Dear Wife - Kimberly Belle Page 0,30

morning. And then she texted me later in the day that she had a showing but she’d be home by nine. When’s the last time you talked to my wife?”

“Has anybody confirmed that she actually made it to the showing? Did she meet Corey and his wife at the house?”

I shrug. “Like I said, I haven’t heard anything from the detective, so I’m guessing so. What time—”

“Did anybody call Corey to ask?”

“You’re the first person I’ve talked to who knows who the showing was with. The most I could tell the detective was the name of Sabine’s boss.”

He turns and races from the room, his footsteps crashing up the stairs. While he’s gone, I take a look around, try to see the place like Sabine would, like she did when she showed it to her soon-to-be lover. I picture her leading him through the empty house, pointing out all the features. Open, rambling rooms with French doors and generous windows. A spacious kitchen with new stainless appliances. Custom molding and hardwood floors throughout. Was their first kiss under the arched doorway? Did he push her up against these granite countertops? The visions burn like acid in my eyes, and I rub them away.

The floor creaks above my head.

I open the fridge and study the contents. Definitely a doctor’s refrigerator. Milk, fruit, yogurt, enough vegetables to stock a produce department. Nothing even remotely unhealthy except a lone IPA, shoved to the very back behind a container of organic pineapple. I’m digging it out when Trevor returns with a shirt, thank God, and his cell.

“Corey’s not answering his phone,” he tells me, “and neither is Lisa.”

I shut the refrigerator and wave the beer in the air by my head. “Where do you keep your opener?”

Trevor ignores me, staring at the phone in his hand.

The first drawer I try is stuffed with pencils and Post-its, so I close it and keep going, moving down the island, opening and closing the drawers in search of a bottle opener. On the third try, I find one, a golf-themed piece of plastic that makes a cheering sound when I open the cap. I toss it back into the drawer mid-hurrah.

“You never answered my question,” I say. “When is the last time you talked to Sabine?”

He looks up, and his eyes are liquid. “She came by the hospital yesterday afternoon. She wasn’t there very long, only fifteen minutes or so. She left around one thirty.”

I stare at him across the island. At one thirty yesterday afternoon, I was in Little Rock, fretting about the canyon that’s cracked down the middle of my marriage and plotting the steps I can take to win my wife back, oblivious to the fact that she was more than likely being fucked by her lover in a hospital supply closet.

“Would you stop looking at me like that?” he says. “Sabine is missing.”

“It’s just that I’m having trouble letting go of the fact that she made time in her day to go to the hospital for fifteen minutes with you, when she can never squeeze in a lunch with me. She’s hardly ever home for dinner!”

Trevor sinks onto a stool at the counter, shoving aside a coloring book and a Solo cup packed with colorful markers. “What about her car? Has anyone seen it?”

“Not that I know of. Ingrid gave the detective her license plate number, though, so I’m assuming he’s on the lookout.” I take a long pull from the bottle, then make a face. It’s one of those snobby IPAs, bitter and aggressively hoppy. I check the label and see it’s also organic. “Do you have any normal beer?”

Trevor plucks a blue marker from the cup. “What’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

“The detective. What’s his name?”

“Oh. Something Durand. Mike or Mark or something like that.”

I pour the rest of the IPA down the drain while Trevor calls 9-1-1 and demands to be put through to the detective. He uses his doctor’s voice, polite but overly self-important, each word delivered in a tone that commands attention. He introduces himself—Dr. Trevor McAdams, Chief Obstetrician at Jefferson Regional, romantically involved with Sabine for the past five months—then rattles off Corey’s name and number. Sabine’s schedule until the moment she left the hospital, at sometime around one thirty. Her cell plus another number I didn’t know existed, for a phone I didn’t know she had. The entire conversation lasts no longer than five minutes. He thanks the person and hangs up.

I slam the bottle onto the counter