br /> “Awe. You’re so cute. You’re not a sock. But seriously, Abby, I don’t think it would be that hard. People disappear all the time. Things happen. It’s tragic, but it’s true.”
“So I’m going to… what? Get kidnapped? Drown? What do you have in mind?”
“The perfect thing about disappearing,” said Charlie, “is that aside from getting some money together, you don’t need to do much else.”
“How do you figure?” Abby asked. “There’s so much more to it.”
“Not at all. Most big decisions take a lot of planning. Like, if you’re going to get divorced, you’ve got to file some paperwork, go to court, get a lawyer, probably buy some courtroom suit to wear… In your case, you’d get your hair done, maybe get your nails done. Right? Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess?”
“Sure you would. Then you’d have a pile of legal contracts to read. Hell, you’d probably have a team of lawyers and so would your husband, right? And then there’d be filing fees. All of that. Right?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t say ‘I guess’. I’m right, right?”
“Yes,” Abby admitted. “It all sounds pretty complicated.”
“It would be! And let’s say you were going to move. Did you and your old man ever move from one house to another?”
“No.”
“You lived in his place the whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“You just moved right into his place?”
“Yes. So?”
“Well, picture it with me for a minute: You see some new mansion that’s even bigger. Even more mansiony. You and Daddy Warbucks gotta have it.”
“I thought he and I were splitting up?”
“Hear me out. This is a different scenario now.”
“Okay. Sorry,” she said.
“So first you’ve gotta put your house up for sale. So you get a real estate agent, and maybe some lawyers again, just because, and they’re going to tell you to put on a new roof first, so you get a roofer, and then you’re going to need all new windows, and that’s all just to get you out of the old place. We haven’t even started talking about everything you’ve got to do to the new place. And you’re going to have to hire a moving company.”
“What does this have to do with me leaving Randall?”
“Listen, Abby-girl. I’m getting to that. I’m telling you that most big decisions in life require a whole lot of planning. But disappearing is different.”
“Okay.”
“If you are going to disappear, as in – poof – be gone, well then, you need to do everything as normal as can be. In other words, you don’t need to do anything at all.”
Abby smelled the rose again and added a little more water to it. “Do you have any sugar? I think if I add some sugar to the water, that will keep it alive longer.”
Charlie shook his head. “Once you disappear, it’s important that everything about your life looks normal, right? No red flags. Nothing unusual that would make a person wonder if there’s more to the story. Come over here and sit by me.” He patted his sofa.
Abby stayed where she was in his kitchen. “Randall’s a lot older than me. I’m kind of just waiting for him to die. Of natural causes, I should add.”
“That could take a long time. You need an actual plan.”
“I’m listening.”