I know.
Call me.
Several minutes passed before another text popped onto the screen: I can’t. Not yet.
Why not?
It’s complicated. And then: I’m not alone.
Despite my thought the night before that Sam might be cheating on me, what I pictured now was Sam hiding in a closet, or in the trunk of some stranger’s car. In both scenarios, he was bruised and bleeding.
Once my mind went dark, another possibility slipped in: Sam might not be the one texting me.
Who’s with you? Are you hurt?
He answered only the second question: I’ll recover.
Then call me.
When no response came, I dialed his number. It rolled into voicemail without ringing.
His text came a second later: I’m sorry.
I see you’re getting real use out of that Big Book of Clichés.
What do you want me to say?
I want you to tell me what the hell is going on.
I sat with that for a moment before summoning the courage to ask the question I didn’t really want answered. Are you having an affair?
The bubbles signifying Sam was typing lasted several minutes, but the text that came was just four words: Give me until tonight.
I pushed: You didn’t answer me.
I waited for the bubbles to appear again. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Finally, I typed: How do I know this is really you?
The reply came quickly this time. Who else would it be?
Another nonanswer.
When Audrey and Leo were babies, Sam had slept with the monitor on his side of the bed. Even when they had started sleeping for longer stretches, Sam would check on them at least once each night. “Just in case the monitor’s not working,” he would say.
Why did you leave Audrey with that woman?
Tonight. I promise.
I don’t know if I can give you until tonight.
The bubbles again, then: The first time we met. Princess Jellybean.
I inhaled sharply. What?
You asked if this was really me.
My hands trembled when I asked the question he still hadn’t answered: Are you having an affair?
In the cold rental sedan, thick with the scent of canned pine, I waited for Sam’s response, and when the bubbles popped on the screen, my heart’s thundering grew so loud I half expected the windshield to flex. Then, for a moment, my heart stopped. My whole world stopped, because the last text I received from Sam was a single word: Yes.
12
Clouds of pulled cotton hung above the skylight in the Santa Rosa Police Department’s main lobby, midmorning sun filtering in through a stand of anemic maples. I entered the station and asked for Detective Ray Rico. He wasn’t in, but the police technician at the counter, a reedy man with a sharp nose, said he would get someone else to help me, leaving me to wait. I hadn’t been good at that even before Sam went missing.
The woman who came out five minutes later—five minutes that felt like an hour—was my height with a tight bun and heavily contoured cheeks. She introduced herself as Marisol Torres and ushered me into a room off the lobby. Despite the severity of her hairstyle, the officer’s manner was sympathetic, and her slight smile seemed genuine.
Then again, my marriage had seemed genuine too.
Torres gathered contact information, social media passwords, and a description of my husband. When she asked for a photo, I scrolled through half a dozen photos before I found one that worked. It was from a few years back when we had gone hiking in Annadel State Park, in an area since scorched by wildfire. The green trees and Sam’s crooked smile were both relics from another time.
“This must be difficult for you,” Torres said. “When’s the last time you saw your husband?”
“Yesterday morning, shortly before seven.”
“Six-thirty? Six-forty-five?”
“Six-forty-five.”
“Any other contact yesterday?”
“We spoke on the phone at 7:14 p.m.” This I knew exactly because I had checked my call log. Repeatedly. “When I got home just after seven, he had already left to take our daughter trick-or-treating.”
“What did your husband say the last time you spoke?”
I didn’t need to think about that. I had replayed our last conversation on a loop since Sam had disappeared. “He said he and Audrey would be home in about half an hour and that we needed to talk.”
“About what?”
“He didn’t elaborate.”
She studied me intently. Though she tried to soften her eyes, I was no longer sure Officer Torres was on my side.
“What did you do then?” she asked.
“Waited for them to come home.” I kept the fact I had fallen asleep to myself. Partially out of guilt, but mainly because of the questions it might raise: You took a nap? With your husband and child missing? What kind of person are you?
She would have phrased the questions differently, but that would be what she would be thinking. Torres didn’t need more reasons to doubt me.
I continued, “I got a call regarding a patient a few minutes after nine, and it hit me that Sam and Audrey hadn’t come home yet.”
“It didn’t hit you that they hadn’t returned until . . . what? . . . nearly two hours after talking to your husband?”
In hindsight, it may have been stupid to omit mention of the nap. Too late now. I kept my face as dispassionate as the officer’s.
“That’s right.”
“What did you do when you realized your husband hadn’t come home?”
“I went looking for him.” I told Torres about my search of the neighborhood and about finding Audrey with the two women.
“No other contact from Sam since?”
I hesitated. “There have been some texts,” I said. “But I’m not sure they’re from Sam.”
I showed them to her anyway.
Torres shifted in her seat, her pen poised above the clipboard she balanced, with practiced nonchalance, on her knee.
“Why do you doubt these texts are from your husband?” she asked.
On the drive to the station, I had considered that question at length, so my response came easily. “Have you been in a relationship, Officer Torres?”
“Everyone’s been in love.”
I shivered at the similarity to Carver Sweet’s comment two nights before. “Why do you say that?”
Torres looked at me as if I were an alien who had just asked to make earrings of her eyeballs. “Hey, it was your question.”
“Sorry. Anyway, once you’re in a relationship, people always ask how you met, right? At first, the Princess Jellybean reference threw me, but then I thought about all the times we’ve told that story. And everything else . . . it didn’t sound like him.”
“How so?”
“For one thing, he didn’t ask about the kids.”
Torres’s jaw clenched. “You don’t think there’s a chance your husband left voluntarily?”
I shook my head on reflex, but of course there was a chance. Though she kept her expression neutral, I sensed she wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t blame her. I hadn’t completely convinced myself.
“Even if the texts are from Sam, he mentions right here that he’s injured.” I tapped the screen where I had asked Sam if he had been hurt, and he had responded he would recover. “If he’s injured, you should follow up on that. And if the texts aren’t from Sam . . .” I let my voice trail away. We both knew what might have happened if Sam hadn’t sent those texts.