Chapter Nine—Dalen
THE TAXI DISAPPEARS from our driveway at two-forty in the morning while I watch through the security feed from a hotel room in Chicago.
Julie turned off the foyer light before she left.
She always does that when we’re going somewhere together because I forget it, and tonight, she remembered while leaving me.
I keep the camera open until the driveway is empty. The kitchen lights are still on behind her, and for a few seconds, I watch the empty driveway like the taxi might come back.
Then I close the app. My last message to Julie is still unread:
Please text me when you’re safely inside.
I want to call her. I want to ask which hotel she chose, if she’s alone, and whether she checked the lock when she got into the room. I could call the taxi company and probably get the destination if I pushed hard enough.
Two hours ago, Julie told me I don’t get to handle her.
I put the phone on the nightstand and start packing instead. There’s almost nothing to do because Calla had my overnight bag delivered before the meeting. I fold the shirt I wore yesterday and put it inside, then check my phone again.
Nothing.
I zip the bag and set it beside the desk.
The hotel room is too quiet. My suit jacket hangs over the desk chair, and two unopened bottles of water sit beside the television.
A card near the coffee machine tells me breakfast begins at six.
I should sleep for the ninety minutes before I need to leave for the airport, but there’s no chance of that happening while my wife is somewhere between our house and a hotel she doesn’t want me to know about.
I pick up my phone again.
Still nothing.
I open the security app, although I know exactly what I’ll find.
The kitchen is empty. Every light Julie turned on after the police left is still burning.
Her cereal bowl from dinner is in the dishwasher because she apparently loaded it before going upstairs.
I can see the corner of her laptop on the dining-room table.
I switch to the family-room camera. Nothing moves there either.
Julie heard someone in our house tonight, and I asked if she was sure. I close the app and rub both hands over my face.
There are explanations for noises in a house. I’ve heard the ice maker dump at midnight and thought something fell in the kitchen. Pipes knock. Wood expands. The heating system makes sounds I don’t understand because I’ve never needed to understand them.
None of that changes what I did. My wife called me terrified, and within minutes, I made her defend what she’d heard.
My phone vibrates in my hand.
I’m at the hotel. I’m safe. Please don’t ask where.
I read it twice.
My first impulse is to ask whether she’s alone. The second is to tell her I won’t come there. Both would make her answer questions she has already answered by asking me to leave her alone.
I type: Thank you for telling me.
I add I love you, stare at it, then delete those three words. She knows I love her. I told her while she was walking out of our house, and she told me she loved me too.
Love didn’t keep her there.
I send the shorter message and set my phone beside my bag.
CALLA MEETS ME AT THE airport shortly after five with coffee and the expression she usually wears when I’ve created a scheduling problem she intends to survive out of spite. “You’re not coming to the office today,” she says as we walk toward the plane.
“I’m not?” I blink.
“I moved Friday’s eight-thirty to Monday, canceled the ten, and sent the Wexler documents to legal.” She hands me the coffee. “I cleared your whole day.”
I take a drink. “That’s generous.” She doesn’t know what’s wrong but realizes something is. I appreciate her managing my day with more blatantness than usual.
“I thought so.”
Calla doesn’t ask anything. She knows Julie had some trouble at the house because she’s dealt with the security company, but she doesn’t know the rest. I’ve spent two weeks discussing my wife with people I had no business involving, and I’m done adding names to the list.
We reach the stairs to the plane. Calla stops at the bottom while I turn toward her. “I’ll handle anything that comes up today,” she says.
“Thank you.”
Her expression changes slightly. “Is Julie okay?”
I don’t know how to answer it without telling Calla something that belongs to my wife. “She had a bad night.”
Calla nods. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” I climb the stairs before she can say anything else.
I don’t sleep on the flight, and Julie doesn’t text again. By the time we land, I’ve talked myself out of calling her at least a dozen times. The urge gets worse in the car because every mile takes me closer to an empty house.
I pull into the garage a little before eight and sit behind the wheel for a minute.
Julie’s car is here. She took a taxi, so I knew it would be, but seeing it makes the empty garage feel worse.
I get out and walk through the mudroom.
Her bag is gone from the bench. The Hollman folder is still on the kitchen counter, which means she left without something she needed for work.
I pick it up automatically. The folder is thick with fabric samples and notes in Julie’s handwriting. A yellow sticky note on the front says LAURENT SAYS WHITE IS A CRIME, followed by a sketch of what I assume is supposed to be a prison cell.
I almost take a picture to send her, then put the folder back where I found it.
The kitchen drawers are closed. I open the one Julie said she heard and close it again. The sound carries farther than I expect in the quiet house.
She knows that sound.
Julie can walk into a room and identify a problem nobody else could explain. She can tell when a table is too large before anyone measures it. She noticed six inches in a kitchen and a picture moved behind another picture in her office.
Last night, she told me she heard our kitchen drawer. I asked if she was sure. I release the handle and walk away.
Upstairs, the bedroom door is open. Julie left the bed unmade, which tells me more about how upset she was than the suitcase missing from the closet. She makes the bed even when we’re running late because she hates coming home to rumpled sheets.
Her lamp is still on, so I turn it off. My reading glasses are on my nightstand where they’ve stayed since Sunday.
I sit on my side of the bed and look across the empty space beside me. Four nights ago, Julie cried on the other side of this mattress because I’d moved a knife away from her without realizing I’d done it. I told her I was scared for her, and she asked why I’d moved the knife.
I had no answer.
Last night, when she asked whether I thought she was dangerous, I answered too quickly. I heard it myself. I know she did.
I wasn’t lying. I don’t believe Julie would hurt me. That doesn’t erase the half-second in our kitchen when some part of me reacted before I thought.
My phone vibrates, and I grab it too quickly.
It’s Meg: Is Julie okay?
I stare at the message. Julie told me Sunday not to discuss her with Meg. That instruction hasn’t changed because she’s gone.
I type You should ask her.
Meg calls almost immediately.
I let it ring twice before answering. “Hi.”
“What happened?” Her voice is sharp with worry. “Julie texted me at five this morning and said she might be hard to reach today.”
I stand and walk toward the window. “You need to talk to Julie.”
“I tried. She’s not answering.” Meg pauses. “Dalen, what happened?”
“I can’t discuss Julie with you.”
The silence lasts long enough that I check the screen to make sure the call hasn’t dropped.
“Okay,” she says finally. “That’s....”
I rub my thumb along the edge of the phone. “If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”
She makes a soft sound. “She was really angry with me Monday.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
I close my eyes briefly. “She told me she was having lunch with you. That’s all.”
“Oh.” Meg sounds relieved. “We worked it out.”
I don’t respond.
She clears her throat. “I shouldn’t have talked to you about her. She made that very clear.”
“She was right.”
“I know.” Meg is quiet for a moment. “Did something happen at the house?”
I look toward the bed. “Ask Julie.”
She sighs. “Jeez, you’re serious about this.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” She sighs. “I won’t ask again.”
“Thank you.”
Meg doesn’t hang up. I can hear movement on her end, then a car door closes. “I know I’m probably the last person who should say this, but maybe you should give her some room.”
The advice irritates me because it comes from Meg, who helped create this mess. I walk into the hallway before answering. “I am.”
“Are you?”
I stop.
“You’re a fixer, Dalen. You helped me get an apartment before I’d even figured out where I wanted to live. When my car died, you had three replacements pulled up on your phone before the tow truck came.”
I frown. “You needed a car.”
“I needed a ride home first.”
Despite everything, I almost laugh.
Meg’s voice softens. “You love her. I know that. Maybe loving her today means leaving her alone until she’s ready.”
Julie told me almost exactly the same thing last night. She shouldn’t have needed to. “I have to go.”
“Okay. If she calls me, do you want me to tell you?”
“No.” I push away from the wall. “If Julie wants me to know something, she’ll tell me.”
Meg hesitates. “Right.”
I end the call.
The conversation bothers me after it’s over, although I can’t identify whether that’s because Meg gave good advice or because I resent needing to hear it from her.
I go downstairs and make coffee I don’t want. At nine-twelve, I text Julie:
Your Hollman folder is on the kitchen counter. I can leave the house if you want to come get it, or I can have Calla send it to your office. Your choice.
She answers five minutes later.
