Husband by Choice

Chantel didn’t know Meri.

“Nothing is missing from this house,” he said, completely calm now. He knew his wife. She was all about leaving messages in code that only the two of them would understand. He couldn’t expect Chantel to get it. “I’ve opened every one of her drawers. Been through every room.”

He’d had an hour and a half between the time he’d pulled into the driveway and Chantel had shown up.

“What about the garage? Maybe she had something hidden out there.”

“I checked.”

“Check again. She wouldn’t have risked coming here without reason. She wouldn’t have cleaned if she didn’t want you to know she’d been here. And it seems to me that if she was thinking about coming home she’d have at least left a note. This almost borders on cruel, Max. Which you tell me she isn’t. So she’s telling you something. Go find it.”

So while Caleb watched his movie about talking cars and Chantel made dinner, Max went through the house again, opening not just Meri’s drawers, but all of them.

It was waiting for him in his top desk drawer. Where he couldn’t miss it the very next time he sat down at his desk.

That was something he hadn’t done in a few days, but used to do daily. Back when reading the news on the internet while his wife made breakfast had seemed important.

With a feeling of dread weighing him down, he picked up the little tin in the drawer. But he didn’t need to open it to know.

He checked anyway. He wasn’t sure why.

And for the first time since Meri had disappeared, he started to believe that it was just as Chantel had been saying all along.

She’d left him because she wanted to.

Meri didn’t want to be married to him anymore.

The missing money told him so.

She and her private, covert messages. Like keys under a car seat. She’d insisted on having predetermined ways they could communicate with each other without words, because she’d known what he hadn’t. That her past wasn’t just going to disappear.

She’d tried to tell him about the world in which she lived. A world where you might have to rely on coded messages, clues that no one else would understand, to communicate. A world where things were nothing like what they seemed on the surface.

He’d called her words paranoia.

She’d described a world where your husband, your protector, a decorated detective, could beat you and hound you and stalk you and you were afraid to say or do anything in case you were seen or overheard.

He’d figured her for a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder.

All along she’d known that she wasn’t the least bit delusional.

He got it now.

Just as he got that he was too late.

Meri had left him because she chose to do so. Because she was afraid of what impact her past would have on Caleb. Exactly as she’d said in the note she’d left in her van.

And she wanted him to move on.

Taking their anniversary money was a message he couldn’t misinterpret. Nor could he convince himself that that missing money was anything other than what it was. There couldn’t possibly be a way anyone else would have known that money was there or forced her to take it.

If she’d needed money she could have accessed her bank account. Or their joint one. Or taken the emergency cash from the house. They’d had a thousand bucks stashed for “just in case.” It was still there. He’d already checked.

No, she’d taken their anniversary money.

Because she didn’t plan to have a distant anniversary with him.

She’d let him know she’d been there, not by anything as personal as a note, but by cleaning—a chore he could have hired someone to do.