“Very prudent.”
“We have to.”
She was right. College was expensive, and it never hurt to save for it. Except it did hurt. It hurt us and our future, which could make everything better for all of us. “I have a better idea,” I said.
“Better than our children’s education?”
“Hear me out.”
I suggested we use the money to invest in ourselves. In the years since we were first married and had our kids, our economic situation had not improved much. Neither had our careers. Millicent was stuck selling condos and lower-priced homes. The more experienced agents had all the higher-end listings and sales. My private lessons were held at the public tennis courts at the park, and the clients were not consistent. I proposed we do something about this.
At first, it sounded like one of our ridiculous dreams. The Christmas gala at the Hidden Oaks Country Club cost $2,500 a ticket. But the gala was not just another party; it was a ticket to people we would not meet anywhere else. A new generation lived in the Oaks. Most never knew my parents or me. These were the people who could afford private tennis lessons and expensive houses. They would pay for our children’s education.
“Insane,” Millicent said.
“You aren’t listening.”
“No.” She brushed off my idea with a wave of her hand.
That made me dig in.
We fought for a week. She called me a child, and I told her she was shortsighted. She called me a social climber, and I told her she had no imagination. She stopped talking to me, and I slept on the couch. Still, I did not give up. She did.
Millicent claimed she was tired. I think she became curious. I think she wanted to see if I was right.
We spent half the money on tickets, and then bought a dress and shoes for her, a tuxedo and shoes for me, and a luxury rental car for the night. Millicent also got her hair, makeup, and nails done. By the time we paid the babysitter, not much of the money was left.
It was worth every penny. Six months after the gala, I was offered a job as the tennis pro at the club. Millicent met her first wealthy clients at that gala and started to move up in the real estate world. In one night, we had skipped a good five years of grinding our way up the ladder. It was like automatically leveling up in a video game.
We aren’t wealthy, not like our clients, but that night moved us closer.
And to this day, Millicent knows that it is because of me. Because I decided what to do with that money. She is reminded of this every year when we go to the annual gala, although, to be honest, I am not sure she cares.
Twenty-eight
AT FIRST, IT was impressive that Rory had figured out a way to blackmail me. I can admit that. I was more annoyed with myself for getting caught than with him for catching me.
But now, he is starting to piss me off.
I am in his room. He is sitting at his desk. His computer is on, and Naomi is staring back at me. Forty-eight hours have passed since she was named as the only missing woman left. Her face is everywhere, all over the news and social media.
“Why are you looking at that?” I say, nodding to his computer.
“You’re changing the subject.”
He is right. I am avoiding the fact that he has just asked for hundreds of dollars to keep his mouth shut about my nonexistent affair. Or my one-night-stand, I should say, because I did sleep with Petra.
“How long are you going to keep this up?” I say.
“How long are you? I saw you sneak out just last week.”
It’s impossible to think of Rory as a child when he talks like this. Despite his floppy red hair and baggy clothes, he does not look like a fourteen-year-old. He looks like my equal.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I say. “I’ll give you the money, and we both stop. You will never see me sneak out again.”
“And if you do?”
“If I sneak out again, I’ll give you double.”
Rory’s poker face falls apart when his eyebrows shoot up. He covers his surprise by rubbing his chin, pretending to think about my offer. “I’ll be watching,” he says.
“I know you will be.”
He nods, thinks, and then says no to my offer. “I have another idea.”
I am already shaking my head at him, pissed off. Before, I was on the verge, and now I am there. “I am not giving you any more—”
“I don’t want money.”
“Then what?”
“The next time you sneak out, I don’t want money. I don’t want anything,” he says. “But I’m going to tell Jenna.”
“You’d really tell your sister?”
He sighs. It is not one of those old-man sighs, filled with weariness and fatigue. This is a child’s sigh, the kind that comes with a trembling lip. “Stop, Dad,” he says. “Just stop cheating on Mom.”
Now I am the one who is surprised. The full impact of what he has said spreads over me an inch at a time, until I have the whole picture.
He is a child. Adulthood is still years away, and he is not even close. Now, he looks younger than ever. He looks younger than he did the first time I lied to him, younger than the second and the third. He looks younger than he did the day I taught him how to hold a tennis racket and younger than the day he rejected it for golf. Rory looks younger than he did yesterday. He is still just a little boy.
This has never been about the money or the video games or even the blackmail.
This has all been about what he thinks I am doing. He thinks I am sneaking out to cheat on his mother. And he wants me to stop.
When I realize this, it feels like a shotgun blast to the stomach. Or at least how I imagine that might feel. It is much stronger than a punch. I do not know what to say or how to say it.
I nod and offer my hand.
We shake on it.
* * *
• • •
I KEEP ALL of this from Millicent, just as I have all along. I don’t even tell her that Rory has been reading about Naomi on the Internet. The kids see it all anyway. It’s everywhere.
