My Lovely Wife

So far, Jenna has not displayed any of the same rebelliousness. She does not try to be difficult. Jenna does something because she wants to, not because it will make someone else angry, and I admire that quality in her. She also smiles a lot, which makes me smile back and then give her everything she wants. I have no idea what I am missing, and because I can’t figure it out, Jenna scares the hell out of me.

Soccer is not my game. I learned the rules only when Jenna started to play, so I am not much help. I cannot tell her what to do or how to do better, like I could if she played tennis. It’s only by some stroke of luck that she plays goalie, so at least I know her job is keep the other team from scoring. Beyond that, all I can do is encourage her.

“You can do it!”

“Nice job!”

“Great effort!”

I often wonder if I am embarrassing her. I think so, but I do it anyway, because my only other option is to watch her games in silence. That seems cruel. I would rather be embarrassing. When she blocks the ball from going in the net, I lose my mind. She smiles but waves her hand, telling me to shut up. In these moments, I do not think about anything but my daughter and her soccer game.

Millicent interrupts by sending a text.

Don’t worry.

This is all she says.

On the field, the kids are yelling. The other team tries to score, and my daughter has to block the ball again. She misses.

Jenna turns around, her back to me, hands on hips. I want to tell her it’s no big thing, everyone makes mistakes, but that would be exactly the wrong thing. All parents say that, and all kids hate it. I did.

Jenna looks straight down at the grass. A teammate walks up and pats her on the shoulder, says something. Jenna nods and smiles, and I wonder what her teammate said. I think it is the same thing I would’ve said, but it meant more.

Play resumes. I look back down at my phone. Millicent has not said anything else.

I pull up the news and gasp.

The medical examiner’s report states that Lindsay has been dead only a few weeks.

Somewhere, somehow, Millicent kept her alive for almost a year.

* * *

• • •

I have an urge to run. To where, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. To do what, I have no idea. I just want to run anywhere.

But I cannot leave Jenna here, alone at a soccer game with no one to cheer for her. I cannot leave my daughter. Or my son.

When Jenna’s game is over, I pick Rory up at the club and the three of us have our usual postsport pizza followed by frozen yogurt. It is difficult for me to stay with the conversation. They notice, because they are my kids—they see me every day and know when something is wrong. This makes me wonder what they think about Millicent.

Except she never looks like anything is wrong. For the past year, she has been calm, even for her. She’d mentioned finding the next woman a month ago.

Everything falls into place. She didn’t mention the next one until after she had killed Lindsay.

For me, the past year had been filled with work, the kids’ activities, chores around the house, arguing about bills, and getting the car washed. Nothing stood out. No single event, day, memory, was anything I would remember twenty, thirty, or forty years from now. Jenna’s soccer team almost went to the city finals but didn’t. Millicent had another good year at work. Gas prices went up and then down, a local election came and went, and my favorite dry cleaner went out of business and I had to find another.

Or maybe the dry cleaner closed two years ago. It all runs together.

During the same time, Millicent had been keeping Lindsay alive. Holding her captive.

The images running through my mind range from disturbing to barbaric. I envision the kinds of things I have heard about in the news, when women are found after years of being held captive by some deranged man. I have never heard of a woman doing this. And as a man, I cannot imagine doing this myself.

I leave the kids at home and drive to the open house where Millicent is working. It’s just a few blocks from ours; the drive takes minutes. Two cars are out front, hers and one other, an SUV.

I wait.

Twenty minutes later, she comes out of the house with a couple younger than us. The woman is wide-eyed. The man is smiling. As Millicent shakes their hand, she sees me out of the corner of her eye. I can feel her green eyes land on me, but she does not pause, does not break her fluid movement.

The couple walk back to their car. Millicent stays in front of the house, watching them go. She is wearing navy blue today, a slim skirt and heels, and a pin-striped blouse. Her red hair is straight and cut sharp at her jawline. It was much longer when we met and has grown shorter each year, as if she were committed to cutting off half an inch at regular intervals. It would not surprise me to learn that this is exactly what she has done. I am not sure anything about Millicent would surprise me now.

She waits until the SUV is gone before turning to me. I get out of my car and walk up to the house.

“You’re upset,” she says.

I stare at her.

She motions to the house. “Let’s go inside.”

We go in. The entryway is huge, the ceilings more than twenty feet high. New construction, just like ours, only this one is even bigger. Everything is open and airy. and it all leads to the great room, which is where we go.

“What did you do to her? For a year, what did you do?”

Millicent shakes her head. Her hair swings back and forth. “We can’t discuss this now.”

“We have to—”

“Not here. I have an appointment.”

She walks away from me, and I follow.

* * *

• • •

A few months after we married, Millicent got pregnant. It was a surprise in some ways, because we’d talked about waiting, but not completely. We were not always careful about using protection. We had discussed various methods of birth control but always came back to condoms. Millicent did not like taking anything with hormones. They all made her too emotional.

When Millicent was late, we both suspected she was pregnant. We confirmed it with a test at home and one at the doctor’s office. Later that night, I could not sleep. We sat up for a long time, sitting on our secondhand couch in our run-down rented house. I curled up next to her, my head on her stomach, and I started worrying about everything.

“What if we screw it up?” I said.

“We won’t.”

“We need money. How are we going—”

“We’ll manage.”

“I don’t want to just manage. I want to prosper. I want—”

“We will.”

I raised my head to look at her. “Why are you so sure?”

“Why are you so unsure?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just—”

“Worried.”

“Yes.”

She sighed and gently pushed my head back down to her stomach. “Stop being silly,” she said. “We’ll be fine. We’ll be better than fine.”

Minutes earlier, I had felt more like a child than a soon-to-be father.

She made me stronger.

We have come a long way from those early days when we had no money. I had gone back to school to get my MBA, but I was halfway through when she got pregnant. We needed money, so I withdrew from the program and returned to what I know best: tennis. It was my one talent, the thing I could do better than anyone else I grew up with. The tennis court was where I shone. Not bright enough go pro, but bright enough to start offering private lessons.