Dear Wife / Любимая жена (by Kimberly Belle, 2019) - аудиокнига на английском

BETH I hit my blinker and merge onto the Muskogee Turnpike, and for the first time in seven long years, I take a breath. A real, full-body breath that blows up my lungs like a beach ball. So much breath that it burns. It tastes like freedom. Four hours on the road, two hundred and eighty-three miles of space between us, and it’s nowhere near enough. I still hear the clink of your keys when you toss them on the table, still tense at the thud of your shoes when you come closer to the kitchen. Still feel the fear slithering, snake-like, just under the surface of my skin. You have three moods lately: offensive, enraged or violent. That moment when you come around that corner and I see which one it is always inches bile up my throat. It’s the worst part of my day. I tell myself, no more. No more tiptoeing around your temper, no more dodging your blows. Those days, like Arkansas, are in my rearview mirror. For early afternoon on a Wednesday, the highway is busy, dusty semis rumbling by on both sides, and I hold my hands at ten and two and keep the tires between the lines. Oklahoma is crisscrossed with turnpikes like this one, four-lane highways dotted with cameras for speeding and toll violations. It’s too soon still for one of them to be clocking every black sedan with Arkansas plates that whizzes by, but I’m also not giving them any reason to. I use my blinkers and hold my speed well under the limit, even though what I’d really like to do is haul ass. I hit the button for the windows, letting the highway air wash away the smell of you, of home. At sixty-four miles an hour, the wind is brutal, hot and steamy and oppressive. It reeks of pasture and exhaust, of nature and chemicals, none of it pleasant. It whips up a whirlwind in the car, blowing my hair and my clothes and the map on the passenger’s seat, rocking it in the air like a paper plane. I reach down, shimmy out of a shoe and smack it to the seat as a paperweight. You’re serious about holding on to me, which means I need to hold on to that map. It may be old-school, but at least a map can’t be traced. Not that you’d have already discovered the number for the burner phone charging in the cup holder, but still. Better to not take any chances. I took the phone out of the package but haven’t powered it up—not yet. Not until I get where I’m going. I haven’t made it this far into my new life only to be hauled back into the old one. So far, this state looks exactly like the one I left behind—fields and farms and endless belts of faded asphalt. Sounds the same, too. Local radio stations offer one of two choices, country music or preachers. I listen to a deep voice glorifying the power of forgiveness, but it’s a subject I can no longer get behind. I toggle up the dial, stopping on a Miranda Lambert anthem that’s much more my speed these days—gunpowder and lead—and give a hard twist to the volume dial. For the record, I never wanted this. Running away. Leaving everything and everyone behind. I try not to think about all the things I’ll miss, all the faces I’ll miss, even if they won’t miss mine. Part of the planning was putting some space between me and people I love most, not letting them in on the truth. It’s the one thing I can’t blame you for—the way I drove a wedge into those friendships all by myself so you wouldn’t go after them, too. There’s only one person who knows I’m gone, and everyone else. It’ll be days, maybe weeks until they wonder where I am. You’re smart, so I have to be smarter. Cunning, so I have to be more cunning. Not exactly a skill I possessed when we walked down the aisle all those years ago, when I was so squishy in love. I looked into those eyes of yours and promised till death would we part, and I meant every word. Divorce was never an option—until it was. But the first time I mentioned the word, you shoved me to the floor, jammed a gun into my mouth and dared me to say it again. Divorce. Divorce divorce divorce divorce. I never said the word out loud again, though I will admit it’s been an awful lot on my mind. I picture you walking through the door at home, looking for me. I see you going from room to room, hollering and cursing and finally, calling my cell. I see you following its muffled rings into the kitchen, scowling when you realize they’re coming from the cabinet under the sink. I see you wrenching open the doors and dumping out the trash and digging through sludgy coffee grounds and the remains of last night’s stir-fry until you find my old iPhone, and I smile. I smile so damn hard my cheeks try to tear in two. I wasn’t always this vindictive, but you weren’t always this mean. When we met, you were charming, warming up my car on cold mornings or grilling up the most perfect strip steak for my birthday. You can still be sweet and charming when you want to be. You’re like the cocaine they slip the dogs that patrol the cars at the border; you gave me just enough of what I craved to keep me searching for more. That’s part of what took me so long to leave. The other part was the gun. So no, I didn’t want to do this, but I did plan for it. Oh, how I planned for this day. My first day of freedom. JEFFREY When I pull into the driveway after four days on the road, I spot three things all at once. First, the garbage bins are helter-skelter in front of the garage door two days after pickup, rather than where they belong, lined up neatly along the inside right wall. The living room curtains are drawn against the last of the afternoon light, which means they’ve probably been like that since last night, or maybe all the nights I’ve been gone. And despite the low-lying sun, the porch lights are on—correction: one of them is on. The left-side bulb is dead, its glass smoky and dark, making it seem like the people who live here couldn’t be bothered with changing it, which is inaccurate. Only one of us couldn’t be bothered, and her name is Sabine. I stop. Shake it off. No more complaining—it’s a promise I’ve made to myself. No more fighting. I grab my suitcase from the trunk and head inside. “Sabine?” I stand completely still, listening for sounds upstairs. A shower, a hair dryer, music or TV, but there’s nothing. Only silence. I toss my keys on the table next to a pile of mail three inches thick. “Sabine, you here?” I head farther into the house. I think back to our phone conversation earlier this morning, trying to recall if she told me she’d be home late. Even on the best days, her schedule is a moving target, and Sabine doesn’t always remember to update our shared calendar. She’d prattled on for ten endless minutes about the open house she’d just held for her latest listing, some newly constructed monstrosity on the north side of town. She went on and on about the generous millwork and slate-tile roof, the pocket doors and oak-plank flooring and a whole bunch of other features I couldn’t give a crap about because I was rushing through the Atlanta airport to make a tight connection, and it’s quite possible that by then I wasn’t really listening. Sabine’s rambling is something I found adorable when we first started dating, but lately sparks an urge to chuck my phone into the Arkansas River, just to cut off one of her eternal, run-on sentences. When I got to my gate and saw my plane was already boarding, I hung up. I peek out the window into the garage. Sabine’s black Mercedes isn’t there. Looks like I beat her home. I head into the kitchen, which is a disaster. A pile of dirty dishes crawling up the sink and onto the countertop. A week’s worth of newspapers spread across the table like a card trick. Dead, drooping roses marinating in a vase of murky green water. Sabine knows how much I hate coming home to a dirty kitchen. I pick up this morning’s cereal bowl, where the dregs of her breakfast have fused to the porcelain like nuclear waste, putrefied and solid. I fill it with water at the sink and fume. The trash bins, the kitchen, not leaving me a note telling me where she is—it’s all punishment for something. Sabine’s passive-aggressive way of telling me she’s still pissed. I don’t even remember what we were arguing about. Something trivial, probably, like all the arguments seem to be these days. Crumbs on the couch, hairs in the drain, who forgot to pick up the dry cleaning or drank the last of the orange juice. Stupid stuff. Shit that shouldn’t matter, but in that hot, quicksilver moment, somehow always does. I slide my cell phone from my pocket and scroll through our messages, dispatches of a mundane married life. Did you remember to pay the light bill? The microwave is on the fritz again. I’m placing an order for office supplies, need anything? I land on the last one to me and bingo, it’s the message I’m looking for. Showing tonight. Be home by 9. I spend the next half hour righting Sabine’s mess. What doesn’t go into the dishwasher I pitch in the trash, then toss the bags into the garbage bins I line up. And then I haul my suitcase upstairs. The bed is unmade, Sabine’s side of the closet a pigsty. I try to ignore the chaos she left everywhere: kicked-off shoes and shirts with inside-out sleeves, shoved on lopsided hangers. Nothing like the neat, exacting lines on my side. How difficult is it to put things back where they belong? To line the clothes up by color? Ten minutes later I’m in shorts and a T-shirt, sneakers pounding up the path in an angry sprint west along the river. The truth is, I am perfectly aware I’m not the easiest person to live with. Sabine has told me more times than I’d care to admit. I can’t help that I like things the way I like them—the cars washed, the house clean, dinner hot and waiting when I get home from work. Sabine is a great cook when she wants to be, when her job isn’t sucking up most of her day, which lately seems like all the time. I can’t remember the last night I came home to one of her home-cooked meals, the ones that take all day to prepare. Once upon a time, she would serve them to me in an apron and nothing else. I’ve spent a lot of hours thinking about how to bring us back to the way we used to be. Easy. Sexy. Surprising. Before my job dead-ended at a human resources company that sells buggy, overpriced software nobody wants to buy. Before Sabine got her broker’s license, which I used to laugh off as a hobby. Now, on a good month, her salary is more than double mine. I’d tell her to quit, but honestly, we’ve gotten used to the money. It’s like moving into a house with extra closet space—you always use it up. In our case, the money made us cocky, and we sank far too much of it into our house, a split-level eyesore with too-tiny windows and crumbling siding. The inside was even worse. Cheap paneling and shaggy carpet on the floors, climbing the walls, creeping up the staircase. “You have got to be shitting me,” I said as she led me through the cramped, musty rooms. It looked like a seventies porn set. It looked like the destitute version of Hugh Hefner would be coming around the corner in his tattered bathrobe any second. No way were we going to live here. But then she took me to the back porch and I got a load of the view, a sweeping panorama of the Arkansas River. She’d already done the math: a thirty-year mortgage based on the estimated value after a head-to-toe renovation, an amount that made my eyes bulge. We bought it on the spot. So now we’re proud owners of a beautiful Craftsman-style bungalow on the river, even though as children of Pine Bluff, a working-class town wedged between farms and factories, we should have known better. The house is on the wrong side of town, a castle compared to the split-level shacks on either side of the street, and no renovation, no matter how extensive, could change the fact that there aren’t many people in town who can afford to buy the thing. Not that we’ll ever be able to sell. Our house doesn’t just overlook the river, it is on the river, the ropy currents so close they swell up the back steps every time there’s a sudden rain. But the point is, Sabine’s job, which began as a fun little way to provide some extra income, is now a necessity. My cell phone buzzes against my hip, and I slow to a stop on the trail. I check the screen, and my gut burns with irritation when I see it’s not Sabine but her sister. I pick up, my breath coming in sharp, sweat-humid puffs. “Hello, Ingrid.” My greeting is cool and formal, because my relationship with Ingrid is cool and formal. All those things I admire about my wife—her golden chestnut hair, her thin thighs and tiny waist, the way her skin smells of vanilla and sugar—are glaring deficiencies in her twin. Ingrid is shorter, sturdier, less polished. The wallflower to Sabine’s prom queen. The heifer to her blue-ribbon cow. Ingrid has never resented Sabine for being the prettier sister, but she sure as hell blames the rest of us for noticing. “I’m trying to reach Sabine,” Ingrid says, her Midwestern twang testy with hurry. “Have you talked to her today?” A speedboat roars by on the river, and I wait for it to pass. “I’m fine, Ingrid, thank you. And yes, though it was a quick conversation because I’ve been in Florida all week for a conference. I just got home, and she’s got a showing. Have you tried her cell?” Ingrid makes a sound low in her throat, the kind of sound that comes right before an eye roll. “Of course I’ve tried her cell, at least a million times. When’s the last time you talked to her?” “About an hour ago.” The lie is instant and automatic. Ingrid might already know I hung up on her sister this morning and she might not, but one thing is certain: she’s not going to hear it from me. “Sabine said she’d be home by nine, so you might want to try her then. Either way, I’ll make sure to tell her you called.” And with that I hit End, dial up the music on my headphones to deafening and take off running into the setting sun. BETH The District at River Bend is an uninspired apartment community on the banks of Tulsa’s Arkansas River, the kind that’s generically appealing and instantly familiar. Tan stone, beige siding, indistinguishable buildings of three and four stories clustered around an amoeba-shaped pool. There are a million complexes like it, in a million cities and towns across America, which is exactly why I chose this one. I pull into an empty spot by the main building, grab my bag—along with the clothes on my back, my only earthly possessions—and head to the door. People barely out of college are scattered around the massive indoor space, clutching paper coffee cups or ticking away on their MacBooks. Everybody ignores me, which is an unexpected but welcome development. I make a mental note that a complex like this one would be a good place to hide. In the land of self-absorbed millennials, anybody over thirty might as well be invisible. I spot a sign for the leasing office and head down the hallway. The woman perched behind the sleek glass desk is one of them. Young. Blonde. Pretty. The kind with a carefully curated Instagram feed of duck-face selfies and hand-on-hip glamour shots. I pause at the edge of her desk, and she looks up with a blinding smile. “Hi, there. Are you looking for a home in the premier apartment community in Tulsa? Because if so, you’ve come to the right place.” Good Lord. Her Midwestern drawl, her Kardashian whine, her unnaturally white teeth. This girl can’t be for real. “Um, right. So I was looking at the one-bedroom units on your website and—” “Omigosh! Then this is your lucky day. I literally just learned there’s a Vogue unit available starting next week. How does eight hundred square feet and a balcony overlooking the pool sound?” I hike my bag higher on a shoulder. “Sounds great, but I was hoping to find something that’s available a little sooner.” “Like, how much sooner?” “Like, immediately.” Her collegiate smile falls off her face. “Oh. Well, I have a couple of one-bedroom units available now, but they’re all smaller, and they don’t offer that same stunning view.” I shrug. “I’m okay with that.” She motions to one of the upholstered chairs behind me. “Then have a seat, and I’ll see about getting you into one of our Alpha units. When were you thinking of moving in?” I sink onto the chair, dragging my bag into my lap. “Today, if possible.” Her eyes go wide, and she shakes her head. “It’s not. Possible, I mean. The application process takes a good twenty-four hours, at least.” My heart gives an ominous thud. “Application process?” I know about the application process. I’ve already scoured the website, and know exactly what it takes to get into this place. I also know that this is where things can get sticky. The woman nods. “I’ll need two month’s worth of pay stubs, either that or proof of salary on your bank statements, a government-issued ID like a driver’s license or passport, and your social security number. The background check is pretty standard, but it takes a day or two depending on what time of day I submit.” I have all the items she requested, right here in an envelope in my bag, but as soon as this woman plugs them into her computer, one little click of her mouse will propel all my information into the ether. Background checks mean paper trails, clues, visibility. Once you spot me in the system, and you will, I’ll have only a few precious hours before you show up here, looking for me. She checks the time on her cell. “If we hurry, I could get everything through the system by close of business tomorrow.” By then I’ll be long gone. I push the envelope across the desk. “Then let’s hurry. I start my new job in two days, and I’d really like to be settled before then.” She flips through the packet of papers. Her fingers pause on my bank statement, and the air in the room thickens into a soupy sludge. Apartment complexes require a minimum salary of three times the rent, which is why I added a couple of zeros to that statement in lieu of proof of salary. Part of the preparations for Day One included learning Photoshop. It’s not the amount she’s focused on, but my former address. “Arkansas, huh? So what brings you to town?” I relax in the chair. “I got a job at QuikTrip.” It’s a lie, but judging by the way her face brightens, she buys it. “A friend of mine works there. She loves it. Great benefits. Way better than this place, though if you ever repeat that I’ll deny ever saying it.” She grins like we’re in on the same joke, and so do I. I gesture to the packet in her hand. “I don’t have pay stubs yet, which is why I’ve included a copy of my contract.” Forged, but still. It looks real enough. As long as her friend doesn’t work in human resources, nobody but me and the Pine Bluff Public Library printer will ever know it’s a fake. I give her time to flip through the rest of the documents, which are real. My real driver’s license. My real social security number. My real address—scratch that, former address. This entire plan rests on her accepting the papers in her hands, on me laying this decoy trail, then disappearing. She looks up with a wide smile. “It’s not often that I get a prospective tenant with a record this spotless. Unless the system catches something I’ve missed, this is going to be a piece of cake.” I can’t tell if her words are a question or a warning. I smile like I assume they’re neither. She drops the papers on her desk and reaches for the mouse. “Let’s get you in the system, then, why don’t we?” You and I met at a McDonald’s, under the haze of deep-fried potatoes and a brain-splitting migraine. The headache is what lured me there, actually, what gave my body a desperate craving for a Happy Meal. A magical, medicinal combination of starch and salt and fructose that works better than any pill I’ve ever poked down, the only thing that will loosen the vise clamping down on my skull and settle my churning stomach. But good, so there I sat in my sunglasses, nibbling french fries while tiny monsters pounded nail after nail into my brain, when you leaned into the space between our tables. “What’d you get?” I didn’t respond. Speaking was excruciating and besides, I had no clue what you were talking about. You pointed to the box by my elbow. “Don’t those things come with a toy? What is it?” I pushed my sunglasses onto my head and peered inside. “It’s a plastic yellow car.” I pulled it out and showed it to you. “That’s a Hot Wheels.” I settled it on the edge of my tray. “A what?” “Pretty sure that one’s a Dodge Charger. Every boy on the planet has had a Hot Wheels at some point in their lives. My nephew has about a billion of them.” You were distractingly gorgeous, the kind of gorgeous that didn’t belong in a fast-food joint, chatting up a stranger about kids and their toys. Tall and dark and broad-boned, with thick lashes and a strong, square chin. Italian, I remember thinking, or maybe Greek, some long-lost relative with stubborn genes. I held the car across the aisle. “Take it. Give it to your nephew.” Your lips sneaked into a smile, and maybe it was the carbs finally hitting my bloodstream, but you aimed it at me that day, and the pain lifted just a little. Three days later, I was in love. So now, when I push through the glass door to the restaurant, I am of course thinking of you. Different state, different McDonald’s, but still. It feels fitting, almost poetic. You and I ending in the same spot we began. The smell hits me, french fries and sizzling meat, and it prompts a wave of nausea, a faint throbbing somewhere deep in my skull, even though I haven’t had a migraine in months. I guess it’s true what they say, that scent is the greatest memory trigger, so I shouldn’t be surprised that one whiff of McDonald’s can summon the beginnings of a migraine. I swallow a preventative Excedrin with a bottle of water I purchase at the register. For a fast-food restaurant at the mouth of a major interstate, the place is pretty deserted. I weave through the mostly empty tables, taking note of the customers scattered around the dining area. A mother flipping through a magazine while her kids pelt each other with chicken nuggets, a pimply teenager watching a YouTube video on his phone, an elderly couple slurping brown sludge up their straws. Not one of them looks up as I pass. I select a table by the window with a view of the parking lot. A row of pickup trucks glitter in the late afternoon sun, competing for most obnoxious. Supersized tires with spit-shined rims, roll bars and gun racks, wavy flag decals on the rear window. People of God, guns and Trump, according to the bumper stickers, a common Midwestern stereotype that I’ve found to be one hundred percent true. Another stereotype: the lone woman in sunglasses, sitting at a fast-food restaurant with no food is up to no good. I consider buying a dollar meal as cover, but I’m too nervous to eat. I check my watch and try not to fidget. Three minutes to five. This Nick guy better not be late. He is a crucial part of my plan, and I don’t have time to wait around. You’ll be getting home from work in an hour. You’ll walk through the door and expect to find me in the kitchen, waiting for you with dinner, with the endless fetching of newspapers and remote controls and beer, with sex—though whether your desire will be fueled by passion or fury is always a toss-up. The thought makes me hot and twitchy, my muscles itching with an immediate, intense need to race to my car and flee. An hour from now, a couple hundred miles from here, you’ll be looking for me. “How will I know you?” I asked Nick two days ago during our one and only phone call, made from the customer service phone at Walmart, after I lied and said my car battery was dead. Nick and I have never actually met. We’ve not exchanged photographs or even the most basic of physical descriptions. I didn’t know he existed until a week ago. Nick laughed. “What do you suggest I do, carry a rose between my teeth? Don’t worry. You’ll know me.” I cast a sneaky glance at the teenager, laughing at something on his screen. Surely not. When we spoke on the phone, Nick didn’t seem nearly so oblivious. My gaze shifts to the elderly man, offering the rest of his milkshake to his wife. Not him, either. When Nick rolls up at thirty seconds to five, I blow out a relieved breath because he was right. I do know it’s him, because any other day, at any other McDonald’s, he’s the type of guy I wouldn’t have noticed at all. It begins with his car, a nondescript four-door he squeezes between a souped-up Ford F-250 and an extended-bed Dodge Ram. His clothes are just as unexceptional—generic khakis and a plain white shirt over mud-brown shoes. He looks like a math professor on his day off, or maybe an engineer. He walks to the door, and his eyes, shaded under a navy baseball cap, don’t even glance my way. He orders a cup of coffee at the counter, then carries it over to my table and sinks onto the chair across from me. “Nick, I assume?” From the look he gives me, there’s no way Nick is his real name. “And you must be Beth.” Touch?. Not my real name, either. Up close he’s better looking than I thought he’d be. Wide-set eyes, angled chin, thick hair poking out the rim of his cap. In a normal world, in jeans and a rumpled T-shirt, Nick might not be half-bad. He dumps three packets of artificial sweetener into his coffee and swirls it around with a red plastic straw. “It’s the only way I can stomach this stuff, by masking it with something that tastes like it was imported straight from Chernobyl. If I grow an extra ear, I’m blaming you.” It’s a little dig because Nick here wanted to meet at the Dunkin’ across the street. He wasn’t the least bit subtle about it, either. “If you don’t mind, I’d really rather meet at the Dunkin’,” he said, not once, but enough times that the old me almost caved, even though I did mind. Because what I called Nick here to discuss has to be done in a McDonald’s. The universe demands it. Symmetry demands it. “This place has special memories for me,” I tell him now, not so much an apology as an explanation, an olive branch for the Chernobyl coffee. “Not good memories, but memories nonetheless. Let’s just say it’s karma that we do this here.” Nick shrugs, letting it go. “Karma’s a bitch. Best not to piss her off, I always say.” He takes a sip of his coffee, then puts it down with a grimace. Clasps his hands on the Formica table. Waits. “I understand you travel extensively for business.” Nick came highly recommended to me exactly because of this qualification—must travel extensively for business. The other qualifications, must be dependable and discreet, were something I mentally checked off as soon as I clocked him walking through the door, on time and in clothing that might as well make him invisible. “I’m on the road more often than not, yes.” “Long trips?” “It varies. Sometimes I need to stay put for a day or two, but even then, I’m never sleeping in the same bed two nights in a row. I like to move around just in case.” He leaves it at that, just in case, and I don’t ask. Whatever he means by it, I honestly don’t care to know. For the job I called him here to do, it makes zero difference. “But sure,” he continues, shrugging again, “in a typical month, I’ll log three to four thousand miles so I guess that qualifies as long trips.” “Do you have a home base?” “Multiple home bases. But like I said, I’m hardly ever there.” “Perfect.” He grins. “Tell that to the missus.” I’m pretty sure he’s joking, or maybe he’s saying it to try to throw me off his tail. Men like Nick aren’t the marrying type—or if they do marry it’s more for convenience or cover than for love. Never for love. “That’s funny,” I say, twisting the cap on my water. “I always liked it when my husband traveled for work.” As soon as I say the words, I want to swallow them back down. The skin around Nick’s eyes tightens, just for an instant, but long enough I catch it. Unlike his joke, harmless words about a wife that doesn’t exist, mine revealed too much—that the husband is real, that life was better when he was gone. Nick is not my friend. He’s not someone I should be joking with over a cup of crappy coffee. This is a business meeting, and the less he knows about me, the better. I slide a shiny Wells Fargo card from the side pocket of my bag and push it across the table. “I want you to spend my money.” He doesn’t say anything, but he picks up the card, running a thumb over the shiny gold letters across the front—my real name, definitely not Beth. When he looks back up, his expression is unreadable. “For the record, I don’t mean spend it as in booking a first-class ticket to Vegas and going nuts at the roulette wheel, but spend it as in ten dollars here, twenty there. I want you to move around a lot. Never the same ATM, or even the same city, twice. The farther away the withdrawals are from each other, the more varied the locations, the better. Think of me as your ATM fairy godmother.” “You want me to lay a trail.” I tip my head, a silent confirmation. “Assuming you don’t withdraw more than a hundred dollars a week, which you can’t because I’ve set up the card with a weekly limit, you’ll get five weeks of money off that card.” “And my fee?” His fee is five hundred dollars, an amount he made very clear on the phone is nonnegotiable. Whatever it is I’m hiring him to do comes on top of that, which means this is a job that comes with a hefty cash bonus, one that’s double his fee. Probably the easiest money he’s ever made. “Your fee is on there, too. You can withdraw that today. The weekly limits kick in as soon as you do.” He hikes up on a hip and slips the card into the front pocket of his pants. “You want me to go east or west?” I know why he’s asking, because he assumes I’d want him to head in the opposite direction. Or at least, I think that’s why he’s asking. But I’m still stinging from my slip-up, and thanks to the card in his pocket, Nick now knows my real name. No way I’m telling him—a criminal, a stranger—where I’m planning to land. Not that I think he’d come after me, but still. If there’s one thing I’ve learned these past ten years, it’s to trust no one, not even the people you’re supposed to trust the most. “East, west, north, south. I don’t care, as long as your withdrawals are erratic and your stops unpredictable. I’ll be watching the transactions online, and if I don’t like what I see, I’ll put the brakes on the account.” “You do know there are cameras at every ATM, right?” I roll my eyes. Of course I know. I didn’t spend the past ten months planning this thing to have not thought about something as basic as security cameras. But it’ll be days, maybe even weeks before you find the withdrawals, longer before you see Nick’s face on the tapes instead of mine. I’m not worried about the stupid cameras. “Make sure to smile pretty.” I pull my bag onto my shoulder, a sign that this conversation, an interview and marching orders at the same time, is over. “The pin is 2764.” Nick reaches for his coffee cup, still full but no longer steaming, then thinks better of it. He leaves it on the table and stands. “I bet that happens a lot, doesn’t it?” “What does?” “That people underestimate you. That they think you’re greener than you actually are. And before you roll your eyes at me again, you should know that’s not a bad thing. If things get hairy, you can use it to your advantage.” Now, finally, he gets a grin from me. “I’m counting on it.” JEFFREY I jerk awake on the couch, and the crystal tumbler balancing on my stomach pitches over a hip. I roll away from the spill, shifting to one side, but I’m too late. The liquid has already seeped through my jeans, dripping a good two fingers of expensive bourbon down my leg and into the fabric of the cushion. With a groan, I plunk the glass on the floor, push myself upright and try to get my bearings. The half-eaten pizza I ordered for dinner sits cold and congealed on the coffee table, and I flip the box closed. Images of a house fire flicker on the television on the wall, a handful of figures in slick yellow gear under a dripping arc of water. I reach for the remote and hit the button for the guide. Tiny numbers at the top of the screen tell me it’s 11:17 p.m. Shit. When I stretched out on the couch, it was quarter to nine. The four days of travel, of being ‘on’ all day at the conference, must have worn me out more than I thought. “Sabine?” No answer, but then again, she’s probably sound asleep. I picture her upstairs in bed, her long hair like silk across the pillow, and a familiar fire burns in my chest. Why didn’t she come in to say hi? Why didn’t she wake me? I click off the TV and stand. The downstairs is quiet, the lights still burning bright in the hallway. I flip them off on my way to the stairs, pausing at the doorway to the kitchen. The counter is still spotless, and the three matching pendants over the island light the air with a golden glow. Sabine might be a slob, but she hates wasting money as much as I do. If she were here, if she’d sneaked past me on her way upstairs, she would have turned off the lights. Unease tightens the skin of my chest. I jog across the kitchen tiles and yank open the door to the garage, getting a faint, heady