Chapter 20

Joshua wandered around the house in a daze.

Rachel could not have left him. He couldn’t believe it—wouldn’t believe it. None of what she’d said in her letter made any sense. He was going to get to the bottom of this and prove that she was bluffing, playing a sick joke, suffering from a mental illness of some kind . . . anything other than what she’d claimed in her note. This could not be happening to him, to them.

He lurched into the garage. Her Acura was gone. He’d figured it would be missing, but he’d needed to see the vacant space, to believe what she’d written.

He tried to call her on her cell phone, in spite of her advisement not to contact her. She didn’t answer; her voice mail picked up immediately, indicating that her phone was shut off.

He left her a message anyway: “Rachel, it’s me. I got this letter. Listen, baby . . . I don’t understand this. I can’t believe it. Whatever’s going on . . . I need you. Please, call me. Please . . .”

He couldn’t go any further; a sob was boiling up his throat. He hung up.

He turned around and around in the family room, feeling lost in his own home. The Christmas decorations, the holiday cards clustered on the fireplace mantelpiece, the photographs of their wedding day and their happy times together, seemed to be exhibits of someone else’s life, not his.

Coco was perched on the sofa she’d shared with Rachel only a few hours ago. She watched Joshua, her big eyes apprehensive.

Joshua realized that the little dog was as anxious as he was. Canines lived in sync with the energies of their human masters. Coco had probably seen Rachel tearfully write her letter, had stood nearby as Rachel had prepared to leave, had watched Rachel leave her behind in the house as she entered the garage and got in her car and sped away to an unknown destination.

Rachel had, in a very real sense, abandoned both of them.

His erratic behavior had probably thoroughly unsettled Coco. Seeing the dog forced him to realize that he had to get himself together, because he was on the verge of coming unglued.

He made another phone call, this one to Rachel’s salon. Tanisha told him that she hadn’t spoken to Rachel since she’d left for her appointment earlier that afternoon.

“If she gets in touch with you, call me right away,” Joshua said. “It’s very important.”

“Sure, honey,” Tanisha said. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he said. He didn’t yet possess the fortitude to tell anyone what was happening. It was a challenge for him to keep his wits about him, and he was in no shape to console anyone else or answer a barrage of questions. “Remember, call me, okay?”

He started searching for clues of where Rachel had gone. In the master bedroom, he checked the walk-in closet. It was a large chamber—the walk-in closet was one of the areas that had sold Rachel on the house—and half of it was dedicated to her belongings.

Rachel was fastidiously neat. Her clothes hung inside, arranged by color, season, and occasion. Her shoes were tucked away in a stackable shoe organizer, and her purses and other accessories sat on built-in shelving. Nothing was out of place.

It confused him. Would Rachel have run away with only the clothes on her back?

He rushed out of the closet, entered the guest bedroom. Flung open the closet door.

They kept their luggage stored in this closet; his aunt and uncle had given them a set of luggage as a wedding gift. One of the large suitcases was missing.

This evidence, more than her car being gone, was like a hammer striking his heart. The vacant garage space could have meant only that she was out running errands. The missing luggage was proof of her serious intent to go away.

Although she apparently hadn’t taken any of her clothes, she could easily purchase clothing on her way to wherever she was going. It seemed like the kind of thing she would do—start fresh.

His heart banging, he went into her study. She’d left behind the laptop, but the computer was off, and he remembered the password lock from that morning.

He looked frantically over her desk, seeking a Post-it or some other note of where she might have gone. He found nothing. Her desk was clean, and even the trashcan was empty.

Back in the kitchen, a laminated list of emergency telephone numbers was pinned to the refrigerator by a magnet for Coco’s veterinarian. He picked up the phone, to dial the police— and then he paused to reconsider.

What could he possibly tell the cops? That his wife had left him a Dear John letter? He’d watched enough TV crime dramas to understand that it wasn’t illegal to leave your spouse. Rachel hadn’t committed a crime of any sort.

Further, she clearly had left of her own volition. There was no evidence that someone had forced her to leave—though it was obvious that her fear of someone had compelled her to run.

As terrible as it will be for us to be apart, this is the best decision for our family. You must trust me on this. It is for our protection.

Who was she running from? The man in her nightmare? Someone who had been in prison in Illinois?

He just didn’t know.

But he could predict what the police would think of her cryptic letter. They would be suspicious, not merely of Rachel, but possibly of Joshua, too. They might suspect foul play, might think that he had done something to Rachel and written a phony letter to hide the evidence. Everybody knew that whenever something awful happened to a married person, conventional cop wisdom assumed that the spouse, especially when the spouse was a man, was always the prime suspect.

Although he could avoid mentioning the letter at all and could report her as a missing person, he was pretty sure that she had to be missing for at least forty-eight hours before the cops would even talk to him about it.

No, he couldn’t call the cops. Not yet. Maybe not at all.

He started to put down the phone, but then, out of vain hope, he dialed Rachel’s cell again. Voice mail picked up right away.

Hearing her voice was like torture. He hung up without leaving a message, his hand shaking.

A vibrating noise came from a darkened corner of the kitchen. Joshua hurried over there, nearly tripping over his feet.

The noise came from the side counter, where they kept the day’s mail, a glass bowl that held their keys, an erasable task list, and their respective cell phone chargers. Joshua’s Blackberry lay there, vibrating rhythmically.

He didn’t immediately pick it up. For he noted that Rachel’s cell phone stood there, too, nestled in the recharging cradle.

His calls to her had been pointless. Not only had she left him behind—she’d left him no means to get in touch with her, either.

Anguish squeezed his heart in a vise.

A check of his phone confirmed that he’d received only a stupid text message advertisement from the phone service provider. Nothing from Rachel, wherever she might be.

Out of ideas, he stumbled into the family room and collapsed on the sofa.

A photo sat on the coffee table. It was a wedding shot of Joshua and Rachel walking down the aisle at his family church, arms linked and smiling, the pastor having recently declared them husband and wife.

He cradled the photo in his hands. And wept.

Drawn by his wracking sobs, Coco wandered into the room and hopped onto the couch. She crawled into his lap.

He set aside the picture and held the dog close, scalding tears dripping from his face.

Life with Rachel had been a sweet dream, too good to be true. Now, the dream had shattered and set free something that he feared had been hiding around the corner all along.

The nightmare.