I reluctantly pull myself away from her bed, stepping out of the room to make a call I’d been dreading. It’s a reality I’m going to have to face, even more so with Molly not being able to remember anything.
I clear the thirty missed calls on my screen and go straight for the investigator, Carl, but stop when I hear someone clear their throat. I look up to see him leaning against hallway wall. He straightens, but I put my hand up and walk towards him. I want to be a few more feet from Molly’s room. I don’t want her hearing this.
“What’ve you got?”
“What I got was fucking lucky. Your wife had nothing in her purse that showed where she was staying. Just a set of keys to who knows where.”
I just stare at him, waiting to get to the lucky part.
“When I got to the scene, there was some man freaking out about her.”
A growl leaves my chest, and I feel myself take a step towards Carl as if he’s the man in question. He holds his hand up like he’s trying to calm me. Carl’s a big man himself, a former Marine, but I’m just as big. It isn’t often that men match my size.
“He was an old man,” he says. Like I give a fuck how old he is. “An old, married man. Calm down. It wasn’t like that.”
I feel a little tension leave my body and I take a deep breath, dropping my head to look at the ground, trying to calm myself. It isn’t working.
“There isn’t another man. In fact, there was only you.” That has me snapping my head back up.
“The old man got to talking. Seemed to know who you were and who she was. Said he was wondering when you’d be coming to get her.”
Fuck. None of this makes any sense.
“Anyway, he showed me her place. Some little studio above a print shop. Place was tiny. Couldn’t imagine the rent being high. Probably how she’d gotten by on just the money she’d taken. Unless she was selling her artwork or something, but I’m guessing not. The place was filled with paintings. Only other things were some clothes, a couple of baby books, and a bed. Even the fridge was pretty bare.”
His words don’t help with any of the confusion, nor supply me with any answers.
“Why do you say I was there?” I find myself asking. It gives me a spark of hope that maybe it won’t be as hard as I think to win my wife back. To piece together what happened all those months ago.
“It was you in all of the paintings. It was like she painted you over and over again.”
I place my hand on the wall to help support myself. She was painting me? Molly hadn’t painted since she’d moved into the condo after we were married. It was something I’d missed.
I remember picking her up to take her out and we’d end up in a make-out session in the car like high school kids. I’d find little smudges of paint in random places on her body. I don’t know why but it turned me on every time I found one. I’d started to look for them.
Then she quit. Said she’d wait until we got the new place and set up a dream studio. That never happened. Shit.
“Clear it out and take it back to New York. I want you to put it in the condo like it’s always been there. Everything. All of it.”
He just studies me for a second.
“She doesn’t remember anything. All she knows is that we made a little trip down here for a few days. She fell and hit her head. Now we’re going home, where she’s fucking been for the last four months.” I yell the last part. It’s like if I say it hard enough, loud enough, it will be true. She never left.
“Of course, sir.”
“Wrap up any loose ends. Do what you have to do. Pay what you have to pay. I don’t care.”
He gives me a tight nod. “It will all be taken care of.”
“Did you see anything about a doctor she might have been seeing?”
Carl reaches into his front suit pocket and pulls out some folded papers. I take them from him and slip them into my back pocket. I’ll have to find a doctor in the city first thing. Have her stuff transferred over. Pull some strings to make it seem like it’s the doctor she’s been seeing the whole time. It’s sneaky and underhanded, but once again I just can’t seem to care. I’d held back too long and that didn’t work. Now I’m just going to take what’s mine.
“Anything else, sir?” he asks.
I don’t need to defend myself, but I still do it. “If your wife tried to leave, what would you do to keep her?”
A half smile hits his mouth like he understands. “It’d be real fucking cute if she thought she could leave.”
“Exactly. I’ll see you back in the city.”
Carl turns and leaves, and I know everything will be handled. The hardest part of all of this is going to be Cindy, but I’ll make her see reason.
I have to make Molly fall back in love with me so that when she finally remembers why she left to begin with, she’ll be in too deep to go. I have to fight back the bit of anger I’m still feeling that she would ever think to leave me.