One Less Problem Without You (19 page)

Until the phone rang.

I had turned off location services on my regular phone (versus the pay-as-you-go phone I'd gotten at the grocery store on my way out of Dodge) but had somehow neglected to turn off the ringer. Or maybe it was a subconscious act so when he called I'd be reassured that he cared, although I certainly hadn't been expecting the call, and the last thing in the world I felt was
cared about
.

My first reaction was to freeze in fear; my second, to flog myself for not having remembered to save myself from my first reaction by simply turning off the ringer.

My third reaction, which probably should have been my first and only, was a certain anger at the fact that it had taken him this long to notice I was gone and to have enough concern to call.

“Concern” might be the wrong word, but it's all I can come up with. Anything conjuring genuine
care
feels wrong, as Leif's first seventeen layers of reaction to
anything
are self-protective. Any reaction to my being missing would begin with his ego. Was I with someone else? Had someone else taken what was
his
? If I'd left of my own accord, had I told anyone and thereby embarrassed him?

I managed not to answer, and he didn't leave a message.

So I returned to my work and tried not to think about it.

Twenty-one minutes later, he rang again.

Again no voice mail, but this time it was followed immediately by a text.

Where the fuck are you
?

Touching, isn't it?

I had been one hundred percent loyal to this man for
years,
yet when he came home from God knows what unholy activity in the middle of the night and found I was not there, his first reaction was
Where the fuck are you
?

It's embarrassing to admit that after the surge of anger I felt, like the sudden and brief swell of pain when you stub your toe, I fell right back into the ditch of rationalization. My old habit. My old enemy.

He's scared,
my mind tried to say.
People often manifest fear as anger.

That would mean he was scared a
lot,
though.

I was pondering this when the phone rang again. Holding it, right there in my hand, made it harder to ignore. It took every ounce of will and determination I had, and my hand hurt from clutching the phone so hard when I set it down.

Another text:
I know you're there, answer the damn phone!

A creepy feeling of being watched came over me, even though I absolutely knew he wasn't literally seeing me. It was an interesting reaction, though, because while I realized he was domineering at home, I hadn't quite put together that I felt so scrutinized that the feeling could follow me even into a space as small, dark, private, and unlikely as this.

It was like being watched by a ghost.

That was the thought in my head when the phone blasted again. I can't even say why (Habit? The need to stop the sound?), but I answered it. Before I said a word, I thought it was a mistake.

As soon as he spoke, I knew it was.

“Where. The fuck. Are you.” A question, stated as a command, blurred slightly by Lagavulin, the sixteen-year-old single malt Scotch he drank—neat if he was in a hurry, with water if seduction of any sort was in order. He thought it was less ostentatious to go with the sixteen- rather than the twenty-year-old. In any event, tonight was a no-water night.

“I've left you, Leif.” The words came so simply it was as though I were saying them in a play or something. They didn't sound true. They didn't
feel
true. They sounded silly and airy. Dumb. Not strong and biting, like I would have liked to sound.

His laugh proved that he felt the same.

The humiliation of that genuine chuckle went deep in me.

“I mean it!” I insisted, sounding like a child on the playground.
Yes, I did! Ask Mom!

“Get your ass back here before anyone notices you're gone, Diana. Jesus.”

“Took you awhile to notice I was gone.”

“What?”

“It's”—I looked at my watch—“two in the morning now. What took you so long to notice that your wife was gone?”

“I was busy.”

A million faces of
busy
floated through my mind. Any of the hot women who worked at his office; the woman who lived two doors down with the foreign husband I'd never seen in the three years we'd lived there; the barely legal bank teller with the red hair and green eyes who might have just stepped out of Ireland or the song “Jolene”; and, of course, there was the Plumber—and who knows how many more?

Yeah, truer words he'd never spoken.

“You are definitely busy. That's the problem.”

“Get your ass home.” He was having no more of this. Even the small veneer of niceness was gone. The courtesy of pretending to be a faithful husband even when the truth was more undeniable than gravity.

“No.”

A pause. A menacing pause. Then a quiet voice that was more shocking than a shout could ever be.
“Now.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't want questions from anyone. You have a position here, and you need to fulfill it.”

“A job to do?”

“If that's how you want to look at it.”

“Then I want a raise.”

“Diana.” I hated his voice. It was like a movie villain's suddenly. “If you want to look at this as a job, then you probably don't want to be fired, do you?”

My chest tightened. “Is that a threat?”

“That's a warning.”

“A little too late.” I took a breath and worked up a little insincere bravado. “I already quit.”

“You can't quit.”

“I did.”

“Where the fuck are you?”

“None of your fucking business.” I never spoke to him that way. Part of me cowered in anticipation of retribution.

Another pause. I couldn't tell if it was him deciding his next move or him already knowing it.

“Diana.” A weary sigh. “I don't have time for this. I don't have
interest
in this. You need to get back here, now, and stop this bullshit, or the police are going to get involved.”

I gave a spike of laughter. “You're going to call the police and tell them your wife ran away from you? Somehow I can't see that. The great Leif Tiesman never admits anything is out of his control.”

“I didn't say I was going to call the police and tell them my wife ran away,” he said evenly. “I said if you didn't come back now, the police were going to get involved.”

“Right, so obviously—” I stopped. Yes, obviously. But not
obviously he was going to call the police for help in finding his poor, lost wife and returning her safely home
.

No, his implication was far more sinister. And so subtle that I might have missed it. Yet even though he'd never threatened me outright before—he'd never had to, I was such a good little wifey—I recognized it almost as soon as I heard it.

The worst of all possible threats.

“You've got to be kidding,” I said, my voice like a flat basketball, thudding on the court.

“Try me.”

Man, that answer came so easily to him. After all our time together, after all the love I thought I'd built for (and from) him, all the bricks we'd set and mortared to build the foundations of a marriage, it was that easy for him to eliminate me if I became inconvenient for him.

Or at least to contemplate it.

I knew the difference between something he was saying for effect and something he was saying because he meant it deeply.

He meant this, deeply and easily.

He was a monster.

For so long, he had been the Leif I could make explanations for, and now it was so obvious that he was the horrible man I thought he was. I wasn't wrong. I wasn't imaginative. I had lied to myself and turned him into a reasonable person, not the other way around.

“Why not just let me go, then?” I asked, doing my damndest to keep my voice steady and strong. “Why the threats, Leif? Why go so low-rent? That's not like you.”

“This isn't like you,” he countered. “And, more to the point, it's not like me to have a live wire out there, about to throw sparks in any direction at any time with little or no provocation.”

“Little or no provocation?” That was the wrong thing to say. Don't incite him. “I don't have any interest in tangling with you at all,” I covered quickly. “I want to move on, get out of your realm. Will you give me a reasonable divorce?”

“No one divorces me.”

I hesitated. Not because I was thinking about
obeying
him or going back, despite his incredibly
romantic pleas
. No, I was scared. Straight up scared. “Well, then, what on earth do you want me to do?” I asked, now allowing all the fear and hopelessness into my voice.

It was real, even though I wished it weren't, but it was also going to serve me a whole lot better than pissing him off with bravado.

“I will say this one more time.” He expelled a long breath, and I could imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose. “You come back, you stay in, you shut up, you speak when instructed and at no other time.”

I backed up to the dusty sofa and reached blindly behind me for it, then sat, dropping my forehead into my free hand. “What happened to us? When did you become my keeper?”

“The moment you became an escaped prisoner.”

“And before that?” I couldn't help the tears that came. And, worse, the sadness that sank my heart. “Before I escaped, was I your prisoner then, too?”

“Was it so bad?” I could see him shrug.
Meh.

Like it meant so incredibly little to him that my
whole life with him
had been a lie.

And that, goddammit, I cared enough, even now, to feel huge grief at its loss.

“No,” I lied, and stood up, my legs moving like mechanical limbs or something driven by remote. “No,” I repeated, going to the door and opening it quietly, thinking to throw the deadbolt on my way out, so it wouldn't lock behind me. “Obviously it hasn't been that bad. I love you, Leif.” The words tasted like poison on my tongue now. In my whole mouth. Like when you spray disinfectant in the air and accidentally inhale it.

“And?” He wasn't sure about my sudden turnaround. He wasn't that stupid, and he wasn't that easy.

But when it came to his ego, he wasn't that smart or complicated, either.

“I need to know that you will never, ever cheat on me again,” I said, because that was the first—and very least—demand he would have expected of me.

“Who said I ever did?”

This was chess, I reminded myself. I was playing chess. He didn't have that much faith in me, though; he thought I was a blind idiot, so he was still playing checkers. If I went too soft, he'd figure me out. I'd already gone off on him about cheating; there was no putting the smoke back in the chimney. So no, I had to go hard, but not too hard.

“You know you did,” I said. “You know it, I know it, she knows it. In fact, a whole bunch of
shes
know it.” I sounded more like myself now, even though I didn't
feel
like myself at all, going down the dingy, dark cement steps of my new digs and walking out onto the eerie quiet of wee-hours M Street. “I don't even want to talk about them anymore. I don't want to
think
about them. But there cannot be any more.” I turned right at the corner and headed south two blocks.

“If you don't go fishing,” he said, oozing confidence, “you won't find yourself with a bunch of fish.”

“Likewise.” I could have puked.

“So you're coming back,” he asked, and it wasn't even a question. I could tell from his tone that he was sure he'd won, sure my tail was firmly between my legs and I was returning to the “safety” of his rule.

I sighed.

He chuckled. I gagged. “That's a yes, then.” Not a question, a statement. Naturally.

“I suppose.” I wished I could lie as easily as he could. “But I drove for hours and just got here when you called.” I prayed my casualness was convincing. “So I'm just going to sleep first. I already paid for the night, after all. Or
you
did.” Was I laying it on too thick?

“There's nothing on the credit card statement,” he said. Because of course he'd checked.

“Cash, Leif. You think I wanted you to know I came down here?”

“Down—wait, you went all the way to Hilton Head?”

Hilton Head was one of my favorite vacation destinations. For a brief time I'd owned a condo there and had a lot of fun fixing it up and renting it out, in addition to going down whenever I could for my own time off. When I'd said “down here” to him, I only wanted to indicate I hadn't gone north, but he'd taken it and run with it, and I was going to let him.

And sickeningly, that weak woman inside me loved the fact that Leif Tiesman knew me well enough to know where I would be most likely to run away to.

But,
the stronger person in me said,
I didn't run there. For once, I did something different
.

“Guess I'm not all that unpredictable, huh?” I gave a lame-sounding laugh. “No wonder you're bored with me.” Just the words made me feel ill. I had
thought
that about myself, in comparison to his glamorous self, for so long, and now that I was starting to see his true colors, it absolutely sickened me to pretend to bow and scrape in comparison to him.

“You're good at what you're good at,” he said, his monotone voice as complimentary as it ever got.

“And that is?”

“Being Mrs. Leif Tiesman.”

“Ah.”

“While you're down there?” he went on. “Maybe take a couple of days and go to a medispa or something to get
refreshed,
would you? You could use a little Botox on your forehead. You always seem to look angry lately.”