Page 8 of Dear Wife

“She didn’t come home after her showing, and she’s not answering her phone.”

“Jesus, Jeffrey. And you’re just calling me now? What the hell have you been doing all this time?” I hear a rustling of fabric, the high-pitched squeal of bedsprings. Ingrid lives alone, in a condo a couple of miles from here, I’m sure because nobody else can stand to share a roof with her. “Who else have you called?”

“Nobody. You’re the first.” And already, I’m regretting it. Talking to Ingrid is like chewing on glass—you just know it’s going to be painful.

“Do you know the number for her boss?” I say. “She had that late showing tonight, so maybe Russ will know what’s going on.”

“Russ?” Ingrid’s voice is clipped with exasperation. “Russ moved to Little Rock in December. You should try Lisa.”

“Who?”

“Lisa O’Brien. Sabine’s boss?” She pauses for my reply, but I don’t know what to say. Sabine has a new boss? Since when? “Oh my God, do the two of you even talk? This all happened months ago.”

I huff a sigh into the phone, done pussyfooting around Ingrid’s shitty attitude. “Do you have Lisa’s phone number or not?”

“Not.” A door slams. A car engine starts. “Call the police, Jeffrey. I’m on my way.”

When early on in our relationship Sabine told me she had a twin, I remember thinking how lucky she was, how luckyIwas. Somewhere out there was a carbon copy of this woman, the yin to her lovely yang. The idea felt like a novelty. Two Sabines for the price of one.

And then I met Ingrid, and the dislike was both instant and mutual. This was right around the time they buried their father, and their mom was starting to repeat the same tired stories often enough that the sisters noticed. In those first few weeks, I attributed Ingrid’s testiness to grief, to worry. I gave her a pass.

But Ingrid was accustomed to being the most important person in her sister’s life, and she made it clear she wasn’t about to hand over the reins. Ingrid was fiercely territorial, and she treated me like a phase, an unwelcome but temporary intruder in their codependent lives. I accused Ingrid of loving her sister too much, and she accused me of not loving Sabine enough. Sabine felt caught in the middle, and from then on out, planned our lives so Ingrid and I were rarely in the same room. I’ve become a master at avoiding the woman, driving on at the first sight of her car when I’m out running errands, ducking into the next room at parties when she walks through the door.

I eye her now across the kitchen table, taking in her dust-bunny hair and shiny, rosacea-covered cheeks as she makes notes on a yellow pad of paper. Fat, black pen strokes scratching out the name of Sabine’s firm, her height and hair color, the number for her cell. This woman looks nothing like my wife. She is the angry, ogre version of Sabine, the kind that bathes in swamp water and gnaws on bones under a bridge. Her face is scored with pillow marks, angry purple lines in the shape of a cross.

I sigh, wishing I was the one with a pen and paper, wishing there was something I coulddo. My legs bounce under the table. We are sitting here, waiting for the police to arrive, and I don’t have any patience. I want somebody to go out there and find my wife.

“There’s got to be an explanation,” I say.

Ingrid shushes me. Actually flicks her fingers in my direction and hissesshh, never once looking up from her scribbles. Upside down, her handwriting looks just like Sabine’s big, messy loops.

“Answer me, will you? I said there’s got to be an explanation for wherever Sabine is. Where she went. I’m terrified something happened to her.”

Ingrid grunts, and the sound sparks like flint in my gut.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, you did. You grunted. If you have something to say to me, just say it. Don’t grunt at me from the other side of the table.” The words come out just as angry, just as venomous as I feel. It’s the middle of the night, my wife is unaccounted for and the sloppier version of Sabine is sitting across from me, looking to start a fight. I don’t know what it is about these Stanfield sisters, but they sure know how to scratch and pluck at my nerves.

“Jeffrey, I didn’tsayanything.”

“No, but you wanted to. So go for it. This is your big chance. Say what you wanted to say.”

“Fine. You want me to say it?” She slaps down the pen, pressing it under her fingers. “Where’s Sabine?”

“I’m the one who called you, remember? Why are you asking me?”

Ingrid rolls her beady snake eyes. “Comeon, Jeffrey. My sister and I talk every day. We tell each othereverything.”

This isn’t exactly news. On a good day, Ingrid and Sabine will spend hours on the phone, discussing the minutia of everything from the tacos they ate for lunch to their favorite brand of tampons. Last weekend they killed an entire afternoon deliberating on the consistency of their mother’s latest bowel movements, and whether changing her diet might slow down the dementia that’s eating up her brain. Iknowthey talk ten times a day. Most of the time, I’m witness to it.

“Well, clearly she didn’t tell you where she was going tonight.”

“Or maybe she was unable to.”

For a second I don’t understand, a fleeting moment ofshe thinks something bad happened, too, and then I go completely still. Ingrid thinks something bad happened all right, but she also thinks I had something to do with it.

---