Page 43 of Such a Good Wife

“I looked everywheeeere.” He drapes himself over the kitchen stool as though the search has drained him and he needs reinforcements. I start to tell him I’ll help him look for it, but then I stop cold.

There is no need to look for it, because we won’t find it. The doorbell saves me, and I help him on with his backpack and carry his sleeping bag and pillow down the slope of the front yard to meet Sandy Miller at her car and thank her for taking him. I tell her I’ll pick him up tomorrow before noon, and then I sit a moment after she drives away, on the front stairs, to collect my thoughts.

The cap isn’t here. The night I sat in Luke’s truck in the bookstore parking lot, I took it off. Lacy almost caught us, so I rushed out of the car. I left it behind. You’d think that investigators wouldn’t look twice at a worn-out Saints cap left in a car. Except that once Ben fell in love with it and kept wearing it to school, I wrote the word HALE in Sharpie on the inside of the rim so it wouldn’t get lost. My name is literally written somewhere in Luke’s property.

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18

COLLIN WORKS FROM HIS home office on Monday, and I usually love having him home. It means a long breakfast after the kids leave for school, chatting about nothing in particular over coffee and usually a walk to Edith’s Café for lunch, but today I’m fidgety and anxious and I want to be able to catch up on any developments in Luke’s case without fear of him seeing me.

I hear him in his office on a work call, talking to Richard, a notoriously high-maintenance client, so I pour a mug of coffee and drop some bread in the toaster. No elaborate breakfast today. The kids had cereal, and I can’t concentrate on much more than pouring milk or buttering toast right now. I sit in the window seat next to the dining room table with my coffee, curling my knees to my chest as I watch a fat squirrel balance on a telephone line across the street. Amy Johanson, who lives a few houses down, steps onto her front stoop to collect the morning paper. I watch her clutch her robe at the neck; she’s surprised by the chilly wind. The Rodderhams’ dog is roaming without a leash again, sniffing his way through the adjacent yards and lifting his leg to every shrub he passes. It’s a perfectly normal morning and it seems so hard to believe that Luke is gone and everything just moves ahead as if he were never here.

I think about the Saints cap. I haven’t been able to sleep since I remembered it. In Luke’s house, which is full of clothes, books, shoes, hats, furniture—a person’s whole life, tons of everyday things—why would they notice a ball cap? They don’t examine every single item in the house, of course not. They’re looking for things that stand out. Why would they even notice it? That is, if he brought it into the house.

Surely he did. He must have seen it on the passenger seat that night, brought it inside, and planned to let me know I’d left it but forgot, so it’s sitting on a hook somewhere or on a living room bookshelf, anonymous. I had been in his truck once more since the day I left it there. I’d ducked down in the passenger seat as we drove to a secluded spot near a creek. My toes on the dash, we’d bumped and bobbed through rough terrain, and I’d held on to the door, laughing, as we acted like naive teenagers that day. It shames me to think about now. I would have seen it though, in the cab of his truck, or he would have remembered to return it if it were sitting there on the seat, reminding him every day. It must be tossed somewhere in his house. I need to stay levelheaded. It will not do me any good to start unraveling over the very minute chance it could be noticed.

I notice the smell of burnt toast and see the blackened bread squares smoking in the toaster. Collin comes in, in his T-shirt and flannel pants instead of a shirt and tie; he loves work-from-home days. He won’t change into jeans until the kids come home from school if he can help it. He goes to the toaster.

“For me?”

“I’ll make some eggs.”

“No, I love it like this.” He smiles at me, sniffing the charred air. “Like roasted marshmallows. It’s perfect.” He scrapes some cold butter onto the toast and sits across from me, nibbling at its corners.

I laugh, shaking my head at him.

“Let me make something edible. It’s no trouble.” I pour him a cup of coffee and place it in front of him, and he pulls me to his lap.

“It’s a culinary triumph, seriously.” He gives me a bite and we both laugh. He’s kind, and he’s funny, and I’m lucky. He knows I didn’t sleep well.

“A kink in my neck,” I lied when he asked again, earlier in the morning, if I was okay. I get them a lot at night, sleeping wrong, so he’s trying to make my morning easier.

“Great coffee,” he says, and I make a faux-shocked face. He enjoys hating anything brand-name or anything too mainstream, just for the principle of it, so I like to sneak things into his life and not tell him what it is until he admits to liking it. A little game we like to play. He’s only been fooled by my trickery once before. He swore whipped cream from scratch was far superior to Cool Whip, so last Thanksgiving I swapped it out and he raved about how good it was. When I pulled out the plastic Cool Whip tub, he knew he’d never live it down. Now I’ve got him good again, and it’s nice to be swept up in a silly moment—a short reprieve from my worrying.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing?”

“No!” He drops his head into the crook of his arm on the table.

“I didn’t say anything.” I can’t help but laugh a little.

“Just tell me.” He’s being charmingly overdramatic. I play along and hold my pause before I reveal the source of his coffee.

“Starbucks. Breakfast blend.”

“Ahhh.” He makes a knife-to-the-heart gesture. I love him. I’m laughing at his antics, but I want to cry at the thought of hurting him. What was I thinking?

He stops goofing around and a serious look comes over his face. I wait for the joke to follow, but it doesn’t come. He’s looking past me. I turn, following the direction of his gaze. Out the front window, a police car pulls into our driveway.

“Why are the cops here?” he asks, but I’m paralyzed.

Two uniformed men step out of the car and make their way up to our front door, and the fear is making my heart quicken. I can’t even set my coffee down. I don’t answer, I just watch them, wondering what they’ll say, how I’ll cover in front of Collin.

“My mom didn’t wander off again did she? Is she—?” He starts to move like he’s going to run and check on her. I cut him off, quietly, controlled.

“No, she’s fine. I was just in there.”

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