by Lisa Unger
“No,” she said. “I wasn’t.”
“How’s your marriage in general?”
“Good,” she said, her whole body rigid. A good wind and she’d snap in two. “As good as any long marriage. We’re—happy.”
She looked around his office for something personal—a photograph, a child-made piece of pottery, a team pennant. But there was nothing—just stacks of files, a laptop, his phone, an old mug filled with pens. There was a wilting plant on top of the file cabinet.
“No infidelity?” he pressed.
“Is this relevant?”
It felt personal, like he was prodding at her, and maybe he was. Will went in with Graham, but he told her before they separated to give the detective nothing. He offered to call a colleague for Graham and stay with her. But she’d waved him off. She had nothing to hide, she told him. Denial. Stupidity. Desperation. All three maybe.
“I think it’s relevant, given the situation,” he said, watching her.
“No,” she said finally. “No infidelity.”
Should she keep track? Of the lies, how many? Yes, a notebook of all the lies she was telling to others and to herself. It could come in handy.
“Isn’t it possible,” she said, “that Geneva just took off? Maybe she met someone? Got tired of the childcare gig? I mean, there’s no indication that anything happened to her, per se.”
“At this point,” said the detective, “anything is possible. The car is worrisome, though. Why would she leave her car?”
She supposed there were a hundred reasons people did things, reasons that might never occur to people who were grounded in their lives. People who locked their doors and protected their identities, who worked to pay bills, who saved for their children’s educations—who didn’t sleep with other people’s husbands, then blackmailed those men into buying them cars.
Seems like the police should be more interested in the Tucker family than they were in the Murphy family, but she wasn’t going to say that. She wasn’t going to throw another family under the bus to deflect attention from her own. Or would she? If it came to that.
* * *
“From what I’m getting,” said Will now, bringing Selena back to the present, “they really don’t have anything to go on. Geneva is missing, but there’s no evidence of foul play. At this point, she might just be your run-of-the-mill con artist. Working her way into families, taking what she can get from them and moving on. Maybe the Tucker woman found out about the car, confronted her. Maybe Geneva figured she might not get much from Graham. It was time to move on.”
The three of them sat there—Graham staring off into space, Will and Selena locking eyes.
“Is anything missing from your place? Jewelry? Cash? Pills?”
Selena shrugged. “I don’t think so. I’ll check.”
Will shifted in his seat, tapped his finger on the wood surface of the table.
“My guess is that if no further evidence of foul play falls into their laps, her body doesn’t turn up, they’ll have to move on.”
“Her body turns up?” said Selena, shocked. “What kind of thing is that to say? She’s a person.”
He lifted his palms.
“I’m just saying,” he defended. “Unless that happens, there’s not a whole lot they can do. It’s not a crime to walk away from your life. And as for the blackmail, the car, all that—it’s Tucker’s word against hers. She could say it was a gift.”
“What if they come with a warrant—want to search our computers, or the camera app?” said Graham.
“They likely won’t do that unless we’re talking about a murder investigation—which we’re not at the moment. If that happens, we’ll have to revisit, decide whether we want to come clean about the affair rather than let them discover it in a search and seizure.”
“So then—what?” asked Selena.
“The hardest thing,” said Will. “Go about your business and wait to see what happens next. Unless the sister keeps applying pressure, or the media becomes a factor, or there’s a further development, I’m betting this just goes away.”
She felt a little burst of hope.
Don’t you wish your problems would just go away?
Maybe they did sometimes.
Graham looked like he was going to be sick. Finally, he got up and left the room. Selena heard him flop onto the couch. A second later, the television came on. She looked at Will, those stormy eyes unreadable. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.
“I should go,” he said finally.
“I’ll walk you out.”
“Thank you for this,” she said at his car. “And I’m sorry. Sorry to drag you into the mess of my life.”
The air was cool and the wind blustery, the tall oaks up and down the street whispering. Lights in neighborhood houses glowed, the picture of warmth and security.
“I’m sorry this is happening to you,” he said, leaning on the hood of his sleek black late-model BMW. “You deserve better than this, Selena. So do the boys.”
She shook her head, wrapped her arms around her middle, not trusting her voice. She looked back at her own house—empty of her children, her cheating husband lying on the couch inside. What had she wanted when she was younger? What had she imagined? Nothing like this.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. His voice was soft and deep.
“I don’t know.”
He put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m here for you,” he said. “You know that. We’ve been friends a long time and that hasn’t changed. It won’t.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
There was still a pull to him; that connection, that attraction, it never went away. She just chose someone else. And that’s all life was—a series of choices and their consequences. What was it about Graham? He was wild, where Will was staid. He connected her to the part of herself that wanted to take risks—like skydiving, and zip-lining. Will had his feet planted firmly on the ground and wanted her to stay there, too. Will had always been the one who pushed her—to do better in school, to get a good night’s sleep, to work out. Graham would party all night—they’d go to clubs, get home in time for a catnap and a shower before heading to work. Life with Graham was fun—last-minute trips to Vegas, lavish dinners, shopping sprees that neither of them could afford. Will was predictable, always did the right thing. He saved, hated debt, only bought what he could afford.
She chose Graham, for reasons that seemed right at the time. Reasons that seemed childish now. She wanted to live on the edge, push the boundaries, walk on the wild side while she was young. She hadn’t been ready to settle into a life where she already knew the beginning, the middle and the end. Graham lit her up. She’d loved him wildly. She’d loved Will, too. It was just—different.
“I met someone the other night,” she said. Will’s expression made her clarify.
“No,” she said. “Not like that. On the train the other night, I met a woman.”
He issued a little laugh. “I’ve heard that one before, too.”
“Stop,” she said with a smile. “She’s been—texting me.”
A frown. “What about?”
She tried to explain the encounter to him, the odd energy, why she felt compelled to tell this stranger about her life, what the woman had revealed to her. How she’d been ignoring the texts that arrived.
“Did you give her your number?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t. I don’t even remember giving her my last name.”
Will’s frown deepened. “That’s odd.”
“I’m just telling you because—there is someone out there who knows about Graham. Or knows that I suspected him of being unfaithful.”
He nodded carefully. “What was her name?”
“Martha. I didn’t get her last name. I blocked her the fir
st time. But the later texts came from a different number. It was almost like she knew I blocked her.”
She handed Will her phone and he scrolled through the texts.
After a moment, he shrugged.
“Ghost her. Certainly don’t engage.”
“What do you think she wants?”
“Maybe nothing,” said Will. “Maybe she’s just looking for a friend.”
Selena shrugged. There was a connection there, wasn’t there? Maybe the other woman felt it, too. Maybe she was lonely. “Seems like an odd way to try to connect.”
“These days, the world is full of people with bad ideas on how to connect with others.”
“If this becomes a thing,” she said, reaching for his hand, “she knows that Graham had an affair with the nanny. Or that I thought he might be.”
“But it’s not a thing yet,” Will said, taking her hand in both of his. “The media is not involved—all we have is a girl who missed a breakfast date with her sister, then didn’t show up for work. There’s no evidence of more. Geneva could return at any point. You’re always ten steps ahead. Just stay here now.”
“Right,” she said. But the world, the swirling possibilities, seemed so manic, out of control.
“And the next time you need to confide in someone, call a real friend. Like me.”
He pulled her into an embrace and held on tight. She felt herself sink into him—the expensive material of his suit, the subtle scent of his cologne. When she was younger, why had the safe and predictable life seemed like a straightjacket? Now it was all she wanted.
When she saw Graham watching from the window, his dark form dominating the frame, she didn’t pull away from Will.
EIGHTEEN
Pearl
“Pearl S. Buck?”
Charlie trying to make conversation. His words leaked through the thick fog surrounding her awareness.
“No,” she said, after a long pause where the road was black and the tires hummed, and the wind roared around the vehicle. “The Pearl by John Steinbeck.”
Her voice was thick in her throat, her arms and legs leaden with fatigue.
“That’s pretty grim reading.”
It was—a difficult, sad story with a hard ending. Still, Stella had loved it for its stark beauty.
There it lay. The great pearl. Perfect as the moon, her mother used to whisper to Pearl when she was small.
“Stella wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine,” said Pearl. But, Pearl thought, she loved me, I think. In her broken-down way. And now she’s gone.
“She had her moments,” said Charlie. He wore a sad smile, eyes straight ahead.
“A few, I guess. Here and there.”
They drove and drove; they’d been driving for days.
Pearl had never been out of the northeast—the gray ceiling winters and fecund green summers, the smell of leaves in autumn, the gray slush of late February. The tentative burst of color in March. It was all she knew. From the highway every place looked more or less the same until they got to Texas, where things got dusty and flat. Then the southwest exploded in bold clay reds, and towering browns and evergreen. Diners got kitschy and full of themselves. Big cerulean-blue sky, towering cumulous clouds. And a night filled with so many stars it didn’t seem real. The painted desert at sunset. Low adobe structures surrounded by scrub and silence. The hustle of the modern came to a dusky stillness.
“I feel like we’re on the moon,” she said.
They mostly rode in silence. She’d slept for days, not sure what was real and what was a dream. The diner where an old woman dressed in black stared and stared. Charlie’s wail of despair. Stella’s dead stare. A dust storm outside a run-down restaurant where a cowboy walked out of the murk. A motel where she slept on the bed and Charlie on the floor beside her. Kneeling in the roadside, vomiting.
“That’s good. That’s where we need to be for now.”
Charlie said he had a place in a town called Pecos, outside of Santa Fe, and that’s where they were headed. When they arrived, she barely noticed the town before they’d passed through it completely. It consisted of a general store and a bar, a gas station turned art gallery, a diner, a consignment store. It took them less than five minutes to pass through it in its entirety.
