Dear Wife - Kimberly Belle Page 0,20

sludge and sink onto a bar stool.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe yesterday was one of the rare workdays that Sabine needed her computer, to search the MLS system or draw up a contract from a coffee shop between showings, in which case I’ll have to go to her office to fetch it. That is, assuming she left it there, and it’s not sliding around her trunk or on the floorboards of her car. I often see it sticking out of that canvas tote she lugs around, the one I’m forever tripping over when she chucks it by the garage door to search for her keys.

I pop off the stool, race to the garage, and there it is. The tote, on the cool cement floor. I snatch it by a handle and carry it inside.

The laptop is completely dead. No surprise there. Sabine has needed to replace the battery for ages now, though what she really needs is a new laptop. One that doesn’t require almost-constant charging.

I plug it in under the island counter and turn it on, topping up my coffee while I wait for the thing to power up, which takes forever. I think about Ingrid across town, doing much the same thing—hunched over a laptop in her lonely kitchen, combing her files in search of her twin. I see her red and swollen nose, her hair still frizzy from the pillow, her squinty eyes when she said those ugly words to me—I know what you did to Sabine—and I feel a momentary spurt of fury. Ingrid thinks I had something to do with this, that I am behind my own wife’s disappearance somehow, and the idea makes me want to strangle her.

The Acer gives a metallic beep, then lights up with a log-in screen. A blinking cursor, but there are only so many things her password could be. Sabine’s birthday, or mine. Our anniversary. Combinations of the dates with our names. With every try, the password dock shimmies, but it doesn’t let me in.

She would choose something that’s easy to remember. She doesn’t have hobbies, and we don’t have pets or children. I try the other people in her life, her mother, followed by her dead father. Still nothing. And then I sigh and type Ingrid’s name and birthdate into the bar—the one I should have started with, honestly—and voilà. The screen dissolves into her desktop.

I email myself the password file, from Sabine’s email program that is a giant, honking mess. More than twenty thousand unread messages, everything from stores to spam to requests for a viewing, automatically generated emails from the MLS and RE/MAX systems. It would take days to search through the chaos for anything remotely relevant, especially since I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. Instead, I flip to the sent messages and start at the top. Contracts, sales pitches, the usual stuff. After the one I just sent, the most recent message is from Tuesday, now two days ago.

I exit and head to Facebook.

Sabine has some three thousand friends, most of whom aren’t friends at all. Clients, colleagues, people from Rotary and business clubs. I go to her profile page, scrolling through post after post boasting sales numbers and pictures of homes listed and sold. No wonder she’s always on her phone, her pretty thumbs flying across the keyboard like a teenager’s. Her Facebook page is a walking advertisement for her services, her success.

Halfway down, I pause on a video from last week, a Facebook Live clip featuring a newly built house on Longmeadow Street. I’m shocked at the number below it, a counter boasting 758 views. Sabine is one of the top brokers, but still. That many?

I click on the video, and the counter ticks to 759.

The video loads, and there she is. My AWOL wife. She’s wearing her favorite summer dress, the yellow one with the ruffles around the hem, and the gold locket I gave her last Christmas, dangling from a chain around her neck. Her hair, pulled high into a ponytail, flicks cheerfully when she talks, bobbing over a tanned shoulder.

“Hey, y’all, Sabine Hardison here with the most fabulous house on the block.” She laughs. “Okay, so I know I say that about every house, but this one really is the most fabulous I’ve seen in like, ever. Four humongous bedrooms, five and a half baths—yes, people, you heard that right, a full bath for every bedroom—and a master suite you have to see to believe. Let’s take a look,