“And what are you grateful for?” asked Natalie in a chillingly robotic voice.
“That you’re unhurt,” Michael said. “That our children our fine. That we found you before something happened to any of you. If it did—Nat, honey, I wouldn’t recover. I love you so much it hurts. I can’t bear to think of anything bad happening to you or the kids. I love you with everything that I am and that I have. I’m here for you and I’ll stay by your side, no matter what. You haven’t been sleeping, you can’t be responsible for what happened to Audrey.”
“Three things,” Natalie said, still without a drop of emotion in her voice. “That’s only two. You’ve one to go.”
“Something I wish I’d done differently,” Michael said, remembering the category. He gazed down at his hands as he thought how to answer.
Natalie offered him nothing but a hard stare.
“Okay then,” he said. “I wish I had shown you more compassion these last few months. I wish I’d been more helpful to you. Your sleep troubles, your accusations, I thought it was all an excuse to avoid me, avoid us.”
Natalie’s eyebrows rose slightly on her forehead.
“I didn’t understand what that kind of lack of sleep does to a body and mind. I do now, believe me, because I’ve been living it, and I’m sorry.”
“So you get it now, do you?” said Natalie ratcheting up the contempt. “You couldn’t sleep after I took off with the kids, is that it, Michael?”
“No, I couldn’t. You planned it, didn’t you?”
Natalie scoffed. “Of course I did,” she said. “I knew you’d be delayed getting the pizza. I must have tested the delivery window a half dozen times before we left for New York. And I knew we’d have just enough time to pack up and leave the hotel while you were gone. I’m sure you thought we took an Amtrak train somewhere; that’s why I made New York our departure city. I figured it would buy us more time as we got away, but I didn’t think you’d remember Kate Hildonen. Good for you. If I hadn’t used the wrong credit card, you probably wouldn’t have had any idea where to begin looking for me.”
“Why, Nat? Why did you run? Did you think the police were closing in on you for Audrey? You could have talked to me.” He spoke in an imploring way. “We could have worked it out.”
Natalie gazed back at Michael straight-faced, her expression blank as a new canvas.
“Three things,” she said softly. “Now it’s my turn.”
She radiated a fierceness he’d never seen before. Michael’s apprehension deepened with each moment of uncomfortable silence that fell between them.
“What went well is that I slept last night for the first time in ages,” she said softly into the phone. “Eight hours straight. Here in a police station of all places, I finally got that elusive, uninterrupted sleep I’ve been craving. You know why that is, Michael?”
“No,” said Michael, finding himself unable to meet her stare, and yet eager to know the answer.
Natalie gave him a few moments to marinate in his discomfort.
When she finally spoke, it was evident to Michael that she was choosing her words very carefully.
“I finally slept because I’m locked behind bars and these thick concrete walls.” She rapped her knuckles against one of them. “Because locked up in here, I know without the slightest bit of doubt that you can’t get to me, that in here I’m safe, Michael, safe from you, my own husband.”
She layered on the sarcasm.
“Natalie, I—”
She held up a finger: no words, she was saying, it’s my turn at the table now.
“As for gratitude, well, I’m grateful that my children are with my parents and not with you. That’s another reason I could sleep well last night.”
Michael clamped down an urge to protest. The look in Natalie’s eyes told him what was coming next, and he knew to stay silent, let it happen—take his medicine, so to speak.
“Three things,” she said with an accompanying huff of air.
Michael drummed his fingers nervously against the counter, holding his breath, waiting for what he knew was coming.
He remembered her answers from the last time they played the game, seated around the dinner table on the evening before they departed for New York.
Today I got us all packed and ready to go.
I’m grateful for the truth.
I wish I’d done this sooner.
He understood what she was saying now. The first line about packing was for the kids, but the other two were definitely directed at him.
“What do I wish happened differently?” Natalie said, drawing out the words.
He was shaking now. Struggling to catch his breath. He had waited so many years for this moment, for his secrets to be fully exposed. He waited for it, to hear the names: Joseph, Brianna, perhaps even Marjorie, the mother who never believed in her own son.
Natalie stayed cool and reserved. Michael found her impassivity more tortuous than her vitriol. It was a complete negation of him, as though he no longer mattered, alive or dead. To his wife, he was now an inconsequential being.
Natalie said, “I wish that I told you months ago to pack up your shit and get the fuck out of my house.” She paused to send him a lopsided smile. “So I’m telling you now, Michael: go home, get your stuff together, and get out of our lives, forever. Because I’m getting out of here tomorrow morning, my lawyer is sure of it, and when I do, I’m coming home. I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep well knowing you’re out there somewhere, but some things I’m willing to live with. And you, my darling husband, are not one of them.”
Natalie hung up the phone. She rose to her feet. A policeman let her out, and she was gone, never once looking back.
CHAPTER 42
NATALIE
Hours after Michael left the police station, a Medford cop informed Natalie she had a visitor. Only after confirming it wasn’t her husband or the children coming to visit (she didn’t want them seeing her locked up, dressed in the orange uniform of a prisoner) did she agree to the meeting.
She was curious who’d come to see her. The lawyer her father had hired wasn’t scheduled to visit. Her curiosity gave way to shock when the interview room door opened and in strolled the very man who had arrested her in Missouri, Detective Sergeant Amos Kennett.
Natalie wondered why the police had left her unsupervised, with no handcuffs, and those questions only grew more pressing now that she was in the presence of law enforcement. Surely the police would want protection from any detainee, even one as slight and slender as she.
“How are you doing, Natalie?” Detective Kennett asked pleasantly enough. His voice may have been as gritty as the city streets where he came from, but his eyes held a gentle kindness.
“Guess you could say I’ve been better,” Natalie quipped back.
Kennett only nodded.
“Yeah, I imagine that’s so.”