered her bag, walked into the living room to kiss the boys. Stephen ran off, oblivious, back to whatever game they were playing with Paulo. But Oliver clung when she kneeled down to him. If Stephen was Graham’s soul mate, then Oliver was hers. She took in his scent, felt his warmth.
“How long?” he whispered, his breath hot on her neck.
“Not long,” she said. “I promise.”
She didn’t say that she was thinking of coming back here tonight. She’d make that decision later. There was a room for her, too, in this warm, expansive house. Yes, she was lucky that there was a safe place for her and for her children. Not every woman in trouble could say that.
“I—” he started. But she cut him short before he could say—I don’t want to stay here. Or I want to go with you. Because she already felt bad enough.
“I’ll call you before bed.”
“Mom,” he said.
“Oliver, please, I’m late. I love you, sweetie. The sooner you let me go, the sooner I’ll be back, and all of this will be behind us, okay?”
He nodded, eyes down. “Okay.”
* * *
In the car she pulled away, Oliver and her Mom waving at the window. When the house had disappeared from her rearview mirror, she let herself cry again. At the stoplight, her phone chimed and she dug it from her bag.
Maybe we should meet for a drink? I’m eager to continue our conversation.
Then another ping.
It’s Martha, by the way. From the train.
SEVENTEEN
Selena
The lights in their kitchen were dim. Will and Graham sat at the table—Will leaning back, jacket off, Graham with his head in his hands. For a second, she felt a twinge of compassion for her husband. But it passed quickly.
Selena stared at the corkbo
ard that hung over the workspace tucked into the far corner of the room. It was a riot of the boys’ artwork, thank-you cards, photographs, coupons, sticky note reminders—all the detritus of their day-to-day.
Sitting in one of the tall chairs by the island, Selena kept her distance from the men. She had a bottle of cabernet open, was already on her second glass. They had spent three hours at the police station, each of them in separate rooms with the detectives. Her head was swimming, every nerve ending frayed. How did they get here? She kept waiting to wake up.
“The good news is that there’s not a whole lot of evidence that anything has actually happened to Geneva,” said Will easily. “And I didn’t get the sense that they considered either of you suspects in her disappearance. You are the employers, the people who saw her most often, the people who saw her last. In some ways, you knew her best.”
Graham nodded, still silent.
“So it makes sense that they’d want to talk to you both,” Will went on. “They’re just covering their bases for the moment.”
Will looked back and forth between them. He was fine-featured—high cheekbones, long aquiline nose. He sported a wild cloud of golden curls. His eyes—a kind of stormy gray-green—were like laser beams. He had a gift for reading faces, body language. When they were dating, he always knew when something was bothering her, when she was holding something back. He kept his eyes on her, and she looked down at her glass.
“What aren’t you guys telling me?” said Will finally, when neither of them said anything.
The wine, dark and fruity, was moving through her veins, creating warmth, easing the terrible tension that had crept into her neck, her shoulders.
“Graham was sleeping with her,” said Selena, causing Graham to look up quickly, as shocked as if she’d Tasered him. Will’s gaze settled on her husband, cool, unsurprised.
“Really.”
“I caught them on the nanny cam,” Selena said. She took another big swallow from her glass, poured a little more.
“Okay.” Will sat up from his easy slouch. “Where’s the video?”
“Deleted,” said Graham. “We deleted it from Selena’s computer and from the app.”
Will lifted his eyebrows. “It’s possible that the video still lives somewhere in the cloud.”
“I know,” said Graham, putting his head back down.
“You slept with the nanny,” said Will. “And now she’s missing.”
The words hung heavy on the air between them, all the implications swirling.
“It was nothing,” said Graham. “Stupid. A distraction.”
“Stop saying that,” Selena snapped. “Why do you think that makes it better than if it had meant something to you?”
Her husband looked at her with sad eyes. Once upon a time, that look could melt her. How many times had he used it to get himself out of trouble? Tonight, she saw it for what it had always been, probably. Insincere. Put on. Now it just made her angry.
“I don’t,” he said. “I’m sorry, Selena.”
Selena could feel Will’s eyes on her, though she was staring at her husband. Graham was so slouched with misery that it looked like he could just slide out of the chair and puddle up in a pile on the floor.
When she finally turned to look at Will, she could almost read his thoughts.
You left me for this guy?
She’d had the same thought many times over the last few years. When her marriage was in crisis, when Will’s fell apart. Their friendship had endured and deepened over the years.
Wouldn’t we have been better off together?
Maybe. But then—no Oliver or Stephen. Will didn’t have children with his ex, so he didn’t know how complicated it could be to regret marrying someone.
“Will, man,” said Graham, in his most earnest “bro” voice. “Wherever she is, I had nothing to do with that. We agreed to stop fucking around. It wasn’t a thing—seriously. No emotion. No heat. She wasn’t making any threats.”
