Page 87 of Wrong Mail

He just keeps flicking through the channels, as if one of them might somehow make sense of it all.

Then the banner changes.

BREAKING flashes across the screen. The anchor puts her finger to her ear, the way they do, and says that in the last hour, a man identifying himself as Christopher Brockwell contacted the station by phone. He denies any wrongdoing or involvement in Julia Shaw's disappearance. He claims he's being set up. The anchor reads those last two words as if they're in quotation marks.

David goes very still.

“Speaking exclusively to us, Christopher Brockwell says he can prove he had nothing to do with her disappearance,” the anchor says. “And he has named another man he alleges the police should be looking at instead.”

They don't say the name. Not yet. But the anchor says a physician. She says a neighbor. The two words land in our living room like they've been aimed. Beside me, David makes a sound I've never heard him make.

"Damn it," he says softly, as if this is what he's been waiting for. "There it is."

"David?"

He runs a hand over his head. "He's been telling people that I'm sleeping with his girlfriend. Forty of them heard him say it at your birthday, Mal. He put his hands on me over it." David turns from the screen at last, and his face has gone a color I don't like. He’s white under the exhaustion, his jaw tight as he forces the words out. "And now she's gone, and he's the one they want, so of course this would happen. Of course he’d point at me. It's the only card he's got left, and he's playing it on the local news."

"You don't know it's you they mean."

"I'm the only physician on this road, Mallory." He almost laughs. "I'm the neighbor. Whose birthday was it? Whose wife found her?" He drags a hand down his face. "He's naming me to save himself. That's all this is. A cornered coward reaching for the nearest name, and mine's the one already in everyone's mouth because of him."

His phone buzzes on the counter. He looks at it and doesn't pick it up. From where I stand, I can see it's the hospital, the main line, the one that only calls him on the days something is on fire.

"You should get that," I say.

He taps accept. He steps out onto the terrace to take it, into the wet, pulling the door most of the way shut behind him. I watch him through the glass with the rain coming down between us, and I can't hear a word. All I can do is watch his shoulders change as he places his hand on the railing and leans against it.

When he comes back in, his voice is level in a way that costs him.

"They're convening the board," he says. "Ahead of schedule. Helen thinks I should take a voluntary leave until it’s…resolved." He sets the phone down. "Someone sent in another anonymous complaint. And now there's a woman missing off my road and a man on television with my name in his mouth, and the timing of all of it is very, very good."

"Good for who?" I ask.

"For whoever is behind the complaints."

He looks back at the screen.

"Chris is trying to save himself. I understand that. But the complaints started before any of this."

Then he turns back to me, and for a second his face is almost pleading.

“Look, I know you don’t want to hear it. But you know who put that security system on our house. You know who's been up and down this road for weeks with a reason to watch us, who knows when we're home and when we're not."

“Come on, David."

"I've said his name to you, and you look at me like I'm the one who's sick."

His voice doesn't rise. That's the terrible part.

"I think Henry filed those complaints. I think he's been pulling pieces out of my life since the day he walked up my drive. I can't prove a word of it. And every time I say it out loud, I sound exactly like a guilty man reaching for the nearest name."

The word sits there between us. Guilty.

"But why would he?" I ask.

"I don't know. A fixation with you, maybe. I've seen how he looks at you."

"Me?" I stop. "Now you really are being⁠—”