The raunchy, dirty, humiliating missives added a new layer to Geneva’s disappearance. There was some violence to the exchange—threats of bondage, punishment.
I want to spank you till you scream.
I’m going to tie you up and take you from behind.
Really? Not Graham’s thing, Selena wouldn’t have thought. But what did she know? Also leaked: Geneva’s affair with Erik Tucker. There was apparently a text chain associated with that relationship, as well. Equally vile.
On Twitter there was already a trending hashtag: #TheNaughtyNanny.
Selena’s phone was ringing and pinging every few minutes. She kept checking it to make sure it wasn’t her mother or the school. The last text from Beth: I’m coming to your house.
Her house—which she thought was made of bricks, was made of straw.
There were other texts, too, between Graham and someone else. Apparently now they had access to his phone. More nastiness. Words used that Selena had never known to cross her husband’s mind, let alone his lips. Those communications, too, were borderline violent, dark. Even more unsettling:
I know who you are. And I know what you did.
You won’t get away with it. I promise.
She imagined they must have taken Graham’s phone. But she didn’t know. She didn’t know how things like this worked. Would they want her phone? Was she required to give it to them if they didn’t have a warrant?
Detective Crowe nodded toward the printouts on the table between them. Selena felt vulnerable suddenly. She shouldn’t have let him in, should have waited for Will. Another mistake.
“Any idea who this might be?” he asked. “What this person might have seen? What Graham wasn’t going to get away with?”
Amazingly, there was a part of her that still wanted to lie. It was me, she wanted to say. Just a little role-playing game.
Partially to protect her children, by protecting their father.
But mostly to protect herself, or the image of herself that she wanted people to hold. Selena—good mom, happily married, successful career woman. Perfect. Instagrammable. Better than her sister. Better than her friends. But you know, in a humble, generous way.
Humiliation had a taste, a thickness at the back of her throat.
Fear had a sound, a ringing in her ears.
“Mrs. Murphy.”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “How should I know?”
“Has he cheated before?”
“Yes,” she said. She stared down at her wedding ring, the big diamond, the platinum band.
“More than once?” His voice was gentle.
She ran it down for him. The sexting with his ex-girlfriend, which he said was nothing more. The counseling. Then the incident in Vegas.
Crowe looked at his notes. “A stripper,” he said. “Is that right? There was an assault.”
“Yes.”
“He propositioned a stripper after a lap dance, and when she declined, he assaulted her. A fight ensued between the club bouncers and Graham and his friends,” he said.
“That’s right,” she said stiffly. Only her mother knew about this incident. Maybe her sister knew too. Selena always suspected them of gossiping about her behind her back.
“More counseling after that, I’m guessing,” Detective Crowe said.
When she looked up at him, she expected to see mockery or judgment on his face. But instead she saw kindness, compassion.
“My wife,” he said. “She cheated on me a couple of times before I got the message that she was always going to cheat. That it wasn’t about me but about her.”
He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He nodded. “I am, too.”
Outside, she thought she heard voices, but it went quiet again. Would the media gather? she wondered. Probably. Wasn’t that the way it worked now? A circus of news vans, true crime bloggers posting theories and pictures, endless phone calls, emails.
“It’s obstruction, you know, that you didn’t tell me any of this.”
She was quiet a moment. Then, “I didn’t think it was relevant. Truly.”
He nodded. “I get it. There’s a disconnect between those things and this thing for you. Those things—the texting was virtual, right? The woman in Vegas, almost an abstraction, far from his life with you. You didn’t want to believe that he could have anything to do with Geneva’s disappearance.”
The words hung on the air, ominous. You didn’t want to believe that your husband would hurt a young woman. Even though you knew he had already hurt another young woman.
“What about your husband’s job?”
There was a dump of dread in her belly.
She knew, didn’t she? On some level, she knew that he hadn’t told her the real reason why he’d lost his job. Jaden, his boss, their friend, hadn’t returned her calls. The last email