As the kids buckle in, Carson reminds me that it’s Monday and the dads will be watching the game in the media room with the rest of the husbands when he gets there, and who plans a party during a Patriots game? And I tell him a single mom who doesn’t give a crap does and Dez asks if he’s allowedto say the wordcrapsince he’s not allowed to sayshitand before I can answer, Carson backs the SUV out of the garage and there is a deafening bang, crack.
“Crap!” Dex yells, and Roxie screams. I’m holding my chest, trying to absorb what just happened. I leap out of the car, realizing he’s backed up into the meat freezer and it’s fallen over onto its side with a metallic crash so loud my heart is still in my throat.
“Damn thing never got pushed back against the wall,” Carson immediately starts to say, thinking I’ll blame him and instinctively absolving himself from any liability. “Who put the emergency brake on, for Christ’s sake?” he asks. Although it happened so fast, I could see he was trying to push the gas and the car wasn’t moving and when he released the brake, it jolted back. Unbelievable. Nobody answers, and he knows it was Roxie because she’s still learning.
“I got it,” I practically yell in a panic, rushing over to the freezer. “Just pull up,” I say, desperately trying to distract him. He stands outside the driver’s-side door with the car running and looks at it. To my absolute horror, I see the impact has broken the lock and the tarp Tia is wrapped in has tumbled out ever so slightly. I kneel next to it and try to push the tarp back in, telling him to just pull up and around, for God’s sake.
He can’t tell what’s inside, but if he comes closer, maybe he’ll try to help or ask questions.
“Fine, jeez,” he says, getting back in the car, but Dez jumps out and comes right up behind me before I even know he’s there.
“Barbies,” he says matter-of-factly, pointing to a lock of silky blond hair that has poked out the crease in the tarp.
“Jesus,” I say. “Get back in the car. We’re late.” I’m holdingback tears, and a full-blown panic attack is threatening to take over.
“I wanna see,” he says.
“It’s just old toys I stored in there—I meant to bring them to Goodwill. Please get in. We’re going.” My whole body is shaking from the surging adrenaline, and I try to keep my back to him and not panic. Dez shrugs and gets back in the truck while I push the heavy tarp back inside the freezer with trembling hands and hook the broken padlock back around the metal clasp. “Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter, my mind reeling, silently pleading for Carson not to exit the car and come over. It won’t lock now, but it will keep it closed at least. I rush back to the passenger seat and Carson backs up, pulls around the fallen freezer, and drives off, closing the garage door behind us.
He’s clueless. Thank Christ. He’s just flipping radio stations and asking if Dez is excited for cake. I try to breathe and keep my eyes out the passenger window, focusing hard on the falling rain in a bid not to start bawling my head off.
“We should call and get that thing hauled away. It takes up too much space and we don’t even use it.”
“Yes,” I agree too eagerly, and he gives me a side glance and then raises his eyebrows in an “okay then” expression. “I’ll call tomorrow morning. Just park outside tonight,” I say, so grateful it was his idea to get rid of it and not mine—not some suspicious thing I did. He just casually thinks we should get rid of it. Yes, fuck yes, we should. I will move Tia after everyone is asleep and tomorrow we’ll have the freezer eliminated as evidence.
The drive is uneventful. Carson explains to Roxie that she doesn’t need to put the emergency brake on when she’sparked in the garage on a flat surface and then lets it go and hums to a Journey song. Roxie is on her phone. Dez is asking if he can have sodaandcake,and I’m thinking about how little time I have to fix this so I don’t end up spending the rest of my life in prison.
How can I move her without being seen? Everyone has a Ring camera these days. I can’t just drive her somewhere in the middle of the night—it would be completely out of character and suspicious no matter what story I came up with. Everyone is paying attention to my demeanor because of my relationship to Tia. Of course they are. I can’t make one misstep.
