Marissa grabs her cell phone off her nightstand and hits the button to dial Matthew. “Renee? Hold on a second.… I’m trying him now.”
When it goes to voice mail, she taps out a text: Where are you? Please call me.
Maybe Matthew had gone to meet a client unexpectedly, though it would be highly unusual for him to not let her know.
“I can’t reach him,” she tells Renee. “Can you explain exactly what happened when he was leaving?”
“He told me he was heading home and emailed me a final electronic document to format and send. He said to make sure to get one of the security guards to walk me to my car, and that I should come in late tomorrow. When I was reading through it, I realized he hadn’t signed one of the pages. I’ve been trying to reach him, but like I said, he’s not answering his calls or texts.” Renee hesitates. “Which we both know isn’t like him,” she concludes with a nervous laugh.
“Let me keep trying him. I’ll call you back.”
The rain seems to be falling even harder, pounding down relentlessly, as she stares at the tiny image of her smiling husband in the circle at the top of her phone screen. The line rings and rings and then goes to voice mail. She sends him another text: Getting worried. Please call me ASAP.
A certain kind of wife would figure her husband had simply forgotten to charge his phone. Another might assume her husband had stopped off at a bar to meet some buddies and couldn’t hear the ringer over the loud music. A third might suspect her partner was with another woman.
But Matthew never lets his phone battery dip below 50 percent. He also doesn’t have a group of drinking pals. And despite Marissa’s own infidelity, she does not believe Matthew would exact revenge. Especially after the connection they shared at his office just this afternoon.
There has to be some logical explanation, but the only one that comes to mind is even worse than the final scenario she conjured.
She hurries downstairs, her phone in hand, and checks the family room, in case Matthew slipped inside while she was getting ready for bed. Maybe he’s slumped on the couch, decompressing after a long day. But all the lights are off and the house is still. She peers out the window, futilely searching for a glimpse of his headlights coming up the driveway.
With every minute that ticks by, her worry grows.
She calls Renee, who answers midway through the first ring.
“He’s still not home.”
“Maybe he stopped to run an errand or something.…” Marissa can tell from those few words that Renee is uncomfortable; she hasn’t been working for Matthew long so she can’t know him well, and perhaps she has mentally run through the same scenarios as Marissa.
“Why don’t you head home. I’m sure the document can wait.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stay a little longer.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from him.” Marissa hangs up.
Because she can’t sit still, she flicks on some bright lights and begins to pace, doing a loop through the family room, formal living room, kitchen, and dining room.
Any minute now, she tells herself, Matthew will walk in and stretch out his arms to envelop her. He’ll apologize for worrying her and promise it won’t ever happen again.
She looks down at her screen, hoping—praying—to see the three dots that indicate Matthew is typing a response to her calls and texts. Marissa enters Matthew’s study and stands still for a moment, forcing herself to think harder. Maybe the explanation is the simplest one. Renee said Matthew had forgotten to sign a document. He probably remembered this on his way home and is driving back to the office right now.
But even as Marissa considers this, she knows it can’t be. Even if Matthew had driven all the way home, he would’ve made it back to the office long before now. Plus she’s fairly certain he could simply use DocuSign.
In any case, this still doesn’t explain why he’s not answering his phone.
Where is he?
She wraps her arms around herself, suppressing a shiver; she’s wearing only a camisole and pajama bottoms, and the house is so cold.
She’s walking through the dining room when she hears the joyful, welcome noise—a faint scraping.
Matthew is turning his key in the front-door lock. He must have had car trouble and taken an Uber home; that’s why he isn’t coming in through the garage. Perhaps he left his phone in his car—it all makes sense now! She runs to the door and reaches for the handle, her movements swift and reflexive, propelled by an enormous wave of relief. Just before she throws open the door, she realizes there was no chime on her cell phone to alert her to a presence at the door.
She peers through the peephole.
She steps back, shaken to her core.
The stoop is empty.
Did she imagine the scraping sound because she so desperately wanted to hear it, or was it simply the wind, rustling through the bushes and shaking the trees?
The storm is still raging, increasing in strength; her husband is somewhere in the dark night, amid the sheets of rain and driving wind.
Marissa texts Renee and again urges her to head home. I’m sure everything is fine, Marissa types, but her hand is trembling so badly that she needs to backspace and retype the word fine.
Then she begins to call hospitals. There are several in the area: Georgetown, Sibley, GW, Suburban …
But no one will give her any information. All the hospitals refuse to confirm or deny whether a Matthew Bishop has been brought in.
“It’s the law,” one of the operators explains, her voice sympathetic yet firm.
Marissa dials 911, and the dispatcher puts her through to the local police precinct. The officer who answers the phone is kind and tries to be reassuring, but clearly he doesn’t consider this an emergency.
She can’t help it; she breaks down. “I know my husband. Something terrible has happened.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s—”
His sentence is interrupted by the clicking of another call.
She looks down at caller ID, and in block letters Marissa sees the information she has been dreading: GEORGETOWN HOSPITAL.
She quickly accepts it, ending her call with the police.
“Mrs. Bishop?” a man asks.
“Yes, yes, this is she,” Marissa blurts.
“This is Dale Whitaker, I’m a nurse here at—”
Before he can finish, Marissa blurts, “What happened to my husband?”
Marissa’s legs give out and she sinks to the hardwood floor as she listens to the efficient yet soothing voice of the ER nurse informing her that Matthew was brought into the hospital by ambulance earlier that night.
A car accident, Marissa thinks. She knew it: the rain, his speeding …
Her body begins to shake uncontrollably. Matthew would have called if he could have. He must be seriously hurt.
But he’s alive, she tells herself. He has to be, or wouldn’t the police show up at her door to relay the devastating news?
Marissa wipes her eyes and braces herself for the words that will come.
Whatever happened—if Matthew broke a half dozen bones and totaled his car or crashed into another vehicle and injured its driver—they’ll face it together.
She’s so certain she knows the origin of the incident that brought him to the ER that it takes her a moment to process the nurse’s words: