Thought I Knew You (2 page)

Taking a deep breath, I logged onto our laptop, which had a permanent home on the kitchen island, and Googled United Airlines, the only airline Greg would fly. From the junk drawer, I pulled out the notebook where Greg always wrote down his flight numbers. The entry for October 1 read, “Flight UA1034.” I typed in the flight number—“On Time.” I called the toll-free number at the bottom of the webpage and asked if Greg Barnes had checked in for the flight. After confirming our address, I was put on hold.

“We have no record of Greg Barnes checking in on Friday. He did check in on Tuesday evening for his incoming flight from Newark to Rochester, and he picked up one bag at baggage claim.” I heard a keyboard clicking. “No, I’m sorry, but it does not appear as though he boarded the return flight UA1034 on Friday morning. Can I help you with anything else?”

The question jarred me.
Sure. Can you help me find him?
I said, “No, thank you,” and hung up the phone.

I sat at the island, drumming my fingers. Could he have missed his flight? I tried to think like Greg. If he had missed his flight, he would have rented a car. The drive would have only taken four hours, so he would have been home even before the kids’ bedtime. That also didn’t explain the dead phone.

Before I had time to think, I called the police station. A woman answered on the second ring, her tone clipped and official.

“Hunterdon County Police Department.”

“Hi, this is strange, but my husband went on a business trip and was scheduled to be home at one o’clock yesterday afternoon, and he’s still not back.” After I said it, I realized how I sounded.
Pathetic
. “I can’t get in touch with him; he’s not answering his phone. This is really unlike him. I’m not sure what to do.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“Would you like to fill out a Missing Persons Report?” she asked, sounding bored.

I heard the sound of a clacking keyboard in the background. “I’m not sure. I mean, I’m sure there’s an explanation, but I’m worried. He’s usually much more… reliable.” I paused, unsure of how to finish, unsure of anything.

“How long has he been gone?”

Not
missing
, I noted.
Gone as in left?
“He’s been missing since one o’clock yesterday afternoon. I mean, he left on Tuesday…” I trailed off, and my words echoing back to me through the phone sounded helpless.

“Well, we
can
send someone out tonight to take a report, if you’d like. Typically, we won’t initiate a missing person’s report for an adult until he’s missing for forty-eight hours and—”

“Forty-eight hours seems excessive,” I interrupted, anxiety tight in my chest. Forty-eight hours was
two days.
Surely, he would be back before then.

“Ma’am, with all due respect, most husbands or wives who are reported missing choose to be missing. So yes, forty-eight hours is our procedure. By then, maybe he’ll come home on his own.” She no longer sounded bored. She sounded compassionate, and that infuriated me.

The finger of fear inched up my spine. “My husband is not
choosing
to be missing. It is very possible that something has happened to him.” I felt panicky, nauseous. Zero to sixty. Less than ten minutes ago, I wasn’t even worried.

“I’m sure it’s possible, but in most cases, the spouse returns within a day or two with a very plausible explanation for their absence. You can call us back tomorrow or Monday, if you’d like to initiate a report or if there is a new development.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly. I felt it then—the certainty that I would be calling her back. I would not be getting any explanation, plausible or otherwise.

Chapter 2

S
aturday morning, I felt groggy
and hung-over from lack of sleep. I sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee from Greg’s mug. With the DVD player on repeat, the girls stared blankly at the TV, and for once, I didn’t care. The high-pitched tinny voices of Dora the Explorer and her friends pounded in my head, and I winced with each trill of cartoonish laughter.

When the phone rang at nine, I snatched it. “Hello.”

“Hi, honey, the farmer’s market is open today for the fall festival. Dad and I are taking a ride out. Do you want to come?” Mom asked. The normality of the question was a vaudeville act, dreamlike and surreal.

I inhaled deeply. “Mom, Greg didn’t come home.”

“What? Why not? Did he miss his flight?”

“I don’t know. I can’t get in touch with him.” A sob caught in my throat. “I called the airline. His flight was on time, so I called the police…” I drifted, hesitant, lost.

“I’m sure there’s some explanation for all this. I’m coming over. We’ll figure this out.”

I hung up and stared at the phone, willing it to ring and for Greg to be on the other end.
Have I got a story for you,
he’d say, laughing. Or more likely,
Goddamn airline, you won’t believe this.

“Mommy, why are you sad?” Hannah stood next to me, wide-eyed. Children had the ability to ask loaded questions in a way adults could never manage, with no subtext and no fear of the answer.

“I just miss Daddy, honey.” I pulled her to me, inhaling the syrupy scent of her hair.

“When is he coming home?”

“Soon, sweetheart.” I realized I was holding her too tightly and loosened the hug. “He’s away working.”

“Can I play with Annie today?”
I don’t know. I don’t know what we’ll do today. I don’t know what we’ll do any day until he comes home
. “We’ll see, Hannah.”

I pulled out the notepad. I was a list maker.

