Page 34 of Dear Debbie

I take a deep breath and walk in the direction of his front door.

26

COOPER

I wake up at three in the morning, feeling sick to my stomach.

I don’t know if it was something I ate. Maybe it was those french fries that Debbie and I shared, because I haven’t felt quite right since then. Then again, I only ate six or seven fries. That doesn’t seem like enough to unsettle my stomach.

I sit up in bed, rubbing my abdomen with one hand and my eyes with the other. I sit there for a moment, debating if I want to attempt to throw up, and then decide against it. And that’s when I notice Debbie isn’t in bed beside me.

That’s weird.

Maybe she got sick from the french fries too. But that doesn’t explain where she went. I can see from here that she isn’t in the master bathroom. If she was feeling sick, where would she have gone?

By now, I’m too keyed up to sleep, so I stumble out of bed. All at once, a wave of dizziness hits me. The urge to vomit suddenly becomes overwhelming, and I make a mad dash for the toilet, where I empty the contents of my stomach in one impressive expulsion. I cling to the side of the toilet for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

“Debbie?” I croak.

I don’t know why I’m calling her name. She’s clearly not here. But my instinct when I’m sick is to call out for my wife.

I finally manage to get back to my feet, although I’m not as steady as I’d like. Debbie definitely is not in the bedroom. Presumably, she’s downstairs. Maybe she decided to make herself a cup of tea to settle her stomach. Actually, that sounds pretty good.

Maybe I’ll go downstairs and join her.

I don’t bother to change out of my undershirt and boxers as I make my way out into the hallway. Over the last several months, Debbie has been acting strangely. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but it’s something. Every single day since we first started living together, Debbie has made the bed after we got up for the day. Then six months ago, she suddenly stopped making the bed.

It’s not that I care if she makes the bed. Frankly, I prefer not having to wrench the blankets out from under the mattress every night. But I can’t figure out why she stopped. And when I mentioned it, she just shrugged and changed the subject.

And now she forgot my lunch this morning. And tied my tie like a kindergartner might do it.

It feels like she’s keeping something from me—like there’s some sort of unspoken distance between us that is growing wider every day. I could blame it on the secrets I’ve kept from her, but everything I’ve done recently is because of the distance.

As I walk down the stairs, clinging to the banister, I make up my mind. I’m going to come clean.

This could be a big mistake. She’s going to be pissed. She might even decide to leave me. I wouldn’t blame her, but the right thing to do is to be honest. Get everything out in the open, and then we’ll figure out how to deal with it.

I know how it looks. But I swear, I’m not a bad guy. And I want to be a good husband. That’s all I want. I just…I screwed up. I love Debbie. Isn’t that what matters?

But when I get to the bottom of the stairs, the first floor is completely dark. I click on the light switch at the base of the stairs and look around, but there’s nobody here. Debbie isn’t in the kitchen having a cup of tea. She’s not here at all.

“Debbie?” I call out, just to be sure.

Nope. Nothing.

Even so, I wander the first floor of my house for several minutes, just confirming she’s not asleep on the sofa or something. But there’s no sign of my wife anywhere.

Where the hell did she go?

My next stop is the garage. It doesn’t seem possible that Debbie would have left the house at three in the morning, but when I push open the door to the garage, her car is gone.

I get an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that replaces the nausea. For some reason, my wife left the house in the middle of the night, and she went far enough that she took her car. Where could she possibly have gone?

A wave of dizziness washes over me, but I do my best to push it away. I don’t know why I feel so sick. Yes, it’s the middle of the night, but I don’t feel like I’m tired. I feel…

I feel drugged.

But how could I be? I didn’t take anything that would alter my consciousness in any way. I didn’t have anything to drink tonight. I haven’t taken so much as a baby aspirin.