Carson works from home half the time, which makes it harder to plan because I never know his schedule, and he doesn’t always know where he’ll be working—whether he’ll be called into a client meeting or can work from home—sometimes until that morning. But somehow, I have to find a window of time when the kids are at school and he’s gone, and then what?
“Do you go into the office tomorrow?” I ask him.
“Well, I don’t know if I should. Will you be okay?”
“I’m completely fine. I was just asking because maybe you could drop Dez at school if you are,” I say. I’m hoping the little push will make him offer—that would give me some certainty of a space of time I can be alone.
“Don’t know yet. I have a lunch with some bigwig buyer who hasn’t confirmed a time, so I might need to prep at home until they let me know. I can take him, though,” he says.
Shit. I need more than a forty-minute school drop. A client lunch is usually long and boozy when Carson calls thema “bigwig,” so maybe I can do it then. If I can push Morrison off a little longer and he doesn’t show up at the house. God, this is crazy.
“Thanks,” I say quietly, and then Carson makes a turn onto the charming covered bridge that I have always marveled at, with its weathered spruce timber and metal gable roof, and as we cross over the Connecticut River, something is set into motion.
There is a picnic area on the bank below the bridge, and I remember last time I was there—that cookout a couple years ago. All of our friends were there, friends of friends and some I didn’t know, and I’ll never forget it because that’s when I should have known. I sat on a picnic table with a checkered cloth and drank a glass of prosecco while the kids threw a football and the guys stood around the grill poking at hot dogs and talking about gold or some boring thing, and I saw Tia go and fix herself a drink from the mimosa bar Kitty Wilson insisted on setting up on a folding table down by the water. That was the moment: when Tia passed Ray at the grill and touched his back, her hand lingering, as she asked him if he wanted her to get him anything. He said “No, thanks,” but her hand remained and then gave a little intimate squeeze before she made her way to the bar. I didn’t clock it then.
But none of that really matters now. What matters is I know exactly where I need to go. I know how to get rid of a body. By the end of the day tomorrow, this will all be over.
Chapter Ten
Regan
“A birthday party from hell, poor kid,” one of the caterers jokes as they try to maneuver food trays and equipment through the pouring rain and safely into my kitchen. They have to dodge Hallie as she spins in her birthday tutu, unperturbed, and still over the moon that all of her friends are coming even though the bounce house had to be canceled.
I give the caterers an apologetic look and tell them where they can set up the bar and chafing dishes. Then I take advantage of the short amount of time I have before guests brave the weather and start trickling in. Kids’ birthdays are equal parts squealing ten-year-olds and tipsy parents. Most of us hire an attendant to run the games and cake patrol so we can take photos and enjoy the moment, and once you experience the luxury of this particular approach to kids’ events, it’s hard togo back. So I let Kathy “the party princess” deal with all the work and duck into my bedroom.
First, I check inside the en-suite medicine cabinet to make sure I’ve hidden all my prescriptions and none of the moms can come snooping in here. I can just see Vicky Wallen snapping a photo of all the shit I take and posting it to Instagram. That’s probably unfair, maybe I’m just paranoid, but I worry every day that Hallie could be taken from me if I can’t keep this panic under control, if I can’t manage this depression enough to keep getting out of bed and at least going through the motions so she doesn’t feel the weight of any of this.
Once I’m satisfied everything is secure, I sit at the edge of my bed, open my laptop and check one more time if anyone has responded to my many posts on message boards from Wallingford to Windsor Locks—and any surrounding areas I could find with community boards or social media pages with local groups that let me join. Any site where I could cut and paste my plea to anyone who has seen Jack—with a photo of him smiling at a gastropub in Jersey we went to once. I don’t remember why I took the photo, but he looks happy in it. I click around, looking at Nextdoor.com pages, Facebook and even a page Andi told me about on Craigslist called “Missed Connections,” which is a terribly sad place where people who met someone at a concert or an outlet mall or Tom Thumb post a short appeal, hoping that random person they wished they connected with will think to look at this bizarre place on the internet to find them back.