Josh is still covering the story and is on TV all day, for breaking news and on the evening reports. He is still very young and earnest, but now he looks tired and needs a haircut.
For the past two days, he has been traveling around with the police as they check rest stops. That was where Owen kept his victims, in an abandoned rest stop, where he had hollowed out the building and turned it into a bunker. The police have been searching all of them, along with any bunker type of building on the map. They have not found a thing.
Tonight, Josh is out on an empty road, behind him a fleet of police cars. He is bundled up in a jacket and a baseball cap, which makes him look even younger, and he says they are checking on another possible location. They have been searching farther and farther out, even way out east near Goethe State Park.
It is because Naomi is still alive.
Josh does not say that. The police do not say it, either. But everyone knows that if Owen is still alive, so is Naomi. He always keeps them alive, and he does awful things to them. Things they do not talk about on TV. Things I do not think about, because Millicent is doing them now.
Or I assume she is. I assume Naomi is still alive, though I have not asked and have no idea where Millicent would keep her. The police searches make me wonder.
The next morning, while I am backing out of the driveway, Millicent comes out of the house. She raises her hand, telling me to wait. I watch her walk from the door to my car. She is wearing a slim pair of slacks and a white blouse with tiny polka dots.
Millicent bends down at the window. Her face is so close to mine I can see the tiny lines in the corners of her eyes—not deep wrinkles but well on their way. When she places her hand on the edge of the door, I see scratches on her forearm. Like she has been playing with a cat.
She sees where I am looking and pulls down the sleeve. My eyes go up to hers. In the morning sun, they almost look like they used to.
“What?” I say.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a white envelope. “I thought this would be useful.”
The envelope is sealed. “What’s this?”
She winks. “For your next letter.”
This tiny thing lifts my mood. I do not write letters, but Owen does.
“It will convince them,” Millicent says.
“Whatever you say.”
She puts her hand on my cheek and strokes it with her thumb. I think she is going to kiss me, but she doesn’t, not out here in the driveway where any neighbor could see us. Instead, she walks back to the house as casually as she walked out, like she has just reminded me to pick up almond milk on the way home.
I slide my finger under the flap of the envelope and open the corner.
Inside, a lock of Naomi’s hair.
Twenty-nine
DESPITE WHAT MILLICENT said, I go back and forth about the lock of Naomi’s hair. I wonder if it will make things better or worse. Although Jenna is no longer carrying a knife, as far as I know, she also is not eating much. She picks at her food, swishing it around her plate. She does not say much at dinner. We have not heard any blow-by-blows of her soccer practices or school days.
I do not like this. I want my Jenna back, the one who smiles at me, the one who asks for something, so I can say yes. The only thing she asks for now is to be excused from the table.
If I send a letter to Josh, confirming that Naomi is Owen’s victim, the search will only intensify. The police will go through every building within fifty miles to find her, and the media will cover every moment of it.
But perhaps it is worse to not send the letter. Perhaps it’s worse to let everyone wonder if Owen has Naomi, maybe forever. Because then Jenna will learn that people can just disappear with no one ever finding them. It is the truth, but maybe she should not know that. Not yet, anyway.
Once again, Millicent is right. The lock of hair is useful.
I go through several drafts of the letter. The first is too elaborate; the second is still too long. The third is down to a paragraph. Then I realize Owen does not have to say anything.
The hair will say enough.
They will DNA-test it, and they will know it is Naomi’s. All I have to do is wrap it up in a piece of paper and sign at the bottom.
—Owen
The final touch is the cheap cologne.
I dump the lock of hair onto my letter. Fifty strands, a hundred—I don’t know how many, but they are a couple of inches long. At one end, the hair is frayed with slight differences in length. The other end was cut so straight I can almost hear the scissors snip.
I do not allow myself to think about it any further. I do not want to picture the look on Naomi’s face when she sees the scissors, do not want to imagine the relief she feels when only her hair is cut.
Instead, I fold up the paper around the hair, put it into a new envelope, and use a sponge to seal the flap. I do not take my gloves off until the letter is in the mailbox.
As soon as I drop it in, I feel a surge of adrenaline.
* * *
• • •
WORK SHOULD BE an escape, but is not. Everyone is talking about Naomi, about Owen, about where she might be held and if she will ever be found. Kekona is in the clubhouse; she does not have a lesson but is there anyway, gossiping with a group of women who are all old enough to be Naomi’s mother. The men sitting at the bar stare up at the screen, at the pretty missing woman they would have liked to meet. No one is saying anything about Naomi’s activities at the Lancaster. She has become everyone’s daughter, sister, the girl next door.
It is scary how fast this has happened.
The others were not like this—especially not Holly. No one ever looked for her, because she was never reported missing.
