Page 2 of The Wife

I waited until the Impala had left to reach for my phone. Jason was in a client meeting, but took my call. I had told him the night before that I didn’t want to speak to him again until I had made some decisions.

“I’m so glad you called.”

With one stupid conversation, I had conformed to the stereotype. I was complicit now. I was all in.

“Jason, Kerry Lynch is missing. Please tell me you didn’t do this because of me.”

I

Rachel

1

The first piece of trouble was a girl named Rachel. Sorry, not a girl. Awomannamed Rachel.

Even teenagers are called young women now, as if there is something horribly trivial about being a girl. I still have to correct myself. At whatever moment I transformed from a girl to a woman, when I might have cared about the difference, I had other things to worry about.

Jason told me about the Rachel incident the same day it happened. We were at Lupa, seated at our favorite table, a found pocket of quiet in the back corner of the crowded restaurant.

I only had two things to report from my day. The handyman fixed the hinge on the cabinet in the guest bathroom, but said the wood was warping and would eventually need to be replaced. And the head of the auction committee at Spencer’s school called to see if Jason would donate a dinner.

“Didn’t we just do that?” he asked, taking a large bite of the burrata we were sharing. “You were going to cook for someone.”

Spencer is in the seventh grade at Friends Seminary. Every year the school asks us to donate not only money on top of the extraordinary tuition we pay but also an “item” to be sold at the annual auction. Six weeks earlier, I opted for our usual contribution at this year’s event: I’d cater a dinner for eight in the highest bidder’s home. Only a few people in the city connected me now to the summer parties I once planned in the Hamptons, so Jason helped boost my ego by driving the price up. I convinced him to stop once my item had “gone” for a thousand dollars.

“There’s a new chair of the committee for next year,” I explained. “She wants to get a head start. The woman has too much time on her hands.”

“Dealing with someone who fastidiously plans every last detail months in advance? I can’t imagine how awful that must be for you.”

He looked at me with a satisfied smile. I was the planner in the family, the one with daily routines and a long list of what Jason and Spencer called Mom Rules, all designed to keep our lives routine and utterly predictable—good and boring, as I like to say.

“Trust me. She makes me look chill.”

He feigned a shudder and took a sip of wine. “Want to know what that crowd really needs for an auction? A week in the desert without water. A cot in a local homeless shelter. Or how about a decent lay? We’d raise millions.”

I told him the committee had other plans. “Apparently you’re a big enough deal now that people will open up their wallets for a chance to breathe the same air. They suggested dinner with three guests at a—quote—‘socially responsible’ restaurant of your choosing.”

His mouth was full, but I could read the thoughts behind his eye roll. When I first met Jason, no one had heard of him other than his students, coworkers, and a couple of dozen academics who shared his intellectual passions. I never would have predicted that my cute little egghead would become a political and cultural icon.

“Hey, look on the bright side. You’re officially a celebrity. Meanwhile, I can’t give myself away without getting rejected.”

“They didn’trejectyou.”

“No, but they did make it clear that you were the member of the Powell family they want to see listed in next year’s brochure.”

We finally settled on a lunch, not dinner, with two guests, not three, at a restaurant—period, no mention of its social consciousness. And I agreed to persuade one of the other moms to buy the item when the time came, using our money if necessary. Jason was willing to pay a lot to avoid a meal with strangers.

Once our terms were negotiated, he reminded me that he would be leaving the following afternoon to meet with a green energy company based in Philadelphia. He’d be gone for two nights.

Of course, I didn’t need the reminder. I had entered the dates in my calendar—aka the Family Bible—when he first mentioned it.

“Would you like to come with me?” Did he actually want me to join him, or had my expression given me away? “We could get a sitter for Spencer. Or he could tag along.”

The thought of ever returning to the state of Pennsylvania made my stomach turn. “The chess tournament tomorrow, remember?”

I could tell that he did not, in fact, remember. Spencer had little in the way of organized hobbies. He wasn’t a natural athlete and seemed to share Jason’s aversion to group activities. But so far, he was sticking with the chess club.

The subject of his intern, Rachel, did not arise until the waiter brought our pasta: an order ofcacio e pepesplit between two bowls.

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