Please have Calla send it.
Okay.
My thumb hovers over the screen while I consider asking if she slept at all. I want to know if she’s eaten, her hotel name, if the room has decent locks, and if she has somebody nearby if she gets scared.
Every one of those questions would be about making me feel better, so I send only Okay. Calla has a courier collect the folder twenty minutes later.
I TRY TO WORK FROM home. By eleven, I’ve read the same page of a report four times, so I give up and walk into the kitchen.
The house is too quiet without Julie. I’ve spent nights here alone when she traveled for work, but this is different because I know she’s somewhere nearby and doesn’t want me with her.
I open the refrigerator and find the leftover pasta we ate Monday. There are two portions because Julie always cooks too much pasta. I take one out, put it back, then close the refrigerator.
My phone rings while I’m standing there. For the second time today, I grab it too quickly, but it’s our security company.
I answer and spend ten minutes listening to another report that gives me nothing useful. They reviewed the interior footage from last night. Nobody appears in the covered areas. No exterior sensor registered an opening. The system functioned as designed.
I thank the technician and end the call.
For the last two weeks, I’ve treated the security system as an objective witness. Cameras either show someone or they don’t. Doors either open or they don’t. Sensors either trigger or they don’t.
That logic works until I remember the family-room lamp broken on the floor.
I was home that night. Julie saw someone move near the hallway. I heard her scream my name, came running, and found her terrified. Then something crashed while she was upstairs and I was searching another part of the house.
I didn’t knock over that lamp. I know I didn’t.
I walk into the family room and stop where it broke. There’s a faint mark on the hardwood where the base hit. I crouch to touch it, then pull my hand back before I do. The police already examined the room. I don’t know what I expect to learn from a scratch in the floor.
I sit on the sofa with my phone still in my hand.
I want to call Julie and tell her I’ve been thinking about the lamp. I want to tell her I know something happened Monday night even if I don’t understand what. Maybe if I say that correctly, she’ll hear the part I couldn’t give her last night.
Then I remember the question she actually asked.
Do you believe somebody was in this house tonight?
I don’t know. That’s still my answer, and calling her now to dress it up would only make me feel less guilty.
I put the phone on the coffee table.
JULIE DOESN’T COME home Friday. She doesn’t come home Saturday either, and we exchange four texts, all practical.
She tells me she needs clothes from the house. I tell her when I’ll be gone and leave the alarm off during the time she gives me. I spend those two hours at the office even though I have nothing that requires me there.
When I return, several more clothes are gone. Her makeup is missing from the bathroom counter. She took the charger from beside the bed and the blue sweater she wears when every building in the city turns the air conditioning too high.
She left her wedding ring.
I find it in the small ceramic dish beside her jewelry case and sit on the bench at the foot of the bed.
Julie takes that ring off to work sometimes. She doesn’t wear it when she’s dealing with finishes that could damage it, and I’ve found it in this dish a hundred times. She’s never left it here when she wasn’t coming back that night.
I don’t touch it.
My phone is in my pocket, and every part of me wants to call her. Instead, I walk downstairs.
The kitchen looks too clean because neither of us has cooked since Monday. Sunday is tomorrow. I usually start deciding what I’m going to ruin by Saturday afternoon, then buy ingredients Julie will eventually rescue.
I won’t be cooking tomorrow.
I stand beside the island and look at the place where she usually sits with a glass of wine while insulting my knife skills. I miss her enough that my throat hurts.
My phone vibrates, and this time, Julie’s name is on the screen.
I got everything I need. Thank you for giving me the house.
I read the message before typing a response.
You’re welcome.
I want to add that I saw the ring, but I don’t.
A minute passes before another message appears.
I need some time, Dalen.
I sit on the stool beside the island. This is the point where I usually act. A problem appears, and I start looking for the next step. I call somebody, arrange something, make the decision that gets us moving again.
Julie hasn’t asked me to do any of those things. She asked for time.
I type: I understand. I’ll give it to you.
My thumb stays over the screen for several seconds before I send it.
Julie doesn’t answer.
I leave my phone on the island and walk upstairs. Her ring is still in the ceramic dish where she left it, and I close the jewelry case without touching either one.