“Can you answer the question, please?”
I feel like I’m the one under suspicion, that I’m being blamed for what happened to Jake. “I’ve been entirely candid, Officer. I said from the start that it’s possible Jake left me. But that was before I knew he wasn’t going to work. I just don’t see why, if he was leaving me, he would walk out on his job too. His work means everything to him.”
“Did you ever think that he might be having an affair?” he asks.
“Was he?” I ask, wondering if Officer Boone knows something I don’t know.
“That’s what I asked you.”
“How would I know if Jake was having an affair?”
“Did you ever consider that he might be?”
Had I? Yes. I never had any evidence that he was. It could just have been that Jake was falling out of love with me. It might not have had anything to do with another woman, but I could feel Jake’s distance from me, those nights when I would reach for him and he would pull away from me in bed, turning his back to me.
“Do I have to answer that?” I ask.
“No. No, you don’t have to answer it, but it would be helpful if you did. Is there a reason you don’t want to answer the questions, Mrs. Hayes?”
“It’s just that what you’re asking is personal and it has no bearing on where my husband is now. I wish you would focus your efforts on that, on finding my husband, and not whether he and I had fought or whether I thought he was having an affair. Which acquaintances of mine told you that there was strife in my marriage?” I ask.
“I don’t particularly like to reveal where I get my information.”
“You won’t tell me?”
“I’d rather not. But I will tell you, it wasn’t just one person. It was a common theme.”
I wonder what Jake had been telling his parents and his brother about me.
I stare at Officer Boone. He stares back. The silence goes on and then, because of it, I ask, “If those are all the questions you have for me, can I go?”
Officer Boone slowly nods. “Yes, Mrs. Hayes,” he says, “you’re not being held here. You can go whenever you’d like.”
I consider his words. I stand up. I slip my purse over my shoulder but before I can leave, he says, “Hypothetically speaking though, if Dr. Hayes was having an affair, how would you feel about that?”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Would you be surprised? Would you be upset?”
“Of course I’d be upset,” I say. “What woman wouldn’t be upset if she found out her husband was cheating on her?”
I watch then as Officer Boone sizes me up, as if trying to ascertain if I would be upset enough to do something to Jake.
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
I go 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?”