Dear Wife - Kimberly Belle Page 0,51

giant bite. A long strand of melted cheese dangles from his chin like a worm, but for the first time in well, ever, I don’t gripe at him for the mess. My idiot, dickhead brother has a point. I have let myself be the easy target.

I pluck my phone from the countertop, pull up a number I once knew by heart. After two rings, a familiar voice hits my ear. “It’s about time,” she says. “I’ve only been leaving you messages all over town.”

* * *

Amanda Shephard steps through my front door, looking just like she did in high school. Blonde, thin, a complicated sort of pretty—big lashes and acrylic nails and long, heat-curled hair. Her face is caked under a layer of makeup I’ve never seen her without, not even the summer before senior year when our entire class spent every day bobbing in blow-up tubes on the river. All the other girls had shiny cheeks pink from the sun, but Amanda’s makeup was like a mask, flawless and impenetrable.

She pulls me into a perfumed hug. “Oh, Jeffrey, you poor, poor thing.”

Her voice echoes in my foyer, loud and consoling in a way that makes it feel exactly the opposite. It’s her television voice, the one she’s cultivated for her show, Mandy in the Morning, a local daily featuring all things mundane and ridiculous.

I extricate myself and give her a tight-lipped smile.

“How are you doing? How are you holding up? Are you eating at all?”

I think of the eggs in the sink, the pizza I shoved out the door along with my brother, right before she got here. “A little.”

“If I had known, I would have made you a casserole.” She waves a manicured hand through the air and laughs. “Oh, who am I kidding? We both know I can’t cook. I would have ordered you some Chinese takeout or something. Anyway, I’m so glad you called.”

“Thank you. And please,” I say, gesturing toward the living room. “Make yourself at home.”

In the sixty minutes it took her to get over here, I cleaned up the place. I dusted and fluffed all the pillows, and I exchanged my running shorts for a pair of khaki slacks and a navy polo over loafers. Nothing too fancy. I don’t want her to think I’m trying too hard.

She steps into the room and gasps, making a beeline to the wall of windows. She stops just beyond the desk, standing before a sheet of glass lit up by the sun. It turns her hair iridescent and makes the fabric of her dress float like a wispy cloud around her body—a cloud that is more than a little see-through. Well, well, well. Amanda Shephard is wearing a lacy red thong.

“You’re so close to the river,” she says without turning. “Like the house is floating on top of it or something.”

“I know.”

“The view is stunning.”

Yes. It is.

She presses a hand into the glass, and the sun turns her skin to fire. Amanda is conventionally beautiful, but up to now, I’ve never found her all that attractive. Too processed, too high maintenance. But standing here, in my cheating wife’s house, I’m beginning to see another side of Amanda. The side that would make a spectacular revenge fuck.

I clear my throat. “The view is what sold us on the house. Turns every window into a piece of artwork. Did you know the river changes colors, depending on the weather and time of day? I didn’t know that until I got to look at it every day.”

She smiles over her shoulder. “Well, Jeffrey Hardison, you sensitive old dog, you. Next thing I know, you’ll be reading me poetry.”

At the south end of the river, a black search boat motors upstream, and multiple people lean over the sides, staring into the water.

“Do you mind if we get started?” I say, pointing Amanda to the couch before she sees the boat. “When we’re done here, I need to get over to the police station and see if there’s any update about Sabine.”

“I just came from there, actually.” She wrinkles her nose, stepping away from the window. “They won’t tell me anything other than that Sabine’s car showed up at the Super1, which in all honesty tells me nothing. Who are the suspects? What are the clues? The people of Pine Bluff deserve to know the truth, Jeffrey.”

“I agree.”

She sinks onto one of the twin three-seaters, and I choose the one opposite her. The search boat has stopped in the middle of