Run Away Baby

“That’s really sweet of you, but I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

Abby sighed. “I can’t stay at your place. I have to have a real plan. I need to make Randall believe I’m gone. Disappeared. Dead. It’s the one and only way he’s going to let me go.”

“You can stay at my place and together we can come up with a plan. It would be so much easier if we were together all the time. We can’t come up with a solid plan when we only see each other once or twice a week. Right? I need your help and information about your husband and his schedule.”

“I already told you, I’m not okay with something bad happening to him.”

“No, I’m not going to kill him, but without the details and facts I don’t know where to begin. I don’t have the structure to build a plan from. We need to do this together. That’s why I need you with me.”

“Yeah, but it’s not as easy to get away from him as you think.”

“Leave him. Boom. Leave him. While he’s worrying about where you went, you and I will have the time and space to come up with a solid plan to convince him that you’re dead.”

“He’ll have every cop in the world looking for me. And I’m not sure if we’ve been careful enough that somebody might not link us to each other. I mean, look at us right now, having a conversation in the middle of the street when you’re everybody’s mailman and they all know you, and it’s broad daylight. We need to stop being careless. We shouldn’t even be talking right now.”

“No one’s home on this street right now. The whole street’s at work. I know every house. Trust me. So yeah, think about staying at my place. Tell me you’ll at least think about it.”

“If we did that, I wouldn’t be able to even step outside for a breath of fresh air without being afraid of Randall catching me. It would be exactly like my current life.”

“But we’d be together all night.”

“I’ll think about it. Now really, I need to go.”

“Okay. Thank you.” He refrained from kissing Abby goodbye, even though anyone watching couldn’t have missed what had just happened.

Chapter 32

It was a typical Friday night. Randall and Abby were on the Lorbmeers’ boat. The Reeds were there and another couple Abby had only met a few times: Bobby and Bobbie. They were old, at least eighty, and drunk. They made Abby feel, as much as anything else she’d suffered, that she didn’t belong here, that she was wasting her youth. It was unnatural to be with these people, to have to speak in ways and about things that were too old for her. In protest, she was sitting alone at the front of the boat. She’d confided to Danna-Dee that she had her period and didn’t feel well. Danna-Dee had looked annoyed, like Abby was bragging about being the only still-fertile woman on the boat.

She kept waiting for the skin-curdling feel of Randall’s hand on her back. To Randall, her going off by herself was like wearing a sandwich board advertising her lack of class. Her youth was appreciated, but never her immaturity. She kept telling herself to get up and mingle, but her body overruled her brain. For the time being, Papa Rottzy was talking to Clark about something and was distracted from her antisocial behavior. She wanted to enjoy it while it lasted.

Feeling momentarily invisible, she looked out at the whitecaps, imagining flinging herself overboard and discreetly swimming to shore. Would she get sucked beneath the boat? Would everyone hear a big splash? Would they see her fall in and throw down a life preserver? Well, that would be embarrassing.

How else did people disappear? She spun the diamond bracelet on her wrist, thinking. She could burn to death, but then she would have to find some other body to stick in the rubble. She’d have to worry about all kinds of things, like dental records and making sure her body double was the right height. No way. It sounded horrifying. She certainly wasn’t going to kill some innocent person just to carry out a plan that might or might not work. If anyone should die it was Randall, not someone she didn’t even know.

Abby rubbed her temples, nauseous, resenting that these were the kinds of daydreams she had. She spun the bracelet around again. It was a bangle bracelet with a little hinge that opened and snapped shut. She thought it looked like something from the mall, but it had probably cost $15,000. She felt like chucking it in the water. This desire was built into everything Randall had ever given her.

He’d been in serious repair mode lately. Present after present. The cabin was gone and she actually thought she’d detected a moment of regret in his eyes when they’d sat at the closing table and passed the keys to its new owners. So little time had passed since they’d received them that they still had the previous realtor’s tag attached to them: 793 Wild Strawberry Lane. It had been hers just long enough for her to miss it now.

She twisted a little, scratching her shoulder and scanning to make sure Randall was still busy. It was easier to think when he wasn’t glaring at her. He and Clark were still engrossed in their conversation.

Charlie had said that disappearing was the easiest thing. Don’t do anything. Just – poof – disappear. The problem with that plan was that it only covered the actual disappearance. What she wanted was a whole new life.

“I wouldn’t mind a little cottage like that. Just for me. Once I’m gone,” she whispered.

“Are you talking to yourself, Sugartitties?” asked Randall.

“Hi,” she said flatly.

“Come back to the party,” he said, closing his hand around her upper arm and leading her back to the group.

“You’re just in time for Scramble,” said Danna-Dee. Abby had always found it ironic that she mispronounced a game about spelling.

“Is this the magnetic board you were telling me about?” asked old lady Bobbie.

“It sure is. It makes it so much easier playing on the boat.”