Page 41 of Such a Good Wife

“What time?” he demands.

“I guess between six and seven. I left a breakfast tray. I thought she was sleeping late too. Like she usually does.” This morning I tiptoed around the kitchen because I was up earlier than everyone. I made up a plate of eggs and toast. She usually wakes up to eat and then naps most of the morning, but she was still out, so I just left it.

I remember this and run back to her room. The food was eaten. Just the crusts left on her bedside tray. The window isn’t ajar. I didn’t imagine that, distracted as I am. Where could she possibly be?

When I get back to the living room, the kids are slipping rain boots on. Collin is being gentle with the way he handles himself so Ben will want to help and not revert into meltdown mode.

Should we call the cops? I mouth to Collin over Ben, who is sitting on the floor pulling on a sock. He answers out loud because his reply won’t scare the kids the way my question would.

“Let’s drive around and look for her first. If she slipped out the door, she couldn’t have gotten far.”

I nod in agreement and we all pile in and drive the tree-lined streets as the sky opens up and the rain falls in torrents, thundering on the metal roof of the car. It’s half past noon. I try to think about the window of time she’s been gone. She’s been unaccounted for for at least five hours. The sliding door was unlocked when I went out to look for her, but it usually is during the day.

Suddenly, I can’t help but wonder if that simple sentence on a disposable cell phone, I know what you did, Melanie Hale, was a threat.

What if someone has taken Claire? It doesn’t make sense. They have dirt on me. If they want something in return for keeping quiet, why haven’t they asked? I’ve been going up to the bathroom and checking the phone for a message as often as I safely can. There’s been nothing. I feel the bile rise in my stomach as we drive and I think of her scared, hurt...because of me.

After twenty minutes or so, there is a lull in the downpour and we open the car windows.

Ben calls out with hands cupped around his mouth, “Grandmaaaa!”

We’ve woven through all the streets in a reasonable distance from our house. We stop and ask a few of the neighbors we see sitting out on covered porches. No one has seen her.

“Where is she, Mom? Is she mad at us?” Ben asks, pausing from his steady bellowing of her name.

“No, honey, she just gets mixed up sometimes. You know that. It’ll be okay.”

I notice that Rachel is quiet. She looks worried, but there’s something else too. After about an hour, Collin looks over at me, defeated. I give a nod, and he seems to understand that it means we should go back to the house and call the police.

When we get back, I tell Rachel to occupy Ben with a video game or something so we can talk to the police and he won’t get freaked out. She obeys without protest, and they go into his room, where I hear her asking him about his Lego ship and successfully distracting him. Before Collin punches in the numbers to call, I motion for him to wait, and I point out the back sliding door with wide, confused eyes. He puts the phone down and comes over to see what I’m pointing at. It’s Claire.

She’s sitting on a wrought iron bench in the garden area. She’s wearing a white nightgown and her wig is sliding down the side of her head. She’s drenched and her hands are covered with mud up the elbow. Her feet are covered too. She stares at the house with a very unsettling look. It makes me shudder. Collin and I stand at the open glass door and stare back a moment. It feels as though she’s looking right through us and it’s chilling. Then she spits on the ground.

He shakes off the shock of how strange it all is and rushes over to her. I go and grab towels and her robe and hand them to him when he gets her inside.

“Mom, where were you?” he asks, shaken, but he knows that no answer will come. She’s looking away, at nothing, her mouth slightly open.

“I’ll get her into a bath,” I say, knowing that Collin is eternally grateful that he does not have to see his mother naked, and he knows that she would want it that way too, so I always offer when it comes to things like diapers and bathing. He smiles, gratefully.

“Okay. I’ll put some tea on.”

“Thanks. Ben missed his swimming thing, so that might take some strategic deflection once he realizes it,” I say as I help Claire up the stairs to the bathroom.

“I’m on it.” He gives a weak smile and I’m glad we’re such a good team with things like this. As I take Claire past Ben’s room, Rachel is standing in the doorway, watching us.

“He’s playing Mario Kart.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Need help?” she asks. She doesn’t usually volunteer. There is still that same, odd look in her eyes.

“Come on,” I say, and she follows to Claire’s bathroom. She pulls herself up to sit on the counter while I get Claire into the water.

“Why do you think she walked off like that?” Rachel asks, looking at the tile floor and hooking her hair around her ear.

“Well, sweetie, she gets confused. I don’t really know. She hasn’t done it before, but maybe she opened the wrong door while everyone was off doing their own thing, and she didn’t realize.” Rachel nods, tentatively.

“What is it, honey? It’s not your fault.”

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