Page 25 of Dear Wife

Martina looks up from her mug, her brows sliding into a frown. “And me, what?”

“How much do you charge for telling me where to find this Jorge person?”

Martina looks at me for a moment, letting the silence linger. Her expression is that of someone making a hard decision, and I know what she’s thinking. How much is the information worth to me? How much is too much? Your words run through my head—no such thing as a free lunch—and I hate you even more for being right.

“Las Tortas Locas on Jimmy Carter Boulevard,” she says finally, unfolding her legs and pushing to a stand, walking with her mug to the door. “Consider it your housewarming gift.”

JEFFREY

A pounding on the front door lurches me out of a dead sleep. I sit up on the couch and rub my face, blinking into the room. The only light comes from a thin slice of morning sunshine where the curtains don’t quite meet, blanching a strip of carpet. I check my watch—11:00 a.m. I’ve been asleep for all of two hours.

The past two days have been a shit show. Coming home to find Sabine missing, discovering she’s been screwing around, my surprise rendezvous with her lover, Trevor accidentally spilling the beans about the pregnancy. By the time I drove across town to Sabine’s client, then did the same with her boss, every muscle in my body was knotted up, my skin vibrating with fury. Corey and Lisa told me exactly what they told the detective: that Sabine never showed up for the showing.

There’s another pounding at the door, followed by three rapid-fire rings of the doorbell. I push off the couch and stumble to the door.

Ingrid doesn’t look like she’s slept much, either, but she’s cleaned up since the last time I saw her. She’s fresh from the shower; her hair is still damp, the ends gathered in wet clumps, dripping onto her dress, some awful blue-and-white thing. She barrels into my foyer, and I catch a whiff of her perfume, cloying and sweet.

She takes in my T-shirt and rumpled sweats, the same ones I was wearing the last time she was here, and frowns. “Why aren’t you dressed? Didn’t you get my messages?”

I wince, pressing down on my throbbing temples with a thumb and middle finger. Ingrid’s volume, louder than usual, isn’t helping what’s pounding in my head like a hangover. And then there’s that constant edge to her voice. I can’t take much of her on a good day; now, after two bad days in a row, she’s chipping away at my last threads of civility.

“Clearly not.”

“Well, go upstairs and change. We’re due at the police department in thirty minutes. The detective has an update.”

My heart bangs a slow, heavy beat. An update could be anything. Her car, found wrapped around a tree. Her body, found rotting in a field of soybeans. Her killer, on the loose or locked behind bars.

“What kind of update?”

“I don’tknow, Jeffrey. He wouldn’t tell me anything other than he had some news.” She chews on a corner of her lips, which are already red and cracked. Her eyes are fat pink pillows. “What if he—”

She stops herself before she can finish, and I don’t touch it. A detective calling with news he wouldn’t share over the phone can’t be good. I turn and head upstairs for a quick shower.

Nine and a half minutes later I’m crammed into the passenger’s seat of Ingrid’s Acura, barreling south toward the police station. Traffic is light, but on the other side of her windshield, it’s gearing up to be another blistering day. I turn the air-conditioning to high and aim the vents at my face. Trevor’s news last night lit me on fire, and I’ve been burning up ever since.

“I suppose you knew about the baby.”

Ingrid stares straight ahead, hands at ten and two, but she nods. “Sabine and I—”

“Tell each other everything. I know.” I glare out the side window at the storefronts flashing by and wish I’d thought to bring sunglasses. “What else have the two of you been keeping from me?”

“She’s been talking to a lawyer. She was going to ask you for a divorce this weekend.”

The news hits me like an anvil; not that Sabine was planning to leave me—Trevor already told me as much—but at the implication she saw a lawyer. Something that’s easy to verify. I don’t need to be a detective to know how it makes me look—like I have a motive.

I snort. “That’s convenient, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The timing. Sabine disappears, pregnant with another man’s child, right as she’s about to file for divorce from a husband who once—and only once, so help me God—lost his temper. If I were the detective, I’d be calling me in for questioning, too.” I twist on my seat, turning to face Ingrid. “Is that what this is? Is that why you came by the house, to haul me in for questioning? Did he send you to lure me to the station?”

“I’m pretty sure the detective can haul you in himself if he wants to.” She gives me the same guilty side-eye Sabine does, right before she admits to having ruined my favorite sweater in the laundry. “But to be perfectly honest, I came to get you because I can’t do this alone. Sit in some sterile room at the police station while the detective tells me something awful has happened to my sister. I’m terrified. And I couldn’t bring Mom. She wouldn’t understand, and even if she did, I can’t deal with her and bad news at the same time. As much as I hate to admit it, I need you there.”

“Why didn’t you call Trevor?”

She presses her lips together.

“You did call him. He wouldn’t come.”

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