whiff of gasoline. My car, right where I parked it. In Sabine’s spot, nothing but an oil stain on the concrete. My heart gives a painful kick. I take the stairs by twos and threes, sprinting down the hallway runner and into the bedroom, even though I already know what I’ll find. The comforter, still unturned from where I’d made it. The pillows, still stacked and fluffed. The bed, empty. BETH I stand at the bathroom sink of room seventeen in a grubby motor lodge on the outskirts of Tulsa and take inventory in the mirror. Chalky skin. Eyes shaded with purple circles. Hair too long, too thick to style. You’re always telling me never to cut my hair. You say you like it long—dark, thick strands streaked with shiny ribbons of bronze, with just the right amount of curl. It’s the kind of hair you see on commercials, the kind women pay hundreds of dollars a month for. But it’s more than just hair to you. It’s a plaything, a turn-on, something to plow your fingers through or moan your orgasms in whenever we have sex. But this hair you claim to love so much? You also love to use it as a weapon. To drag me by it from room to room. To pin me down. Hair is so much stronger than you think it’d be, the roots like barbed hooks in your skin. The scalp will rip open sooner than a hank of hair will break. I know this from experience. I pick up a handful and a pair of shears and slice it in an uneven, stubby line. It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be. A hell of a lot less painful than when you grab me by the ponytail and lift me clear off the bed. The strands tumble down my chest, sticking to the white cotton of my shirt. I feel lighter. Unencumbered. Free. I keep chopping, brushing the strands into the sink to toss later, not because I think you’ll track me here, but because I believe in karma. One day very soon I’ll need a job, and it’s not unthinkable I’ll end up in a hotel room like this one, scrubbing someone else’s hairs from the drain. Not exactly what my parents were hoping for when they paid for my college, but a better paying job, a job I’m actually qualified for, would send up a smoke signal you might spot. I’ve never cut my own hair before, and I don’t do a particularly good job of it. I was going for a pixie cut, but it’s more of a walk-in salon hack job, or maybe a sloppy bowl cut from the seventies. I pick up random chunks, pull them between my fingers like a hairstylist would, and slice in asymmetrical layers. When I’m done, I fluff it with my fingers and study myself in the mirror. With a bit of hair gel, it might not be half-bad. You are not who you used to be. You are Beth Murphy now. “I’m Beth,” I say, trying on the name like a questionable shade of lipstick. It’s the name I gave Nick, the one I signed on the hotel register, but only after forking over two twenties so the man behind the counter didn’t ask for my ID again. “My name’s Beth Murphy.” Beth with the crappy haircut. I dig the box of hair dye from the CVS bag and mix up the color. In my previous life, I was one of those brunettes who never longed to be a blonde. Blondes are louder, bolder, more conspicuous. Flashy and competitive, like sorority girls and cheerleaders. Not good traits when your goal is to disappear. The picture on the box advertises an ashy blond, the least in-your-face blond of the blonder shades. Blond for beginners. I paint it in lines across my scalp with the plastic bottle, then slip off the gloves and check my watch. Ten minutes until we find out if what they say is really true, that blondes have more fun. While I wait for the color to set, I flip on the television. It’s past midnight, and I’m three hundred miles away from Pine Bluff—too late for a local broadcast, and too soon for news of my disappearance to have spread across state lines and made it to cable. Still, I sit on the edge of the bed and flip between CNN and Fox, watching for the tiniest sliver of my story. An empty house. A missing woman. My face hidden behind dark sunglasses, spotted heading west. But there’s nothing, and I’m torn between relief and dread. You’ll be looking for me by now. I shower and dress in the clothes I bought earlier at Walmart, a dowdy denim skirt and a shirt two sizes too big. The duffel on the bed is stuffed with clothes just like them, synthetic fabrics in Easter egg colors, cheap and outdated items I’d normally turn up my nose at. In my former life, I would have turned up my nose at Beth, too. With her baggy clothes and dollar-store hair, Beth is a frump. I leave the key on the nightstand, gather up my things and step outside. Sometime in the past few hours, clouds have rolled in, a dark and threatening blanket hanging over muggy, electrically charged air. The wind is still, but it won’t be for long. I’ve lived in these parts long enough to know what a wall cloud looks like, and that they often swirl into tornadoes. A bolt of lightning rips the sky in two, clean as a knife slash. Time to either hunker down or get the hell out of Dodge. I choose door number two. My car is exactly where I left it, at the far edge of the lot next to the dumpster, though “my” is a relative term since the car doesn’t officially belong to me. It belongs to a Marsha Anne Norwood of Little Rock, Arkansas, a woman who seemed as eager for a discreet, all-cash transaction as I was. I bought it two weeks ago, then moved it from lot to lot in a neighboring town, but I never transferred the title to my name. I peek inside and things are exactly as I left them. The keys, dropped in the cup holder. The title, folded on the front seat. The doors, unlocked. I cast a quick glance up the asphalt, taking in the other cars, jalopies like this one. My car is no prize, but it’s an easy target. A jackpot for any wannabe thief. No, Marsha Anne’s car won’t be here for long. I turn, head to Dill’s Auto Repairs and Sales across the road. “You can’t buy a car,” you told me once, when it was time for me to trade up. “Just keep your mouth shut and let me handle it.” Dill might disagree, seeing as I’m able to sweet-talk more than 10 percent off a 1996 Buick Regal. It’s a rusty old pile of junk, but the motor runs and the price is right, especially once I discover that Dill likes it when I call him “Sugar.” He forks over the paperwork and the address for the nearest Oklahoma DMV, which I promise to visit first thing in the morning. If I hurry, I’ll be in the next state by the time the office doors open. He hands me the keys and I fall inside and crank the engine, right as the skies open up. JEFFREY The first number I call is Sabine’s, even though I know before I dial the first digit it’s a waste of time. If Sabine is pissed, if she’s punishing me for something, she’s not going to pick up. And if something’s happened. My stomach twitches, and I push the thought aside. Her phone rings, four eternal beeps, then flips me to voice mail. “Sabine, it’s me. Did I forget you were going somewhere tonight? Because I got the message where you said you’d be home by nine, but now it’s almost midnight and you’re still not here. Call me back, will you? I’m at home, and I’m starting to get a little worried. Okay, bye.” I hang up, think about calling 9-1-1, but she’s what, less than three hours late? Not long enough to be an emergency. And don’t the police require a minimum of twenty-four hours before you can report a person missing? What am I going to tell them, that my wife missed her curfew? I slip my cell in my pocket and pace the length of the upstairs hallway. Okay, so I know she had a showing. A late showing. Even if it ran over, even if it were all the way on the other side of town and she decided to grab a bite to eat before coming home, she would have been here by now. And it’s not like Sabine to ignore her phone. It’s one of her least desirable job requirements, that she’s always, always available. From the moment she wakes up until the time she goes to sleep, there’s a device either in her palm or pressed to one of her ears. If her car broke down on the way home, if she’s sitting on the edge of a highway with a flat tire and no clue how to switch it for the spare, she would have called roadside assistance, and then she would have called me. Assuming she’s conscious. My skin snaps tight at the thought of her bleeding on the side of the road or worse, floating facedown in the Arkansas River. I picture her bobbing in the currents or caught in the reeds that line our backyard. I see some sicko dragging her into the show house, her heels digging into the brand-new hardwood floor. Screaming into the empty house. I’ve never loved the thought of her showing houses to complete strangers. It was one of the sticking points between us when she took this job, the idea that anyone could come by pretending to be a prospective client. What if a prisoner escaped from Randall Williams? What if he had a knife or a gun? She might as well put a sign out front and a target on her back. Pretty broker, here for the taking. I pull out my phone and call her again. “Sabine, seriously. This isn’t funny. Where are you? I get that you’re still mad at me, but at least shoot me a text so I know you’re breathing. I’m really worried here. I’m giving you one more hour, and then I’m calling the police.” I hang up and haul in a deep, calming breath, but it doesn’t help. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is yet. I just know that something is very, very wrong. I pull up the number for her sister. Ingrid picks up on the first ring, like she’d been lying there with her finger hovering above the screen, waiting for it to light up with a call. Her voice is gruff and insistent: “Hullo!” Not a question, said with an upward lilt at the end, like how a normal person answers the phone, but a demand. More grunt than word. How these two women share the same DNA is one of God’s great mysteries. “Ingrid, it’s Jeffrey. Sorry to call at this hour, but—” “I have caller ID, Jeffrey. Put Sabine on the phone.” I close my eyes and inhale, long and steady. “That’s the reason I’m calling you in the middle of the night. I don’t know where she is.” “What do you mean you don’t know where she is? She’s not with you?” “She didn’t come home after her showing, and she’s not answering her phone.” “Jesus, Jeffrey. And you’re just calling me now? What the hell have you been doing all this time?” I hear a rustling of fabric, the high-pitched squeal of bedsprings. Ingrid lives alone, in a condo a couple of miles from here, I’m sure because nobody else can stand to share a roof with her. “Who else have you called?” “Nobody. You’re the first.” And already, I’m regretting it. Talking to Ingrid is like chewing on glass—you just know it’s going to be painful. “Do you know the number for her boss?” I say. “She had that late showing tonight, so maybe Russ will know what’s going on.” “Russ?” Ingrid’s voice is clipped with exasperation. “Russ moved to Little Rock in December. You should try Lisa.” “Who?” “Lisa O’Brien. Sabine’s boss?” She pauses for my reply, but I don’t know what to say. Sabine has a new boss? Since when? “Oh my God, do the two of you even talk? This all happened months ago.” I huff a sigh into the phone, done pussyfooting around Ingrid’s shitty attitude. “Do you have Lisa’s phone number or not?” “Not.” A door slams. A car engine starts. “Call the police, Jeffrey. I’m on my way.” When early on in our relationship Sabine told me she had a twin, I remember thinking how lucky she was, how lucky I was. Somewhere out there was a carbon copy of this woman, the yin to her lovely yang. The idea felt like a novelty. Two Sabines for the price of one. And then I met Ingrid, and the dislike was both instant and mutual. This was right around the time they buried their father, and their mom was starting to repeat the same tired stories often enough that the sisters noticed. In those first few weeks, I attributed Ingrid’s testiness to grief, to worry. I gave her a pass. But Ingrid was accustomed to being the most important person in her sister’s life, and she made it clear she wasn’t about to hand over the reins. Ingrid was fiercely territorial, and she treated me like a phase, an unwelcome but temporary intruder in their codependent lives. I accused Ingrid of loving her sister too much, and she accused me of not loving Sabine enough. Sabine felt caught in the middle, and from then on out, planned our lives so Ingrid and I were rarely in the same room. I’ve become a master at avoiding the woman, driving on at the first sight of her car when I’m out running errands, ducking into the next room at parties when she walks through the door. I eye her now across the kitchen table, taking in her dust-bunny hair and shiny, rosacea-covered cheeks as she makes notes on a yellow pad of paper. Fat, black pen strokes scratching out the name of Sabine’s firm, her height and hair color, the number for her cell. This woman looks nothing like my wife. She is the angry, ogre version of Sabine, the kind that bathes in swamp water and gnaws on bones under a bridge. Her face is scored with pillow marks, angry purple lines in the shape of a cross. I sigh, wishing I was the one with a pen and paper, wishing there was something I could do. My legs bounce under the table. We are sitting here, waiting for the police to arrive, and I don’t have any patience. I want somebody to go out there and find my wife. “There’s got to be an explanation,” I say. Ingrid shushes me. Actually flicks her fingers in my direction and hisses shh, never once looking up from her scribbles. Upside down, her handwriting looks just like Sabine’s big, messy loops. “Answer me, will you? I said there’s got to be an explanation for wherever Sabine is. Where she went. I’m terrified something happened to her.” Ingrid grunts, and the sound sparks like flint in my gut. “What is that supposed to mean?” “I didn’t say anything.” “Yes, you did. You grunted. If you have something to say to me, just say it. Don’t grunt at me from the other side of the table.” The words come out just as angry, just as venomous as I feel. It’s the middle of the night, my wife is unaccounted for and the sloppier version of Sabine is sitting across from me, looking to start a fight. I don’t know what it is about these Stanfield sisters, but they sure know how to scratch and pluck at my nerves. “Jeffrey, I didn’t say anything.” “No, but you wanted to. So go for it. This is your big chance. Say what you wanted to say.” “Fine. You want me to say it?” She slaps down the pen, pressing it under her fingers. “Where’s Sabine?” “I’m the one who called you, remember? Why are you asking me?” Ingrid rolls her beady snake eyes. “Come on, Jeffrey. My sister and I talk every day. We tell each other everything.” This isn’t exactly news. On a good day, Ingrid and Sabine will spend hours on the phone, discussing the minutia of everything from the tacos they ate for lunch to their favorite brand of tampons. Last weekend they killed an entire afternoon deliberating on the consistency of their mother’s latest bowel movements, and whether changing her diet might slow down the dementia that’s eating up her brain. I know they talk ten times a day. Most of the time, I’m witness to it. “Well, clearly she didn’t tell you where she was going tonight.” “Or maybe she was unable to.” For a second I don’t understand, a fleeting moment of she thinks something bad happened, too, and then I go completely still. Ingrid thinks something bad happened all right, but she also thinks I had something to do with it. “Careful.” I say the word like an order, sharp and commanding. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were accusing me of something.” “Why, do you feel guilty?” “No.” “Because I know about your fights. Sabine calls me after every one.” Of course she does. The two are always on the same page, always, always of the same mind. They use the other both as a sounding board and a tuning fork. As long as the other sister agrees, then their opinions are vindicated. Two like-minded twins can’t be wrong. And then there’s that weird twin telepathy Sabine and Ingrid share, that creepy ability to know what the other is about to say before they even say it. Last year for Christmas, they bought each other the exact same gift, a hideous beige purse in the shape of a take-out bag. The two of them squealed like they’d both won the lottery. I don’t know how to compete with that. “So? All couples argue, which you would know if you could ever hold on to a man long enough to be in a relationship. Wherever Sabine is tonight has nothing to do with our arguments.” She cocks an unplucked brow. “You didn’t even know she had a new boss, and that happened ages ago. When is the last time the two of you actually talked? When is the last time you had sex?” “None of your fucking business, that’s when. And don’t you ever ask me that again. Not while you’re in my house.” She folds her hands atop the pad of paper, and I’d think she was calm if it weren’t for her paper-white knuckles. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure this house belongs to Sabine.” It’s the most hateful thing she could say to me, and as much as I hate her for it, the person I really blame for her words is Sabine. Sabine knows the name listed on the mortgage is like the drunk relative trying to talk politics at a dinner party, better just to ignore. It’s always been a touchy subject between us, but like Ingrid said, Sabine tells her sister everything. “My wife needs to keep her mouth shut. Our personal business is just that—personal. Sabine shouldn’t be sharing every little thing that happens with you, just like I shouldn’t have to tell you that wherever she is right now, I had nothing to do with it.” Ingrid goes silent, and I can tell she has more to say. She stares at me, chewing her lip, weighing her options. I see the exact instant the decision is made. Her eyes—Sabine’s eyes—ice over. “She told me what you did to her.” She says it just like that, her voice low and deceptively calm, like I’ll know what she’s talking about. I do know, and the fury that rises in me is as familiar as the woman sitting across the table. Sabine told Ingrid what I did, and I want to leap across the table, wrap my fingers around Ingrid’s throat and squeeze until she wipes those awful, horrible words from her brain. “Did Sabine tell you what she did?” “I already told you. Sabine tells me everything.” “Then you know that she pushed me first.” “That’s not an excuse! A man should never lay his hands on a woman, Jeffrey. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.” Ingrid’s condescending tone burrows under my skin like a tick. Sabine told me I was forgiven. She promised we would never speak of it again, and then she went blabbing it to her sister. Of course Ingrid thinks the worst of me now. She only heard one side of the story. “Sabine accused me of checking out of our marriage. She said I was emotionally and physically disengaged. She kept harping on about her love tank being empty, whatever the hell that means. You know what? I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you. The point is, we had a fight, it was bad, we both apologized and we moved on. That’s what successful couples do—they forgive each other and move on.” I hear the words coming out of my mouth, and I wonder if they’re true. Not the part about Sabine’s complaints—she’s never been shy about voicing those—but the part about us as a couple. Forgiving each other. Being successful. Are Sabine and I a successful couple? Once upon a time, we were. For the first few years, we were that couple—the one every other couple wanted to be. Happy. In love and in lust, both of them at the same time. The kind of couple that shoulders major life disappointments together. Her mother’s sudden forgetfulness. My low sperm count, and their decided lack of mobility to reach Sabine’s wonky uterus. “We will get the very best care for your mother,” I would murmur to a sobbing Sabine. “We’ll adopt.” That was back when everything, even the most impossible, felt possible. I was a champion, a supportive husband, a fixer. I could fix everything. And then something happened that I couldn’t fix: my career stalled out halfway up the ladder at PDK Workforce Solutions. “Account Executive” may sound impressive, but it’s a midlevel slog that entails sucking up to needy, curmudgeonly customers so they’ll buy crap they don’t actually need. But even more limiting, there’s nowhere for me to go. The next rung is my boss’s job, and he’s blocking the ladder like a king-of-the-hill linebacker, with no plans to retire, change industries, or move to Toledo. I’ve put out some feelers, even talked to a couple of headhunters, but the only companies hiring are all the way in Little Rock, and Sabine wouldn’t hear of moving. So yes, I may be bitter but I’m not oblivious. I am fully aware how unfair it is to blame Sabine, but her success makes it so easy. I’m forty and washed up, and she’s just getting started. I come home beaten and burning with rejection to find Sabine glowing with the high of yet another sale. Lately, I’ve begun eating dinner alone in the den, mostly because I can’t stomach her hum of satisfaction. And so, late last year, after a particularly shitty day at work, when I got home and Sabine wouldn’t stop nagging, when she kept pick-pick-picking at every little flaw, when she accused me of checking out of our marriage, of sitting back and letting her do all the hard hitting for our house, our bank account, our sex life, her words filled me with a pure, inarticulate rage. She shoved me, and I hit her. I didn’t plan to. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I know how this looks, believe me. I lost my temper with my wife, and now she’s gone. Maybe she’s trying to punish me for what I did, or maybe my earlier hunch is right, maybe something is really, really wrong. Either way, you don’t have to tell me. I am the husband with a history of violence, the man living for free in the house his wife owns, the person with the most to lose or to gain. This doesn’t look good for me. BETH The storm blows north so I point the Buick south, aiming the nose toward Dallas. It’s not the most efficient way to get to the East Coast, but I’m not in any sort of hurry, and it’s an easy, roundabout route that circumvents my home state of Arkansas entirely. Even though you are hours, hopefully days behind me. Even though you’ll be on the lookout for a brunette in Marsha Anne’s black sedan, not a blonde in a gas-guzzling Regal, already down to a quarter tank, now is not the time to take any chances. I flip off the air-conditioning and roll down the windows, letting in the humid highway air. One advantage of this stupid new hair, it doesn’t blow into my eyes while I drive. My eyelids are dangerously heavy, and I stop often. To grab another coffee and some snacks, to splash cold water on my face, to load up on gas and an IHOP breakfast platter. Eggs, biscuits, sausage, the works. It’s not my normal kind of meal—you like me thin and waiflike—but ever since leaving Pine Bluff, I’ve been ravenous. Maybe it’s the relief of finally breaking free, or maybe it’s that I’m no longer my normal self. I’m Beth now, and Beth eats whatever the hell she wants. I’m nearing Atlanta when the sun comes up, streaking the sky with a spectacular orange and pink, so psychedelic bright that I reach for my sunglasses. My heart skitters in anticipation of my final-for-now destination. A city I visited for the first and only time with you, ages ago, for a college buddy’s booze-fueled wedding. The reception was loud and rowdy and at the rotating restaurant atop the Westin downtown, where you twirled me around the dance floor until we were dizzy—me from the shifting skyline, you from the cheap Russian vodka. When we stumbled downstairs to our room, I asked if you were drunk and your answer was to shove me into a wall. Atlanta was the first time you hurt me that way, and the last place you’ll think to look for me now. I know I’m close when a giant Delta jet lumbers over my head, its belly white and shiny, its wheels braced for landing. I catch a whiff of jet fuel, brace for the roar of its engines, a sound somewhere between an explosion and a NASCAR race. It rattles the steering wheel, the windows of my car, my teeth. All around me, people slam their brakes, and traffic grinds to a halt. Six lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, red taillights as far as I can see. I’ve studied the map, so I know where I’m going. Merge onto the downtown connector, follow it to I-20 east, then take a left on Boulevard to Cabbagetown. “Eclectic” and “edgy” is how the internet describes the east-Atlanta neighborhood, but what sold me on it is its affordability. Especially the Wylie Street Lodge, where one can rent a small but fully furnished room for a whopping twenty-two dollars a night. I’ll have to share a bathroom and kitchen, but still. I’ve already prepaid for the first week. An eternity later, I pull to a stop on Wylie Street and climb out. The road under me might as well be on fire, a steaming, sizzling furnace melting my tires and the soles of my sneakers, but it’s the house I’m looking at, my stomach sinking at the sight. The yard is a foul-looking patch of dirt and scraggly branches that has seen neither fertilizer nor lawn mower since sometime last century. Front steps, rickety and rotting, lead to a porch littered with trash and a ripped brown sofa, where three raggedy men drink from paper bags. If it weren’t for them and the hooker advertising her wares from a second-story balcony, I’d think the place was abandoned. I stand on the sidewalk, thinking through my options. I could cut my losses and leave. I could march to the door and demand my money back. I could suck it up and stay. The men eye me from the front porch, and I know how they see me. The rusty Buick with Oklahoma plates, the soccer-mom shirt, my fried hair. I’m the naive country girl come to the big city. I’m an easy target. The hooker calls down to me. “Hey, blondie. You looking for this?” She pulls her tube top down to reveal breasts as enormous as the fat rolls holding them up. She jiggles them back and forth like a bowl of caramel pudding. “Uh, no thanks,” I say. “I’m good.” She barks a phlegmy laugh, and she’s not wrong. Beth is going to have to work on her one-liners. I drop into my car and motor away. Around the corner, I squeeze my car into a spot at the edge of a crowded parking lot. After the car, the hotels, the food, Nick’s fee and debit card, I have just over two thousand dollars in cash left. Tens and twenties mostly, siphoned from grocery funds, birthday and Christmas money, forgotten bills swiped from your pockets when you were passed out. Saving was a long, laborious process that took me almost a year to do in a way that you wouldn’t notice. I bought things on discount and shopped sales. I switched to cheaper toilet paper, coffee, washing powder. Ironically, I stopped cutting my hair. My stash of money grew slowly, deliberately. Anything else would have gotten me killed. But two thousand dollars won’t last long, not even with a strict budget. Hotels are expensive, and most require ID. Even if I got a job tomorrow, staying in one would blow through my cash. For a city of six million souls, Atlanta has an astonishing lack of beds for abused or homeless women, of which I am both. I could sleep in my car, but it doesn’t feel safe, and I probably wouldn’t do much sleeping. A better option would be to find another lodge, one that is cheap and won’t ask for identification. Like the ones I found before settling on Wylie—rooming and boardinghouses, a hostel or two, some seriously sketchy motels—if only I remembered their names. And no, I didn’t write any of them down. I couldn’t. If you’d found anything even remotely suspicious—the search parameters on my laptop, a new number on my phone log, a faraway address scribbled on the back of a receipt—you would have confronted me. That was the hardest part of this past year, staying one step ahead of you. I’m reaching for the burner phone to start my new search when I spot a sign at the far end of the lot for a Best Buy. Best Buy means computers, banks and banks of computers. The internet at my fingers, free and with no tracking, unlike the data on this piece-of-crap prepaid phone. I crank the key and head farther up the lot. The store is packed for a Thursday morning. People everywhere, jamming the aisles and forming lines a dozen people deep at the MacBooks display. I push past them to a lonely, unmanned Dell at the end of the counter. I navigate to the internet and pause. Stare at the blinking cursor. Check behind me to make sure no one is watching. Old habits are hard to break. Two seconds later, I’m typing in the address for Pine Bluff’s local news website. I hold my breath and scroll through the headlines. Arkansas man accused of killing wife for changing TV channel. State police investigate Monticello murder. Pine Bluff officer shot in “ambush” attack. Nothing about a missing woman. Nothing about me. And yet, I’ve been gone for almost twenty-four hours now. Why is there nothing on the internet? Is the police department sitting on the story? Are they holding out on the press? Or has the media just not sniffed it out yet? The Pine Bluff Police Department website doesn’t make me any wiser. Their home page is as generic as ever, the last item on a long list of to-dos for the department, updated almost as an afterthought. The most recent post on their newsroom page is from 2016. On a whim, I surf to Facebook, and I’m in luck. Gary Minoff, a middle-aged man from Conyers, Georgia, forgot to sign out. No one will think anything of him nosing around on the Pine Bluff Police Department Facebook page, which is much more current than their website. I scroll down their wall, past posts about robberies, murders, a deadly hit-and-run, and the knot between my shoulder blades tightens. Maybe something happened, and you haven’t yet figured out I’m gone. Maybe I have more of a head start than I think. I can’t decide if the old adage applies here: Is no news really good news? “Best priced laptop in the place,” a voice says from right behind me, a ginger with facial hair and a Best Buy polo. He gestures to the Dell. “Intel Pentium duel core processor, two megabyte cache, up to 2.3 gigahertz performance. All that and more for only $349.” I have no idea what any of that means. I give him a smile that is polite but perfunctory. “I’m just looking, thanks.” “For a few bucks more, you can upgrade. Tack on some more memory, or some cloud-based backup storage.” “I just want to play around a little more, try things out. Maybe if you come back in ten minutes or so, I’ll be ready to decide.” Or maybe, by the time you come back, I’ll be gone. He wanders off to bother another customer, and I exit out of Facebook. Time to get busy. I Google cheapest boarding houses Atlanta and take a picture of the results with my burner phone, then do the same for area hostels. Just in case, I find five hotels advertising rooms under fifty dollars a night and take a picture of those, as well. The rest of the time I use for poking around on Craigslist. Most of the housing listings are either too expensive or too creepy. A dollar for a live-in girlfriend? Pass. I click on one of the cheapest listings, a furnished basement bedroom in a house in Collier Heights, then back out of the page when I see the field labeled “driver’s license number.” I click on the next one, “for professional ladies only.” “My girlfriend got totally shafted on Craigslist.” It’s the ginger salesclerk again, hovering behind me even though it’s been nowhere near ten minutes. “She’d booked a room with what she thought was a nice family, but it was a scam. She gets there and some crazy dude pulls a gun on her and next thing she knows, she’s got no money, no wallet, no car, no nothing.” “That’s.awful.