I couldn’t think of a decent thing I’d done in the past two years. In New York, those first few years of marriage, I’d been desperate to please my wife, to return to those loose-limbed days when she’d run across a drugstore parking lot and leap into my arms, a spontaneous celebration of her hair-spray purchase. Her face pressed up against mine all the time, her bright blue eyes wide and her yellow lashes catching on mine, the heat of her breath just under my nose, the silliness of it. For two years I tried as my old wife slipped away, and I tried so hard – no anger, no arguments, the constant kowtowing, the capitulation, the sitcom-husband version of me: Yes, dear. Of course, sweetheart. The fucking energy leached from my body as my frantic-rabbit thoughts tried to figure out how to make her happy, and each action, each attempt, was met with a rolled eye or a sad little sigh. A you just don’t get it sigh.
By the time we left for Missouri, I was just pissed. I was ashamed of the memory of me – the scuttling, scraping, hunchbacked toadie of a man I’d turned into. So I wasn’t romantic; I wasn’t even nice.
‘Also, I need a list of people who may have harmed Amy, who may have had something against her.’
‘I should tell you, it seems Amy tried to buy a gun earlier this year.’
‘The cops know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know?’
‘Not until the guy she tried to buy from told me.’
He took exactly two seconds to think. ‘Then I bet their theory is she wanted a gun to protect herself from you,’ he said. ‘She was isolated, she was scared. She wanted to believe in you, yet she could feel something was very wrong, so she wanted a gun in case her worst fear was correct.’
‘Wow, you’re good.’
‘My dad was a cop,’ he said. ‘But I do like the gun idea – now we just need someone to match it to besides you. Nothing is too far out. If she argued with a neighbor constantly over a barking dog, if she was forced to rebuff a flirty guy, whatever you got, I need. What do you know about Tommy O’Hara?’
‘Right! I know he called the tip line a few times.’
‘He was accused of date-raping Amy in 2005.’
I felt my mouth open, but I said nothing.
‘She was dating him casually. There was a dinner date at his place, things got out of hand, and he raped her, according to my sources.’
‘When in 2005?’
‘May.’
It was during the eight months when I’d lost Amy – the time between our New Year’s meeting and my finding her again on Seventh Avenue.
Tanner tightened his tie, twisted a diamond-studded wedding band, assessing me. ‘She never told you.’
‘I haven’t heard a single thing about this,’ I said. ‘From anyone. But especially not from Amy.’
‘You’d be surprised, the number of women who still find it a stigma. Ashamed.’
‘I can’t believe I—’
‘I try never to show up to one of these meetings without new information for my client,’ he said. ‘I want to show you how serious I am about your case. And how much you need me.’
‘This guy could be a suspect?’
‘Sure, why not,’ Tanner said too breezily. ‘He has a violent history with your wife.’
‘Did he go to prison?’
‘She dropped the charges. Didn’t want to testify, I assume. If you and I decide to work together, I’ll have him checked out. In the meantime, think of anyone who took an interest in your wife. Better if it’s someone in Carthage, though. More believable. Now—’ Tanner crossed a leg, exposed his bottom row of teeth, uncomfortably bunched and stained in comparison with his perfect picket-fence top row. He held his crooked teeth against his upper lip for a moment. ‘Now comes the harder part, Nick,’ he said. ‘I need total honesty from you, it won’t work any other way. So tell me everything about your marriage, tell me the worst. Because if I know the worst, then I can plan for it. But if I’m surprised, we’re fucked. And if we’re fucked, you’re fucked. Because I get to fly away in my G4.’
I took a breath. Looked him in the eyes. ‘I cheated on Amy. I’ve been cheating on Amy.’
‘Okay. With multiple women or just one?’
‘No, not multiple. I’ve never cheated before.’
‘So, with one woman?’ Bolt asked, and looked away, his eyes resting on a watercolor of a sailboat as he twirled his wedding band. I could picture him phoning his wife later, saying, Just once, just once, I want a guy who’s not an asshole.
‘Yes, just one girl, she’s very—’
‘Don’t say girl, don’t ever say girl,’ Bolt said. ‘Woman. One woman who is very special to you. Is that what you were going to say?’
Of course it was.
‘You do know, Nick, special is actually worse than – okay. How long?’
‘A little over a year.’
‘Have you spoken to her since Amy went missing?’
‘Yes, on a disposable cell phone. And in person once. Twice. But—’
‘In person.’
‘No one has seen us. I can swear to that. Just my sister.’
He took a breath, looked at the sailboat again. ‘And what does this—What’s her name?’