Millicent and I made that decision together. We never discussed it after Holly was gone; it never occurred to me. I was too busy thinking about not getting caught to wonder what came next. Days later, Millicent’s mother called. Her Alzheimer’s had not advanced to the point where she’d forgotten how many daughters she had. We never told her Holly had been released, but she knew anyway. She had called the hospital.
That evening, we had our first date night. We’d never had one before. We used to make fun of the term right up until it became useful.
When I told Millicent her mother had called, the expression on her face did not change. Dinner had just ended, the kids were watching TV, and we were still at the table. Veggie-burger patties piled with tomatoes and organic cheese, sweet-potato fries, and salad. I was still picking at the fries, dipping them in the spicy pseudomayonnaise.
“I thought this would happen,” she said.
I glanced behind me, making sure the kids were not around. In those days, I jumped at my own shadow. I was not used to breaking the law, much less killing anyone, so every little sound meant we were getting caught. Each day, it felt like I had aged a year.
“We shouldn’t talk about this here,” I said.
“Of course. Later, when the kids are asleep.”
Even that made me nervous. “We should go outside. Or in the garage. We can sit in the car or something.”
“Perfect. It’s a date.”
Our first date night took place after eleven-year-old Rory and ten-year-old Jenna were asleep. Millicent left the door to the house cracked, just in case they needed us.
I assumed we would tell her mother we had not seen Holly. I was wrong.
“We can’t tell her that she’s missing,” Millicent said. “They’ll look for her.”
“But she won’t find—”
“No, she won’t. But she won’t stop looking until she can’t remember to.”
“So we lie to your mother? We tell her Holly is here and she’s fine?”
She shook her head. Millicent was staring at the dashboard, lost in thought. Finally, she said, “There’s no way around it.”
I waited, afraid I would sound stupid again.
When Millicent said she wanted to pretend Holly was still alive, I remember thinking it would not work. After all we had done, and after all we had apparently gotten away with, this was the thing that would ruin us. We had not thought it through properly. We never even discussed it.
“It won’t work,” I said. “Eventually, she’ll want to talk to her, see her. They’ll come down or try to get hold of her . . .” I rambled on, listing all the reasons this could not work. We could not claim to be the only people who saw or spoke to Holly.
“I think Holly wants to get away,” Millicent said. “Probably because of me, because I remind her of what she did and why she was put away.”
I started to get it. “If it were me, and if I wanted a fresh start, I might even leave the country.”
“I would definitely leave the country,” she said.
“Would you send your mother an e-mail?”
“A letter. A long one, letting my mother know that I’m fine, that I just need some time to figure it all out.”
She sent the letter almost a week after Holly died. Holly said she was going to Europe to heal, to find herself, to make her own way in the world, but she would check in regularly. Her mother responded, saying she understood. She even included a picture. It came from my phone, when I took a picture of Holly in front of the kids’ school. The letter then came full circle when she showed it to Millicent during a visit.
When my mother-in-law passed away, she no longer remembered either of her daughters.
Thirty
I FIRST SEE THE report on my phone, while sitting in my car outside a coffee shop. I am in between home and work, on my way back to the club after dropping the kids off after school, and I stop
ped to get a cup of coffee. The breaking-news alert on my phone goes off.
OWEN MAKES CONTACT AGAIN
In the video, Josh talks about the latest note from Owen. For the first time in a while, he does not look tired. He is standing outside the police station. His cheeks are flushed pink, and his eyes are wide from excitement, not caffeine. After spending a week watching the police check empty rest stops and abandoned sheds, he looks like a new man.
A picture of the letter flashes on the screen. Owen’s name is clearly visible.
“This note was not the only thing I received from the man who claims to be Owen Oliver Riley. Wrapped up inside this piece of paper was a lock of hair. We don’t know who it belongs to. We don’t even know if the hair belongs to a man or a woman. DNA testing is going on as we speak, but as soon as we know anything more, we will bring it to you first.”
Josh brings in a young woman who says she is a friend of Naomi’s, though again he points out that we do not know what happened to Naomi. The friend does not look familiar; I do not remember seeing her with Naomi in real life or online. This woman has a nasally voice that grates, and it feels like I am locked in my car with her. She claims that Naomi is “sweet but not cutesy, a great friend but also independent, smart but not a know-it-all,” and I have no idea what any of that means.
She steps out of view. The camera pans over to Josh and then widens. A man is standing next to him. He is a big man, with a mustache that makes him look like a walrus. Josh says he is an assistant manager at the Lancaster Hotel and he worked with Naomi. Josh does not ask him to describe Naomi in one word, but he does.
“If I had to describe Naomi in one word, it would be ‘kind.’ She was kind to everyone, all the guests and all of her coworkers. Always willing to help. If a guest needed something up in his room and room service was busy, she volunteered. If someone was sick, she would cover for them. Never asked for anything. Not from me, anyway. Can’t speak for everyone.”
A knock on my car window makes me jump.
My Lovely Wife Page 14