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and grins, revealing a row of neat white teeth. “I’ll say. Three months later she’s at the courthouse, declaring herself bankrupt. Bastard stole her identity, then took out all sorts of loans and credit cards in her name. By the time she figured out what was happening, he’d racked up over fifty thousand dollars of debt in her name. It’s going to take her years to get her credit back on track. Anyway, all that goes to say, you might want to be careful.” His gaze wanders to the picture on the laptop screen, and he’s not wrong. This place is a dump. I click the X to close the screen. He starts in on his sales pitch again, something about a LED-backlit screen and HD camera, and I’m about to tell him to back off when something occurs to me. His girlfriend’s wallet was stolen. Some asshole took her credit cards, her driver’s license, everything. Even if she went to the DMV that very same day, it would have taken her a couple of days, maybe a week, to get her new plastic. My voice is a lot more friendly when I turn back to the salesman. “Where did your girlfriend stay in the meantime? After that guy took off with her wallet, I mean.” “Oh. Well, she couch surfed and stayed with me for a while until she found this sweet boardinghouse over on the Westside. Most places want some kind of credit card number as a guarantee, but this boardinghouse was cool with her paying cash, especially after she told them her sob story.” I realize this is only the first hurdle of many. I have no home, no ID, no more than a couple grand to my name. But I have a sob story, one that’s so much sadder than this guy’s girlfriend’s, and I have something even better. Determination. The smile that sneaks up my cheeks is genuine. “Do you remember the boardinghouse name?” JEFFREY The man on the other side of my door is not in uniform, but everything about him screams cop—dark pants, pressed button-down shirt, his soldier’s stance and the gun strapped to a hip. Behind him on the driveway, an unmarked sedan ticks off the heat. He flashes a badge. “Detective Marcus Durand, Pine Bluff PD. I understand you have some concerns about your wife?” His voice is low, his words businesslike. I search him for even a hint of concern, but I can’t find anything beyond a weary intensity. I swing the door wide and step back. “Thanks for coming.” My tone is thick with sarcasm, because I’ve been waiting for hours. Six of them, at least, trying to get some rest on the couch despite Ingrid standing above me, huffing like an angry dragon. The longer he kept us waiting, the harder she stomped on the floor, poking me on the shoulder every half hour to ask how it was possible for me to sleep. “I just lie down and close my eyes,” I told her. “Maybe you should try it.” If the detective hears the snark in my voice, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He’s younger than me, midthirties maybe, and half a foot taller. He fills my foyer with his presence and size, making me feel small in my jeans and bare feet. I wish I’d changed into something nicer. I wish I had on some shoes. His jaw is set with the gravity of the situation. A missing woman, an after-hours house call means he’s taking this seriously. But not seriously enough to show up on time. He looks around, his gaze pausing on the curved staircase, the custom newels with vertical slats, the antique Turkish rug under his feet—none of which he can afford on a detective’s salary. None of which I could have afforded, either, were it not for Sabine. I consider telling him my wife made the million-dollar club four years running, that when it comes to decor she knows how to get the best bang for your buck, but then his gaze lands on Ingrid, standing at the doorway to the kitchen. “Something’s wrong,” she says, her voice high and tight. In the light of day, I notice her sneakers are mismatched, one black, the other blue, both of them untied. “Something is terribly wrong, I just know it.” “And you are?” “Ingrid Stanfield. Sabine’s sister.” She juts a thumb into the next room. “I’ve made some notes. They’re in the kitchen.” Detective Durand shifts his weight, but his shoes stay planted to the hardwood. He turns to me, pulling a notepad from the front pocket of his pants. “I understand your wife didn’t return home last night?” I give him a perfunctory nod. “Sabine had a late showing, something that happens fairly often these days. She’s a real estate broker, a really good one. She texted me earlier in the day that she would be home by nine, but she never showed up. I’ve called her multiple times. Her phone rings, but it keeps sending me to voice mail.” “I’ve called her, too,” Ingrid says, nodding. “I’ve been calling her all night. Can you maybe trace her cell phone? I’m worried she’s had an accident, that she’s hurt somewhere and needs help.” Detective Marcus checks the time, by now closing in on nine in the morning, and he looks as exhausted as I feel. Drooping shoulders and pale, lined face. I’m guessing this is the end of his shift, and not the beginning. “Could she have gone anywhere else?” he says, in a tone that’s a tad too calm. He sounds like he’s holding back a sigh, or maybe a yawn. Maybe both. “To a friend’s or family member’s house, or maybe grabbed a drink with someone and forgotten to tell you?” I open my mouth to tell him no, but yet again, Ingrid beats me to it. “Sabine is too responsible to stay out all night without calling, and she always calls me back. Always. It’s how I know something has happened to her. Something bad.” I turn to the detective with a pained smile. “Ingrid is right to be worried, I’m afraid. It’s unlike Sabine to not let one of us know where she is. Their father is dead, and their mother is in assisted living over at Oakmont. The only other place she would have gone is to her sister’s.” “Have one of you called over to Oakmont just to be sure?” “I have,” Ingrid says. “One of the nurses spoke to her on the phone yesterday, but the others haven’t seen or heard from her in days.” The detective flips to a fresh sheet in his pad, writes OAKMONT across the top in all caps. He points to the kitchen, where the lights are still burning despite the early morning sunshine. “Maybe we could sit down?” “Of course, of course.” I sweep an arm toward the doorway like Vanna fucking White. In the kitchen, Ingrid makes a beeline to the table, parking herself on the same chair as before, her back to the wall, her hands folded on her notepad. Detective Durand chooses my chair, the one at the head. A man used to being in charge. “Detective, can I offer you something to drink? I think I have some Coke in the fridge, or I can make a pot of coffee if you’d like.” I’ll admit the offer is not entirely unselfish. Last night’s pizza has resulted in a ferocious thirst, and it’s probably not a bad idea to demonstrate I am both helpful and forthcoming. So far he hasn’t said anything to indicate he might suspect me, but he’s also not said very much. “I’ll have a water,” Ingrid says, and I glare at her over the detective’s head. “Did either of you call any of your wife’s friends before you called the police?” he says. “Her colleagues?” I pull three glasses from the cabinet by the sink. “It was the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake anyone up. And I am certain my wife wouldn’t go to their houses anyway. She’d go to her sister’s.” “Jeffrey and I don’t agree on much, but he’s right. Sabine and I talk multiple times a day. I know her schedule. She would have come to me, and she would have told me if she was going anywhere else. That’s why this is so urgent.” The detective looks at her with new interest. Not, I sense, because of her conviction some awful disaster has overcome her sister, but because of her first words. The ones that imply she and I don’t get along. She rips the top few pages from the notepad and holds them across the table. “The names and numbers of everybody I could think of who might know Sabine’s schedule yesterday. I left messages with everyone I got through to. I also wrote down Sabine’s description, the make and model of her car, her email and cell phone number. If you give me your number, I can text you her picture.” Detective Durand takes a few seconds to scan the pages, then looks up with a nod. “This is all very helpful, ma’am. A great start.” His voice is as earnest as his expression, and I get the sudden and sinking feeling that Ingrid is showing me up, making me look unprepared. That I’m uncaring, when I’m anything but. I’m the one who sounded the alarm in the first place. Leave it to Ingrid to make me feel defensive in my own house—which she so kindly pointed out is actually Sabine’s. Leave it to her to make me feel like a bum, a mooch. It’s always the husband. Especially one like me—sexually frustrated and financially dependent. It wouldn’t take much digging to uncover our marital issues. Ingrid knows. How long until she tells the detective? I fill the glasses with water from the tap, a sudden surge to seem cooperative. “So what now? What’s next?” “You mentioned she had a showing. Where was it? What time?” “I don’t know,” I say, “only that she said she’d be home by nine.” Ingrid’s eyes hold mine for a second too long. “The showing was at seven thirty.” She turns to the detective. “Sabine is the lead broker at that new development on Linden Street. You know, the one with the stone columns at the entrance and the big, colorful sign. I don’t have the address for the house she was showing, but it was in that development—her boss Lisa can tell you which one. Lisa’s name is at the top of the second page, but you’ll have to track down her number. Unfortunately, I don’t have it.” I pass out the glasses of water, and the detective doesn’t look at me, but I can sense his judgment. The husband and sister are not friends. The sister is better informed than the husband. Neither reflects well on our marriage. “When is the last time either of you talked to Sabine?” he says. “I talked to her twice yesterday morning,” Ingrid says. “The last time was at just before eleven. She was on her way to the office. But Jeffrey spoke to her later in the day, in the afternoon.” The lie comes back to me in a flash of icy hot. Ingrid, interrupting my jog, asking to speak to Sabine. Me, telling Ingrid I’d spoken to Sabine only an hour earlier so I could get back to my run. If I repeat the lie now, it would take the detective all of two seconds to catch me in it. One look at my call log would prove me wrong. I sink onto the chair across from Ingrid and shake my head. “No, I didn’t. I said I talked to Sabine yesterday morning, right before I boarded my connection in Atlanta.” I turn to the detective, explaining, “I’ve been in Florida all week, at a sales conference.” Ingrid’s head whips in my direction, and she glares across the table. “When I called you, at just before five, you said you’d talked to her an hour ago. So around four.” “You must have misunderstood.” She presses both hands to the wooden table, and they’re shaking. “I heard you loud and clear, Jeffrey. I asked when did you talk to her last, and you said an hour ago.” “Do you want to see my call log? I didn’t say that, and I didn’t talk to her.” The detective raises both brows, taking a long breath through his nose like a parent might, when he’s had it with his two squabbling toddlers. “Okay, okay, let’s just back up here for a second. Am I to understand that neither of you talked to her since yesterday morning, is that correct?” I nod. “Yes. That’s correct.” “Apparently so,” Ingrid mumbles. “And when you talked to her, did she mention anything out of the ordinary? Maybe that her car was acting funny, or that she had an errand to run in another town, anything like that?” Ingrid and I shake our heads. Finally, something we agree on. “And this showing last night. Any idea who it was with?” She waits until I shake my head again, then juts a triumphant chin. “I don’t know his name, but he was from out of town. Some executive who’s just started at the Tyson plant. Sabine had found him temporary housing while he searched for a house—an apartment just off 530, but now his wife was coming to town. This showing was more for her than for him. He already loved the house.” I’m silent, and also a little shocked. Ingrid’s knowledge of her sister’s business, all the particulars and detail. Sabine didn’t tell me any of this—or maybe she did. Maybe I just wasn’t listening. What else have I missed? Detective Durand consults Ingrid’s notes, taps the page with his pen. “This Lisa O’Brien will be able to tell me his name?” He’s no longer directing his questions at me. “I’m sure she can,” Ingrid says. “In fact, if I had her number, I would have already called to ask. Can you, I don’t know, look her up in your system or something?” “I’ll contact Ms. O’Brien, absolutely. I’ll also drive by the development and see if anything looks out of the ordinary. I’m not saying it will be—I just want to be sure, to cover all the bases. If I do find any signs of foul play—” the words make me twitch like a spider “—I’ll put a trace on her phone and contact you immediately.” “Can’t you do that now? Trace her phone, I mean. Because if something’s happened, if she’s hurt or.” Ingrid shakes her head, swallowing. “I just don’t think we should waste any more time.” “I’m not going to waste any time, I assure you. A missing person is about as high priority as you can get. And I’m sorry to have to ask this, but has your wife been receiving any threats? Is there anyone out there who might have wanted to hurt her?” “No!” I beat Ingrid to the answer this time, but I can’t look at her. I keep my gaze, sure and steady, on the detective. “Absolutely not. Everyone loves Sabine. She goes out of her way to be friendly to everyone. Partly because that’s her job, but mostly because that’s just how she is. Friendly and helpful. She’s never met a stranger.” Ingrid clears her throat. “It’s true. Sabine is a lovely, lovely person.” The detective offers up a smile, but it’s neither friendly nor comforting. “Okay. I’m going to start by checking the standard places—hospitals, medical centers, jails. I want the two of you to take a look at anything that might give us some insight as to her movements yesterday. Emails, texts, social media pages, mutual bank statements and credit cards, things like that. Compile a list of everything you find and send it to me.” Detective Durand slaps a card to the table, pointing to the number at the bottom. “Call me the second Sabine shows up, or if you think of anything else that might be relevant to where she could be. We’ll regroup later today.” I nod, mainly because I don’t know what else to do. That’s it. Interview over. The detective lets himself out and the two of us sit stunned, staring at each other with wide, horrified eyes. Across from me, Ingrid starts to cry. Now that the detective is gone, I shove Ingrid out the door and put on a pot of coffee. I make it extra strong, the kind that bubbles out opaque and is thick as molasses. Not that I think I’ll need the caffeine. Despite my sleepless night, I’m not the least bit drowsy, my veins humming with adrenaline and purpose. If Sabine doesn’t show up soon, if somebody doesn’t figure out where she went and what happened to her, Ingrid won’t be the only one who thinks I had something to do with my wife’s disappearance. The detective told me to comb through Sabine’s social media and bank accounts, but I was one step ahead of him, already thinking about where Sabine left her laptop. It’s an ancient Acer, a thick chunk of plastic and metal as manageable as a cinder block, and just as heavy. Its bulk is a big part of the reason why she doesn’t usually lug it to work. The other part is that she’s got a slick new desk computer at the office, and her iPhone is permanently attached to her palm. But in order to see what she’s been up to, I need her log-in credentials, the ones she keeps in an unprotected Excel file on her desktop. Usernames and passwords for pretty much anything you need a username and password for. Email accounts. Bank records. Credit card statements. Things that will give me a road map to wherever she is, or at the very least, which way she’s gone. I start upstairs and work my way down, moving from room to room looking for her computer, double-and triple-checking everywhere I can think of. The problem is, Sabine is not logical. She treats her laptop like an old sweater or pair of shoes—as an afterthought, an item to leave lying around wherever she pleases, half-hidden under the bed or the couch. I concentrate my search around the places where Sabine tends to sit. On our bed, the laptop resting on her stretched-out thighs. The left end of the couch, her legs curled under her like a cat. The desk in the study and the chaise by the window in the den. I peer on shelves and under tables, sift through stacks of papers and books, lift bed skirts and blankets. No laptop. Typical. In each room, before moving on to the next one, I stand in the middle of the floor and call her cell. Even though wherever she is, chances are her phone is with her and not here at home. I hit her number and then I hold my breath and listen for the familiar melody, or if it’s on silent, the muffled buzzing of it vibrating under a pile of pillows or some clothes. But the only sound is the four lazy beeps, right before it goes to voice mail. I hang up and move to the next room. After an hour, I end up back where I started, in the kitchen, empty-handed. I pour myself a cup of thick, black sludge and sink onto a bar stool. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe yesterday was one of the rare workdays that Sabine needed her computer, to search the MLS system or draw up a contract from a coffee shop between showings, in which case I’ll have to go to her office to fetch it. That is, assuming she left it there, and it’s not sliding around her trunk or on the floorboards of her car. I often see it sticking out of that canvas tote she lugs around, the one I’m forever tripping over when she chucks it by the garage door to search for her keys. I pop off the stool, race to the garage, and there it is. The tote, on the cool cement floor. I snatch it by a handle and carry it inside. The laptop is completely dead. No surprise there. Sabine has needed to replace the battery for ages now, though what she really needs is a new laptop. One that doesn’t require almost-constant charging. I plug it in under the island counter and turn it on, topping up my coffee while I wait for the thing to power up, which takes forever. I think about Ingrid across town, doing much the same thing—hunched over a laptop in her lonely kitchen, combing her files in search of her twin. I see her red and swollen nose, her hair still frizzy from the pillow, her squinty eyes when she said those ugly words to me—I know what you did to Sabine—and I feel a momentary spurt of fury. Ingrid thinks I had something to do with this, that I am behind my own wife’s disappearance somehow, and the idea makes me want to strangle her. The Acer gives a metallic beep, then lights up with a log-in screen. A blinking cursor, but there are only so many things her password could be. Sabine’s birthday, or mine. Our anniversary. Combinations of the dates with our names. With every try, the password dock shimmies, but it doesn’t let me in. She would choose something that’s easy to remember. She doesn’t have hobbies, and we don’t have pets or children. I try the other people in her life, her mother, followed by her dead father. Still nothing. And then I sigh and type Ingrid’s name and birthdate into the bar—the one I should have started with, honestly—and voil?. The screen dissolves into her desktop. I email myself the password file, from Sabine’s email program that is a giant, honking mess. More than twenty thousand unread messages, everything from stores to spam to requests for a viewing, automatically generated emails from the MLS and RE/MAX systems. It would take days to search through the chaos for anything remotely relevant, especially since I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. Instead, I flip to the sent messages and start at the top. Contracts, sales pitches, the usual stuff. After the one I just sent, the most recent message is from Tuesday, now two days ago. I exit and head to Facebook. Sabine has some three thousand friends, most of whom aren’t friends at all. Clients, colleagues, people from Rotary and business clubs. I go to her profile page, scrolling through post after post boasting sales numbers and pictures of homes listed and sold. No wonder she’s always on her phone, her pretty thumbs flying across the keyboard like a teenager’s. Her Facebook page is a walking advertisement for her services, her success. Halfway down, I pause on a video from last week, a Facebook Live clip featuring a newly built house on Longmeadow Street. I’m shocked at the number below it, a counter boasting 758 views. Sabine is one of the top brokers, but still. That many? I click on the video, and the counter ticks to 759. The video loads, and there she is. My AWOL wife. She’s wearing her favorite summer dress, the yellow one with the ruffles around the hem, and the gold locket I gave her last Christmas, dangling from a chain around her neck. Her hair, pulled high into a ponytail, flicks cheerfully when she talks, bobbing over a tanned shoulder. “Hey, y’all, Sabine Hardison here with the most fabulous house on the block.” She laughs. “Okay, so I know I say that about every house, but this one really is the most fabulous I’ve seen in like, ever. Four humongous bedrooms, five and a half baths—yes, people, you heard that right, a full bath for every bedroom—and a master suite you have to see to believe. Let’s take a look, shall we?” She looks happy. Her skin is flushed, her cheeks pink with excitement as she backward-walks the camera through the house, pointing out the features. When she signed up for the real estate course in Little Rock, I bitched about the time commitment, didn’t hold back about how the house and our social life and our marriage would suffer, but I knew she’d be good at it. The truth is, that’s what I was more worried about. I lean forward on my chair, remembering when she used to smile like this at me. When I was the one to make her glow. The computer beeps, and at the bottom of the screen, a window opens. A message from someone named Bella. Hey you. I ran into Trevor last night at the grocery store, and he was asking about you. Like, really asking. If I’ve seen you lately, if we’ve talked, what we talked about. He wouldn’t tell me why, just gave me this big-ass smile like a canary would pop out any second. Are you the canary? I’m here for you whenever you have something to tell me. XO I sit back on my stool. Trevor. Who the fuck is Trevor? I click on the list of Sabine’s friends and type the name in the search bar, with zero results. I repeat the search in her email program, and this time I get a hit. Multiple hits, actually, messages sent and received with Dr. Trevor McAdams, an ob-gyn at Jefferson Regional. Apparently, Sabine sold him a house last fall. The most recent string is a boring exchange from November, setting up a meeting for the signing of papers, the official exchange of keys. I scan their back-and-forth, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. No flirtatious innuendo, nothing that implies a swallow-the-canary kind of outcome. The only thing Trevor says that is even remotely personal is that he wishes her a nice Thanksgiving. She thanks him, says she hopes he and his family will be happy in their new home. His family. Maybe I’m overthinking this. Trevor is an ob-gyn, so it’s not entirely impossible he could be Sabine’s doctor. Not because she’s pregnant, something that’s impossible when you haven’t had sex in five—that’s right, count ’em—five months. But women go to the gynecologist for other reasons. Maybe Sabine goes to this guy. I scroll down to his signature, click through to his bio on the hospital website. Trevor McAdams is a decent-looking guy, probably somewhere in his early forties. Clear skin, bright eyes, full head of hair swept off a broad forehead. The type of face that plenty of women wouldn’t mind having between their legs. Is my wife one of them? I return to the emails and open one of the attachments. Eight months ago, Trevor plunked down just over three hundred thousand dollars for 4572 square feet of newly renovated house on a quiet street overlooking Pine Bluff Country Club. That’s a lot of square footage, and an address in the swankiest area of town. No mortgage, which means he earns a hell of a lot more than Sabine and I do added together. I jot his address on a sticky note, 1600 Country Club Lane. I open Sabine’s calendar, in search of the address for last night’s showing, but it’s empty. She hasn’t synced it in ages, maybe never. I click the icon for the internet instead and surf to Google, where Sabine is already signed in. I pause, the cursor hovering over the symbol for Gmail. Sabine has a Gmail account? I stop. Stare at the screen. Breathe hard and fast through my nose. My finger lingers over the track pad because I know, I know, I goddamnitalltohell know what I’ll find once I click it. Hundreds of IM chats, all with Trevor McFuckingAdams. I need to see you. Even if it’s only for a minute. I’m sitting next to him, thinking about you. Meet me at our place in half an hour. You said we wouldn’t fall in love. You lied. (I’m glad) I’m ready to tell them, Sabine. I’m ready to take that step whenever you are. OMG, are we really going to do this? Can we? Yes, dammit. All you have to do is say the word. I love you. Let’s tell them this weekend. The coffee turns to oil in my stomach, and I shove the cup away. It skids across the counter and into the sink, and it’s a good thing Sabine is not here, because if she were, I would fucking kill her. No, first I would hurt her, and then I would hurt Trevor, and then I would kill them both. No wonder he swallowed the fucking canary. For the past however many months, he’s been having secret sexcapades with my wife while I played the role of clueless, foolish, idiot, ignorant husband. Somewhere across town, a bitch named Bella is laughing. At me. Is that where Sabine is right now? In a bed somewhere, with him? My gaze lands on the sticky note. 1600 Country Club Lane. Ten minutes later, I’m death-gripping the wheel of my car, the pedal punched to the floor. MARCUS This case, I handle by the book. I start at the show house, walking the grounds and studying the dirt for imprints—both shoes and tires. I press my face to the windows and peer into all the rooms. This place is a “show house” all right, every room packed with complicated, flashy furniture, every horizontal surface crammed with bowls and candles and crap. I try the doors, the latches on the windows, but the place is locked up tight. No sign anyone but a decorator has been here. From there, I go to the office for a face-to-face with Sabine’s boss, Lisa, a perfumed blonde in a ruby-red suit with lips to match. According to her, not only was Sabine a no-show for last night’s showing, she also missed a company-wide training yesterday afternoon, where she was supposed to present on building a social media platform. “You don’t understand,” Lisa tells me, a frown pulling on her Botoxed brow. “Sabine is my hardest worker, and she’s always on time for everything, especially showings. Honestly, Detective, this is very worrisome. This isn’t like her at all.” The other brokers I talk to say much the same. Sabine is responsible, considerate, punctual. Like Lisa, they’re worried something happened. An accident, maybe, or worse. “Could she have booked a last-minute vacation?” I ask every one of them. “Maybe she needed to get away for a day or two.” Head shakes all around. I’m on my way to the station to write up a report when my phone rings. Bryn. My reaction is both instant and physical. I wince. My lungs deflate like an unleashed balloon. Three years since her husband passed—my former partner—and her calls still hit me like a punch to the gut. Stifling a groan, I pick up on the handsfree system. “Hey, Bryn.” “Hi, Marcus. Do you have a minute?” She sniffs, and I know it’s not going to be a minute—pretty much the last thing I have time for right now. I need to get my ass to the department. I need to plug Sabine’s name through all the available databases, make sure Chief Eubanks sees my hardworking face. I need to make it known around the department that I met the missing woman once, when she showed my wife and me a house, so there’s no uncomfortable questions down the road. I need to get every cop on the street watching for her car. But once upon a time, I made a promise to Brian and to God—to watch over his sons, to be there for their birthdays and school graduations, to make sure they go to church and stay out of trouble. They’re two little hellions, but I love them like they’re my own. The only problem is I’m not so crazy about his widow, Bryn. Scratch that. It’s not that I don’t like Bryn, it’s that I don’t always agree with her parenting methods. She babies those boys, lets them get away with far too much, and without a man in the house to counteract her coddling, her boys have the run of the place. She’s constantly calling me to bellyache—how they’re walking all over her, how they could use a good talking-to. My wife, Emma, says it’s a cry for adult male interaction—in this case, mine. For someone to shoulder the burden like Brian used to. Emma’s not the best armchair psychologist, but in this case, I think she might be right. Bryn sighs into the phone. “I was cleaning up Timmy’s room just now, and I found a whole bunch of toys I’ve never seen before. Those spinners, you know the ones all the kids are flinging around these days, and a whole bunch of other stuff that’s not his. The problem is, I didn’t buy it, and there’s no way he could have bought it all himself. First of all, he’d need me to drive him to the store, which I didn’t do. And toys are expensive. How’d he afford so many on a dollar-a-week allowance?” “You think he stole them?” “I hate thinking that about my own son, but I don’t know what else it could be. He didn’t get them from me, that’s for sure.” She pauses, giving me time to make the offer. To tell her I’m on my way. “He talks to you, Marcus. He tells you things he won’t say to me.” I don’t have time for this. I’m almost to the station, and backtracking to her house will tack on a half hour, maybe more, of driving time alone. And visits to Bryn are never quick. They involve tearful conversations and awkward hugs, endless pep talks and bottomless glasses of sweet tea. I do not have time. But I think of Brian and I can’t say no. I beat a fist on the wheel, then jerk it hard to the left, making a U-turn in the middle of the road. “I’ll be right over.” Twelve minutes later, I skid to a stop in front of the house, a squat ranch that’s seen better days. The grass needs mowing, the window frames could use a fresh coat of paint, and I count at least a half dozen shingles missing on the roof. I shake my head, shake it off. Not my responsibility. No time. I’m coming up the walkway when the front door opens, and Bryn steps outside. She’s lost more weight since the last time she called me here, less than a month ago, and it looks like she’s gotten even less sleep than I did. Pale skin, eye bags, the works. She likes to joke that her kids are trying to kill her, and not for the first time, I wonder if it might be true. “Thanks for coming,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do, who else to call.” How about her father, who lives just up the road? Brian’s brother in the next town, or any one of the other fifteen detectives who stood behind her when she buried her husband? I’m not just her first resort, as far as I can tell I’m the only one. I meant my promise to Brian, but in moments like these, I sure wish she’d let the other men in her life help, too. I drop a kiss on her cheek, which is cold and pasty. “How’s he doing?” “Pouting. Upstairs in his room.” I pat her shoulder and step inside, taking the stairs by twos. Timmy’s door, the last at the end of the hall, is closed, but I’m pretty sure he’s not pouting. Video game sounds are coming through the wood—a car race, by the sound of it. I rap the door with a knuckle. “Yo, Timmy. It’s me, Marcus.” Timmy is the oldest boy, a wiry kid with his father’s cowlick and a half-decent jump shot. He was only four when his father died, a bullet to the chest at a routine traffic stop. I heard the pop, looked up and Brian was on the ground, the kid who shot him running away. He’s currently serving life in prison, but the point is, Timmy barely remembers his father. He only remembers me, stepping into his father’s shoes. When he doesn’t answer, I open the door, lean my head inside. “I take it you know why I’m here.” Timmy is sprawled on his bed in sweatpants and bare feet, and he looks up with a sheepish expression—in my mind, another strike against his mother. She only calls when one of her kids need disciplining, which is all the damn time. If she’s the pushover, I’m the bad guy, the strict—well, not parent, but certainly disciplinarian. I’d much prefer the role of cool godfather. “Yeah. I know why.” Timmy’s gaze goes back to the TV, and his thumb works the joystick in his hands. On the television screen, his car, a bright green Mustang, is tearing up a dirt track. I step inside, shut the door behind me. “You want to explain it to me then?” He shakes his head. “Uh-uh.” “Come on, Timmy. Either you turn the game off, or I will.” Timmy sighs, but he hits Pause. He stares at his lap as the room falls into silence. I sink onto the edge of his bed. “So, here’s the thing. There’s a woman missing, and for about—” I check my watch, do the math “—twenty hours now. The most crucial hours in an investigation, and the farther out we get from the time of disappearance, the less likely it is I’ll find this woman in time. I shouldn’t even be here right now, but I am because you’re important to me, too.” He looks up, a lightning-quick glance. “You think the woman’s dead?” I should have known he’d latch on to that part. That’s what happens when you lose a parent at such an early age. You have an unnatural preoccupation with death and dying. But Timmy is smart, and he knows when someone is lying to him. “I’ll tell you what, buddy, it’s not looking good.” “Oh.” “Yeah, oh.” I drape a hand over his scrawny leg, give it a jiggle. “So help me out here, will you? Tell me where you got the toys.” Timmy tosses the joystick on the bed and reaches over, pulling a notebook from his bedside table. He flips it to a page smothered in writing—big, sloppy letters and numbers lined up in crooked columns. I scan the page, taking in the list of names and toys. A logbook. “You’ve been trading your toys and games?” “Yeah. But only for a little while. We were gonna trade back after we’re done playing with them, only Mom took everything and now I can’t. That’s why I kept a list, so I wouldn’t forget where all my stuff went.” I toss the notebook to the bed, biting down on a grin. This kid may be a hellion, but he’s not a thief. In fact, he’s actually kind of brilliant. Whether he realizes it or not, this kid just created a co-op. “Okay. But you do realize if you’d just told your mom all of this, you could have saved me a trip.” Timmy frowns, folding his scrawny arms across his chest like I said something wrong. I’m trying to figure out what when my cell buzzes, and I check the screen. A text from Rick, another detective on the force. Hospitals, med centers, jails and morgues all clean. No sign of car, no activity on phone, either. I type out a reply—On my way, be there in 15—and slide it back into my pocket. “Listen, I need you to promise me two things. Timmy, look at me.” I wait for him to meet my gaze, then I stick a thumb in the air. “First, that you’ll tell your mom the truth about the toys. Explain it to her like you did me. Show her the list. Your mom’s a smart woman, and she loves you. She’ll think you’re as smart as I do for coming up with such a plan. Do you think you can do that?” He gives me a reluctant nod. I uncurl a finger, hold it alongside my thumb. “And second, next time you want to see me, just pick up the phone and call. It’s a hell of a lot easier for everybody involved. Way better than getting yourself in trouble just so I’ll come over.” The look he gives me tells me I was right. His mother is not the only one in this family looking for a little male influence. The boys need it just as much. I resolve to be better, to do better. I ruffle his hair and stand. “As soon as this case is behind me, we’ll do something fun, just you and me, okay? A movie. A ballgame. You pick. Does that sound all right to you?” Timmy looks up from his bed and smiles. “That sounds awesome.” “Now get up here and gimme a hug so I can go.” It’s the fastest hug on record, as is my trek down the stairs. Bryn is waiting for me at the bottom, her expression hopeful and disappointed at the same time. I’m not staying. That much is clear from the way I hit the floor and keep going, heading in long strides to the door. “Talk to Timmy. He promised to explain.” My phone buzzes. Rick again, with a possible sighting of Sabine’s car. Shit. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” Bryn says. “Call you later,” I say, and then I’m off like a shot, jogging across the front yard to my car. BETH I roll up at a two-story cottage on the Westside and double-check the address—1071 English Street. I take in the salmon-painted siding, white picket fencing, the neat, manicured front lawn lined with a cheerful border of impatiens. On the outside at least, Morgan House is a dream. A hundred times better than the shithole on Wylie Street, and that’s without even taking into account the hooker. I park at the curb, sling my bag over my shoulder and head for the door. The woman who pulls it open is large. Amazonian large, with a stretched-out frame and limbs like a panther, lean and miles and miles long. The tallest woman I’ve ever seen, though. My gaze lands on her throat. Not even a shadow of Adam’s apple. She steps onto the porch in four-inch heels, and I have to tip my head all the way back to look at her. “Can I help you?” Her voice is round and resonant, like she’s talking into an empty jug. I clear my throat and smile. “Yes. I’m looking for whoever’s in charge of this place.” “Well, then, you’re in luck, ’cause you found her.” She sticks out a hand the size of a skillet. Her nails are pointy and sharp, painted a shiny hot pink. “My name’s Miss Sally. And you are?” Her makeup is immaculate, if a little heavy. Fuchsia lips, lined and shaded lids, a pinkish bronze lining her cheekbones. I search her chin for tiny pinpricks of whiskers—it’s too early to have a shadow, but still—and find nothing. Her foundation looks spray painted on, dense but flawless. “Beth Murphy,” I say, shaking her hand. “A friend gave me this address because I’m looking for—” “You don’t look like a Beth.” She leans back and studies me, her gaze exploring my face, my hair, my suspiciously dark eyebrows, which I didn’t think to color until it was too late. “You look more like a Haley, or maybe a Madeline.” I go ice cold and overheated all at once. I don’t look like a Beth. I don’t feel like one, either. My baggy clothes, my dollar-store hair are all wrong. I’ve only been Beth for a day, and already I can feel her slipping away. Miss Sally laughs, slapping me playfully on an arm. “I’m just playing around with you, sugar. In my house you can be whoever you want to be. Now come on in and I’ll show you around.” I step inside the tiny foyer, and she shuts the door behind me. A TV blares from the room to my left, a square space crammed with mismatched couches and chairs, a table, some bookshelves. The only occupant is a man, in dusty jeans and a yellow hard hat. He looks over from his perch on the couch and lifts his chin in a greeting. “Living room, TV room and study, all in one,” Miss Sally says. “Those books there are loaners, meaning don’t go leaving them all over town or selling them off to Goodwill. There’s cards, darts and board games in the cupboard. The Wi-Fi is free, but the vending machines aren’t. Parking is out back.” “Looks great,” I say, but I’m talking to air. Miss Sally is already halfway down a long, narrow hallway. I hustle to catch up, peeking into the bedrooms as we pass. Tiny but neat—a single bed, a dresser and not much else. “So, Beth,” she says, stopping, turning on the hallway runner to face me. “Did you just get to town?” “Yes. Today, in fact.” “How are you liking Atlanta so far?” “It’s okay. There’s a lot of traffic.” She laughs, though it’s not even remotely funny. “It’s also jungle-hot, sprawled halfway to Tennessee and has entirely too many Republicans. But it’s not all that bad, you’ll see. You on your own?” “Very.” “Where from?” “Out west.” She twitches a brow that says she wants more. You’re a great liar. For years I’ve watched you tell the truth whenever possible, and not embellish with too much detail you’ll only forget later. Lies multiply, contradict, proliferate. Sticking to something close to the truth is the only way for you to keep track of all your lies, to keep them from piling up and you from stumbling over the simplest answers. I follow your example now. “I’m not really from anywhere. Not anymore, anyway. I move around a lot.” It’s enough for Miss Sally. She turns on her heels, raps on a door with a knuckle. “We’ve got three bathrooms,” she says, shoving the door open, “one for every four bedrooms, and they pretty much all look like this one.” She steps aside so I can see. Two pedestal sinks, a toilet and at the far end, a glass-enclosed shower, utilitarian and blinding white. The room smells clean, like Old Spice and bleach. “Shower time is three minutes. Seems short, I know, but you can get everything you need to get done in that time if you’re efficient, and if you’re not.well, we know what you’re doing in there. And you do not want to be going over. People start pounding on the door at two minutes, fifty-nine seconds, and they won’t be polite about it, either. Bitches who hog the hot water aren’t so popular around here, I can promise you that.” “It’s very neat.” No toothbrushes, no sticky tubes of cream or paste, no forgotten towels on the floor. The place is spotless. Miss Sally gives me a nod that says she’s pleased I noticed. “That’s because anything you leave behind gets confiscated, if not by me, then by whoever goes in after you. Don’t leave your shit lying around—that’s one of the house rules.” “What are the others?” She ticks them off on Jolly Green Giant fingers. “No smoking, no drugs, no sleepovers, and if you’re not in the door by midnight you’ll be sleeping on the lawn. Other than that, just don’t be an asshole and you’ll do fine.” “Does that mean I’m in?” In lieu of an answer, she turns and moves farther down the hall. “Kitchen’s down there, and the laundry room is in the basement. A buck a load, drop it in the lockbox on the wall. We live by the honor code here, and don’t even think of stiffing me. I’m not saying I have cameras everywhere, but it’s best to assume I have cameras everywhere.” I start at the word cameras, and my gaze wanders to the ceiling, searching out the corners. Miss Sally laughs, a big sound that fills the hallway like a cello chorus. “Well, I’m not going to be that obvious about it, now, am I?” I can’t tell if she’s fucking with me or not. “And the price?” “Single rooms are twenty-four dollars a night. Rent is due in cash on Sundays at noon. No exceptions. Come to me either short or late, and you’re out.” A few bucks more than Wylie Street, but also a million times nicer. I nod. She looks down her nose at me, and the silence that fills the hallway tightens the skin of my stomach. She’s waiting for something, and so am I—for her to pose the question I’ve been dreading since I walked through the door: Can you prove you are who you say you are? She opens her mouth, and my heart gives a sudden kick. “Who is this friend you mentioned earlier?” I shake my head, confused. “I’m sorry, what?” “When you knocked on my door, you said a friend gave you the address. Who? Tell me his or her name.” I think about how Beth should answer, if she’s the type of person to lie easily and effortlessly, like you. The opposite of Old Me, who’s never been a natural liar, though I’ve certainly sharpened my skills some. Don’t change your voice. Don’t fidget or become too still. Hold a steady, confident gaze, and whatever you do, don’t look up and to the left. But now I’ve waited too long to answer—the dreaded, too-telling pause. It’s too late to blurt out a name and hope for the best, and my gut tells me this is some kind of test. That Miss Sally, with her third-degree tone and squinty eyes, would see straight through me. “So maybe ‘friend’ was too big a word,” I say, lifting an apologetic shoulder. “Maybe it was more like some random person I met at Best Buy.” Miss Sally’s shiny lips spread in a grin. “Girl, welcome to Morgan House.” I celebrate securing a new room by falling onto the bed fully clothed and conking out for five hours straight. It’s still light when I awaken, but the sun has dipped below the trees, giant pines that sway in the air above my window. My few belongings are tucked in the drawer to my right, an easy arm’s reach from my bed. When Miss Sally shoved open my door, she handed me two keys—one for the door and the second for the drawer—but if she’s the type to spy with secret, hidden cameras, then she’s also the type to have a master key. My dwindling wad of cash is strapped to a belt inside my shirt. Somewhere below me, people are starting to trickle in. The front door opens and closes, opens and closes, and voices worm up through the floor like distant waves. I wonder about the proper etiquette here. Do I go down and say hello? Stay in my room? I hear a sudden burst of laughter, and I am overcome with uncertainty. Venturing downstairs means talking to people. Introducing myself as Beth. Answering questions like the ones Miss Sally asked. Up here in my room, behind my closed door, I am invisible. My stomach growls, and I unlock the drawer and dig out a small bag of peanuts, the last one. I rip off the corner and think what I really want is a burger, dripping in grease and draped in bacon, smothered in mayonnaise and ketchup and a thick layer of pickles. My mouth waters, and I remember all those times I ate pickles at the fair, giant, foil-wrapped mammoths my sister and I had to hold in both hands. We’d wander among the bumper cars and farm stalls, eating them until our stomachs ached. You say pickles make my breath stink. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a jar of Vlasics and eat every single one. For someone who is trying to shed herself of a husband, I sure do think of you a lot. Part of it is habit—all those years of tiptoeing around your moods and catering to your every whim are hard to unlearn, like a Charles Manson brainwashing. And it’s still a necessary measure to keep myself safe. I have to think of you, to imagine the steps you’re taking to find me in order to stay one step in front of you. But I can’t stay up here, hiding in my room forever. I reach for my phone, pull up the calculator. At twenty-four dollars a night, my two-thousand-dollar stash will last me only a couple of months, and that’s assuming the pile of crap car Dill sold me doesn’t blow a fuse or a tire. And Beth has to eat, which means Beth needs to do some seriously creative thinking. Even a job slinging burgers requires some sort of identification. I turn the peanut bag upside down over my mouth, but all I get is crumbs. I toss the bag on the bed. Groceries and a job, that’s on the agenda for tomorrow. I think about what you’re doing now, some thirty hours into my disappearing trick. I wonder if you’ve found my car, my cell phone, the clues that will lead you to Tulsa—the opposite direction of here. I picture you searching through my things, calling my sister and my friends, combing through the files on my computer, and my senses go on high alert. I listen for the rumble of your car, the scrape of your key in the door, the tremor of your heavy shoes coming down the hallway floor. I shoot a glance to the window, half expecting to see the pale moon of your face peering in, the flash of your gotcha smile before you point your gun at my head. My heart taps a double time, and I take deep, belly breaths, trying to calm my nervous system. Post-traumatic stress is no joke—flashbacks and nightmares and anxiety attacks like this one are the product of years of abuse. It’ll take more than a couple days of freedom for my body to uncoil. Freedom. I’m not there yet, not even close. I’m more in danger now than that time the waiter accidentally brushed his fingers against mine when refilling my water, or any one of the times you came home after a particularly bad day at work. Leaving does not stop the violence, and it doesn’t guarantee freedom. Why doesn’t she just leave? gets asked in living rooms and courtrooms across the country, when a better question would be, Why doesn’t he let her go? It took me a while, but I’ve finally figured out the answer. You’d sooner kill me than let me go. JEFFREY On a long stretch of stick-straight road, 1600 Country Club Lane is tucked behind a thick tuft of trees and bushes. I don’t see it until I’ve already blown past, and then I slam the brakes and screech to a stop in the middle of the road, because what the hell. Nobody’s on this street but me, and with any luck, the squealing of my tires lets them know I’m here, that I’m coming in. I throw the car into Reverse, pulling into the driveway in a sloppy arc, my gaze lighting on an upstairs window. I picture the two of them popping up in bed behind the shiny glass, sheets pressed to their naked, panting chests. I’m here, bitches. Just in case, I lean on the horn. The house is a renovated bungalow, sprawling and ivy-covered, the kind of place Sabine would go gaga over. A pompous thing that belongs in the rolling hills of Tuscany, not pressed up against the faded greens of the Pine Bluff Country Club. An easy sale, a house she’d already be in love with before Trevor walked through the door. I climb out of the car and slam my door with a sharp clap that echoes down the street. Inside the house, a little dog barks, high-pitched and frantic. Good, at least somebody knows I’m here. I stomp up the walkway and bang on the front door with a fist. “Sabine! I know you’re in there so open up. Open this door right goddamn now!” The fury fills me like a furnace, bathing my body in a thin layer of sweat. Somewhere inside this stupid, pretentious house, my wife’s body is wrapped around her lover’s, and if one of them doesn’t open this door right fucking now, I’m going to bust it down with my bare hands. I cup my hands around my face and lean into the glass, searching for movement, but all I see is an empty foyer. I haul back a fist and bang some more. On either side of me, two gas-fueled porch lights flicker in the fading light. Two feet appear at the top of the stairs—male feet, sticking out from under blue scrubs. The man comes down trailed by a tiny white dog that is losing its shit. Each frantic bark pops all four of his paws off the ground, a fluffy jumping bean bouncing down the stairs. But it’s Trevor, all right. A shirtless Trevor. I recognize him from his headshot—full head of hair, strong shoulders that taper down into the abs of a movie star, not an ounce of fat or love handles on him. Not that I would normally notice such a thing, but Sabine would. She’d notice, and then she’d want to trace all those sculpted muscles with her fingertips, and maybe her tongue. “It’s you,” he says, studying me through the door’s paned windows. All those years of hospital training, of on-call shifts and middle-of-the-night births are working now like a Xanax, making him look almost bored at the prospect of his lover’s husband banging on his front door. I beat on the wood hard enough to crack it. “Where’s Sabine? Tell that little bitch to stop hiding and get her ass down here!” On the other side of the glass, the dog is going ballistic. Trevor scoops it up and cradles it to his chest like a football. His mouth is moving, but I can’t hear his words over the barking and the doorbell, which I’m mashing over and over and over again with a thumb. He opens the door with a whoosh of cool air and moneyed manliness. “I’m sorry, Jeffrey, but Sabine’s not here.” Jeffrey. I’ve known about this motherfucker’s existence for less than half an hour, and now he’s calling me by my first name. Did Sabine show him my picture? Did they laugh about poor, clueless Jeffrey and talk about the best way to make me look like a fool? I shove him out of the way, marching to the stairs and hollering up them. “Sabine! You can come out now. I saw the emails. I know.” “Jeffrey.” A hand lands on my shoulder. “Calm down. She’s not here.” I shrug him off, swinging my arm through the air. “You touch me again, Trevor, and I will shove my fist down your throat hard enough to come out the other side. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” The dog kicks things up a notch or ten, barking so hard he’s starting to foam at the mouth. Jeffrey holds a chill-out hand in my direction, then wraps his fingers around the dog’s snoot like a muzzle. Finally, thankfully, the beast stops barking. “Where is she?” I’m not looking at him, but beyond him into the foyer. A family’s foyer. Kids’ shoes, a soccer ball, forgotten jackets and book bags. I wonder if Sabine has met them yet, if they hate her for blowing their happy home to bits. Trevor shuts the door. “I already told you. She’s not here.” “Why should I believe you?” “You shouldn’t. But I’m telling you the God’s honest truth that she’s not upstairs. I’d let you look, but my kids are up there.” He winces. “Jesus, I’m going to have to explain this to them, aren’t I? They’re only six and four. They’re never going to understand.” If that was an attempt to make me feel sorry for him, it gets him nowhere. I don’t give a shit about his kids, or the fissure in his family. I only care about mine. “You fucked my wife.” A normal person would deny it, especially one who’s just been threatened with a fist down his throat, but not Trevor. His shoulders slump and he sighs, and his body language just lays it all out there. Yes. Yes, now that you mention it, I did fuck your wife. He even has the balls to look apologetic. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t want you to find out like this. Sabine was going to tell you to your face this weekend. Ask her—she’ll tell you we had it all planned out. She was going to tell you the right way.” “The right way. What in the fucking hell could possibly be the right way?” Now that the dog’s calm, he settles the thing on the floor. “By telling you that we’re in love. That we want to be together. I know that hurts to hear, and believe me, we’ve struggled with it ourselves, but—” I throw back my head and shout hard enough to burn the back of my throat, “She’s married, you asshole!” The words bounce around the house, then fall into a silence so absolute it rings in my ears. “I understand that, Jeffrey, and I’m sorry. Truly. You can’t even imagine how sorry. But swear to God, Sabine and I didn’t set out intending to break up two families. It just happened, and this isn’t just some fling. This is the realest, most genuine thing I’ve ever felt. Sabine is my soul mate. I love her. I adore her. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” His speech might have worked on another man. His words might have been a balm on a brittle, broken heart. Sabine will be loved, cared for, cherished. He’s not stealing her out of greed or spite, but because he has no choice, because their connection is too great to ignore. Only an asshole stands in the way of soul mates. But we’ve already established that I am a bitter, bitter man. “Well then, Trevor, I feel obliged to tell you that this woman you cherish so much? Your soul mate?” The fur bag sniffs at my shoe, and I push it away with a foot. “She’s missing.” Trevor makes a face like I punched him in his perfectly sculpted abs. “What do you mean, Sabine is missing? Missing, missing?” I nod. “She had a showing last night—” “With Corey Porter and his family, I know.” The doctor stops, waiting for me to continue, but I’m still processing the fact that he knows more about my wife’s business than I do, than even Ingrid does. As much as I’d love to leave him hanging, I need to know what he knows. I fix him with a defiant stare. “She never came home.” “She never.” He swallows the rest, but his expression is screaming the words. “Came home. Sabine never came home. She didn’t show up, and neither did her car.” “Okay, okay. Let’s think about this logically. I mean, she was pretty sure Corey would pull the trigger on the house. Maybe he did. Maybe they went out after to celebrate.” “Maybe. But now it’s the next day.” “Did you call her?” I sigh. Roll my eyes. “Of course you called her. But, but.” Trevor runs a shaking hand through his hair. “What about Ingrid—did you call her? Did you call the police?” “Yes to both. Ingrid was at my house when the detective got there. He was going to check out the show house, see if he saw anything out of the ordinary. That was hours ago.” Trevor’s eyes go wide with fear, with horror. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” He stumbles into the kitchen, and I follow behind. I step on one of the dog’s squeaky toys, and the beast comes running. Trevor leans against the kitchen counter, tapping numbers into a cordless phone with his thumb. He presses the phone to his ear, muttering, “Come on, come on, come on.” And then his shoulders slump, and he curses. “Babe, it’s me. Jeffrey’s here, and he said you never came home last night. Wherever you are, please call me, okay? The very second you get this. I need to know you’re okay, that you’re. I’m scared shitless. I love you. Call me.” He hangs up, and I almost feel sorry for the bastard. He begins pacing, his bare feet slapping the hardwood floor. “Now what?” Under the kitchen can lights, his face is green and shiny, sweating despite the air-conditioning. “What are we going to do now?” I shake my head, battling a rush of disgust at his use of the word we. “You and I are not on the same team here. We do not share Sabine. She’s my wife. She’s nothing to you.” He stops, takes a long, slow breath. “When is the last time you talked to your wife?” “Yesterday morning. And then she texted me later in the day that she had a showing but she’d be home by nine. When’s the last time you talked to my wife?” “Has anybody confirmed that she actually made it to the showing? Did she meet Corey and his wife at the house?” I shrug. “Like I said, I haven’t heard anything from the detective, so I’m guessing so. What time—” “Did anybody call Corey to ask?” “You’re the first person I’ve talked to who knows who the showing was with. The most I could tell the detective was the name of Sabine’s boss.” He turns and races from the room, his footsteps crashing up the stairs. While he’s gone, I take a look around, try to see the place like Sabine would, like she did when she showed it to her soon-to-be lover. I picture her leading him through the empty house, pointing out all the features. Open, rambling rooms with French doors and generous windows. A spacious kitchen with new stainless appliances. Custom molding and hardwood floors throughout. Was their first kiss under the arched doorway? Did he push her up against these granite countertops? The visions burn like acid in my eyes, and I rub them away. The floor creaks above my head. I open the fridge and study the contents. Definitely a doctor’s refrigerator. Milk, fruit, yogurt, enough vegetables to stock a produce department. Nothing even remotely unhealthy except a lone IPA, shoved to the very back behind a container of organic pineapple. I’m digging it out when Trevor returns with a shirt, thank God, and his cell. “Corey’s not answering his phone,” he tells me, “and neither is Lisa.” I shut the refrigerator and wave the beer in the air by my head. “Where do you keep your opener?” Trevor ignores me, staring at the phone in his hand. The first drawer I try is stuffed with pencils and Post-its, so I close it and keep going, moving down the island, opening and closing the drawers in search of a bottle opener. On the third try, I find one, a golf-themed piece of plastic that makes a cheering sound when I open the cap. I toss it back into the drawer mid-hurrah. “You never answered my question,” I say. “When is the last time you talked to Sabine?” He looks up, and his eyes are liquid. “She came by the hospital yesterday afternoon. She wasn’t there very long, only fifteen minutes or so. She left around one thirty.” I stare at him across the island. At one thirty yesterday afternoon, I was in Little Rock, fretting about the canyon that’s cracked down the middle of my marriage and plotting the steps I can take to win my wife back, oblivious to the fact that she was more than likely being fucked by her lover in a hospital supply closet. “Would you stop looking at me like that?” he says. “Sabine is missing.” “It’s just that I’m having trouble letting go of the fact that she made time in her day to go to the hospital for fifteen minutes with you, when she can never squeeze in a lunch with me. She’s hardly ever home for dinner!” Trevor sinks onto a stool at the counter, shoving aside a coloring book and a Solo cup packed with colorful markers. “What about her car? Has anyone seen it?” “Not that I know of. Ingrid gave the detective her license plate number, though, so I’m assuming he’s on the lookout.” I take a long pull from the bottle, then make a face. It’s one of those snobby IPAs, bitter and aggressively hoppy. I check the label and see it’s also organic. “Do you have any normal beer?” Trevor plucks a blue marker from the cup. “What’s his name?” “Whose name?” “The detective. What’s his name?” “Oh. Something Durand. Mike or Mark or something like that.” I pour the rest of the IPA down the drain while Trevor calls 9-1-1 and demands to be put through to the detective. He uses his doctor’s voice, polite but overly self-important, each word delivered in a tone that commands attention. He introduces himself—Dr. Trevor McAdams, Chief Obstetrician at Jefferson Regional, romantically involved with Sabine for the past five months—then rattles off Corey’s name and number. Sabine’s schedule until the moment she left the hospital, at sometime around one thirty. Her cell plus another number I didn’t know existed, for a phone I didn’t know she had. The entire conversation lasts no longer than five minutes. He thanks the person and hangs up. I slam the bottle onto the counter with a clap, and the dog, who’d curled into a sleepy ball on its bed by the table, looks up with a start. “Five months?” Trevor frowns. “You told the detective just now that you and Sabine have been romantically involved for five fucking months.” Those were his words, “romantically involved.” The beer turns to acid in my throat. “Like I said, this isn’t the way we wanted you to find out, but can we drop the guilt trip for a minute? At least until Sabine is found.” I grip the granite with both hands. “Five months ago, Sabine started to cringe whenever I’d touch her. She started turning her head when I kissed her and complaining about headaches any time I reached for her in bed. I thought it was me, but it was you, wasn’t it?” Trevor sighs, and he lifts a hand from the counter. “I don’t know what to tell you, Jeffrey.” “That phone number you gave the detective just now. Let me guess. Sabine got it when she started seeing you, didn’t she?” He doesn’t answer, but his expression tells me it’s a yes. Sabine has a secret phone. She got a separate device so she can talk to Trevor without me knowing. A Trevor hotline. He opens the coloring book, scribbles across a smiling Dumbo in bright purple marker. “Corey lives in those gated condos on Old Warren Road. He must know something. I need to know what it is.” He rips out the sheet and holds it across the counter to me, waiting for me to take it. “Please, Jeffrey. My kids are upstairs. I can’t leave them. My wife.” He shakes his head. “She’s already taking me to the cleaners. I can’t have her taking them, too. Please.” I sigh, a hard huff filled with resentment and something sharper, something that gnaws at me like hunger—but for revenge. When I get home, I’m going to look up the number for this guy’s wife and volunteer as a witness. “You do realize that Sabine leaves her shit all over the house, right? If you actually lived with her, if you spent time with her on a regular basis, you’d know she’s demanding and forgetful and selfish. That she pees with the door open and she hogs the couch and she never bothers cleaning up her own dishes. You don’t want her because she’s your soul mate. You only want her because she’s not yours.” He gives the paper a shake. “Please, talk to Corey. Don’t do it for me. Do it for Sabine. For our—” He stops himself just in time, but it’s too late. I already understand. I heard the words he didn’t want to say. “You motherfucking fucker.” I pause, the realization lighting me up from inside—hot, smoldering coals that seethe in my stomach and spread outward until my limbs feel like they’re on fire. One good spark, and I’ll blow. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?” He doesn’t nod, but his eyes are glassy in the dim light. Finally, after all these years of wishing and wanting and eventually giving up entirely, Sabine is pregnant. With Trevor’s child. His gaze dips to the paper. “Please,” he says, and his voice breaks on the word. I take the paper, but then I stalk around the island and punch him in the face. BETH That night, you come to me in my sleep, a blur of lightning limbs and shouted curses, tearing through the house. Opening and slamming doors, whipping off pillows and bedcovers, flipping couches and tables, ripping pictures off the wall. You are searching for something, for me. I teeter on the edge of awake. I see you gaining speed, moving closer, and my stomach clenches into a spiky knot. You puff your big chest and scream, and that lock of hair I used to love to run my fingers through falls flat on your sweaty forehead. You push it off with the back of a fist, and that’s when I see the gun. Wake up! I pinch the skin of my arms, smack myself on the cheeks. But my legs, tangled in the sheets, are like lead. They won’t move. Suddenly, you’re here, stomping down the hallway at Morgan House. The hollow thud of your footsteps trembles the floor, the walls, the lining around my heart. The noise stops in front of my door, and I am frozen with fear, with pure terror. My doorknob rattles, then goes still. I hold my breath, wait for the gun to go off. The door explodes, wood splinters showering down on me like a million deadly spikes. The hallway sconces light you up from behind, glowing underneath your skin like blood. I scream. You grin and aim the gun. I shoot upright in my bed, the scream ringing in my ears. I clamp a hand over my mouth and stare into the dark room, trying to get my bearings. My room, my bed at Morgan House. I’m safe. You’re not here. It was only a dream. And yet. Was it? The back of my throat burns in a way that tells me the scream might have been real, but the ache could also be from the sobbing. My cheeks are slick, the hair at my temples damp with sweat or tears. I mop my face with the sheet and take several deep breaths, willing my hammering heart to slow. I check the time on my cell phone: 4:00 a.m. Somewhere above me, a male body is snoring loud enough to rattle the floorboards, and I wonder what this says about my housemates. That they are either deaf or sleep like the dead. Or maybe they are immune to a stranger’s scream ripping through their slumber. Miss Sally runs a tight ship, but this place is an oasis in a questionable neighborhood, one where the houses sport bars on the windows. This doesn’t bode well for me if my nightmare turns to reality. What will they do if you find me here? Sleep through the screams? Hide behind the locked doors of their bedrooms? Suddenly, the room is too hot, the four walls shrinking around me. I kick off the twisted sheets and reach for my shorts, in a wadded pile on the floor. I need a glass of water, or maybe a cup of tea if I can swipe a tea bag from somebody’s supply. Mostly, I need to get out of this room. I strap my money belt around my waist, pluck my keys and phone from the nightstand, and creep into the hall, locking the door behind me. The hallway is dark, lit only at the far end by a streetlamp somewhere outside the window. I move, breathless and on tiptoe toward its golden gleam, the pads of my bare feet silent on the polyester runner. The stairs are trickier, sagging and creaky in the middle. I hug the side instead, my fingertips skimming the walls, following them to the kitchen. A single bulb above the stove casts faint light on the scuffed linoleum floor, but otherwise the room is a black hole. I power on my cell, use the light of the screen to guide the way to the cabinets on the far wall. The first one is dinnerware, neat stacks of plates and bowls and plastic cups. I shut it and move down the line. Cleaning supplies, pots and pans, but not a single crumb of food, no box of dusty tea bags. “You must be the new girl,” a female voice says from behind me. A grenade erupts in my chest, and I whirl around, searching for her face in the darkness. The shadows shift, and the ceiling lamp buzzes to life, blinding me with sudden light. I cover my eyes, squinting through my fingers at the woman sitting cross-legged atop the kitchen table. Caramel skin and big brown eyes and the body of a fifties film star, petite but curvy. She watches me with barefaced curiosity. “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.” She’s as pretty as her accent, a South American cadence slowed with a Southern drawl. Two silver discs hang on delicate chains from her neck, each of them engraved with something I can’t quite make out from this distance. Names, I’m guessing. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone here, not when the money belt hanging from my middle is about as subtle as a third breast. I pull on my too-tight T-shirt, fold my arms across my waist. “You scared the shit out of me.” “Was that you upstairs?” She pauses. “I heard somebody scream just now. Was that you?” Shit. So that part wasn’t a dream. My face goes hot, thinking of all the sleeping bodies upstairs. “Sorry. Did I wake you?” How many others did I rouse from their slumber? “No. My room is right next to Ned’s.” She points to the ceiling, the boards above our head rumbling like a faraway train. Ned, I assume. “Anyway, tell me what you came down here looking for, and I’ll tell you where you can find it. Though I will warn you—Miss Sally keeps the good stuff locked in the pantry.” “Oh.” Miss Sally’s warnings ring in my ear—her honor code, and the hidden cameras everywhere. But surely a tea bag doesn’t count as stealing, especially if I replace it first thing tomorrow. “I was hoping to borrow a tea bag, actually.” “Well, that’s easy enough.” She hops off the table and pads on bare feet across the room. Her shorts are the kind a cheerleader would wear, skintight and Daisy Duke short. “I’ve got a box of Lipton—hope that’s okay.” You once hurled a full cup of piping hot tea at my head because it was Lipton. You said if you’d wanted a cup of hot piss, you would have asked for some. I smile. “Lipton is perfect, thank you.” She pulls a yellow box from a drawer by the microwave, flips on the electric kettle, drops the bags in two mugs she finds in a cabinet. “So, what were you doing down here?” I say, gesturing to the table. “Why were you sitting here in the dark?” “I was meditating.” “Seriously?” It’s not at all what I was expecting. She doesn’t seem like the type—too fidgety, too va-va-voom to be that grounded. “In the middle of the night?” “Why not? Meditation relieves stress, increases concentration, clears your mind and calms your nerves.” She closes her eyes, holds her hands in the air, palms to the sky, in a classic meditation pose. I notice a tattoo that pokes out from the collar of her white tank top, winding down the skin of one arm. The other is covered in bracelets, leather and bright, colorful beads. “Ommmmmm.” Her eyes pop open, her gaze finding mine. “I’ll teach you sometime. Honestly, I’m glad to have another one of us here. Another female, I mean. We’re the only ones, if you don’t count Miss Sally. I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but this place is boiling over with testosterone.” Her rapid-fire change of subjects is dizzying to my sleep-deprived brain, and I sink onto a chair at the table. I consider which part of her monologue to latch on to—the meditation, the proffer of friendship, the gender imbalance in this place—but she’s already moved on. “I take it you’re new to town,” she says. “Just got here, actually. How long have you lived here?” “Atlanta or Morgan House?” I shrug. “Both, I guess.” “I’m a Grady baby, born and raised.” She leans a hip against the counter, taking in my frown. “Oh, sorry. Grady’s the hospital downtown, where they take all the gunshot patients and moms too strung out to know they’re pushing out a baby. I spent six weeks in one of those heated bubbles, sweating the crack and Lord knows what else out of my system. By the time I was clean, my mom was long gone. They handed me over to foster care.” Her story has a few holes. Her accent, for one. Even if her foster parents were Latino, even if she grew up speaking Spanish at home, would her accent really be that strong? And why would someone born and raised in this city end up here, in a boardinghouse that caters to transients? Still, no way I’m planning to ask. The less she tells me about her life, the less she’ll expect me to tell her about mine. “I’m sorry,” I say instead. “The foster system is tough.” She shrugs, a what-can-you-do gesture. “The worst part is not being wanted by anyone. That really messes with your head, you know? It can make you feel worthless if you let it.” She pulls a bear-shaped bottle from the cabinet by the fridge and waves it next to her face. “Honey?” I nod, even though I don’t usually take my tea sweet. My stomach is sharp with hunger, and honey will help. She squirts a generous blob in each mug, reaches in a drawer for two spoons. “I’m Martina, by the way.” A first name, nothing else. I follow her lead. “I’m Beth.” “Nice to meet you, Beth.” She grins at me over her shoulder. “How you liking it here at Morgan House?” “I haven’t really been here long enough to know, and you’re the only other person I’ve met besides Miss Sally.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “She scares me a little.” Martina turns, swiping a hand through the air, her bracelets jangling. “Oh, don’t you worry about Miss Sally. As long as you’re cool, she’s cool. Ditto for most of the people staying here. They might need more than a three-minute shower, but they keep to themselves, mostly, and they won’t grab your ass or try to steal your shit, because they know Miss Sally would eat them for supper. Keep your head down and don’t ruffle any feathers, and you’ll do fine. How long will you be staying?” “I don’t know. It depends on how quickly I can get a job.” The kettle clicks off, the water gurgling in a rolling boil, and she pours it into the mugs. “The place I work for is always looking for some new help. Nothing fancy, just mopping floors and scrubbing sinks, but still. The work is steady and it pays enough to afford the rent here.” Your voice bubbles up in my head, as clearly as if you were sitting at the table across from me. No such thing as a free lunch. Somebody offers you something, you best be thinking about what they want in return, because they always want something. I study Martina’s back as she dunks the tea bags up and down, up and down, and I wonder what she wants from me. The money strapped to my belly, most likely. She glances over a shoulder. “Don’t like cleaning toilets, huh?” I push your words aside and flip the script. Tell myself this isn’t about what this girl wants from me but what I want from her. The thing is, I already know that becoming Beth Murphy, really becoming her, is a pain in the ass, and maybe an impossible one. I need a Georgia driver’s license, and for that I need documents that seem as elusive to me as sprouting fairy wings or finding a flying unicorn. A birth certificate, a social security card and not one but two documents proving residency, something like a utility or credit card bill. Miss Sally doesn’t seem like the type who could be persuaded into slapping my name onto a rental agreement for a couple of crisp bills; I’m pretty sure she’d toss me onto the street if I even asked. And what about the other documents? The utility bills, the birth certificate and social security card? My Photoshop skills are nowhere near good enough, and I’m pretty sure forging a government-issued document is a felony. “It’s not that I mind cleaning toilets,” I say. “It’s just that I lost my ID.” Martina gives me a look. “You lost it, huh? That happens a lot around here.” She carries the mugs to the table and holds one out to me. “You don’t have anything? Not even an old, expired one?” Especially not that. My Arkansas license is a charred lump at the bottom of a hotel trash can four states away. I take the tea and shake my head. But according to the internet, this city has more than three hundred thousand undocumented workers. The question isn’t if there are jobs here, but where to find them. “I can still get a job without one, right?” She sinks onto the table, swinging her legs onto the wooden surface and crossing them underneath her, resuming her old position. “Sure, if you don’t mind working construction or cleaning rich ladies’ houses. Know any Buckhead Betties?” I open my mouth to answer, but she waves me off. “Never mind. You do not want to work for one of those bitches, I can promise you that. What I meant was, you’ll need a roster of regular customers, people with big houses who don’t mind paying you cash under the table.” My stomach sinks. “The only people I know in this city are you and Miss Sally.” “Miss Sally can maybe help you, but I can’t. I try to stay out of the northern suburbs.” She blows over the surface of her tea, regarding me with a thoughtful expression. “How much money you got in that bag strapped to your waist?” The hand I press to the bag is automatic, as is the expression on my face, a mixture of distrust and defiance. Don’t even fucking try it. Martina laughs. “Come on, chica. I already told you people here don’t try to steal your shit, and that includes me, though it’s probably not a bad idea to keep your cash on your person at all times. What I’m asking is if you would be willing to part with some of it. Because if you are, I might know where you could find an ID.” I lean back on my chair, eyeing her with suspicion. My hand is still on my money belt, my legs still ready to pounce. I’m bigger than Martina, and thanks to you, I know the most effective places to land a punch. Kneecap, face, solar plexus, throat, temple. I’ll be back upstairs, barricaded behind the door of my room before she stops writhing on the floor. But an ID would solve a lot of problems. “How much?” I say warily. “Last I heard, Jorge charges somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars. You can probably talk him down some if you find him in a good mood. The hard part is finding him in a good mood.” “Is he any good?” “The best. The Rolls-Royce of fake IDs. That’s why he’s so expensive.” I sip my tea and do the math. Three hundred dollars is a lot of cash, almost two weeks’ worth of rent and 15 percent of my rapidly dwindling stash. But if Jorge is as good as Martina says he is, it might be worth the money. Finding a job will be so much faster and easier if Beth is legit. “And you?” Martina looks up from her mug, her brows sliding into a frown. “And me, what?” “How much do you charge for telling me where to find this Jorge person?” Martina looks at me for a moment, letting the silence linger. Her expression is that of someone making a hard decision, and I know what she’s thinking. How much is the information worth to me? How much is too much? Your words run through my head—no such thing as a free lunch—and I hate you even more for being right. “Las Tortas Locas on Jimmy Carter Boulevard,” she says finally, unfolding her legs and pushing to a stand, walking with her mug to the door. “Consider it your housewarming gift.” JEFFREY A pounding on the front door lurches me out of a dead sleep. I sit up on the couch and rub my face, blinking into the room. The only light comes from a thin slice of morning sunshine where the curtains don’t quite meet, blanching a strip of carpet. I check my watch—11:00 a.m. I’ve been asleep for all of two hours. The past two days have been a shit show. Coming home to find Sabine missing, discovering she’s been screwing around, my surprise rendezvous with her lover, Trevor accidentally spilling the beans about the pregnancy. By the time I drove across town to Sabine’s client, then did the same with her boss, every muscle in my body was knotted up, my skin vibrating with fury. Corey and Lisa told me exactly what they told the detective: that Sabine never showed up for the showing. There’s another pounding at the door, followed by three rapid-fire rings of the doorbell. I push off the couch and stumble to the door. Ingrid doesn’t look like she’s slept much, either, but she’s cleaned up since the last time I saw her. She’s fresh from the shower; her hair is still damp, the ends gathered in wet clumps, dripping onto her dress, some awful blue-and-white thing. She barrels into my foyer, and I catch a whiff of her perfume, cloying and sweet. She takes in my T-shirt and rumpled sweats, the same ones I was wearing the last time she was here, and frowns. “Why aren’t you dressed? Didn’t you get my messages?” I wince, pressing down on my throbbing temples with a thumb and middle finger. Ingrid’s volume, louder than usual, isn’t helping what’s pounding in my head like a hangover. And then there’s that constant edge to her voice. I can’t take much of her on a good day; now, after two bad days in a row, she’s chipping away at my last threads of civility. “Clearly not.” “Well, go upstairs and change. We’re due at the police department in thirty minutes. The detective has an update.” My heart bangs a slow, heavy beat. An update could be anything. Her car, found wrapped around a tree. Her body, found rotting in a field of soybeans. Her killer, on the loose or locked behind bars. “What kind of update?” “I don’t know, Jeffrey. He wouldn’t tell me anything other than he had some news.” She chews on a corner of her lips, which are already red and cracked. Her eyes are fat pink pillows. “What if he—” She stops herself before she can finish, and I don’t touch it. A detective calling with news he wouldn’t share over the phone can’t be good. I turn and head upstairs for a quick shower. Nine and a half minutes later I’m crammed into the passenger’s seat of Ingrid’s Acura, barreling south toward the police station. Traffic is light, but on the other side of her windshield, it’s gearing up to be another blistering day. I turn the air-conditioning to high and aim the vents at my face. Trevor’s news last night lit me on fire, and I’ve been burning up ever since. “I suppose you knew about the baby.” Ingrid stares straight ahead, hands at ten and two, but she nods. “Sabine and I—” “Tell each other everything. I know.” I glare out the side window at the storefronts flashing by and wish I’d thought to bring sunglasses. “What else have the two of you been keeping from me?” “She’s been talking to a lawyer. She was going to ask you for a divorce this weekend.” The news hits me like an anvil; not that Sabine was planning to leave me—Trevor already told me as much—but at the implication she saw a lawyer. Something that’s easy to verify. I don’t need to be a detective to know how it makes me look—like I have a motive. I snort. “That’s convenient, isn’t it?” “What is?” “The timing. Sabine disappears, pregnant with another man’s child, right as she’s about to file for divorce from a husband who once—and only once, so help me God—lost his temper. If I were the detective, I’d be calling me in for questioning, too.” I twist on my seat, turning to face Ingrid. “Is that what this is? Is that why you came by the house, to haul me in for questioning? Did he send you to lure me to the station?” “I’m pretty sure the detective can haul you in himself if he wants to.” She gives me the same guilty side-eye Sabine does, right before she admits to having ruined my favorite sweater in the laundry. “But to be perfectly honest, I came to get you because I can’t do this alone. Sit in some sterile room at the police station while the detective tells me something awful has happened to my sister. I’m terrified. And I couldn’t bring Mom. She wouldn’t understand, and even if she did, I can’t deal with her and bad news at the same time. As much as I hate to admit it, I need you there.” “Why didn’t you call Trevor?” She presses her lips together. “You did call him. He wouldn’t come.” “He’s a mess.” She punches the gas to make it through a light, then merges into the far-left lane. “And he was right. Having him there would only make everything worse. At least I won’t have to take care of you.” I’m not quite sure how to take that. Her mother would be too clueless, Trevor would be too emotional and I would be my usual asshole self. I choose to focus on the words she doesn’t say: that I’m strong, solid, sensible. No matter what the detective has to tell us, at least I won’t go apeshit. But is she right? I think about what I’d do if the detective tells me Sabine is dead, or asks to swab the inside of my cheek. What will my reaction be then? I look over at Ingrid, at her pointy features and shiny profile, and think I really don’t want to do this alone, either. “It’s ironic,” I say, turning back to the traffic. “What is?” “That it took Sabine disappearing to make us actually want to be in a room together.” BETH For a boulevard named after a former peanut-farmer-turned-president, it’s nothing like I expected. A magnolia-lined avenue, maybe, or a winding country road slicing through rolling green fields would be fitting, not this six-lane thoroughfare that packs the Buick Regal on all sides with bumper-to-bumper traffic. I cling to the far-right lane, keep a safe distance between my car and the guy riding the brakes in front of me and search the storefronts for Las Tortas Locas. I spot it up ahead, a giant margarita glass jutting above the rooftops like a crown jewel. I swerve into the turn lane and head toward the building, a riot of flashing neon lights squeezed between a strip mall and a drive-through bank. I pull into the lot, and mariachi music rattles the Buick’s tinted windows. The inside is even worse. Music blares from the ceiling speakers, mixing with the din of a full house of diners and the hard chinks of porcelain and glass. The hostess has to cup a palm around her ear when I yell at her who I’m here to see, and then she points me to a table at the far end of the restaurant. “Are you sure?” I shout, squinting at the man across the room. Even from here, from clear across the room, the man doesn’t match the name. “I’m here for Jorge. Jorge.” She leans on the hostess stand with an elbow, and I catch a slight roll of her eyes. “That’s him. And I heard you the first time.” I wind my way through the tables to “Jorge,” four hundred pounds of a milky-white man eating a burrito the size of his forearm. I hover at the edge of his table, waiting for him to stop shoveling food long enough to notice me. This Jorge guy may not be Latino, but he’s no stranger to churros. He looks up, and his eyes are thin slits, part genetics, part his cheeks squeezing them shut. It looks like he’s glaring at me—and maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing. Martina said he was in a perpetually bad mood. He picks up a hard-shelled taco loaded with meat and cheese, and dunks it in salsa. “Martina gave me your name,” I say finally. I lean closer, across what looks to be a bucket of refried beans smothered with cheese. “She said you could help me get an ID.” “What kind?” His accent sounds Asian. “A driver’s license. For Georgia preferably. And maybe a social security card if you’re able.” He gives me a look, and I don’t know if it’s to say he does or doesn’t have one. “Four hundred dollar.” He shoves the taco—the whole entire thing—into his mouth. “For both?” “Yup,” he says around a mouthful of meat. “But Martina told me three.” The slits all but disappear. I give him time to swallow some of the food bulging in his already-swollen cheeks. “Three hundred for license only. Four hundred for both.” Barter, you say in my head. For you haggling is a sport, a competition. You will hold up the grocery store line to bicker about the price for dented cans and boxes torn at the edges. Say it like you mean it, you tell me now. There’s always wiggle room in a price. Always. “Three hundred and fifty,” I say. “Three hundred seventy-five.” A shard of ground beef flies from Jorge’s mouth and ricochets off my leg. I make a face, edge backward until I am out of range. I will never eat Mexican again. I nod. “Deal.” Jorge tells me to meet him in an hour, at a strip mall a few miles from here. He slides the beans closer, reaching for his spoon, and rattles off an address I commit to memory. That’s it. Meeting over. I beat a semistraight path to the door before he changes his mind. For the next forty-five minutes, I sit in my car in the restaurant’s parking lot, listening to the radio and killing time. People come and go in a constant stream, construction workers and folks in business attire, moms with hair like mine emerging from a minivan full of kids. It’s the weirdest combination of diners I’ve ever seen, and I think of Jorge, the way he shoveled in those tacos faster than he could chew. The food here must really be something. My gaze sticks to a figure at the far edge of the lot. She’s everything a woman in a neighborhood like this one is not supposed to be: alone, half-hidden behind a holly bush, completely oblivious to her surroundings. Her head is down, her thumbs flying across her phone, and even from all the way across the lot I can tell she’s a perfect mark. Designer bag slung over her shoulder, a honker of a diamond on her finger. The stone winks in the afternoon sunlight, along with matching ones in each ear. A car slows alongside her, and one by one, the hairs on the back of my neck soldier to a stand. “Look up, lady. Look up look up look up,” I say into my empty car. No way she can hear me, but still. I say it loud and with authority, like anyone who’s ever taken a self-defense class would know to do. Straight punch to the throat, knee-kick to the groin, elbow in the nose. Basic moves, simple techniques every woman should have in her arsenal, both potent and effective. But this woman doesn’t look up, doesn’t even glance at the car. Las Tortas Locas is apparently a hotbed for criminal activity, and she might as well have hung a sign over her head, advertising herself as easy prey. “Shit, lady. Come on.” The car is completely stopped now, and I spot two shadowed figures behind the opaque windows who are not here for the taco special. I know it with everything inside me—my queasy stomach, my itchy skin, a cell-deep awareness that something is about to happen. Something bad. My fingers wander to my steering wheel, the heel of my hand hovering over the horn, while my brain shuffles through the scenarios. Leaning on the horn might scare off the bad guys and save the woman’s jewels, but it might also get me noticed. It would mean her asking my name, noting my license plate, looking at me as a hero or worse: a witness. Beth Murphy’s life would be over before it even began. This lady needs saving, but dammit, so do I. The passenger’s door swings open, and a man steps out. Pale skin, slouchy jeans, faded and ripped gray sweatshirt. No, not a man, a kid, tall and lanky, all shiny face and silly-putty limbs, probably no more than fourteen. He leaves the door open, and if that’s not a getaway move, I don’t know what is. He stalks straight at her, and I scream into my car, “Put down the stupid phone!” But as hard as I try, I can’t make my hand press on the horn. And so I sit, watching from fifty feet away while the kid whips out a gun and mugs her in broad daylight. Purse, phone, diamonds, watch, bracelets—she hands over everything with frantic, shaking hands. He forces her to the ground, his body language commanding her to hurry. She sputters and sobs but she obeys, lying flat with both hands shielding the back of her head. Behind him, the car’s tires squeal and smoke, and the kid lunges with his loot through the still-open door. The entire episode takes all of sixty seconds. As soon as the parking lot is quiet again, the woman clambers to her feet. “Help! Somebody help me. Help!” I tell myself it’s fine, that she’s fine. Scared and shaken, maybe, her white jeans smudged where they made contact with the dirty asphalt. But otherwise, everybody is fine. Everybody but me, trapped here in this lot. The woman is standing between me and the only exit. A gaggle of sorority types push out the restaurant’s double doors, talking and laughing. They hear the woman’s cries and stop on the concrete, their happy expressions falling into surprise. “I was robbed!” the woman screams at them. “He pointed a gun at my head and he took my wedding ring. He took everything. Oh my God, don’t just stand there. Somebody call the police!” A tall blonde pulls out a cell phone, and I eyeball the curb height to the street, trying to judge if it’s too high for the Buick to plow over without blowing out a tire. Would the women even notice? Would they jot down my license plate and hand it to the cops as a potential witness? And what if I don’t leave, then what? What will I say when the police find me sitting here, hiding in my car? I glance at the clock on the dash. Less than ten minutes until I’m supposed to meet Jorge. Even if I ditched my car and ran, I’d never make it on time. The women are all babbling now, gesturing and talking over each other, their expressions tight with the near miss, and guilt pushes up from somewhere deep inside me. All my life, I’ve believed in karma, in the universal principle of cause and effect. Do good, and good comes to you. Do bad, and. Well, you better watch your back. And today I stood by and watched a woman get mugged. What does the universe have in store for me now? The women storm inside, and I start the car and drive as fast as I dare, squealing into the strip mall Jorge directed me to a full six minutes late. I pray Jorge’s not a punctual guy, the type who doesn’t tolerate clients who show up later than promised. Then again, I am the client, and I’m guessing the black market ID business must by definition remain fluid. In the grand scope of things, six minutes isn’t all that long. I step out of my car and scan the half dozen storefronts. Jorge didn’t give me anything other than an address, so which one? Discount stores and carnicer?as, a cell phone shop, a smashed window covered in butcher paper. And then at the far end, I spot a single word: fotogr?fico. I slam the door and hurry to the store. Inside, the place is tiny—a shoebox of a room with a camera on a tripod, a register counter and not much else. Jorge is waiting for me by the register, beside a man he introduces as Emmanuel, no last name. Emmanuel demands six dollars in cash, then points me to a grubby white wall. “Stand there. No smile.” Emmanuel is a man of few words, but he gets the job done. There’s a blinding flash, and by the time the spots have cleared from my vision, two passport-size pictures are rolling out of his printer. While Emmanuel cuts them into tiny squares, Jorge hands me a piece of paper and a pen. “Write down name, birth date, height, weight and address. You can use fake ones if you want.” “Do your customers ever use real ones?” He shrugs his linebacker shoulders. “Don’t know. Don’t care.” I write Beth’s full name across the top of the paper, dredging up a middle name on the spot—Louise, a character from some book I just read. I give Beth two extra years, born on February 20, 1983. She’s my height, five foot eight, but I tack on a few pounds. The best way to hide in plain sight, I’ve decided, is to put some more meat on my bones with a strict pizza, doughnut, hamburger and french fry diet. Her address is the one for Morgan House. I hand the paper back to Jorge, and he holds out a meaty palm. “Three-fifty, right?” He grunts. “Funny.” I contemplate the wisdom of forking over the money now, before I’ve gotten my ID cards, but I’m not exactly in a position of power here. I slap the three hundred and seventy-five dollars I already peeled off my stash into his hand. Jorge counts it, then counts it again. “What’s your number?” he says, pulling out his phone. I open my mouth, then stop myself just in time. The only number I know by heart is my real number, for the phone sitting at the bottom of a trash can back in Arkansas. My new number, the one for the prepay phone in my back pocket, is a blank. I haven’t memorized it yet. “I.I don’t remember.” Jorge heaves a sigh that reeks of cheese and jalape?o, and the look he gives me says “amateur.” He rattles off a string of numbers that I realize too late is for his cell phone. “Hang on, hang on.” I fumble for my phone, and he repeats the numbers, this time slower while I type them in. I hit Send, and his cell phone lights up in his hand. He flips it so I can see. “Your number. I call you when ready.” “How long?” He lifts a meaty shoulder. “Thirty minute. Maybe more. Wait at Sonic up the road.” It is seventy-three eternal minutes before a shiny black SUV rolls into the Sonic parking lot. I watch from my table by the window as a man who is definitely not Jorge—too dark, much too skinny—slides out. He looks up and down the parking lot like a villain on an episode of Cops, then tucks a manila envelope under the Buick’s windshield wiper and hustles back into his car. By the time I make it outside, the man is long gone. I pluck the envelope from the windshield and drop into my car, my fingers shaking as I slide my nail under the flap. I jiggle the envelope upside down, and two small squares drop onto my lap. One is paper, a social security card with a bright yellow sign here sticker. The other is plastic, a driver’s license that looks as real as any I’ve ever seen. I examine it, turning it back and forth in a shaft of sunlight, and the hologram Georgia seal brightens and fades. The signature is not mine, but it’s generic enough that with a little practice, I can duplicate it. Other than that, it’s perfect. Beth Louise Murphy is legit. My cell phone rings with a number I recognize as Jorge’s cell. I pick up to the sound of chewing. “You get ID?” “I did get ID, thank you.” I toss the cards on the passenger’s seat and start the car. “They look great. Totally real.” He grunts, a sound I take to mean you’re welcome. “Listen, you have friends who need ID, you send them to Jorge. Fifty dollar every friend.” And there it is, I think as I ease the Buick into traffic. What Martina wanted from me. MARCUS The Pine Bluff Police Department is housed in a squat, one-story complex on East Eighth Avenue, blinding white stucco against a sprawling green lawn. The place is a dump, dingy walls and scuffed linoleum floors, but on a bright note, we’re understaffed enough that the detectives get their own private rooms. They’re cramped and stuffy, but they’re a million times better than a desk in the bull pen they surround. Jeffrey and Ingrid arrive a full twelve minutes late, and just like yesterday, the two are practically vibrating with animosity. He opens the door for her but only because I’m watching, prompting a thanks she doesn’t want