‘Andie.’
‘What is her attitude about all this?’
‘She’s been great – until the pregnancy … announcement. Now I think she’s a little … on edge. Very on edge. Very, uh … needy is the wrong word …’
‘Say what you need to say, Nick. If she’s needy, then—’
‘She’s needy. Clingy. Needs lots of reassurance. She’s a really sweet girl, but she’s young, and it’s, it’s been hard, obviously.’
Tanner Bolt went to his minibar and pulled out a Clamato. The entire fridge was filled with Clamato. He opened the bottle and drank it in three swallows, then dabbed his lips with a cloth napkin. ‘You will need to cut off, completely and forever, all contact with Andie,’ he said. I began to speak, and he aimed a palm at me. ‘Immediately.’
‘I can’t cut it off with her just like that. Out of nowhere.’
‘This isn’t something to debate. Nick. I mean, come on, buddy, I really got to say this? You cannot date around while your pregnant wife is missing. You will go to fucking prison. Now, the issue is to do it without turning her against us. Without leaving her with a vendetta, an urge to go public, anything but fond memories. Make her believe that this was the decent thing, make her want to keep you safe. How are you at breakups?’
I opened my mouth, but he didn’t wait.
‘We’ll prep you for the conversation the same way we’d prep you for a cross-exam, okay? Now, if you want me, I’ll fly to Missouri, I’ll set up camp, and we can really get to work on this. I can be with you as soon as tomorrow if you want me for your lawyer. Do you?’
‘I do.’
I was back in Carthage before dinnertime. It was strange, once Tanner swept Andie from the picture – once it became clear that she simply couldn’t stay – how quickly I accepted it, how little I mourned her. On that single, two-hour flight, I transitioned from in love with Andie to not in love with Andie. Like walking through a door. Our relationship immediately attained a sepia tone: the past. How odd, that I ruined my marriage over that little girl with whom I had nothing in common except that we both liked a good laugh and a cold beer after sex.
Of course you’re fine with ending it, Go would say. It got hard.
But there was a better reason: Amy was blooming large in my mind. She was gone, and yet she was more present than anyone else. I’d fallen in love with Amy because I was the ultimate Nick with her. Loving her made me superhuman, it made me feel alive. At her easiest, she was hard, because her brain was always working, working, working – I had to exert myself just to keep pace with her. I’d spend an hour crafting a casual e-mail to her, I became a student of arcana so I could keep her interested: the Lake Poets, the code duello, the French Revolution. Her mind was both wide and deep, and I got smarter being with her. And more considerate, and more active, and more alive, and almost electric, because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was no plateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the same result.
Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That was both our making and undoing. Because I couldn’t handle the demands of greatness. I began craving ease and averageness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, I realized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. I had pretended to be one kind of man and revealed myself to be quite another. Worse, I convinced myself our tragedy was entirely her making. I spent years working myself into the very thing I swore she was: a righteous ball of hate.
On the flight home, I’d looked at Clue 4 for so long, I’d memorized it. I wanted to torture myself. No wonder her notes were so different this time: My wife was pregnant, she wanted to start over, return us to our dazzling, happy aliveness. I could picture her running around town to hide those sweet notes, eager as a schoolgirl for me to get to the end – the announcement that she was pregnant with my child. Wood. It had to be an old-fashioned cradle. I knew my wife: It had to be an antique cradle. Although the clue wasn’t quite in an expectant-mother tone.
Picture me: I’m a girl who is very bad
I need to be punished, and by punished, I mean had
It’s where you store goodies for anniversary five
Pardon me if this is getting contrived!
A good time was had right here at sunny midday
Then out for a cocktail, all so terribly gay.
So run there right now, full of sweet sighs,
And open the door for your big surprise.
I was almost home when I figured it out. Store goodies for anniversary five: Goodies would be something made of wood. To punish is to take someone to the woodshed. It was the woodshed behind my sister’s house – a place to stow lawn-mower parts and rusty tools – a decrepit old outbuilding, like something from a slasher movie where campers are slowly killed off. Go never went back there; she’d often joked of burning it down since she moved into the house. Instead, she’d let it get even more overgrown and cobwebbed. We’d always joked that it would be a good place to bury a body.
It couldn’t be.
I drove across town, my face numb, my hands cold. Go’s car was in the driveway, but I slipped past the glowing living room window and down the steep downhill slope, and I was soon out of her sight range, out of sight of anyone. Very private.
Back to the far back of the yard, on the edge of the tree line, there was the shed.
I opened the door.
Nonononono.