Page 88 of Wrong Mail

"Paranoid?" he says, cutting me off.

"That isn't what I was going to say."

"But you were thinking it."

I don't tell him Henry sent me a kind note and stepped out of our lives before any of this happened.

Instead, I look at my husband and do the sum I've been doing for a week, the one I can't stop doing. Chris named David to save himself. That's the simple answer, the clean one.

But there's a harder answer, and it's been in the room since the birthday, since the hospital, since a name on a phone at seven in the evening. Maybe Chris named David because Chris, brutal and stupid and cornered, saw something true. Maybe Chris knew exactly whose name to reach for.

“Listen, David, this isn't about Henry. It's about Chris."

“What? You believe him over me?” He's watching my face do the thing it does, the thing he can't stand. "You think I did this. That I had an affair with Julia and then hurt her to keep her quiet. Right?" He pauses. "Hell, I bet you even think I had something to do with the Ericksons."

I sigh. "I don't think anything," I say, which is a lie, and we both hear it. Outside, the rain beats harder against the glass. On the muted television, Chris keeps grinning out of the wrong photograph, as if he knows something the rest of us don't.

Chapter Thirty

The cellphone that rings the next morning is mine. The number is a Portland one. I almost don't answer because every 503 number has started to feel like a hand reaching north for my husband.

David's been gone since seven.

He didn't tell me who he was seeing. Only that it had something to do with the board.

Before he left, he kissed the side of my head like a man boarding a train. I let him go without asking the real question. Because I've become a person who doesn't ask.

And I'm ashamed of her.

So I'm alone in the kitchen when the unknown number calls.

It's not quite ten in the morning. Rain taps at the windows. The house is quiet around me.

I answer already braced.

"Is this Mallory?" a woman asks. "David's wife?"

“Who’s this?”

"I'm Elaine." She says it like it should be enough, and it is. "I hope you don't mind me calling. I got your number from Sophie." I've never spoken to Elaine. However, I've seen her in the corner of Sophie's video calls, moving through the house, calling Sophie to dinner. David says her name like a place he left behind years ago. "I've been trying to reach David since last night. He's not answering me. He's very good at not answering when it matters."

"Yeah, he's dealing with a lot right now. He's out. Can I have him call you back?"

"No need. I expect you know the answer." Something in her voice gives her away. Then I hear the soft clink of ice against glass. "Sophie sent me a link from some Seattle station. A missing woman on your road, and a man on the phone naming a doctor. She wanted to know if they meant her dad." She lets that sit.

"You should probably talk to David."

Elaine draws a breath.

"I tried. That got me nowhere. No, I wanted to hear his wife's voice. I wanted to know what he's got you believing."

“Believing? He didn't do anything," I say, and it comes out fast. She laughs, and it isn't cruel, which is worse.

"That's exactly how fast I used to say it." I hear the ice shift in her glass. "You want to know something about David, since we're finally talking. He's never been good at lying. He thinks he is. He's a surgeon. Everyone tells him he's brilliant, so he's decided he's brilliant at everything. Lying, though? He's terrible at it. He can't stand to be looked at while he does it. So he's careful instead. He gets quiet. He starts deciding what you're allowed to know, and he starts hiding money where a tired wife doesn't think to look." She goes quiet for a moment. "Have you noticed that, Mallory? How often he decides what you get to know? How often he takes things behind a closed door?"

I don't answer. I'm thinking of a study door held not quite shut. Of "someone from Portland." Of a gun I was never told about. Of four thousand dollars in cash, taken out without reason. Of all the things David has decided I don't get to know.

"That's what I thought," Elaine says.