I wait.
Twenty minutes later, she comes out of the house with a couple younger than us. The woman is wide-eyed. The man is smiling. As Millicent shakes their hand, she sees me out of the corner of her eye. I can feel her green eyes land on me, but she does not pause, does not break her fluid movement.
The couple walk back to their car. Millicent stays in front of the house, watching them go. She is wearing navy blue today, a slim skirt and heels, and a pin-striped blouse. Her red hair is straight and cut sharp at her jawline. It was much longer when we met and has grown shorter each year, as if she were committed to cutting off half an inch at regular intervals. It would not surprise me to learn that this is exactly what she has done. I am not sure anything about Millicent would surprise me now.
She waits until the SUV is gone before turning to me. I get out of my car and walk up to the house.
“You’re upset,” she says.
I stare at her.
She motions to the house. “Let’s go inside.”
We go in. The entryway is huge, the ceilings more than twenty feet high. New construction, just like ours, only this one is even bigger. Everything is open and airy. and it all leads to the great room, which is where we go.
“What did you do to her? For a year, what did you do?”
Millicent shakes her head. Her hair swings back and forth. “We can’t discuss this now.”
“We have to—”
“Not here. I have an appointment.”
She walks away from me, and I follow.
A few months after we married, Millicent got pregnant. It was a surprise in some ways, because we’d talked about waiting, but not completely. We were not always careful about using protection. We had discussed various methods of birth control but always came back to condoms. Millicent did not like taking anything with hormones. They all made her too emotional.
When Millicent was late, we both suspected she was pregnant. We confirmed it with a test at home and one at the doctor’s office. Later that night, I could not sleep. We sat up for a long time, sitting on our secondhand couch in our run-down rented house. I curled up next to her, my head on her stomach, and I started worrying about everything.
“What if we screw it up?” I said.
“We won’t.”
“We need money. How are we going—”
“We’ll manage.”
“I don’t want to just manage. I want to prosper. I want—”
“We will.”
I raised my head to look at her. “Why are you so sure?”
“Why are you so unsure?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just—”
“Worried.”
“Yes.”
She sighed and gently pushed my head back down to her stomach. “Stop being silly,” she said. “We’ll be fine. We’ll be better than fine.”
Minutes earlier, I had felt more like a child than a soon-to-be father.
She made me stronger.
We have come a long way from those early days when we had no money. I had gone back to school to get my MBA, but I was halfway through when she got pregnant. We needed money, so I withdrew from the program and returned to what I know best: tennis. It was my one talent, the thing I could do better than anyone else I grew up with. The tennis court was where I shone. Not bright enough go pro, but bright enough to start offering private lessons.
When I met Millicent, she had just finished a year of real estate classes and was studying to take the test. Once she passed, it took a while for her to start selling, but she did, even while pregnant, even when the kids were babies. And she was right—we made it work. We are better than fine. And as far as I know, we have not screwed up the kids yet.
Seven
Now, as we stand in that empty house she is trying to sell, Millicent does not make me feel stronger. She makes me feel scared.
“It’s not okay,” I say. “None of this is okay.”
She raises one eyebrow. That used to be cute. “Now you’re growing a conscience?”
“I always had—”
“No. I don’t think you did.”
She is right again. I have never had a conscience when I’m trying to make her happy.
“What did you do to her?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”
“Not anymore.”
“You worry too much. We’re fine.”
The doorbell rings.
“Work calls,” she says.
I walk with her to the door. She introduces me, tells them about my tennis skills. They are as young as the last couple and just as clueless.
I head home and drive right by our house.
First, I go to the Lancaster. Naomi is there, behind the counter, with many hours left on her shift.
Next, I go by the country club. I think about distracting myself by hanging out in the clubhouse, chatting with some of my clients while watching sports. Again, I don’t stop.
A number of other places run through my mind: a bar, a park, the library, a movie. I burn through almost half a tank of gas driving around, trying to pick a destination, before I head toward the inevitable.
Home.
It is where I always go.
When I open the door, I hear the sounds of my life. My family. The only real one I ever had.
Rory is playing a video game, electronic gunshots ringing through the house. Jenna is on the phone, talking, texting, and setting the table. The smell of dinner wafts throughout the great room, chicken and garlic and something with cinnamon. Millicent is behind the counter, putting it all together, and she always hums to herself while fixing meals. Her song choice is usually something ridiculous—a show tune, an aria, the latest pop music—and that’s another inside joke of ours.
She looks up and smiles, and it is real. I see it in her eyes.
We all sit down and eat together. Jenna entertains her mother and bores her brother with a play-by-play of her soccer game. Rory brags about his golf score, which today was better than anyone else under sixteen. On most days, our meals are like this. They are boisterous and loud, filled with tales of the day and the ease of us, we who have lived together forever.
I wonder how many times we did this while Lindsay was being held captive.
When I get into bed, I am surprised that hours have passed since I last thought about Lindsay, about the police, about what Millicent and I have done. Home, and all that goes with it, is that powerful to me.
My childhood was not the same. While I did grow up in a two-parent family in our nice Hidden Oaks house, with two cars, good schools, and a lot of extracurricular activities, we did not eat meals together like my own family does. And if we did happen to all eat at the same time, we ignored one another. My father read the paper, my mother stared off into space, and I ate as quickly as possible.
They showed up to watch me play tennis only if I was in a tournament and even then, only if I made it to the last round. Neither of my parents would have given up a Saturday for anything. Home was a place to sleep, a place to hold my stuff, a place to leave as soon as possible. And I did. I left the country as soon as I could. It was impossible to imagine an entire life of feeling like a disappointment.
Though I am not sure it was me, not personally. If I had to guess, I was the one who was supposed to fix their marriage. After spending years thinking about it, running through my whole childhood again and again, I have come to the conclusion that my parents had me to try and fix their marriage. It didn’t work. And their disappointment became my failure.
I returned to Hidden Oaks only because my parents passed away. It was a freak accident, impossible to prevent or predict. They were driving down the highway, and a tire flew off a car ahead of them. It smashed through the front windshield of my father’s luxury sedan, and they both died. Gone, just like that. Still together, still undoubtedly miserable.