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He says, “In your missing person’s report, you said that you and Dr. Hayes had an altercation right before he disappeared. What were you fighting about?”
I don’t answer his questions. Instead I ask, “Are you suggesting that I did something to my husband, Officer?” I don’t give him a chance to reply. I go on, saying, “In all the time that he’s been gone, I’ve been the only one looking for him. And now someone has broken into my home. This is more than just some marital spat. I wish you would do your job, and that you would find my husband.” I look at my watch. “I have to go,” I say, “or I’ll be late to work.”
I turn and walk away from him, thinking how what Jake and I were fighting about is none of his business.
As I put my head down and walk quickly to my car in the parking lot, I realize that I’ve somehow just become the prime suspect in my husband’s disappearance.
CHRISTIAN
Igo out to start Lily’s car for her in the morning while she’s finishing up her breakfast. It’s slow to start. The engine doesn’t turn over at first. I blame it on the weather, because it got cold overnight, colder than it usually is in the Midwest this time of year. Last night it dipped beneath forty, and they’re saying in the coming nights, it could freeze. I try to start it again, and this time it starts.
“Let the engine run for a couple minutes to warm up,” I say to her when I come back in the house. Lily stands at the sink, rinsing out her coffee mug. She overslept this morning because last night, she didn’t sleep. She was up for much of the night, like me, because the news didn’t say anything other than that a body was found. The rest was left to our imagination, and an active imagination fuels insomnia. I didn’t fall asleep until after two. The 5:00 a.m. alarm came as a rude awakening.
I come to stand behind her. I rub her back. I say, “Try not to think about it, babe. Where’s your coat? It’s cold out.”
“On the hook,” she says. There’s a pulse to Lily’s voice. She’s crying. She sets her mug in the sink and then wipes at her nose with the back of a hand.
“Hey,” I say, turning her around. I look at her. Lily’s eyes are swollen. They’re red but not bloodshot. The swelling and the redness will go down by the time she gets to school. No one will notice. I wipe a tear from her cheek with my thumb. I don’t say anything because there isn’t anything I can say that isn’t a lie. Instead, I pull her into me. I wrap my arms around her and hold her and, in my arms, she feels like she could break.
I go to find her coat for her, and then I help her into it before she leaves.
At the end of the school day, Lily’s car won’t start. She calls me at work and says, “I tried to start it, Christian, but nothing happened.”
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Sitting in my car.”
“Okay,” I say, looking at my watch. Thankfully a meeting I had this afternoon already got pushed to the morning, freeing up the rest of the day. “Let me just finish up a couple things and I can leave. I’ll come give you a jump. You can take my car home and I’ll take yours to get fixed. It’s probably a dead battery. Go back to your classroom for a while. Wait there. It’s warmer inside.”
Lily says okay, that she will go back inside and grade papers. I feel bad for making her wait because I know how tired she is at the end of the day, and how eager she always is to get home.
I leave work as soon as I can. I drive to Lily’s high school. I find her car in the parking lot and I pull in, facing it so that it will be easier to jump.
I put my car in Park and turn off the engine. I send a quick text to Lily to let her know I’m here, and then I walk over to her car to pop the hood when I hear footsteps approach. “That was fast,” I say, but as I turn to look, it’s not Lily, but Nina Hayes.
She says, “Hi, Christian. I thought that was you. What are you doing here?”
“Nina,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. I’m not surprised to see her, but I was hoping I wouldn’t. I don’t know how Lily does this, how she looks Nina in the eye every single day and pretends that everything is okay. I stand at the hood of Lily’s car. It’s smaller than mine, a little two door coupe that we only intend to keep until the baby comes, and then Lily will need a new car, a family car. “Lily’s car won’t start. I came to give it a jump.”
Nina smiles. “Her knight in shining armor. Does she know you’re here? I can get her for you?”
“Yeah. No, she knows I’m here. I texted her.”
“Okay,” she says, and I know that I should say something about Jake, that I should ask if there is any news or if she’s heard anything from him, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I wonder if Nina knows about the body they found at Langley Woods. She might, but she also might not. For us, the police finding this body is pivotal. It’s practically all I can think about. But bodies are found and people get murdered all the time and most of them, you never hear about.
I unlock Lily’s car with my key. I pull open the door and I lean over to pull the lever to pop the hood, and then I come around to the front of the car, find the release latch, open the hood and prop it open with the prop rod, all the while keeping my back to Nina, hoping she’ll leave. “Hey listen, Christian,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to say I’m sorry if I was rude to you the other day at your house. This whole thing with Jake just has me completely undone, and I’m sorry if I took it out on you. I didn’t mean to.”
I look at her. “No problem, Nina. You weren’t rude to me.”
“No,” she says, “I was.”
“Well, I didn’t notice. And if you were, you have every right to be. Lily and I feel really terrible about what you’re going through with Jake. We’re sorry this is happening. We just hope Jake comes home soon. But Lily says that your mom saw him, so you know he’s okay at least, that he’s not hurt.” I step past Nina, moving back toward my own car for the jumper cables. I pop open the trunk with my key fob and the tailgate lifts.
“This is your car?” Nina asks, looking at it, watching the tailgate slowly rise.