They wound along clay roads, past houses that were hidden in the trees, wind chimes on porches, birdsong, until finally they arrived. A small adobe structure waited, surrounded by trees, mountains, and sky. The other properties they’d passed were miles back.
“We’ll stay here a while,” he said, coming to a stop in the squat drive.
“Whose place is this?” she asked. It looked oddly familiar, though she’d never been anywhere like it.
“Ours for now.”
There was a mailbox crafted from the same clay as the house, a collection of pots on the stoop in front of a wooden door, wind chimes hanging.
Pearl opened the car door and stepped outside, kicking up red dust. The smell of juniper and sage was fresh and broad, filling her senses. Something inside her that was tight loosened. And the quiet—no traffic noise, no voices—it expanded.
“What about school?” she asked. Her voice seemed to disappear, swallowed by the wind.
Charlie closed his car door, the sound of it echoing off the mesa behind them. “You can go online.”
He had an easy answer for everything since she’d come back to herself. She nodded, unquestioning. Yes, of course. She could go to school online. Why not?
Something happened to Pearl when she saw Stella—broken, her body left bleeding and twisted in her bed. Blood on the floor, on the sheets. Her eyes open, staring with confused rage. Pearl must have blacked out when she came in to find Charlie on his knees before the mess. His wailing. It was a siren. She’d hit her head on the floor when she fell; there was still a knot. The next thing she remembered she was in the back of Charlie’s car, lying across the rear seat under a blanket, head on the pillow from her bed.
Woman murdered. Child missing.
That’s what the headlines said, all the newscasts they’d caught in roadside diners, what they’d read online.
True and not true.
Pearl wasn’t missing, she thought, looking at the world around her. She was found.
They unloaded the groceries they’d picked up in Albuquerque. He had a key, unlocked the front door as if it was a place well-known to him, flipped on the inside lights. The place was all windows—the living room, dining area and kitchen just one big room—vaulted ceilings that gave the impression of height. The walls dominated by glass inviting in views of the mesa behind them, the Santa Fe National Forest, the valley below.
He settled her in a simple room with a queen bed, a wood dresser. Placing her suitcase by the door. The walls were eggshell, no art. A blank slate. A big window. The bed was a white cloud, clean cotton sheets, comforter, pillows.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said. He’d said this a number of times like a mantra, wearing a worried frown. “I’m going to take care of you.”
They hadn’t spoken much about what happened; she’d barely uttered a word about anything. He panicked, he said, when they’d discovered Stella. Packed Pearl’s things—her bedding, her books, clothing, toiletries, her stuffed bear—and put them in his car. Pearl walked with him; he didn’t carry her. He’d repeated that a couple of times, like it was important that she’d walked under her own steam. Stunned, nonresponsive, Pearl let herself be led away from home.
“They’d have taken you, right? Into child protective services? Stella wouldn’t have wanted that. She’d have wanted me to take care of you. That’s why we ran,” he said the second day. He’d repeated this as well, a couple times. A narrative he was running. She supposed it was true. There was no one else to take care of her; she was a minor. Charlie wasn’t her father, not even her stepfather. Charlie wasn�
��t even her mother’s boyfriend, technically. Her biological father—she had no idea who he was. Pearl would have gone to foster care or something.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said again. “I promise.”
Now, she sat on the bed, nodded.
“I’m going to make some dinner,” he said. “We’ll talk more. When you’re ready.”
There was a mirror over the dresser. She didn’t recognize the girl she saw there. In Texas, they’d cut her hair in a short bob, dyed it black. Charlie shaved his dark mane down to a crew cut. He grew a goatee. They weren’t the same people they were when they were packing up boxes in the bookstore. It hadn’t even been a week. Could life change so fast? Could you be one person on Monday, and someone else by Sunday? She touched the necklace she wore, Stella’s locket. Charlie had taken it for her. That and a picture album, some journals that Pearl didn’t even know her mother kept. She hadn’t opened them. There was a shoebox of cash; he’d given that to Pearl, too. He’d grabbed files—her birth certificate, Social Security card. Everything she owned was in a single large suitcase.
She took a shower. The water was tepid, the flow flaccid. But she felt more alert, more focused when she was done. She got dressed, listening to Charlie move about the kitchen. Finally, she joined him. He’d already set the table, was serving the food.
“Sit,” he said.
Grilled chicken breast with a fresh green salad, mashed potatoes with butter. They ate and ate. It had been all burgers and fries, sodas, microwave burritos, chips for days. The food on her plate now was fresh and clean, healthy. They drank about a gallon of water. Neither of them spoke until they were both done.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” said Charlie. “I can only imagine how you must be feeling.”
But she wasn’t feeling anything. That was the strange thing. She wanted to feel something—grief, fear, rage. But there was just a floating numbness inside, an awareness of the present that wasn’t impacted by the past.
“But here we are,” he said. She saw it in him, too, that strange coolness, that ability to only look ahead. “If they don’t find us soon, their case will go cold. You have no family or connections that will put pressure on them to keep looking. No one’s going to hire a private investigator or anything like that.”
