Detective Hardy: She’s been missing since this past weekend.
Natalie: Oh my God. No one’s heard from her?
Detective Hardy: No.
Natalie: And you — Jesus — and you think I had something to do with it?
Detective Hardy: No, I—
Natalie: Because whatever my ex told you, it’s bullshit.
Detective Hardy: Okay. Tell me about that.
Natalie: And it was a long time ago, too. What did Conroy tell you, anyway?
Detective Hardy: Maybe you should give me your side of it.
Natalie: It was a one-time thing. And it was after we’d split up. I saw him with Charlotte, and—
Detective Hardy: Charlotte?
Natalie: The first one he went out with after we separated. I saw them at the Stamford Mall, in the parking garage. I was heading for my car and I saw them getting into his, and yeah, okay, I walked right past the car, but there’s no way he could prove it was me that keyed his Jag.
Detective Hardy: You keyed his car?
Natalie: The security video didn’t show anything.
Detective Hardy: So it wasn’t exactly an amicable split with him.
Natalie: All I’m saying is, I’ve got nothing to do with this woman going missing.
Detective Hardy: What I was about to ask you was, did Mr. Mason ever say anything about his wife that would lead you to believe he might want to harm her in any way?
Natalie: Oh, okay. Wow, I’m such an idiot. I thought—
Detective Hardy: Did he complain about her? Make disparaging remarks?
Natalie: No. He was pretty depressed a lot of the time, feeling guilty, you know? About seeing me. I mean, okay, there was the one time he said he could just kill her, but—
Detective Hardy: He said what?
Natalie: Andy said... I’m trying to remember now... but he said something like, “I could just kill her.”
Detective Hardy: He said that.
Natalie: He did. But it was more in a kidding way. Like, a figure of speech.
Detective Hardy: What was the context?
Natalie: I think they’d a fight about something. A disagreement. They’re renovating that house, right? And I think it was about picking out things for the kitchen. Brie couldn’t make up her mind about colors or taps or countertops or something. I don’t really remember, but Andy was annoyed because it was slowing the project down.
Detective Hardy: Okay. That does sound like an offhand comment. My partner wanted to kill me when we were trying to pick a paint color for our bedroom.
Natalie: I know, I’m making too much of it.
Detective Hardy: So there was nothing else along those lines.
Natalie: Not really. In fact, he said one time, about Brie, he said, and this got me thinking that maybe it wasn’t going to work out with him, and these were his exact words: “I love her to death.”
Eighteen
Andrew
I have to admit, I hadn’t seen that coming.
If I had, maybe I would have known how to react, could have prepared myself, said something that gave the impression I was thrilled with Jayne’s news. Because when someone tells you she’s pregnant, you want to look delighted. And I’m not saying I wasn’t. I believe, given a moment to get my head around what Jayne had told me, I would have been more than delighted. I would have been downright fucking thrilled. Having a child was not something we’d really talked about, but we would have gotten there eventually, and when that time had come I know I would have been on board with the idea.
But considering the kind of morning it had been — the appearance of that woman, Detective Hardy coming to the house, my relationship with Jayne seemingly on the verge of unraveling as my past came to light — I wasn’t quite in a mood to jump up and down. I should have said something along the lines of, “That’s wonderful!” or, “Oh my God, that’s great!” A simple “Wow!” might have done the trick.
What I said was, “What?”
And I imagine I looked pretty stunned when I said it.
“I’m pregnant,” Jayne said again.
I was frozen for about two seconds, then bolted forward, and, given that she was still in the chair, went down to my knees and put my arms around her for a hug. She returned the embrace, but it didn’t feel as though she was putting as much into it as I was.
I pulled away and said, “When did you find out?”
“Yesterday,” she said. “I’d done the test last weekend, peed on the stick, you know? And it was positive, but I wanted to go to the doctor first, get her two cents’ worth, before I told you. I saw her yesterday.”
“That beer,” I said. “When you came out with those two bottles, yours looked different.”
“Non-alcoholic,” she said. “I picked up a six-pack yesterday, tucked them into the back of the fridge where you wouldn’t find them.” Jayne motioned for me to stand up, which I did, then sat back in the chair across from her. “You didn’t exactly look thrilled a moment ago.”
“You caught me by surprise,” I said. “It’s been a day full of them.” I ran my hand over the top of my head and sighed. “Man. How far along?”
“About seven weeks, the doctor figures,” she said. “I think it happened the weekend we went to Mystic. Couple of days before Tyler joined us.”
My mind immediately went back to that mini-vacation. I behaved like someone released from prison. Jayne was no less insatiable.
I couldn’t help but grin. “Yeah, it could have been then. We were going to do a charter, check out the museum, but I don’t remember our leaving that B&B much.”
“I’d had this plan,” she said. “That we’d go out to dinner tonight, that I would tell you the news, but now...”
“Jayne.”
“This can’t be happening,” she said. “Not now.”
“Wait, what do you mean? You don’t want to have the baby? I thought—”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “This, whatever this is, what’s happened today. That can’t be happening.”
“Jayne, I swear, I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“What if she’s back?”
“We don’t know that it’s Brie,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense that it’s Brie.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked. “How do you know it couldn’t be?”
That was the closest she’d come to asking the question. I took a moment to consider my answer.
“Because, if that was Brie, how do we explain it? Where’s she been for six years? Why would she just pop up out of nowhere? I mean, what’s she been doing all this time? If it was really her, why’d she decide that this, of all the times she could have come back, was the right time? Did someone keep her prisoner and she finally escaped? And if that was what happened, why didn’t she go straight to the police? How does she end up showing up at our old house? There’s no rational explanation for it.”
“But it happened.”
“Something happened. Someone showed up at the house.”
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, it is your wife,” Jayne said. “She... she was abducted by aliens and they just brought her back, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know. But if it is, don’t you want it to be her?”