to give. These two people detest each other, and I want to know why. I gesture for them to follow. “This way.” I usher them through the rowdy bull pen to the open door of my office. “Have a seat,” I say, gesturing to the twin chairs across from my desk, but only Ingrid sinks into one. Jeffrey is frozen just outside the door. He pokes his head into the room, and his relief when he sees it’s an office is palpable. The sucker thought this was going to be an interrogation room. I raise a brow, and reluctantly, he steps inside, sinks into a chair. I round my desk and drop into mine. “We found Sabine’s car.” “What?” the two say in unison, their voices high and wild. “Omigod, where?” Ingrid says. “When? And that’s good news, right? It means you have some idea which way she went.” I don’t shake my head, but I don’t nod, either. A car is not necessarily good news, especially one like Sabine’s—undamaged and untouched. So far, the only DNA we’ve found on it is hers. “The car was parked at the far end of the Super1 lot on East Harding. According to the security footage, she walked through the door yesterday at 1:49 p.m. Ten minutes later, she purchased a loaf of bread, some sliced turkey and cheese, and a lemonade. She paid with her ATM card and was out the door by 2:03 p.m. The cameras don’t cover the entire parking lot, unfortunately, so we lost her soon after.” Ingrid scoots to the front edge of her seat. “I don’t understand. You’re saying she never made it back to her car?” “It sure looks that way. We searched the lot and trash cans for the groceries, without any luck. Somebody could have picked them up, or maybe she took them with her.” “With her where?” Ingrid shakes her head. “What are you saying, exactly?” “You both mentioned you talked to Sabine—” I flip through my notes, pausing to find the right page. “Ingrid at 10:45 a.m. and Jeffrey.” I look up, meeting his gaze. “You didn’t actually tell me a time.” “I was at the Atlanta airport, boarding a flight.” “The DL 2088, I know.” Jeffrey told me he talked to Sabine as he was boarding his flight, but he didn’t say which one. He didn’t even mention the airline. I did a little digging. “The flight left Atlanta at 11:30 a.m,” I say, “so boarding would have been what, a half hour earlier?” He nods, shifting in his chair. “Yeah, eleven sounds about right. I can pull it up on my call log if you need the exact time and duration.” I ignore his offer, turning to Ingrid instead. “In either of these conversations with Sabine, did she mention where she was going?” Jeffrey shakes his head, but Ingrid nods. “She was on her way to the office.” I frown. Not the answer I was expecting. “This particular Super1 is nowhere near her work. I checked with her office, and she didn’t have any showings that morning. Only a staff training later in the afternoon at the office, which she missed.” “Oh, she had a showing, all right,” Jeffrey says, his voice thick with sarcasm and something else. Anger, for sure. Disgust, too. And more than a little pain. Ingrid looks over with a frown. “Sabine was coming from the hospital.” His lip curls into an ugly sneer. “Her lover told me she dropped by for a little conjugal visit.” I lean back in my chair. By now I know about the affair. Dr. McAdams already told me, tripping all over himself in his hurry for a face-to-face, a million questions disguised as a statement. The poor guy is desperate for answers, almost too desperate to be believable. “Well, if she was coming from the hospital, the route makes more sense. She could have stopped to buy herself a late lunch.” “And then what?” Ingrid squirms on her chair, clutching her hands. “Where did she go next?” “Well, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Sabine left on her own accord, that she got into a car with a colleague or a friend, but my gut says no. For one thing, she wouldn’t have left her cell phone behind. We found it in the car, charging in the cup holder. I was hoping one of you could identify it for us.” I pull an evidence bag from my desk drawer, holding it up to show the Samsung smartphone inside. Ingrid releases a loud, relieved breath. “That’s not Sabine’s. Are you sure the car you found is the right one? Maybe you made a mistake.” Again, not the answer I was expecting. The phone was found in Sabine’s locked car. Who else’s could it be? “Are you positive? We haven’t been able to check it. Not without the code.” “One hundred percent,” Ingrid says. “Sabine has an iPhone. A white one. The newest model.” I look to Jeffrey for confirmation. “It’s true, she does have an iPhone.” He stabs a finger at the Samsung. “But that’s probably her burner phone.” Ingrid’s face whips to his. “What the hell are you talking about? Sabine doesn’t have a burner phone. Don’t be ridiculous.” “Yes, Ingrid. She does. The one that for the past five months, she’s been using to talk to her lover.” Ingrid twitches, and his smile is a mix of mean and condescending. “Looks like she doesn’t quite tell you everything, does she?” Ingrid slumps in the chair, and Jeffrey turns to me. “Dr. Trevor McAdams, Chief Obstetrician at Jefferson Regional Hospital. I believe you spoke with him last night. I’m guessing if you crack the code on that phone, every number on the call log will be his.” “Try 8-2-6–6-3-7,” Ingrid mumbles. “It’s the one she uses for her iPhone.” I pluck a plastic glove from the box on the sill, wriggle my hand inside, then shove it in the bag and tick in the code. The log-in dissolves into a colorful home screen with neat columns of apps. The icon for phone has a bright red number in the top right corner, twenty-three missed calls. I tap it, and they’re all from the same number, which matches the one scribbled on my pad. “You were right. It’s the number for Dr. McAdams’s cell.” Ingrid shifts in her chair with a huff. I reseal the bag, peel off the glove and drop both in my desk drawer. “This doesn’t explain where the iPhone is, though. We’ve put out a trace on that number, but we’re not finding anything. Looks like wherever it is, she’s turned it off. And according to her bank, the transaction at the Super1 was the last purchase she made. She hasn’t used her credit card or ATM card since. There were also no big withdrawals in the weeks before, which tells me she wasn’t planning on making a run for it.” “Of course she wasn’t,” Ingrid says. “Sabine wouldn’t run, not without telling me.” Sometime in the past few minutes, she’s started to cry. Her face is messy with it—red eyes; mottled cheeks; swollen, dripping nose. She sniffs and swipes at it with a sleeve. “So, what now? Where do we look next?” “Well, we’ve begun questioning Super1 staff who were working Wednesday’s shift. We’re hopeful that one of them saw something out of the ordinary, or maybe someone out of the ordinary. I’ve also put out an APB for anyone matching Sabine’s description, which means we’ve got a lot more than just our eyes looking for her. We’re going through her bank records, her credit card usage, anything that will help us trace her movements. We’ll be interviewing her friends, her colleagues, all the people in her life—and before you ask, that includes Dr. McAdams—and we’ll be asking them the same question I’m asking you—where were you Wednesday afternoon, from 1:00 p.m. on?” An alibi. I’m asking them for an alibi. The two exchange a look. Ingrid folds her arms across her chest, her expression a mixture of insult and concern. “I work at home. I’m a virtual assistant. People pay me to arrange their schedules, type up reports, handle their social media. Things like that.” “Was anyone there with you?” I ask. “I live alone.” “Okay. Is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts? A neighbor, maybe, or a client who called on the house line.” “No,” she says, then brightens. “But I was online all day. I can prove I was there with the IPs from websites I visited, and the emails in my Sent folder.” “You know how to do that?” Jeffrey sounds dubious, like he doesn’t think she’s that capable. “Yes,” she says, slow and satisfied. “I have a degree in computer science.” Mentally, I shuffle the sister to the bottom of my list. Ingrid is a spinster, the kind of woman who lives alone, works alone, stays alone, but so far, everything I’ve seen and heard from her seems sincere. As suspects go, she’s not a strong one. Jeffrey, on the other hand. He checks all the boxes. Every single one. He clears his throat, folds his hands atop his lap. “Well, let’s see. I landed at just after noon or so—” I nod. “At 12:05 p.m.” Surprise flashes across his face, though it shouldn’t. I already told him I looked up his flight number, which means I’ll also know when he landed. I’m not a small-town cop, and I’ve done my homework. “Your plane arrived at the gate at 12:11,” I say without consulting my notes. “By 12:24, everyone but the crew had deplaned.” “Okay,” he says, thinking. “But I was all the way in the back, so one of the last people off the plane, and then it took forever to get my bag. The Little Rock Airport is notoriously slow. After that I grabbed some lunch.” “At the airport?” “No. At a little Italian place near the airport. I don’t remember the name.” Ingrid makes a sound: convenient. “What time was this?” I ask. “I don’t know. After one, for sure. Maybe closer to one thirty.” “Did you use a card?” “I paid cash.” Ingrid gives up all pretense. She blows out a sigh, long and loud, and sits up straight in her chair. She’s ready for me to arrest him, to slap some cuffs on him and cart him downstairs. “What time did you get back to Pine Bluff?” He shrugs. “I think it was around four or so.” “Your neighbor, a Mrs. Ashby, confirms it to be around four ten. She remembers because she was watching a rerun of Ellen, who’d just finished her dance. Mrs. Ashby was in the kitchen during the commercial break, making herself a snack.” He makes a noise deep in his throat. “More likely pouring herself a drink. Rita Ashby is a nosy old hag whose face is pressed to the kitchen window more often than not. She’s also a drunk. In all those years we’ve lived there, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sober.” He’s trying to distract me, buy some time. He knows the question coming next. “Why so late?” When he doesn’t immediately answer, I add, “I mean, by my math, even accounting for the baggage delay and the lunch stop and afternoon traffic, which we all know can be a real bitch, you should have been home by 2:30 p.m. at the latest. How come you were so late? What were you doing for that hour and a half?” His shrug is trying too hard, as is his tone, too high and much too smooth. “It was a nice day, and I’d spent all week cooped up inside at a conference. Don’t tell my boss, but I really didn’t want to go back to the office. I stopped off at a park along the river to read.” “Which park?” “Tar Camp.” A forested recreation area popular with families and fishermen, about halfway between Little Rock and Pine Bluff. Emma and I used to go camping there, back when we were newlyweds. I scribble the name on my pad. “How long did you stay?” “An hour and a half, maybe longer.” “What were you reading?” “The CEO of one of our biggest competitors just came out with a book, Stoking the Fire at Work or some such nonsense. My boss is making everyone at the office read it. Honestly, it’s not very good.” “Did you see anybody there?” “It’s a public park,” he says, getting defensive. “I saw lots of people.” “What I meant was, did any of them notice you? A guy in business attire sitting by himself, on a park bench—” “It was a picnic table. There’s a cluster of them at the edge of the river.” He pauses to glance at Ingrid, whose brows are bunched in a skeptical frown. “And I was in jeans and a polo. Travel attire.” “Still. A guy all alone at a picnic table, reading a book. I’d imagine you stood out.” “I’d imagine so, but tell me this, Detective—how am I supposed to find them?” I dip my head, ceding the point. Not that it helps him any. Even if he had been at Tar Camp, it’s not like any of the people there would remember him, and they certainly wouldn’t have exchanged names and numbers. But the bigger point is, he’s lying. All the signs are there. The stare down across my desk, the way his breath comes quicker, the microscopic flashes of panic I keep catching on his face. Something about his story is not true. “Help me out here, Jeffrey. I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything.” I lean toward him, hands folded on top of a sloppy pile of papers. “According to what you just told me, you were alone all afternoon yesterday, either in your car, at an unnamed restaurant or in a public park, from around 12:30 p.m. until a little after four, when the neighbor confirms you pulled into your driveway.” He nods. “That’s right. Yes.” Add sweating to the list. His face has gone shiny, sprouting a million wet pinpricks. “And at no point during those three and a half hours, the same hours your wife walked out of the Super1 on East Harding and disappeared, can anyone but you verify your whereabouts.” He’s silent for long enough I almost feel sorry for him. He sucks a breath, then two more, thirteen brain-numbing seconds, and then the best he can do is: “Pretty much.” I try to hold my expression tight, but the smile sneaks out anyway. Gotcha. BETH I pull to a stop in the middle of the two-lane drive, double-check the address on the Post-it note Martina handed me earlier this morning and gawk at the building before me. A church. Martina works at a church. A neo-Gothic monstrosity of beige brick and stained glass, with crimson gables and scalloped finials and lancet arches. In the very center of the main tower, a rose window stares out like the eye of a cyclops. Above it, at the steepest point of the roofline, a wooden cross reaches with long arms into a pale blue sky. The Church of Christ’s Twelve Apostles. Oh hell no. My hand clenches around the gearshift, jiggling it into Reverse. The Church and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms, not since I went to the leader of mine for guidance and he refused to unshackle me from a monster. “It’s perfectly normal to argue,” Father Ian had told me. “All couples do. But the successful couples learn to forgive. They put the resentment behind them and move on.” I nodded my head in pious agreement. “I understand that, Father, but he.hurts me.” “Hurts you how?” For a second or two, I considered pulling up my shirt and showing him my cracked ribs. In the end, I settled on, “With his hands.” “Closed or open?” “I’m sorry?” “His hands, when he hurts you. Are they closed or open?” The logical part of me understands Father Ian’s reluctance to believe you would be capable of such cruelty. He’s known you most of your life, guided you through so many sacraments. And we were together for two years before you shoved me into that hotel wall. It was two more years before you punched me, and another year after that before you punched me again. The violence came on so gradually, and then so fast. To Father Ian, to everyone but you and me, my complaints came out of nowhere. In the end, we compromised: Father Ian would counsel you on the proper ways to handle an argument, and I would pray to become a better wife. A honk comes from behind me, two friendly, rapid-fire beeps. I look up to find a pretty blonde in my rearview mirror. She waves, diamonds winking on her wrist, and I try to remember what Martina called them, these wealthy women from the northern suburbs. Betty somethings. I gesture for this one to go around, but she doesn’t move, and the road is too narrow for me to turn around. With a sigh, I put the car in Drive. The two-lane road slices through a manicured lawn clotted with oakleaf hydrangeas and boxwoods sculpted into perfect circles. Before I can find a place to turn around, it dumps me into a parking garage, five-plus stories of stacked concrete. I swing the Buick into a visitor’s space, finally shaking off the blonde on my tail. She motors past, rounding the corner to the next level. The holy hush—that’s what I’ve since learned it’s called, this brushing of allegations like mine under the altar rug, though I suppose I should give Father Ian a little credit. He lived up to his end of the bargain and talked to you. But whatever he said only made things worse. You came home looking for a fight, one that ended with a concussion and a weeklong ringing in my ears. That Sunday, Father Ian pressed the communion wafer through my split lips like nothing had ever happened. As soon as I turned away, I spit the thing into my hand. I realize that not every church operates this way. That ignorant and willfully blind priests like Father Ian are, for the most part, a dying breed. I once read an article about an abused woman who claimed church was the only thing that kept her going, the one hour each week she allowed herself a glimmer of hope. And yet I stare out my windshield at this one, and I feel nothing but dread. Martina all but guaranteed they would hire me on the spot. She said she told them that I clean like she does, powering through six toilets in the time it takes others to scrub one, even though she’s never seen me work so much as a sponge. I have no idea why she has taken up the role of my protector, but I’m not exactly in a position to turn her down. I do a mental count of the bills strapped to my stomach. After Jorge and groceries, it’s a whole lot lighter than it was just yesterday. It would take me days to find another job, which means church or not, I can’t afford to walk away from this one. I brace myself and climb out of the car. The garage stairwell dumps me out at a side entrance, and I step into a hallway that smells like pine and incense. I follow it past a long line of double doors, then stop at an open one, gawking into a cavernous space three stories high. Rows and rows of plush crimson seats, thousands of them, are arranged in sections on a gentle slope around a podium hung with stage lights and two giant LED screens. And what’s that—an orchestra pit? Voices come from somewhere behind me, and I continue down the hallway, following the signs to the administrative offices. Colored light trickles down from stained glass windows high above my head, painting patterns across a freshly vacuumed carpet. I can’t imagine why they need another person on their cleaning staff. So far, everything I’ve seen here has been spotless. The executive offices are bright and spacious and, as far as I can tell, span the entire length of the church. There’s a reception area straight ahead, with hallways dotted with doors on either side. A woman sits behind the receptionist’s desk, one I recognize. Prim white blouse, understated pearls, diamonds at her wrists, blond hair teased into a helmet atop her head. Up close, she’s not half as pretty as she was in my rearview mirror. She greets me like she’s never seen me before. “Welcome to the Church of Christ’s Twelve Apostles. What brings you in today?” “I’m here to see Father Andrews.” “It’s Reverend,” she corrects, turning to her computer. She punches a few buttons on the keyboard with a baby pink nail. “Do you have an appointment with the Reverend?” “Yes, at ten.” I arrange my face into a careful neutral. “My name is Beth Murphy.” She tells me the Reverend had a minor emergency in the music room and asked me to meet him there, then rattles off a series of convoluted directions for what is basically a trek to the basement. I thank her, then head in search of the stairwell. A few minutes later, I step into a full-on recording studio. Modern and airy, furnished with sleek black chairs and leather couches arranged in clusters around a stage. Multiple rehearsal rooms each with their own mixing panel are lined up along the wall, across from a soundproof recording booth. Behind its smoky glass, a spongy microphone hovers like a spaceship from the ceiling. “Hello?” A thump, followed by a muffled curse, drifts up from somewhere behind me. I turn and that’s when I see them, two stovepipes of dark denim ending in orange Nikes, poking out from under one of the mixing panels. He wriggles himself out and heaves to a stand, holding out a hand. “Erwin Andrews,” he says, smiling behind his clipped white beard. “And you must be Beth.” I shake his hand, swallowing a flutter of nerves. It’s been years since I’ve been on a job interview, especially one for which I am so monumentally unqualified. I know how to scrub a toilet, yes, but what if he asks about prior experience? What if he asks for references? “Why don’t we sit?” The Reverend is fit despite his age, popping off the ground with surprising speed and agility. He leads me with long, nimble strides to a matching pair of couches to the right of the stage. He’s a runner, judging by his shoes and his build. He points me to the couch, then plucks a chair from the stage and swings it around, placing it so we’re almost knee to knee. Not too close, but not far away, either. Relaxed and informal. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says, clasping his hands. “Why would the pastor of a place this size want to interview every potential employee? Why not let someone else do it? The office manager, maybe, or the head of the cleaning crew.” It’s almost word for word what I said to Martina last night, when she told me she’d set up the interview. She didn’t know the answer, either. “Martina says that you interview everybody.” I tell my nerves to shut up, but they don’t listen, and neither does my body. Sweaty hands, hammering heart, the works. I clear my throat, struggling to rein myself in. “I do, Beth, and I’ll tell you why. Because we are a community here at CCTA, and as its leader, it is my responsibility to keep people from harm. Everyone who walks through that door needs to know that they are sheltered. Regardless of where they came from or what brought them here. That is the promise I have made, to provide a secure, positive, healthy environment where everyone, from the worshippers to the volunteers to the janitors, know that they are safe.” In other words, he needs to ensure I’m not a criminal. He says it without rancor, but still. Reverend Andrews is the godlier version of Miss Sally. I wouldn’t want to cross him, either. I nod, plastering my most law-abiding look on my face. “That makes total sense.” “Good. Excellent.” He slaps his thighs. “Now, I assume you know how to operate a mop, so we can skip the boring parts of this interview and get right to the part where I ask if you can sing.” “I.” I blink, frowning. “I’m sorry, what?” He waves an arm at the setup along the edge of the stage, guitars and microphone stands and a drum set worthy of Charlie Watts. “Music is an essential part of worship at CCTA, an essential part of our culture. God has blessed me with parishioners who have the voices of angels, to make up for others who are.how shall I say this.not put on this earth to carry a tune. Sometimes the Lord works in mysterious ways, and other times He is painfully obvious.” He sticks a finger in his ear, jiggles it around. “What I want to know is which one are you?” “I fall in the second category, unfortunately.” Another lie. I can sing, and I can read music, too. But admitting to either would mean getting shoved onto this stage or worse, the one upstairs, in a cathedral that must seat thousands. The spotlight can feel too hot, too bright, even when you’re not trying to hide. No way I’m letting them shine it on me. “What about an instrument? Do you play anything?” Piano—or I used to, until you mangled my left pinkie. “No.” I shake my head. “Sorry.” The Reverend looks mildly disappointed. “What about a beat? Can you carry one of those?” He taps his foot, snaps his fingers in a slow, rhythmic cadence. I can’t help but smile. “I can do that.” “Excellent! Then you can play the tambourine. We always have room for more tambourine players.” And here it comes. The invitation to attend Sunday services. Reverend Andrews wants to save my soul, and he wants me to play the tambourine while he does it. I picture me in a singing, swaying crowd, joyous faces tipped to the heavens, while he holds his healing hands above us all. There will be no tambourine playing in my future. No church service, either. He swings an ankle over a knee, leaning back in the chair. “Do you have a favorite team?” I dip my chin, raise my eyebrows. Team? “You know, sports. Football, baseball, basketball. And don’t be looking at me like it’s a crazy question. More than half the hard-core Atlanta United fans I know are female. Fifteen-nine our first season. You like soccer?” “I’m not really much of a sports fan.” For the next twenty minutes, the Reverend wanders topics like a drunken bumblebee, bobbing from bloom to bloom. We talk about movies (I haven’t seen one in ages), books (I will read anything but horror), whether or not I thought the TV show did The Handmaid’s Tale justice (yes, absolutely). He asks me my favorite color (what am I, twelve? Fine, yellow), and what do I think about when I’m alone in my car (how not to get pulled over). We touch on favorite foods (mine: french fries, his: pizza) and this place I absolutely must visit, the BeltLine, a walkable, bike-able trail that connects dozens of in-town neighborhoods, because I haven’t lived until I’ve had the truffle fries at Biltong Bar (ask for extra mayonnaise). Our banter is more suited to a bar, or maybe a match.com chat group. I don’t know what this conversation is, but it’s definitely not an interview. “Well, Beth,” he says once the topics are exhausted, “sounds like you’d fit in just fine around here.” I blink in surprise. That’s it? Interview over? “You seem surprised.” “Not to be rude, but don’t you want to ask me about my experience? Question me about cleaning skills or ask me about. I don’t know, my relationship with God or something?” “Your relationship with God is just that—yours. It’s no business of mine unless you make it that way. And Martina already vouched for your cleaning skills. Everything I’ve seen and heard from you so far lives up to what she told me.” I don’t ask what she told him, because I’m not sure I could keep a straight face when he rattled off what must have been a string of lies and fabrications. I’ve known Martina all of two days, and the longest conversation we’ve had was on that first night, when I bumped into her in the kitchen. She knows nothing about me other than what she’s seen, and I’ve made sure she hasn’t seen much. And yet she’s told the Reverend all about me—yet another favor, yet another reason for me to question her motivations. What does that girl want from me? “There’s some paperwork that needs filling out upstairs,” he says, standing. “The official application so we can process your paycheck, and another one so the USCIS doesn’t come banging on my door with a big, fat fine. I assume Martina told you to bring some identification?” Trotting out my new ID feels as precarious as walking the ledge of a cliff, but I pat my bag with a nod. “Not a problem.” “Then welcome to Church of Christ’s Twelve Apostles, Beth.” He sticks out a hand, and we shake, mine pressed between his two warm palms. “We’re glad to have you join our ranks.” “Thank you, Reverend. Really, this means a lot to me.” To my absolute horror, my eyes grow hot, the tears welling so quickly it’s impossible to blink them away. I choke on a small but audible sob. “I can’t even tell you how much.” The Reverend takes me in with a kind expression. “Are you all right, child?” I wipe my cheeks with my fingers, but new tears tumble down before I can mop the old ones away. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Or I will be. I don’t even know why I’m crying.” I force up a throaty laugh. “I promise it won’t be a regular occurrence.” I hate to cry. For the past seven years, my tears have been slapped, backhanded, punched, yanked, kicked, squeezed and one time, burned out of me. Tears are a sign of weakness, followed always by punishment. Only losers cry. But this man doesn’t taunt me for them, and he doesn’t look away. “If you ever want to talk about anything,” he says warmly, patiently, “you should know that I’m a good listener. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you I take care of my flock.” I murmur another round of thanks, though the only thing I can focus on is getting out of here and into the restroom across the hall, where I can splash the splotches from my face and reapply the mascara I’m almost certainly crying down my cheeks. He lets me go, and I’m almost to the door when he stops me. “Oh, and Beth?” His lips curve into a gentle smile, and I can see how it could melt a churchful of people, hanging on his every word. “What I said before, about taking care of my flock. That includes you. Whatever brought you here, whatever burdens you think you’re carrying, you can lay them down. You’re one of us now.” Forty-five minutes later, I’m back in the church basement, where Martina is busy attaching a battery-powered vacuum to my back. “Did he ask you to be in the band?” Martina says, holding up the straps for my arms. The two of us stand in the center of a room that does triple duty as a kitchen, break room and cleaning supply closet. An old television is pushed against a wall in front of mismatched sectionals, and to its right, a workstation with multiple sinks for rinsing buckets and rags. Two walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves that belong in a grocery store cleaning aisle, or maybe an episode of Extreme Couponing. Sponges and mops, neatly stacked buckets, every cleaning product imaginable. My uniform came from the giant Tupperware containers on the bottom shelf, khaki pants and a white T-shirt with the church logo and God Works Here embroidered in looping navy letters across the front. The getup looks ridiculous over the pleather Mary Janes I wore with my interview dress, but I didn’t think to bring sneakers. “He asked me if I could sing or play an instrument, yeah.” I shove one arm through the loop, then another, and she settles the thing on my shoulders. For a piece of machinery, it’s pretty light. “I knew he would. He asks everybody to be in the band.” She reaches around me from behind, snaking the harness around my waist, and I stiffen. Her fingers brush over the money belt but don’t linger. She smells like bleach and peppermint gum. “What else did you talk about?” “I don’t know. Lots of stuff. TV shows and books and truffle fries. It was the weirdest job interview ever.” She grabs me by an arm, turns me around to face her. “Did he tell you the joke?” I shake my head, and she grins. “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Jesus.” “Jesus who?” “Jesus Christ, open the door.” I laugh, not because the joke is funny, but at the idea it originated from a man of God. What happened to not taking the Lord’s name in vain? Father Ian would lose his shit. Martina hands me the vacuum hose, shows me how to work the on and off button on the side. I flip it on, and the nozzle suctions itself to the carpet. “Good gear is half the work,” I say before I can stop myself, one of your favorite one-liners. I flip the switch, both on the machine and in my mind, and turn to Martina. “I still don’t understand. He didn’t ask me one single question that was relevant to the actual job. No personal questions, either, other than silly things like whether I put on both socks before my shoes, or do one foot at a time. The whole time I’m just sitting there, waiting for the bomb to drop.” “The Reverend says the past only defines us if we let it. He says you can let it hold you back, or you can be set free.” Martina takes on that church-like expression I’ve come to know so well, a combination of holier-than-thou satisfaction and wondrous, drank-the-Kool-Aid joy, and this is what Father Ian could never explain to me about organized religion. You are invited into the flock because you are damaged goods, and then you are expected to transform into a righteous follower, to throw out your doubts with your sins and just believe. In the end, after all that happened while going to that church, I couldn’t do it. I lean in and lower my voice, even though we’re the only two in the room. “He also said they needed my IDs so they wouldn’t get fined by the USCIS. That’s the Citizenship and Immigration Services, Martina.” Her eyes narrow. “What would you know about the USCIS?” The accusation in her words revives my doubt of her Grady-baby story, and what about that Spanish-tinged accent she tries to bury under a Southern drawl? If Martina were born here, in a hospital in the state of Georgia, like she said she was, what would she know about the USCIS? “I know what the letters stand for,” I say, “but I’m also assuming they have these things called computers, which will light up like a Vegas slot machine at my fake ID and social security numbers.” She chews her lip. “They won’t,” she mumbles, but I catch a flash of panic in her eyes. “Jorge recycles the numbers. He only uses ones that are real. Ours won’t get flagged.” Whatever uncertainty I had is wiped away, just like that. Martina is a Jorge customer, too. A fugitive posing under a name she wasn’t born with. Maybe I’m right to guard the cash strapped to my waist. Suddenly, this room feels too crowded, too hot. I need to get away from here, away from her. I gesture to the machine strapped to my back. “So where do you want me to start with this thing?” “Upstairs,” she says, stepping to the shelves for a vacuum of her own. “We start at the top and work our way down. Like a team.” But I’m not blind, and I’m no fool. I caught her glance at my waistline. Whatever Martina is after here, I’m pretty sure it’s not teamwork. JEFFREY When I wake up on Saturday morning, I shoot off a text to my boss explaining why I’ve been MIA for the past two days, then pull the pillow over my head. It smells like Sabine, like that sweet-spicy stuff in the overpriced bottles on our shower shelf, and I shove it to the floor. I stare at the ceiling and tell myself to get up, but my limbs feel hulking and heavy, like those sandbags they pile everywhere when the National Weather Service issues a flood warning. I barely slept, thanks to the constant hum of the search boats in the waters behind my house. They’re out there now, and I waver between worry and fury. What kind of idiot do they think I am? Like I would be stupid enough to dump my wife’s body in my own backyard. Like I would ever be that reckless. I watch Dateline. I know to not pollute my own property with evidence. They could give me a little credit and search farther downstream. Then again, I haven’t given them much reason not to suspect me, not after my miserable performance in Detective Durand’s office, my nonanswers about my whereabouts Wednesday afternoon. I’d blame it on being rattled, the knowledge he’d been checking up on me, unsettling me enough to stumble over my answers. But the truth is, it was Ingrid. If she hadn’t been sitting right there, weighting the air in the room with her huffed sighs and cheap perfume, then I might have told him the truth. The detective is a guy; he might have understood, but not Ingrid. No fucking way I was telling her. It was like when you get a Trivial Pursuit question you know the answer to, that panicked, white-hot moment before the answer rolls off your tongue. I took some deep breaths, blew them all out, but the answer didn’t come. And now Detective Durand and his Keystone Cops are determined to pin Sabine’s disappearance on me, instead of finding the person actually responsible. Because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that though they say they’re looking for Sabine, what they’re really searching for is her body. By the time I wake again, it’s well past noon, and the noise of the boats is muffled by a low rumble coming from my front yard. Reporters have descended on the house like a flock of starving vultures, pecking at me through the glass. It’s not enough that they ruined my front lawn with their vans, they hurl questions at the house whenever I so much as walk by a window. Yesterday I pulled all the shades, but I can still feel their presence the way you feel a tornado bearing down outside, ominous and deadly. I know from their questions that the police and their merry band of volunteers have searched everywhere there is to search. Pine Bluff’s fields and patchy woods, the town’s parks and hills and riverbanks. No bits of fabric to show for their efforts, no long strands of brown hair found stuck in a tree. If Sabine is anywhere close by, if she’s on Pine Bluff soil or in her muddy waters, chances are good that she’s dead. Anger and grief, remorse and regret, the emotions churn in my empty stomach. There are a million things I want to say to Sabine, and now it looks like I’ll never get the chance. The light in the room has shifted, the afternoon sun finally climbing high enough to hit the bedroom windows. I stare up at the ceiling, listening to the camera crews on my front lawn, and a wave of anxiety drags me from bed. I need to run. To pump my legs until my heart wants to explode and my chest burns with the lack of oxygen. To abuse my body until I forget these past few days ever happened. I pull on running shorts and a T-shirt and grab my phone from the nightstand. A hundred and twenty-seven messages. I scroll through the texts and emails, variations of the same message. OMG, so shocking. Anything I can do to help? Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. I’m pleased that the tide hasn’t turned, but I’m not naive enough to know that it won’t. Ingrid is probably out there right now, alerting the world of the two-hour hole in my day. It won’t be long until she tells the press, too. I peel the shade from an upstairs window and take a peek outside. Reporters stand in clumps on my front lawn, drinking coffee and shooting the shit like my life is a fucking happy hour. The Arkansas sun beats down on their heads and reflects off the pavement behind them like water. Good. I hope they’re roasting out there. Downstairs in the kitchen, I inspect the contents of the fridge, searching for breakfast. Leftover pizza, a half-empty pack of eggs, some fuzzy cheese and a gallon of spoiled milk. Sabine didn’t spend any of the time I was out of town at the grocery store, and why would she? My trip to Florida was like a birthday, anniversary and Christmas rolled into one, four whole days of unmonitored time with her lover. They probably spent every free second together, especially since his wife moved out. No nagging spouses at home, asking what’s for dinner. I grab the eggs and slam the refrigerator door. If I’m going to hide out here all weekend, I need to go to the store. Tension creeps into my shoulders at the thought of backing my car through the throng of reporters. Maybe I should talk to a lawyer. Get him to chase them off with the threat of a lawsuit, and while I’ve got him, ask what the implications might be now that Detective Durand knows about the unaccounted-for patch in my Wednesday. Then again, what is the detective going to do, arrest me? He can’t do that without evidence, without a body. A two-hour window doesn’t make me a murderer. I’m cracking the last of the eggs into a pan when the doorbell rings, and I check the window by the garage. Somehow, my brother Derrick has managed to plow his Camaro past the reporters, and now he’s out there, preening for their cameras. Shit. I drop the blinds and return to the eggs, watching them pop and hiss in the pan. To open or not to open, that is the question. The doorbell rings again, four quick punches followed by a fist pounding on the door. “Come on, Jeffrey. I know you’re in there. It’s me, Derrick. Let me in.” I poke at the eggs with a fork. Letting him in would mean uncorking a spiky, barbed ball of age-old grievances and passive-aggressive rage. Derrick resents me for my job, my house, my wife—ha! joke’s on me—my car and my clothes, the inch-and-a-half height I have on him, even though he’s the older brother. I resent him for the way he tortured me at school, bullying me with taunts and ridicule and once, a wedgie delivered in front of the entire football team. We are like Mentos and Coke—put us in a container together and it’s not long before we explode. I hear him clomping up the steps to the back door. He finds the spare key Sabine hid under the flowerpot and slides it in the lock. There’s a whoosh of sliding glass, a roar of rushing water, and a few seconds later, he’s standing in my kitchen. “Didn’t you hear me?” he says, tossing the key onto the kitchen counter. “I’ve been banging on your door.” My brother is his usual, slouchy self. Faded and ripped T-shirt, cutoff jeans, flip-flops. Derrick is the high school star quarterback who never made it off the bench in college. He flunked out sophomore year, and his life has been shit ever since. “I heard you. What are you doing here?” Not the nicest greeting, but considering our relationship, not the worst one I could give him, either. “I figured you could use the moral support, but I can just as soon go back home.” He hikes a thumb over his shoulder, but it’s all for show. His soles are superglued to the hardwood. “So I guess your wife finally had enough of you, huh?” “You’re a real dick, you know that, right?” “Jesus, chill out, will you? I’m only kidding.” He moves farther into the room, taking a look around—kind of like that detective did in my foyer. Like he’s cataloging all the things he can’t afford and silently judging me for them. He whips off his shades and hangs them from the collar of his shirt. “Seriously, man. What can I do?” “Nothing.” I turn back to the stove. “Though I really appreciate you coming over to gloat and all, but you can go now.” Derrick moves closer, his flip-flops slapping against his crusty heels. “I’m just trying to be helpful. Jeez. Why do you always have to be such a dickwad?” “I don’t know. I guess it runs in the family.” “I thought maybe we could drive around and look for her or something.” I toss the fork into the pan and flip off the gas. The eggs are burned, the edges brown and papery. I dump them, pan and all, into the sink. “What, do you think she’s just hanging out on a street corner or something, waiting for a ride?” “No, but maybe she drove that fancy car of hers into a ditch. Maybe she had a flat tire.” “Don’t you watch the news, Derrick? They found her car at the Super1. It was abandoned.” His eyes go wide, and he leans a hip against the granite. “Holy shit, bro. That sounds serious. What do the cops think happened, that somebody took her?” I yank open the refrigerator, pull out the pizza box from the night Sabine went missing. The crust is hard as dried dirt, the cheese an orange, rubbery blob. I pick up a piece and bite into it, and it tastes as disgusting as it looks. “I’m pretty sure they think that I took her,” I say around the pizza. “You? Have they lost their minds? Why would they think you took her?” I stuff my mouth with another bite in lieu of answering. Answering would mean telling him about the backhand, her affair with the doctor, the missing two hours in my day—none of which I plan to share with my brother, ever. Derrick likes to pocket my shortcomings and failures, store them in his basement-brain like dormant Molotov cocktails. Weeks or months or years from now, when the rest of the world and I have moved on, he’ll toss one into a conversation just to see the fireworks. “What about Ingrid?” He helps himself to a slice of pizza, which he shoves in the microwave for a minute, and pulls a beer from the fridge. “What about her?” “Come on, man. Stop being so difficult. What does she think happened?” I sigh, sinking onto a counter stool. That heavy, sandbag feeling is back along with a knifepoint throbbing behind my eyes. “I’m pretty sure she thinks the same thing.” He pops open the beer and tosses the top on the counter. “Well, okay, who cares what that old hag thinks? The cops are the ones you need to convince.” I roll my eyes, toss the bottle top and the rest of my pizza slice into the trash. “You’re a motherfucking genius, Derrick. You really are. Convince the cops I didn’t do it. Why didn’t I think of that?” “I’m serious, J. I know a guy who works for Century 21, and he’s always talking about the crazies who wander into his open houses. Mostly people come for the free snacks or to take a dump in the powder room, but just last month, some asshat pulled out a gun. Took my friend’s wallet, his watch, the keys to his car. Sabine’s hot. It’s not unimaginable somebody saw her and got the wrong idea.” “I know. I’ve been telling her that for ages.” The microwave dings, and he reaches in for the pizza, then snatches his hand back with a hiss. He rips a paper towel from the roll and tries again. “And what about those gangs over on the east side? All those break-ins on Cherry Street aren’t for nothing, you know. Those little shits are taking over the city. It’s only a matter of time before they move their territory up this way. Maybe it was them.” “Maybe,” I say, because for once my brother is not wrong. The gangs are taking over the city, and thanks to the soaring unemployment, the poverty, the crappy schools graduating illiterate halfwits without a single marketable skill, there are fewer and fewer people here to stop them. What used to be a hardworking American metropolis now has the dubious honor of being one of the most dangerous cities in America, second only to Detroit. The smart folks have all moved away. Maybe I should join them. He folds the slice in half, and orange oil spurts onto his hand, dripping down his fingers and onto the floor. “I’m just saying there are a million people it could’ve been. Seems to me the cops are being lazy, focusing only on you. Don’t let yourself be an easy target. Show ’em it’s not always the husband.” He shoves half the pizza in his mouth in one giant bite. A long strand of melted cheese dangles from his chin like a worm, but for the first time in well, ever, I don’t gripe at him for the mess. My idiot, dickhead brother has a point. I have let myself be the easy target. I pluck my phone from the countertop, pull up a number I once knew by heart. After two rings, a familiar voice hits my ear. “It’s about time,” she says. “I’ve only been leaving you messages all over town.” Amanda Shephard steps through my front door, looking just like she did in high school. Blonde, thin, a complicated sort of pretty—big lashes and acrylic nails and long, heat-curled hair. Her face is caked under a layer of makeup I’ve never seen her without, not even the summer before senior year when our entire class spent every day bobbing in blow-up tubes on the river. All the other girls had shiny cheeks pink from the sun, but Amanda’s makeup was like a mask, flawless and impenetrable. She pulls me into a perfumed hug. “Oh, Jeffrey, you poor, poor thing.” Her voice echoes in my foyer, loud and consoling in a way that makes it feel exactly the opposite. It’s her television voice, the one she’s cultivated for her show, Mandy in the Morning, a local daily featuring all things mundane and ridiculous. I extricate myself and give her a tight-lipped smile. “How are you doing? How are you holding up? Are you eating at all?” I think of the eggs in the sink, the pizza I shoved out the door along with my brother, right before she got here. “A little.” “If I had known, I would have made you a casserole.” She waves a manicured hand through the air and laughs. “Oh, who am I kidding? We both know I can’t cook. I would have ordered you some Chinese takeout or something. Anyway, I’m so glad you called.” “Thank you. And please,” I say, gesturing toward the living room. “Make yourself at home.” In the sixty minutes it took her to get over here, I cleaned up the place. I dusted and fluffed all the pillows, and I exchanged my running shorts for a pair of khaki slacks and a navy polo over loafers. Nothing too fancy. I don’t want her to think I’m trying too hard. She steps into the room and gasps, making a beeline to the wall of windows. She stops just beyond the desk, standing before a sheet of glass lit up by the sun. It turns her hair iridescent and makes the fabric of her dress float like a wispy cloud around her body—a cloud that is more than a little see-through. Well, well, well. Amanda Shephard is wearing a lacy red thong. “You’re so close to the river,” she says without turning. “Like the house is floating on top of it or something.” “I know.” “The view is stunning.” Yes. It is. She presses a hand into the glass, and the sun turns her skin to fire. Amanda is conventionally beautiful, but up to now, I’ve never found her all that attractive. Too processed, too high maintenance. But standing here, in my cheating wife’s house, I’m beginning to see another side of Amanda. The side that would make a spectacular revenge fuck. I clear my throat. “The view is what sold us on the house. Turns every window into a piece of artwork. Did you know the river changes colors, depending on the weather and time of day? I didn’t know that until I got to look at it every day.” She smiles over her shoulder. “Well, Jeffrey Hardison, you sensitive old dog, you. Next thing I know, you’ll be reading me poetry.” At the south end of the river, a black search boat motors upstream, and multiple people lean over the sides, staring into the water. “Do you mind if we get started?” I say, pointing Amanda to the couch before she sees the boat. “When we’re done here, I need to get over to the police station and see if there’s any update about Sabine.” “I just came from there, actually.” She wrinkles her nose, stepping away from the window. “They won’t tell me anything other than that Sabine’s car showed up at the Super1, which in all honesty tells me nothing. Who are the suspects? What are the clues? The people of Pine Bluff deserve to know the truth, Jeffrey.” “I agree.” She sinks onto one of the twin three-seaters, and I choose the one opposite her. The search boat has stopped in the middle of the river, the flashlights all trained to one spot. I watch as a man in full diving gear slips over the side. “I really wish you’d have let me bring the cameras,” Amanda says, dragging a voice recorder from her bag. I shake my head. There’s an orchid in the air between us, and I shove it to the opposite end of the table. “I already told you, I can’t say or do anything that might get in the way of the police investigation.” She freezes, one arm stretched halfway to the coffee table. “So this is off-the-record then?” She straightens, holds up the recorder. “Can I even use this thing?” I lean back in my chair and pretend to consider it. Amanda loses patience after only a second or two. “You called me here for a reason, Jeffrey. Stop playing around and tell me what it is.” “Fine. I called you here because I want you to help me set the record straight. The thing is, I’ve seen this movie, and I know how it ends. With the husband serving twenty to life.” “Only the guilty ones.” She says it teasingly, playfully, letting it hang with obvious implication. “Come on, Amanda. We’ve known each other for what—fifteen, twenty years?” She purses her glossed lips. “I won’t tell if you don’t.” Behind her crossed legs, a stealthy thumb presses down on the record button. I pretend that I don’t notice. “Long enough for you to know what I am and what I’m not capable of. I may be a dick at times, but I am not the kind of guy who makes his estranged wife go missing. I’m not a murderer.” She tsks at the word estranged. “Shelley McAdams is a friend of mine. Let’s just say she’s not taking it well.” The doctor’s wife. At least I’m not the only sucker. “Yeah, well, no offense to Shelley, but she’s one of the reasons I called you here. The police seem to be assuming this was a crime of passion, but I’m not the only one with a motive. How do we know Shelley didn’t. I don’t know, seek out her own revenge?” “Because Shelley is in Chicago, interviewing divorce attorneys.” Amanda flashes a sorry-but-I’m-on-her-side smile. “Don’t be surprised if she gets full custody of the kids.” “Okay, so other people, then. You know the statistics on crime in this town. Sabine has money, she’s gorgeous and she’s often alone in some empty house. There are plenty of sickos out there. How do we know it wasn’t one of them?” “I’m sure the police are looking into it.” “No, they’re not—that’s the whole point. As far as I can tell, the only person the police are sniffing around is me.” “Then why don’t you look into a camera and tell the world you’re innocent?” When I don’t respond, she adds, “If you’re nervous, if you need some media coaching, I can help you get some. It’s not that hard.” “I’m not nervous. I just think what I have to say would mean so much more coming from someone who’s not me.” “What do you have to say?” “I have.information about my wife. Information that coming from me would sound.suspicious. Coming from you, however, it would be news.” Amanda straightens in importance at the last word, just like I knew she would. Amanda longs to be seen as a real journalist. She spends a lot of time online, promoting the newsworthiness of her show on social media, defending it from people who dismiss it as fluff. Calling her a journalist is like handing her a Pulitzer. It validates her. “How about this?” I swing my ankle over a knee, sinking deeper into the couch. “You put that recorder of yours onto the table, and I’ll talk into it and tell you what I know. When we’re done, if you like what I have to say and want me to say it all over again into a camera, we can talk about that, too.” By now, Amanda is like a dog with a bone. I’ve given her one with just enough meat that there’s no way she will let it loose. But she’s always been a bit of a drama queen, and she takes her time pretending to decide. Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, glossed lip working between her teeth. I settle in and indulge her theater. After a few seconds, she places the recorder on the table. Showtime. I walk her through what I know. That Sabine was there, in the Super1 lot, before she disappeared. That she left without her car and her burner phone, but with her iPhone, which the police have not been able to locate. That I was the one to sound the alarm, a few short hours after she was expected home. That I’ve barely slept since. “So what, then? Do you think someone took her?” I shrug. “It’s possible, I guess. But there was no sign of struggle near her car, no blood on the ground or tire marks. If she got into someone’s car, I’m guessing it was someone she knew. Then again, I think it’s much more possible she.” I wince, looking down at the sisal carpet. Amanda scoots forward on the couch, leaning in. “You think it’s more possible she what?” I heave a full-body sigh. “I feel like I’m betraying Sabine by even bringing this up, but I also think if she were here, she’d understand. The thing is—and you’re the first person I’ve ever told this to, so please forgive me if I stumble over my words—but a little over two years ago, Sabine was going through a rough patch. Her mother has Alzheimer’s, and she’d stopped recognizing Sabine. Not every time, but that first time was pretty devastating. On top of that, we heard the baby Sabine was carrying, the one we’d spent a lot of money trying to conceive, didn’t have a heartbeat. All that goes to say, things were really, really shitty.” Amanda makes a sound of sympathy, but she waits for me to continue. “After she lost that baby, it’s like she. I don’t know, went to a place I couldn’t follow. She stopped eating. She stayed in bed for days at a time. She was self-medicating, with alcohol and leftover painkillers and whatever else she could get her hands on before I flushed it all down the toilet. Then one day, she was fine. She got up, got dressed and went back to work like nothing had happened. She sold three houses that week and listed two more. I remember thinking that’s how good a broker my wife is, that she can end three comatose weeks with deals totaling more than a million dollars.” “How did she do it?” Amanda asks. “I have no idea. It could have been a fluke, deals that she had been working on before the miscarriage that suddenly came through, I don’t know. But the point is, I finally relaxed. I thought things were better, that she was better, and I stopped hovering so much.” I pause, counting in my head to three. “I shouldn’t have stopped hovering.” Amanda’s forehead crumples between perfectly sculpted brows. “I don’t understand. What does all of this have to do with what happened to Sabine? With wherever she is?” “Maybe nothing, maybe everything.” I fill my lungs with breath, blow it slowly out. The vapid Amanda holds hers. “What I’m trying to say is, Sabine has done this before.” Amanda’s eyes go wide. “You’re not suggesting.” I nod. “Two years ago in November, the day after Thanksgiving, Sabine got on a bus and disappeared.” BETH Early Monday morning, Martina shows up at my door fresh from the shower. “Good morning! You look pretty. Let’s carpool.” Her face is bare, rosy cheeks and scrubbed skin, a fringe of dark lashes that doesn’t need mascara. Two French braids snake around each ear and leave twin wet marks on her God Works Here T-shirt. The total effect is easy, youthful, adorable. I smile and reach for my keys. “Good idea. I’ll drive.” “But I’ve already got mine.” She holds her car keys up, jingles them in the air beside her face. “I’m a real backseat driver,” I say, nudging her out of the way so I can step into the hall. “You don’t want me in your passenger’s seat, I promise. I’ll only make you crazy, and besides, I like to drive.” What I really like is to stay in control. No way I’m strapping myself into somebody else’s car and letting them steer me Lord knows where, not with every penny I own strapped to my middle. I’m not about to relinquish my cash or my shiny new command on life that easily. At least behind the wheel of my own car, I am the one in charge. As long as things are on my terms, I wouldn’t mind the company. Martina opens her mouth to argue, then becomes distracted by a door opening at the far end of the hall. Tom, the red-faced, sweaty guy who lives in the room across from mine, steps out of the bathroom in a puff of steam. He’s soaking from his three-minute session under the shower, water streaming in rivulets down his short, square body and onto the hallway runner. His hair, usually wrapped into a complicated comb-over that’s not fooling anyone, hangs in thin strands onto his bare shoulders. “Good morning, ladies,” he says. “You two are looking awfully spiffy today. Matching outfits, I like it.” Better than his outfit, which is a tiny slip of ancient terry cloth slung low around his potbelly. It flaps open when he walks, providing intermittent views of something I’m trying hard not to notice. Martina makes a face. “Put some clothes on, Tom.” “Gotta dry off first.” “I thought that’s what the towel was for.” I make a sound in the back of my throat. “Towel” is a generous term. “Nope. Towel’s for modesty.” He stops at his door, giving us his hairy back while he works in his key. “My body parts function best when they air-dry. You two have a good day, now.” He steps inside and shuts the door. Martina turns to me with a concerned frown. “Is that true? Am I supposed to be letting my parts air-dry?” I laugh and head for the stairs. “Come on. I don’t want to be late.” We run into Miss Sally in the hallway below, her hair wound around fat curlers the same hot pink as her silk robe, a floral kimono wrapped loosely around her body. It hangs open between her breasts, two jiggly mounds of flesh right at eye level. What is it with half-naked people in this place? “Well, don’t you two look like the Doublemint twins,” she says, taking us in from head to toe. “I see our Martina got you a job, huh?” I glance at Martina, flashing her a smile. “She did. For which I am forever grateful.” Martina grins and bumps me with a shoulder. “I hear good things about that place. A friend of mine goes there every Sunday. Sits front and center, right in front of the big cross. He’s been trying to get me to go, but I keep telling him not to bother.” Miss Sally’s gaze dips to my chest, and the text written across my shirt. “Unlike your souls, I’m pretty sure mine is doomed.” “Don’t be fooled,” I say, laughing. “I’m going to need more than a T-shirt to save my soul.” Miss Sally laughs like we’re in on the same joke, even though all those things I used to believe about my inherent decency are no longer true. I’ve lied, I’ve cheated, and before this thing is through, I will have done much worse. Some might say that makes me just as bad as you, but I don’t believe that. This is nothing like the times you held me down and spit in my face, punched me in the stomach so hard I stopped breathing, held my neck and tried to make me swallow a whole bottle of Ambien. “I don’t want to do these things,” you told me after every instance. “It must be you. You are the one who brings this out in me. I wouldn’t be like this if you were a different woman.” What I’m doing is self-defense. For me, this is survival. We say our goodbyes to Miss Sally and head out the door. Sometime during the night, clouds rolled in, bringing with them a humidity that makes it feel like we’re walking through water, the air so thick it has a weight to it. The inside of the Buick is even worse. The dampness has seeped through the cracks in the windows and turned the upholstery clammy. We sink onto it, and it belches up a bouquet of scents I’ve not noticed before, none of them pleasant. Cigarettes and body odor and something sour and rotten, like spoiled milk. I start the engine and hit the buttons for the windows to air out the stink. “Sweet ride,” Martina says, sliding her hand up and down the armrest, and I wonder if she’s messing with me. Either way, it doesn’t make me any more eager to ride in her car. I pull up the map app on my phone, and Martina waves it away, directing me out of the neighborhood. She chatters as we wind our way through streets that are already crowded with the morning rush, people like us going to work and school, and I wonder how we look to them. Normal, probably. Like one of them. Once we’re hurtling toward the highway—a route I recognize—she settles back into her seat, kicking off her sneakers and swinging her feet up onto the dash. Her toenails are painted a bright metallic blue. “So, what’s the deal with you, anyway?” The question is broad enough that it could refer to any number of things. I glance over, trying to judge which one, but Martina’s profile doesn’t give anything away. She points at the light and says, “Green.” I look both ways, then tentatively press on the gas. “What’s the deal with me, how?” “Well, you insist on driving, even though—and no offense—you’re not very good at it. You have nightmares almost every night. Screaming nightmares, and yes, everybody at Morgan House hears you. They’re all talking about it. And any time anyone asks you anything even remotely personal, you mumble something vague and change the subject. You won’t even tell me where you’re from.” “I’m from Oklahoma.” It’s a lie, but it matches the car’s plates so what the hell. “Where in Oklahoma?” “A town nobody’s ever heard of.” That, at least, is the truth. Except when it comes to crime rates, Pine Bluff isn’t exactly on anyone’s radar. “A town I’m trying really hard to forget,” I add, trying to shut down this line of questioning. Martina shrugs. “We’re all running from something, but if we’re going to be friends, you’ve got to at least give me something. That’s how this works, you know. You tell me something about yourself, and I tell you something about me.” She’s right, of course. That is how friendship works, though I’m not sure friendship is the goal here—for either of us. It certainly wasn’t Martina’s goal when she pocketed Jorge’s kickback without a word to me about it. And yet. God, what would it be like to make a friend in this place? In this city? Someone to laugh and share jokes with, a ride or die like the ones I used to have, before you drove a wedge into every single one of my friendships. I like Martina, and the truth is, I could really use a friend. “I told you where I was from,” she reminds me. “I even told you about my crack-whore mom, and I never tell anybody about her. The least you can do is share a truth about yourself.” Truth. The word strikes me as funny, and I bite down on a laugh, a big belly guffaw. What truth? So far, neither one of us has been willing to take that first leap and share something completely honest, and I’m sure as hell not going to be the first. This new life, for as long as it lasts, depends on me telling no one the details of my past. I take a left up the ramp to I-75, which looks like a parking lot. A bumper-to-bumper sea of red brake lights. Exhaust shimmers in the air, undulating waves rising up like heat. I slow to a stop behind a souped-up truck and twist on my seat to face her. “You told me you were born at Grady Hospital but in an accent that sounds like it came from Mexico. You basically admitted you were Jorge’s client, too. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I believe half the stuff that comes out of your mouth. What does an American-born citizen need from a guy like Jorge other than kickbacks?” She frowns. “What does that mean, ‘kickback’?” “Like when he paid you a commission for sending me to him. That’s a kickback. And speaking of kickbacks, a real friend would have told me about it, or maybe even shared it. Friends don’t use other friends to try to make a buck.” “What are you talking about? I didn’t earn a commission from Jorge. Who told you I did?” The truck in front of us rolls a few feet forward, and so do I, nudging the nose into traffic. “Jorge told me. He said he’d pay fifty bucks for anyone I sent him.” “What—? Fifty dollars.” Her cheeks flush and her eyes squeeze into a squint. “Per person?” I nod. “Oh no.” She shakes her head, hiking up on a hip. “Oh hell no.” Spouting a steady stream of angry, staccato Spanish, she wriggles her phone from her back pocket and stabs at the screen with a finger. I pick up a few choice words—puta, cojones, mierda—while the speaker burps a rhythmic tone. A few seconds later, Jorge answers with a curt “Yeah?” She switches to English, her words high and clipped. “Jorge, Martina. What’s this I hear about a commission?” His voice bursts from the phone speaker. “Who tell you that?” “Beth. You offered her one when I’ve sent you what, ten people at least? Don’t tell me, all those checks must have gotten lost in the mail. Is that right?” Jorge’s pause is two seconds too long. “Commission is new. Just started.” “Uh-huh.” Martina looks at me, rolls her eyes. The first wave of guilt rolls through me, nibbling its way across my stomach. “This is some serious bullshit, Jorge. You owe me like three hundred bucks.” “Okay, okay. I pay you next time.” “No, you listen to me. There won’t be a next time, not until I get that money you owe me. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Not one more person until you pay.” There’s another long pause, then a sigh. “Fine.” “Fine,” Martina barks back, then disconnects the call. She drops it on her lap with an angry squeal. “I can’t believe he did that to me. What a snake. What a dirty, disgusting snake.” Guilt flares, heating me from the inside out. If anyone’s a snake here, it’s me. I wrap both hands around the wheel and wince. “I just assumed he offered you the same deal he did with me, Martina. I never even considered.” I shake my head, glancing over. “I feel like such a shit.” She brushes away my apology with a wave of her hand. “You’re not the shit. Jorge is the shit. He’s the one I’m mad at, not you.” “Still. I’m really, really sorry.” At my apology, her anger vanishes as quickly as it appeared. She turns to me, and her smile is big and real. “See? This is what friends do. We apologize. We forgive, and then we do better the next time. If you have a problem, you come to me and we’ll talk about it, okay?” I nod. “Okay.” “Great. So now it’s my turn.” She inhales, long and deep through her nose, then blows it out in one giant huff. “Okay. Fine. I don’t like the way you look at me sometimes.” “How do I look at you?” “Like you think I’m about to tackle you. Like you think I’m after however much is in that thing hanging at your waist. But I wouldn’t do that to you.” She points a finger at my face, wags it in the air between us. “You and I, we are friends, and I wouldn’t hurt a friend that way, Beth. I wouldn’t.” She says it just like that—like it’s decided, like it’s a fact. She is to be trusted. We are to be friends. She holds me in her brown stare for a few more seconds, and I can’t deny her message tugs at something inside me. The thing is, I like Martina. Even though I haven’t believed much of what she’s told me so far, I think this might be the nugget of truth I was searching for. I was wrong about her dealings with Jorge. Maybe I was wrong to be suspicious of her, too. “I believe you,” I say, and God help me, I mean it. I believe Martina when she says she wouldn’t take my money. I just pray it’s not a mistake. The car behind me leans on the horn, and I press the gas and slide forward, smiling. The truth is, it’s nice to have a friend. Unexpected. But nice. Martina tells me she’s twenty-eight as we work our way through the nave of the church later that morning, stacking Bibles and hymnals in the cubbies between the seats, dropping in bulletins for the evening service. Her family has either died or moved away, all except for a younger half brother, Carlos, a boy half her age about to start high school at Grady—which I gather is a different place than the hospital where she claims to have been born. The two share a father, a deadbeat drifter who last she heard was playing drums in dives up and down the West Coast. Carlos’s mother is kind of a bitch, but she doesn’t drink or forget to buy groceries, and in Martina’s mind, that more than makes up for any snarky remarks. Martina talks and talks, a constant stream of words to plug the silence, and I don’t interrupt. As long as she’s the one talking, I don’t have to do anything but listen. As we’re nearing the last row of a section, I step on something hard and lumpy. I reach down, pick up a baby’s pacifier. It’s grubby and cracked, the pink face missing its ring. “Should I throw this thing away?” I say, holding it up. Martina takes it from my fingers, tosses it into an empty box. “We never throw away anything here, ever. We take it to lost and found. Not that anybody will ever come looking for an old piece of plastic, but it’s not up to us. You never know what you’ll find. Phones, keys, gum wrappers and Lord knows what else. Once I found a diamond earring. A real one, too.” “How do you know it was real?” “Have you seen the people who come in this place?” She snorts. “It was definitely real.” I think of Charlene, the blonde receptionist I met my first day here, with her silky dress and sparkly jewelry, and I don’t argue. “Anyway, wait’ll you see this place tomorrow morning, after the Reverend packs the house here tonight. There are eight thousand seats in this place, eight thousand bodies, and at least half of them drop crap out of their pockets for us to pick up.” I reach inside a box for a fresh stack of bulletins. “This place is nothing like the church I used to go to.” As soon as I say the words, I wish I could snatch them back. Not that Martina seems to notice my accidental sharing. She picks up a piece of trash from the floor, tosses it into the box and moves farther down the line. “Have you ever gone to one of the Reverend’s services?” She nods. “What’s it like?” “The services are cool. Very happy-clappy, if you know what I mean, but the music steals the show. It’s like going to a concert or something. It makes the hour fly by. We can stay tonight if you want to, but I say we wait until Wednesday.” “Why, what happens on Wednesday?” “The Reverend puts on a buffet dinner after the services. Fried chicken, lasagna, mashed potatoes, more food than you’ve ever seen. And you should see those hoity-toity types tear into that buffet like they haven’t eaten for days. They hover around the tables with their plates while the Reverend blesses the food, and his Amen is like the shot of a starting pistol. They dive into that food like.like what are those people in the Bible with the famine?” “Canaanites?” “Yeah, them. Anyway, if we stay for the service and then help clean up afterward, we get to eat as much as we want, and the Reverend pays overtime.” Overtime and a free meal, the two magic words. I nod, decision made. “Let’s wait till Wednesday then.” I look to Martina for confirmation, but she’s looking over my shoulder. Her spine straightens, and her brows slam together. “What the hell are you doing here?” I turn to see a woman—no, a girl—coming down the aisle toward us. She’s somewhere around sixteen or seventeen, though she’s helped along by her height, six feet and then some. Her skin is bronze and her hair is natural, a wild crown of curly ringlets over high cheekbones and big green eyes. She’s dressed like us, in the same khaki pants and God Works Here T-shirt, only hers are skintight, her shirt knotted on the side to reveal a seductive slice of coppery skin. She moves closer, and I see that she’s biting back a smirk. “I work here. What’re you doing here?” Martina shakes her head, and her hands tighten into fists. “You can’t work here. I work here.” “Well I do.” The girl says it short and matter-of-fact. “Here I am.” “Where’s the Reverend?” Martina pushes past, almost mowing me over in her hurry into the opposite aisle. “I need to find the Reverend.” The girl rolls her eyes. “What are you going to tell him, that you stole my money?” At the accusation, Martina does an about-face, arms slinging in fury. I press myself to the chairs and get out of her way. “I already told you,” she shouts, “I didn’t take your goddamn money. I didn’t even know you had any until you accused me of taking it. And it’s not like it was your cash to begin with. That hooker you stole it from probably just came back to claim what was hers.” They’re making a lot of noise, too much. I check behind us, scanning the rows of empty chairs, but as far as I can tell, there’s nobody else here. Still. I wish they would stop yelling and cussing. The girl purses her lips. “That hooker did come back, and so did her pimp. Do you know what they do to people who take their money? You’re lucky they didn’t kill me.” “What is that, some kind of threat? Because I didn’t take your stupid money, and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t make me say it again.” Martina’s accent is full-on south of the border now, all rolling Rs and short, staccato spurts. The girl lifts a brow. “Your Mexican is showing.” With a squeal, Martina rears back an arm, her hand squeezed into a hard fist, and I hook my hand in her elbow right before she punches the girl in the face. The move is not entirely unselfish. I like to stay out of catfights as a general rule, but seeing as Martina is the one who got me this gig, I’m thinking it’s better to stop this one before any blood is spilled. I’m too new to have established a good reputation yet. What reflects badly on Martina reflects badly on me, too. I plant my body between the two women, holding up a hand in both directions. “Both of you, see that cross up there? Either shut up or take it outside.” Martina opens her mouth to protest, but I beat her to it. “This isn’t the time or the place.” She shuts up. The tall girl, too. They glare over my head at each other while Martina does a deep-breathing technique, less meditation and more trying not to explode. I open my mouth to speak, but it’s the Reverend’s voice that rings out. “There you are,” he says, and the three of us freeze. Footsteps sound to my left, and I turn to see him walking across the stage. He stops under a stage light, the skin of his forehead shining like wet glass. Particles of dust dance in the air above him, suspended in the beam of light. “Oh good, I see you’ve already met Ayana.” Martina tosses me a panicked glance. How much did he hear? But the Reverend’s a good fifty feet away, and he has to raise his voice to be heard. He watches us with a benevolent smile. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to work upstairs today, in the administrative offices,” he says, and I don’t know which one of us he’s talking to. I nod, but Martina frowns. “What happened to Oscar?” Oscar is the unofficial head of the cleaning crew, an ancient, gnome-like man who, according to his hunched back and knobby, arthritic fingers, is somewhere between eighty and a hundred and fifty. As far as I can tell, his sole responsibility is pushing a rag over the desks in the administrative offices and shooting the shit with anybody who wanders through. Any other person could do it in half the time, but in this place, seniority comes with the benefit of a cushy job. “Oscar had to go to Florida, to visit his ailing mother. He’s asked us to keep her in our prayers.” I make a sound of sympathy, even though I’m thinking, Oscar’s mother is still alive? “Do you think you could take over, just until Oscar returns from his trip?” “Of course, Reverend,” Martina says, volunteering in her best Southern Belle accent. “Beth and I will be happy to help.” The Reverend leans back on his heels, his gaze flitting to Ayana, looking at her like she’s a child who wasn’t chosen for the party. “Maybe you can take Ayana, too. Introduce her around. Show her the ropes.” Martina falls silent, and an angry flush climbs up her neck. I smile up the stage at the Reverend. “Not a problem. We’d be glad to.” “Excellent. Well.see y’all upstairs, I guess. And thank you. I’m so happy that God brought the three of you to me. I am blessed beyond measure.” He drops his hands in his pockets and wanders off, leaving the three of us standing in the aisle. As soon as he’s gone, Martina swirls to face Ayana. “Swear to God, if you so much as look at me wrong, I’m telling the Reverend what you did.” “What did she do?” I say. I can’t help it. Now I want to know. Ayana folds her arms across her chest, her gaze dipping to Martina’s collarbones. “Pretty necklaces. How’d you pay for them?” Martina’s face blooms bright purple, two matching spots on each cheek. She sputters something that would make Jesus blush, then turns and stalks up the aisle. I look at Ayana, and she’s smiling. JEFFREY PDK Workforce Solutions is housed in the center of a shabby strip mall on Sheridan Road, sandwiched between a consignment shop and a serve-yourself yogurt place on the brink of bankruptcy. The parking lot is mostly empty. I’m one of the first ones here, thanks to the early bird reporters who dragged me from a dead sleep, rumbling up in their noisy vans and calling out greetings like miners punching in at the quarry. So far, they haven’t followed me here, though I figure I’ve only got another day or two before they line up on the sidewalk outside. My boss, Eric, will lose his mind. Inside the glass door, Florence is parked behind the receptionist’s desk, slurping from a foam jug of Diet Coke she refills at the doughnut shop across the lot a couple of times a day. I have no idea what she does here. Up until a few years ago, she was more than happy being a housewife, and then her husband died and she “needed something to keep her busy.” She actually used those words on her application; I know, because I’ve seen it. Eric is such a slouch that he hired her anyway. She sees me and her eyes go wide. “Oh, Jeffrey, you poor, poor dear. I heard about Sabine on the evening news.” She rushes around her desk to pull me into a hug. What is the proper amount of time to stand here while a colleague holds you in her wrinkly arms? I count to three, then extricate myself. “Thank you, Florence.” She smells like cigarettes and Oil of Olay, and now so do I. “I appreciate your concern.” “I just can’t believe it. She’s really gone? Do the police have any leads at all?” It’s the question I tried to ignore all weekend—from the reporters swarming outside my windows, from friends and neighbors who blew up my phone, from my boss who texted me late last night suggesting I take the week off. Every time, the questions hit me like a brick. Are there any leads? I have no fucking idea. The search for Sabine has fizzled, the volunteers have washed the mud off their shoes and returned home to their families and their lives. For police, the investigation has morphed from find her to solve the case, though they’re holding developments tight against their Kevlar chests. If there are any leads, if Detective Durand has found so much as a hair from Sabine’s head, he’s not shared the information with me. I haven’t spoken to him since Saturday afternoon, when he stopped by the house to pick up Sabine’s computer. Part of me wonders if he’s keeping me in the dark because I am a suspect, and the other part already knows the answer. And so I spent the weekend on the couch, monitoring news of the search on my laptop while a constant stream of Netflix blared on the TV. Most of what I found was a rehashing of old facts or tabloid hacks spinning rumors into conjecture, into motive. That Sabine was taken. That she was killed, by a stranger or her lover or me, in a fit of jealous rage. That she made a break for it, sneaked out of town on purpose. That last rumor was the result of my calling Amanda, of parking her on my sofa for an uncensored airing of Sabine’s dirty laundry. The reality of last year’s disappearing act was only a little less dramatic than I made it sound. Sabine really did board a bus—headed west, I later learned—but she didn’t make it very far. Halfway to the Oklahoma border, she received a call from the nursing home that her mother had suffered a fall. She was home before any of us noticed she was gone. But the point is, she intended to leave. She tried to sneak off, and for once without telling her sister. If her mother hadn’t tripped over her own two feet, who knows how long she would have stayed gone. So now the seed has been planted. Sabine is unstable. She has a history of running off. The husband is innocent. All I can do now is sit back and watch it grow. I sneak a quick glance at my watch. Mandy in the Morning starts in less than an hour. “I’m starting to think the police are not very competent,” I say to Florence, shaking my head. She makes a face, and she swats my bicep with a crepey hand. “Well, of course they’re not. My house was broken into last year, and they did nothing. They didn’t even come by to see the busted-up door or dust for prints. I had to go all the way over to the station just to file a police report. Their excuse was that the gangs on the east side were keeping them too busy for common house thieves, but I was like, ‘well, who the hell do you think did this?’ Of course it was the gangs.” I make a sympathetic sound, even though she’s spouting nonsense. The gangs are a problem, yes, but they’re slinging dope, not breaking into old ladies’ houses to steal their tchotchkes. But Florence has always been brilliant at this, at flipping any conversation back to her and her own piddling problems. I mumble some excuse about a conference call and head down the hall. The office is quiet for a Monday morning, a few minutes before opening time. No phones ringing, no clacking keyboards, no voices muffled behind cubbies and walls. Eric must not be here yet, otherwise he’d be shouting out orders from his office at the end of the hall. “Make some calls!” he’ll yell whenever the office gets too quiet, “Send out some emails!” As if selling his crappy software is as easy as making first contact, but I guess he’s right to complain. A silent sales office is not a productive one. I slip into my office and shut the door, going through my normal morning routine. Power up the computer, plow through my email inbox. Delete, delete, delete, ignore. A knuckle raps against wood, and a second later, the door pops open. Eric’s head pokes around the corner. “What are you doing here?” I lean back in my chair, eyeing him over the top of the computer screen. Eric is dressed in his usual gear—pastel button-down, lightly rumpled khakis, suede saddle bucks. He looks like a frat boy playing boss man. “Working.” His brows slide into a frown. “I thought I told you not to come in.” “No, you told me to take however much time I need, but I don’t need time. I need to work. That mailing I did last month is finally starting to bear fruit, and I have a million things to do.” This place is set up for a roving sales department, with company-issued laptops and a VPN that can be accessed from the road. Both of us know I could just as easily work from home as from here. Easier, probably, because I could do it without ever leaving my bed. He glances into the hallway, and I catch a flash of something in his expression—surprise? annoyance?—before he looks back at me and steps inside. He shuts the door behind him. “Jeffrey, people are starting to talk.” “What people?” He makes an are-you-kidding-me face, a minuscule lifting of his shoulders. “The point is—” “Who, Eric? What are they saying?” I know what they’re saying. Sabine cheated. She was in love with another man. Jeffrey Hardison is a fool. A stooge. A sucker. My desk phone buzzes, and I tap the Do Not Disturb button. The system flips the call through to voice mail. “People are worried about your wife, Jeffrey,” Eric says evenly. “They’re worried about you.” His words toss yet another coal onto my belly-fire. I slam both fists onto my desk and lean in. “They’re worried? How do you think I feel? Today is day six. Six days since Sabine went wherever she went, and there’s still no sign of her. The police think—” I stop myself just in time. I inhale long and slow, trying to put a damper on my tone, on my temper. “This whole situation is crazy intense. I’ve barely slept. I’ve lost my appetite. You can’t even imagine the stress I’m under.” “I can imagine. Which is why I suggested you take some time off. Nobody expects you to be here, least of all me.” I choke up a chuckle, an attempt to laugh it off. “I gotta tell you, Eric, I never thought I’d hear you tell me I’d done enough work. I thought your motto was ‘more is more.’ I barely know what to do with this laid-back version of you.” He doesn’t share my joviality, not even a little bit. The silence stretches, long and painful. He leans a shoulder against the door. “Are you really going to make me say it?” I cross my arms, lean back in my chair. Wait. He sighs, stepping to the edge of my desk. “Look, if it was just the staff talking, that’d be one thing, but the clients are starting to ask questions, and not just of me. They’re talking to each other, and already the gossip is swirling out of control. I can’t have potential customers getting wind of this. Business is already bad enough.” I clear my throat. “So this suggestion of yours for me to take some time off. It wasn’t a suggestion, really? More like an order?” “Both.” “Are you firing me?” He lifts both hands into the air, frustrated. “Come on, you know I can’t do that. We work in HR, for crap’s sake.” There’s a knock at the door, which we both ignore. “I’m placing you on paid leave so you can go home and worry about your wife in private. Just until this thing blows over.” I take a deep breath. Sit here calmly, at my desk across from him, while his words boil under my skin. Until this blows over. Meaning what, until Sabine is found safe and sound, and I’m proven innocent? Or that I’m carted out of here in handcuffs and he has reasonable grounds to fire me? Which one? There’s another knock, this time louder. More forceful. Florence’s voice works its way through the wood. “Jeffrey? I tried to call but your phone is on DND.” I roll my eyes, but Eric’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Are we agreed?” he says, his voice low and filled with meaning. I give him a brisk nod: fine. In fact, fuck this place. A paid vacation sounds like just what the doctor—Nope, not going there. Fuck Trevor, and fuck Eric, too. Eric steps back and opens the door, and Florence swipes the air with a knobby fist. She sees him, and her arm falls to her side. “Oh.” Her gaze bounces from Eric to mine. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Sorry.” My jaw aches from the pressure creeping up my neck and shoulders, from keeping my molars clamped together. Of course she meant to interrupt, every time she banged on my door as well as however many times she tried to call. The Do Not Disturb button exists for a reason. “It’s fine, Florence,” Eric says. “Jeffrey and I were done.” Florence’s gaze cuts me like a knife fresh from the freezer. “There’s a detective here to see you.” MARCUS Jeffrey’s office smells like coffee and expensive cologne, but it can’t disguise the stink of his panic when I step through his door. I thank the receptionist and his boss, close the door in their faces. I picture them standing on the other side, pressing their ears to the wood. A detective dropping by an office for an unexpected visit is always a showstopper. They were equal parts captivated and horrified. He watches me sink into one of the chairs across from his desk, trying to read my expression, but I don’t give anything away. Let him sweat. I toss my bag and keys on the chair next to me, settling in like I’m planning to stay awhile. “Thanks for squeezing me in. I’m sure you must be very busy.” I take in the PDK poster on the wall, his whiteboard messy with sales numbers and scribbled reminders, the Every day I’m hustlin’ desk plaque on the edge of his desk. “What is it you do here exactly?” “PDK Workforce Solutions provides an interactive human resources management software that helps grow your business. Recruitment, performance management, workflow, things like that. Honestly?” He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “Don’t buy it, it’s a little buggy.” I watch him without even a shadow of amusement. “Do I need a lawyer?” he blurts out before he can stop himself. His nerves are making him restless and blunt. “Do you want one?” Now I’m amused. A smile sneaks out before I can stop it. “That depends on what you’re here to ask me.” “You want to see my list of questions?” I point to the pad balanced on a thigh. “Not sure you can read my handwriting, though. My wife seems to be about the only one on the planet who can.” He doesn’t respond, and I drop my hand. “How about I just read ’em off to you one by one, and you tell me when I hit the magic button.” Whatever remnants of the smile from his mocking of PDK’s buggy software disappears. “Why don’t you just tell me what I can do for you, Detective.” I flip through the pages of my notebook. “As you know, we’ve been combing through the files on Sabine’s laptop, and we found a couple of things I’m hoping you can clear up for us. Like her bank accounts, for example.” His shoulders drop a good inch in relief. This is a question he thinks he knows the answer to. “I assume you’re not asking about our joint accounts.” I dip my chin in a nod. “Correct.” “Which one? She has three in her name only. The mortgage account, a checking and a debit Mastercard. Those last two are business accounts, by the way. I don’t really have much knowledge of them, other than to help her file her taxes.” “I’m referring to her savings accounts, actually. The two money markets, and the investment account.” Jeffrey goes completely still. He gave me Sabine’s computer, but not before combing through it. He would have been a fool not to. But these accounts weren’t on that Excel file she maintained. They weren’t anywhere. I only know of their existence because Ingrid told me. “You look surprised,” I say, trying not to sound satisfied. His answer comes through gritted teeth. “Since when?” I consult the papers on my lap. “Well, let’s see. The money markets are from early January and end of March, 2013. The investment account is more recent, December of last year. Together the accounts add up to a grand total of $379,385.29, give or take, but you know how those investment portfolios go. The value changes faster than you can add up the numbers.” He doesn’t respond, but I see the thoughts rolling through his mind as clearly as if they were written in the air. Sabine has almost $400K squirreled away in accounts she never told him about. In accounts she hid from him. For years. “I can see you need a minute to process this, so let’s come back to it in a little bit. In February of last year, you transferred your share of ownership at 4538 Belmont Drive to your wife, and over the course of the next sixteen months, the monthly mortgage payment has been coming from her salary, not yours.” He shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “Sabine makes a lot more money than I do. If you’ve been through the accounts, you know how much more. It only seemed fair.” “Was this her idea or yours?” “I don’t remember who suggested it, but Sabine was picking up the slack most months anyway. I didn’t want it to become an issue between us.” “Was it ever?” “Was it ever, what?” “An issue. Because my wife and I, we just throw everything into one pot. But believe me, I get how money can become an issue, because she used to draw a salary. When she stopped working, she felt guilty spending the money in our account since I was the one who put it there. It took me a while to convince her that what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is mine. She contributes in other ways, you know? But to each his own, I guess.” This is me playing good cop. The witty and let’s-be-buddies cop. Judging from the way his eyes go dark and squinty, Jeffrey doesn’t believe it for a second. “Sabine and I went in another direction, but believe me when I say there are no hard feelings between us. I may live in our house rent free, but I pay the utilities and buy most of the groceries, as I’m sure you’ve seen on the joint household account. That’s my contribution.” “Sounds like a good deal.” “Yes,” he says, nodding. “A good deal for both of us.” I scribble some bullshit on the pad, then flip to the next page. “Since Sabine’s disappearance, you’ve discovered she was having an affair. That must have been rough.” He barks a sarcastic laugh. “Rough is one way of putting it, I guess. Finding out about the affair was difficult, yes, it was hurtful, but was it surprising? Maybe not so much. The truth is, Sabine and I have been moving further and further apart for some time now. I’m sure her sister, Ingrid, has told you as much.” “According to Dr. McAdams, it wasn’t just an affair. He says the two are very much in love. That they’ve been making plans to reorganize their lives so that they can be together.” “By planning to ditch their spouses, you mean. Yes, I know about that, too. Ingrid and Dr. McAdams both told me.” “According to the doctor, Sabine was also pregnant.” “Yeah, he told me the joyful news.” He says it through curled lips, and with a tone like he’d just stepped in dog shit. “How’d that go over?” “I punched him, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’d also caution him, before he gets too excited, to take a look at Sabine’s medical records.” “You think she’s lying?” “I think he should take a look at her medical records. Out of respect for Sabine’s privacy, I don’t want to say more.” “You weren’t respecting her all that much when you punched her in the face.” His face goes white, then beet red, fury firing through his veins. He knows that little tidbit came from Ingrid. It’s the same expression he used with her in my office. He stabs a finger on his desk. “Okay, first of all, I did not punch her. Not even close. It was a light slap with the back of my hand, one I regretted as soon as it happened. That’s all it was.” “That must have been one hell of a slap.” “We were arguing. Things got heated. She shoved me. I slapped her. Afterward, we apologized, and that was that. We moved on.” “What were you arguing about?” He lifts both hands in the air. “I don’t know, Detective. What does any married couple argue about? Taking out the trash, dirty clothes on the floor, using the last of the shampoo. Take your pick.” “Would you say you’re a jealous man?” He narrows his eyes. “My wife is cheating on me, Detective. I think I’m allowed to be jealous. But again, I didn’t find this out until after she went missing.” I shrug. “Still. Your wife certainly had her secrets. Secret bank accounts, secret lover. I wonder what else she was keeping from you.” I leave the question dangling, and he doesn’t pick it up. It’s something he’s probably wondered a million times since finding out about the doctor, but what is it they say? Never ask a question you don’t want the answer to. “According to Ingrid, Sabine had consulted an attorney,” I say, consulting my notepad. “She was going to ask you—” “For a divorce, I know. This past weekend, apparently.” He leans back in his chair. “Ingrid and Trevor told me that, too.” I scratch at a cheek, watching him. Waiting. For the span of a good three breaths, maybe four. Jeffrey is the first to lose patience. “What?” “I’m just wondering what would happen. If she’d gotten the chance to ask you for a divorce, I mean. Who would get the house? How would you split up your assets?” “Come on, Detective. We both know I’d get the shitty end of the stick. But okay, I’ll play this game. If Sabine and I got a divorce, I’d probably move away. This is a dead-end job in a dead-end town. I’d have better opportunities elsewhere.” I nod, satisfied for now. “Let’s go back to the fight. After Sabine shoved you and you punched her—” “Slapped,” he says, his voice clipped. “I slapped her. Not punched. There’s a big difference.” “After you slapped her, then what did you do?” “I apologized, of course. So did she. We put it behind us and moved on.” “But not before you had another heated exchange via text.” He pales, his body twitching before he can stop it. “What happened, did she lock herself in a bathroom and refuse to let you in? My wife does that sometimes, drives me up a tree. I can see how that might make you do things you might not otherwise do. Say things you might not otherwise say. A smart guy wouldn’t have put it in writing, though.” I pause, two seconds of silence that add weight to my next words. Give them extra meaning. “Unless, of course, you meant what you said.” A smart guy wouldn’t have put it in writing, but hey, maybe he’s that much of an idiot. I take in his expression, all slack chin and wide, wild eyes, and I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s that much of an idiot, too. I flip through my notepad until I find the single sheet of paper I tucked there, and then I slide it out and slap it to the desk. A printout of a text exchange, his and Sabine’s. I flip it around so he can see, but he doesn’t glance down. He doesn’t need to. He already knows what it says. He’s the chump who wrote the damn thing. Come out of there or I will fucking kill you. “Mr. Hardison, do you own a weapon?” Jeffrey owns a .357 Magnum, licensed and registered in his name. If he lies now, I’ll have a warrant by the end of the day. He looks sick, like he might actually throw up, and my chest goes tingly and hot. Victory. “I think it’s time I get an attorney.”