For the longest time Carole had been all but certain that her husband was seeing Amanda Jenkins. So pretty. So young. David’s type. She saw the way he touched her lower back at the restaurant one time when he was presenting the menu to the servers on opening night. It was a gentle touch, a pat that lingered too long. Carole had wondered if there was a lower-back tattoo in the place that he’d touched. If he’d seen it while he made love to her. Was it at the restaurant, in the pantry? Carole and David had done the same thing before they got married. Was it at the girl’s apartment? Or had they slept together there, in Carole and David’s home?
When she got to know Amanda, she decided she was too smart to fall for her husband. If nothing else, surely he was too old for her. And when it came down to it, it didn’t really matter. Carole had her art, and then Charlie. David had been little more than a distraction from the things at the center of her universe. At times, a fun and even sexy distraction. That was a while ago.
Carole didn’t have it in her at the moment to create a scene by launching a slew of accusations. She was so done. All of her emotions had been wrung out like a bar rag, and there was very little anger to throw at David. Their son was gone.
What did anything else really matter?
She knew he’d look for her in Charlie’s room when he got home from Sweetwater, so she waited in the little bed, smelling the pillowcase scented from the baby shampoo that she still used on his precious head at bath time.
Charlie, come home to me. Charlie, you are my only real joy. My sweet little love.
A few minutes after midnight, David’s beloved Porsche came down the driveway, the engine over-idling in that show-offy way that stroked his surprisingly fragile ego by commanding everyone in earshot to look up and admire all that he had. David never did anything without making sure others could see it. If he bought a piece of jewelry for his wife, it was only so he could point to it and talk about the good deal he’d been able to negotiate. David lived to brag, but he’d never admit that. To be a braggart was gauche. He saw himself as far too sophisticated for that. Carole listened as the garage door went up. She could feel the slight vibration that came with the sound of the chain pulling the door upward. A beat later it went down. Next, David disarmed the alarm. He was getting closer. For some reason her heartbeat quickened a little. She’d do what she needed to do. She didn’t see that she had any other choice.
He made his way to the kitchen. Opened a bottle of nonalcoholic beer. Silence as he took a drink.
Everything David Franklin did was very predictable.
Just as his affairs had been.
“Babe?” he called into the darkened hall that led to the bedrooms. His footsteps found his way to her. “You in here?”
“I’m here,” she said.
He stood there. Moonlight seeped in through the miniblinds, marking the walls and Carole’s face like war paint.
“You going to sleep in here again tonight?” he asked.
Silence. Her heart was broken, and she didn’t want a fight.
He looked down at her, crumpled as she was in their son’s bed. “Carole?”
She stayed quiet, the bands of light from the blinds shifting on her face. “We can’t stay together,” she finally answered, barely looking at David. She ran her fingertips over the grosgrain edge of the Star Wars duvet; it had been Charlie’s favorite for building forts in the dining room. “I don’t think so. Not now.”
David sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his wife, but she stiffened and pushed him away.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
Again the bars of light moved across her face. “David,” she said, “you know.”
But he didn’t. Or at least the look on his face indicated as much. Her words were a riddle, and he didn’t understand Carole.
“Our son is missing,” he said. “We need each other right now.”
There were a million things she could fling at him, but she chose only one. “You go to work like nothing’s happened, David. You’re carrying on like it was nothing. Like Charlie was nothing. There’s something seriously wrong with a man who would do that.”
“I asked the detective,” he said. “I asked her what I could do. She told me that I needed to stay focused and clearheaded. That I needed to take care of business.”
“That’s not what she meant. Trust me: no one loses their son and goes to work as if nothing happened.”
“You’re wrong. Charlie’s on my mind all the time. He’s right here,” he said, touching the beer bottle to his chest.
Carole didn’t want to fight. She wanted to save all of her energy for the investigation and, God willing, Charlie’s homecoming. “You have to go,” she said. “Stay at a hotel.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, getting up and standing over her.
Carole stared at him. She’d faced tougher adversaries in the boardroom. She knew how to take the emotion out of her words. A tone of resignation was better than an avalanche of aggression. “Look,” she said, picking her words carefully, “let’s not fight. Let’s not say something that we will never forget or forgive.”
“I want him home too,” he said.
“I need you gone.”
“I won’t go,” David said. “I tell you, I won’t.”
Carole held her tongue. She didn’t tell him to go sleep at his girlfriend’s place. Whoever she was. She didn’t want to make her growing hatred for him be about another person outside of their marriage. This was a family matter. She could see his disinterest in their son from the day that he came home from the hospital. She saw the way he’d always feigned wishing he had more time with Charlie.
But he was too busy.
Too busy with the restaurant.
Too busy having sex with some woman not smart enough to see through his lies.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go.”
“Where will you go?” David asked, a response that only confirmed what she’d thought of him all along. He had no capacity for love. He only thought of himself. He didn’t tell her that she should stay: it was her money that had paid for the house, after all. He just asked where she would go.
She went to an overnight bag that she’d already packed. She took her robe and a jacket and uttered not a single word. She simply fought to keep her resolve that when Charlie came home, she’d kick David out the door as fast as she could. She’d pull the credit line from the restaurant and she’d kiss him good-bye.
For good.
“Don’t do this,” he said.
Carole turned the latch on the front door.
“It will look bad, babe,” he said. “It will look like there’s been something going on here. Now’s not the time for this kind of drama. Think about Charlie.”
She spun around and looked hard at her husband.
“David, Charlie is all I think about. I don’t care what other people think. I don’t want to fight and I don’t want to bad-mouth you. I just don’t want to see your face. Not right now.”
It was one in the morning when Owen Jarrett climbed out of bed to answer a tentative but persistent knocking on the door. He fumbled for a pair of sweatpants in the shadowy light and hurriedly put them on. Liz, startled by the commotion, started to get up.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll find out what’s up.”
“It’s the police,” she whispered. “They’ve found me.”
He slipped a T-shirt on. “Be quiet,” he told her. “It is not the police. Someone’s car broke down or something. Or some kids are shit-faced and can’t find their way home. It isn’t the police. Just wait here.”
Liz put her head back down on the pillow and pulled up the covers.