"You showed up at one in the morning in mens clothes that are too big for you.”
"I know."
"With nothing else."
"I know."
"You will tell me when you tell me, but I’m just asking in case you want to tell me now.”
I don’t say anything.
“OK, In the meantime."
"Yes."
"There is a detective in Redwater City who would like to speak to you. There is a person from your husband's firm who would like to speak to you. There is a man from the insurance company who would like to speak to you. There is a journalist who would like to speak to you. There is, also, your mother-in-law. All of these people contacted me when you went missing. The list is on the table on a piece of paper. I was prepared to be a stop-gap on this list until you turned up, and you have turned up, and now I am done being the stop-gap."
"Margot."
"Darling. I'm not pressing. I'm informing you."
I should have known that caring for me wasn’t enough.
I am quiet.
"And in the meantime you are going to make a decision about which of these people you are going to call back, and when, and from where. But someone should know you are alive.”
I drink the coffee.
The coffee is good.
I put the cup back on the saucer.
"I want to call the detective."
Margot looks at me.
"All right," she says.
She slides her phone across the marble.
---
I do not call from Margot's phone.
I call from a phone that Margot keeps in a drawer in the office down the hall, a phone that is hers in a way that is not on any account anyone is looking at, because Margot Wexler at thirty-four is the woman she always was at sixteen and at twenty, which is to say the woman who makes sure the door is closed before she lights the cigarette.
I call a man in Reno.
The man in Reno is a man my husband used many times for things he did not tell me about, and once for a thing he did tell me about: a building in Sacramento that needed to not exist anymore. It did not exist by the following Thursday. It burned to the ground. I know his number because I watched my husband dial it many times, and I have a memory for numbers. My father taught me that. A number you can look up is a number someone else can look up too.
I dial.
He answers on the second ring.
“Hi, I’m Evangeline Clark. Daniel Clark’s wife.”
There is a pause. I know he is still there I can hear him breathing.
