“A mother who bore me a defective son. What does that say about you?”
You’d stared at him, heartbroken. Because, whether he really meant it or not, there was no going back now.
“Abbie knew Tim would fight her every inch of the way,” Jenny continues. “She had this insane plan to just take off…It wouldn’t have worked, not in a million years. He could have tracked her down in hours. And then he’d use what she’d done to take Danny away from her. I told her, if she really wanted to do it like that, she had to do it properly.”
“And then you thought you’d get your husband back,” you say softly.
She nods, then glances at Mike. “Didn’t quite work out like that, though, did it?”
“Why not?” you ask when he doesn’t reply.
“Anyway,” she says, not answering you directly, “it took two months of planning. First, we had to research suitable places for Danny. Julian was out of the question, of course—he was the first person Tim would have looked for. That picture you found, of the fundraiser? It was me who found that organization, me who went to look around one of their sites and shot footage on my phone for Abbie to look at. I’m not saying they’re perfect, but they ticked most of Abbie’s boxes. They focused on making people with autism happy, not making them better. Tim’s preference was always the other way around.
“Eventually we got to D-day. That was what we called it, in case Tim was spying on us—Abbie always suspected he’d bugged her phone. D for disappearance. D for Danny. But as it turned out, maybe D for something else as well.”
“Why? What went wrong?”
“After all that planning, it was the stupidest thing. Danny was on a school trip that afternoon. That stupid bitch Sian hadn’t thought to tell anyone. So Abbie got to the school with some story about needing to take Danny for an eye appointment, and he wasn’t there. Everything else was in place…Abbie figured she’d just have to come back for him next day. So she went back to the beach house.” Jenny’s silent, her short unpolished nails picking at the seam of her hoodie. She sighs. “And that was the last I ever heard from her.”
“Why?” you say, not understanding. “What happened?”
“My guess is, Tim found out somehow.” Jenny’s eyes are wet. “Maybe the school phoned him instead of her when Danny got back, and he realized there was no eye exam…I don’t know. I don’t even know if she somehow managed to get away, or if he killed her. Or, for that matter, if she killed herself, thinking it wasn’t going to work.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police? You could have told them what she’d been planning. They’d have had a much better chance of getting to the bottom of it if they’d known.”
Jenny shrugs. But her gaze goes to Mike.
“Oh my God,” you say, realizing. “You thought Mike was involved. You thought, if Tim killed Abbie, Mike might have helped him.”
“Why not?” she says quietly. “You think Tim wouldn’t have called Mike up and said, I’ve just killed my lying slut of a wife, come and help me clear up the mess? That’s the kind of shit he doles out to my husband on a regular basis. And Mike…” She stops. “Mike would have done it, too.”
“Jesus,” you say disbelievingly. “All this time, you’ve thought that of your husband…And you never said anything?”
Her eyes flash. “Sometimes it’s easier in a marriage not to overshare. Not to rock the boat. There’ll always be another day for that conversation.”
“Jen,” Mike says desperately. “Jen…”
“Don’t say anything you’ll regret later,” she says sharply to him. “Don’t lie to me.”
There’s a long silence.
“Maybe I can help there,” you say at last. “Abbie’s alive. She wants me to go to her.”
Jenny buries her head in her hands, her bony shoulders shaking with relief.
“So now you have to help me,” you add. “Both of you. You owe me that, at least.”
Jenny looks up, her cheeks shiny with tears. “What do you need?”
“To know where she is, for one thing. Haven Farm Ranches seem to be spread all over the U.S. I can’t possibly visit them all.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know where she is. None of us do. That was the only way it was safe, Lisa said.”
“Lisa was in on it, too?”
Jenny nods. “She was the only one Abbie trusted. But