“Quite the opposite,” said Selena, taking another sip from her glass. “She couldn’t wait to get away from you.”
Will held up a hand to Selena. “Let’s all take a breath.”
But Selena didn’t want to take a breath.
“She probably just left this stupid town, with all its cheating husbands and clueless working wives,” she said.
Red wine made her aggressive; this was a known thing. She pushed the glass away. Then pulled it back and took another sip.
“You’re referring to the Tucker family,” said Will, looking down at his notes. “Geneva slept with Erik Tucker. Apparently, according to Mr. Tucker, there was some blackmail there. A new car to keep quiet and quit her job.”
The so-called “problems” with her former employers the Tuckers included an affair and extortion.
Apparently the other references on Geneva’s glowing résumé weren’t real. According to Detective Crowe, the phone numbers rang and rang, or were disconnected. Emails bounced.
“Did you call all of these people?” the detective had asked. They hadn’t brought her into the same kind of space where they’d apparently grilled Graham. He’d been in an interrogation room with Detective West and Will. Selena had been led to what looked to be Crowe’s small, windowless office.
Crowe had offered her a stiff, uncomfortable chair, a bottle of water. She sat, tense and upright, still in the clothes she’d have worn to work, the waistband of the skirt tight and uncomfortable.
“I knew the Tuckers,” she told him. “I wrote to them. They confirmed that she’d been a good nanny, that the kids loved her. But I already knew Geneva, from the park.”
He looked down at the paper in front of him, then handed it to her.
“And what about the others? Did you ever actually talk to any of these people?”
She glanced at the list he handed her; it had been a while since she’d seen it.
“I sent an email to this family—the Wrens. But I didn’t hear back.”
He frowned at her. “You didn’t think that was odd?”
She hadn’t thought it was odd, no. Men didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what a chaotic rush it all was, how much email flooded your inbox, how many administrative tasks passed by your eyes—work, school, the business of running a home, a family. Doctor appointments, dentist visits, haircuts, this request for a donation, that birthday party invitation. She didn’t think it was odd that she didn’t get an answer. In fact, she’d probably just forgotten that she’d sent the email at all. Checking references was just a formality. She knew—or thought she knew—the young woman she invited into her home to care for her children.
“Well, I knew Geneva. I tend to go on instinct.”
“And your instincts have served you well in the past?”
There had been more than a lilt of sarcasm there, an edge. She ignored it.
“Well enough,” she said. Well enough. Was that even true? Given her current situation, she guessed not.
That’s when Crowe told her about the blackmail. That Geneva had slept with Erik Tucker, and according to the Tuckers, blackmailed Erik to keep it from his wife. She wanted a car; Erik got her one. Recently, Eliza Tucker had discovered the purchase. How, she wondered, did a man think he was going to keep the purchase of a car from his wife? Graham couldn’t even go to Starbucks without it popping up on their accounting software.
“That’s—terrible,” said Selena.
It was really hard to believe. It just didn’t jibe with the woman she thought she knew. It meant that Geneva, the girl who was always ready with extra wipes, or a spare bag of Goldfish in the park, was also an extortionist. Then again, Selena had seen the video of Geneva and her husband, and she had trouble reconciling that, too. The lovely person with the ready smile, the one who was an efficient and competent worker, a loving but firm caregiver, a respectf
ul employee, was also someone who was sleeping with the husbands of hardworking moms.
Geneva, it seemed, was a shape-shifter, an actress. Selena wasn’t the only one who had been fooled.
“Are the Tuckers suspects in Geneva’s disappearance?” Selena asked.
Suspects. Disappearance. These were not words she wanted coming out of her mouth.
But Crowe didn’t answer. Just went on.
“So, nothing like that going on at your place?”
“No,” she lied. “No, she’s a fantastic nanny. Reliable, great with the kids, above and beyond with housework, errands—everything.”
Her throat felt dry. Didn’t cops know when you were lying? Wasn’t there some kind of training they received? She caught herself tapping her foot, something she did when she was nervous. She forced herself to stop by crossing her legs. Had he noticed?
“But your husband was home all day, right? Why did you even need a nanny?”
She laughed a little.
“Good question,” she said with a light eye roll, looking for a connection. But he remained neutral, watching her. She cleared her throat. “Graham was looking for another job. We didn’t plan for him to be home long. And he needed the freedom to interview.”
It sounded like bullshit. Because it was, essentially, bullshit. Graham hadn’t been caring for the kids, or working, or actively looking for another job, had he?
“He lost his last job. Is that right?”
It sounded really shady, the way he said it.
“He was laid off,” said Selena. “His division folded.”
“That’s rough.”
She didn’t like the note of pity in his voice.
“It happens,” she said stiffly.
He scribbled something, even though he told her the conversation was being recorded.
“You weren’t concerned about your husband and the nanny being alone together all day?”