The Perfect Wife

Tim’s eyes hold yours, very still. “That seemed to be their thinking, yes.”

“Tim—” you begin, just as he continues, “It was crazy, of course. You would never do something like that, never. Integrity is very important to you.”

He sounds utterly certain. But then, Tim is confident in all his opinions.

Once again, you find yourself wondering what could be on that iPad.

“It’s clear to me what must have happened,” he adds. “You were—are—an exceptionally beautiful woman. Someone stole a picture of you for their online profile, that’s all.”

“But I’m also quite distinctive,” you object. “Isn’t the whole point of catfishing—that’s the word, isn’t it?—that you find someone who looks a bit like you? Otherwise, when the real person turns up, it’s obvious they’ve been lying.”

He shrugs. “They could say they’d changed their hairstyle. Or used an old photo. Women do that all the time, don’t they?”

“I guess,” you say doubtfully.

“I ran image-recognition software,” he adds. “The police said they would, but I had no faith in them by then. So I hired server space from Google and did it myself. There were thousands of pictures of you online—mostly on news sites, of course, because of your disappearance. But not a single photo on any dating site. Whoever used it must have taken it down. But there was so much media interest by then, the authorities were under pressure to justify all the money they’d wasted on the investigation. So rather than admit they’d been incompetent, they decided to charge me. After that, of course, they were even less interested in looking at alternative explanations.”

“Could I…” You hesitate. “One of those articles suggested I might have killed myself.”

“Again, I just don’t believe it—even if you could have done that to me, you would never have abandoned Danny.”

You feel the same. From what you recall, while mothers of autistic children did take their own lives sometimes, they almost always killed their disabled child, too, rather than abandon them to an uncertain world. You remember one heartbreaking story about a mother who jumped off a bridge along with her six-year-old autistic son. When they were found, she still had her arms wrapped tightly around him, the maternal urge to protect unshakable even as she took them both to their deaths.

Though Mike would probably say it was just her emotional brain and her reptilian brain wanting two different things, you reflect.

“It’s true you’d been a little depressed,” Tim adds. “But things were getting better—we’d finally decided on the right treatment for Danny, gotten him into a good school…You were feeling more optimistic about the future. We both were. You went surfing, that’s all. You even took your board with you. Why would you have done that, if you were intending to kill yourself?”

“I took medication for my depression,” you say as another memory returns to you. “Citalopram and lurasidone. Dr. Fenwick prescribed them.”

“That’s right.” Tim hesitates. “Though you didn’t always take them. Not regularly. They kept you on an even keel, but they also muffled any positive feelings you had—made it almost impossible for you to work creatively. After your disappearance, the police found a stash of loose pills in the bathroom. You’d been removing the right number from the bottle each day, so I’d think you were still taking them, then hiding them.”

You stare at him. “So I was clinically depressed? If I had meds I wasn’t actually taking—”

He shakes his head. “If anything, you were excited—you’d had an idea for a new project. I think that must have been why you stopped taking them—you really wanted to give it your best shot.”

That makes sense, you think. But then a fact slots neatly into your brain. Side effects of citalopram in women include low libido and loss of sexual function.

If you were having an affair, might that, rather than a new project, explain your excitement? And also explain why you didn’t take those particular meds?

“What was the project?” you ask.

Tim shrugs. “I don’t know. You never talked about ideas until they were finished. And it hardly seemed the most important thing, afterward. Whatever it was, it’s still in your studio, I guess. At the beach house.”

You understand those last texts between the two of you now.

Things still going well here. OK if I stay another day?

And his reply. Sure. As long as you like.

Even so, the picture you’re getting of your marriage is a mixed one. A woman who pretended to her husband she was taking antidepressants when she wasn’t. A husband who counted the pills in the bottle. Periods apart, focusing on work. Were these the ordinary, healthy accommodations of marriage, the give-and-take of a relationship that had settled down for the long term? Or the tiny cracks that signaled the beginnings of a broken partnership?

Tim says softly, “We were happy, Abs. So happy. Perhaps our marriage wasn’t entirely conventional, but what marriage is, when you look under the hood? I’m not always an easy man to live with—I know that. But I never wanted some colorless Silicon Valley wife who spent her days having hair treatments and planning fundraisers. I met that kind of woman all the time, and they bored me stiff. You, on the other hand…Right from the start, you captivated me. Sure, we didn’t always agree on everything, but that was part of the fun. Whenever you were around, there were sparks. You were—you were alive.”

An unfortunate choice of word, you think ruefully. Because isn’t alive the one thing you can never truly be, now?

Outside, you hear sounds coming from the street—shouts, some kind of commotion. The entry phone starts buzzing; not regularly, but in short sharp bursts.

Tim goes to the window. “I wondered how long it would take the vultures to get here,” he mutters.

Two big, sleek vans, one from KGO-TV and one from KPIX, have pulled up outside the gates. From their roofs, satellite dishes rise up smoothly on hydraulic runners, pointing skyward like the weapons of some strange armored vehicle; the shock troops of a new kind of warfare. Men and women with video cameras on their shoulders swarm out, surrounding the gates.

“They’ll all be here soon,” he adds. “All the news stations. Then the photographers, the radio journalists…The whole fricking circus. Just like before.”

You go and put a hand on his shoulder. “At least this time you’ve got me.”

“At least I’ve got you,” he agrees. “That makes it bearable.” He puts his hand over yours.

You stay like that for several moments. Then you reach for the blinds, meaning to close them, but he stops you. “I’ll do it. It’s not me they want this time.”

He’s right. Already, seeing you at the window, lenses are swinging in your direction. Beyond the gate a reporter with her back to you, doing a piece to camera, is pushed out of the way by her own cameraman in his eagerness to get the shot. He goes down on one knee to film you, the heavy camera balanced on his shoulder, eyes intent on his viewfinder, and again you’re reminded of heavy weaponry: a fighter with a rocket launcher, crouching down to take aim.

Tim’s phone rings. He checks the caller’s name on the screen before answering.

“What?” he says curtly, then, “No. Tell them nothing.”

The person at the other end talks for a long time. You can tell from Tim’s expression that he’s getting angry. But his tone, when he eventually responds, is polite.

“Thank you, Katrina. It certainly is what I pay you for. But the answer’s still no.”

“Who was that?” you ask when he rings off.

“The woman who heads our PR agency.”

“What did she want?”

“To give me the benefit of her advice.” Tim grimaces. “She said if she picks a network and sets up an exclusive interview with you, the others won’t hound us so much. Once they know they haven’t got the scoop they move on to their next victim, apparently.”

“I’m not sure I could do an interview,” you say nervously.

“You won’t have to.” Tim reaches for his car keys. “There’s another exit at the back. We can get out that way.”

“Where will we go?”

“To the beach house. It’s a gated community—they won’t be able to get to us there.”

“What about Danny?”

“Sian can bring him after school. I’ll pack him some things.” He turns toward the staircase, then stops. “I’m glad we’re going to the beach house, actually, although obviously I wish the circumstances were different. You always loved that place.”

“Yes,” you say. “It’ll be good to see it again.”

And despite everything, you feel a little frisson of anticipation. Because, however frustrating it is to be driven from your home like this, you’re going there. To the place where it all began, or ended, or both. The place where you died.

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