1. Call Rochester hospitals.

2. Call Greg’s hotel.

3. Call Rochester police.

4. Call Hunterdon County police.

5. Find Greg.

I enjoyed lists. Lining through completed items gave me a sense of satisfaction, and I couldn’t wait to line through number five.

Leah and Hannah rattled around the house, whiny and bored.

“Mommy, can we go outside today? Are we going to the library?” Hannah asked.

“No, honey, I’m sorry. We’re going to play inside. Mommy has a lot to do.” I almost laughed at the absurdity of the phrase.
A lot to do.

How would I figure out what happened to Greg and keep things normal for the girls? How did people function in real crisis situations with small children? It wasn’t even a real crisis, just a missed flight and a dead cell phone battery.
Except, except…
Why couldn’t he call from the hotel? Borrow a cell phone from a stranger? Nothing made sense.

I fed Leah and asked Hannah if she wanted to watch Cinderella. The time would give me an hour or more of thinking and planning. I plopped them back down in front of the television, Leah clutching her ever-present Uglydoll, and they zoned out.

I jumped when the doorbell rang. I ran to the door, my heart thudding. Just as I reached for the knob, I remembered Mom had said she was coming.

“I have a plan,” Mom said. My mother was always a force, in her element during a crisis, strong and sure.

We divvied up my list. I gave her number one, as I needed to be the one to call his hotel. I passed the computer to her so she could look up the Rochester hospitals. I had Greg’s notebook: departing flight number, returning flight number, hotel, date. Every single time. Greg the Metronome.

I dialed the hotel number. “Hi. My name is Claire Barnes. My husband Greg stayed there this week. He should have checked in on Tuesday and checked out early Friday morning. Would you be able to tell me if he did check in and out?”

“Yes, we can tell you that, Mrs. Barnes.” I heard the clicking of a keyboard. “Yes, Greg Barnes did check in on Tuesday night. However, he did not check out on Friday morning.”

My mouth went dry.
What’s going on?
“Okay.” I needed to talk to this faceless voice on the phone and force her to be human, not like the calls to the police station or the airline. I needed her to be on my side. I took a deep breath. “My husband was scheduled to return yesterday, and he didn’t come home. He never boarded his plane. The police won’t help me until tomorrow, at the earliest. Is there any way you can check his room? I don’t know. Make sure he didn’t have a heart attack up there or something? Please. I’m begging you.”

“Oh, my goodness, sweetheart.” She had a deep southern drawl, not Carolinas. Alabama, maybe. “I’m sure the manager would be happy to check the room. Can I call you back? What’s your number?” I gave her my cell phone number, and we hung up.

I sat in the dining room and stared out the window. I counted to seven hundred and fifty nine before my phone rang. I checked the display. Ten minutes had passed. Before I answered, I just knew he was dead in his room. His father had had a weak heart and died at fifty-eight. The phone rang again. I picked up and mouthed hello; the actual word stuck in the back of my throat. My stomach churned with fear.

“Mrs. Barnes? This is Carol Ann from the Fairmont in Rochester?”
Yes. I know who this is. Please, is my husband alive?
“Honey, I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I swear, I don’t believe he ever set foot in the room.”

My mind raced.
He had checked in, but not used the room?

“Honey, are you still there? Are you okay?”

“Yes. No. No, I’m not okay, but I’m here. So you’re telling me he checked in on Tuesday, but you don’t think he stayed there? How could you know that?”

“Well, we put little welcome cards in the locks of all the doors, you know? Our guests have to remove them to swipe their cards, but his is still in there. The bed doesn’t seem to have been slept in, and the cleaning staff said they haven’t cleaned it because it didn’t need it. So either he never entered his room, or he wanted it to look that way.” She coughed nervously.

An affair. She thinks Greg was having an affair. Why didn’t I think of that? I laughed, a barking sound, like a seal. Greg with another woman? Of all the scenarios that had run through my head, another woman had never been one of them. Greg could barely make a move on me half the time. He was reserved that way. I had never seen him even look at another woman. He never went to strip clubs or commented about actresses. When I teased him about it, he asked, “Why would I look at other women when I can look at you anytime I want?” I used to think it was sweet. The thought, and the raw tenderness that accompanied it, brought tears to my eyes.

I hung up without another word and put my head down on the dining room table. Between thinking he was dead and then wondering if he could be sleeping with someone else, the tears came out of me like possibilities dripping onto the table. I wanted to collect them all, organize them into a list, and check them off one by one until only one was left, and then I would know what happened to my husband. I felt Mom’s hand on my back, patting me like an infant.

“Graham,” she spoke quietly into her cell phone. I couldn’t hear Dad’s response. “Come get the girls. We’re going to have to call the police.”

Chapter 3

T
wo police officers came to
take the missing persons report. Though it hadn’t been forty-eight hours, they didn’t so much as utter the words ‘protocol’ or ‘procedure.’ Both were kind, accommodating, and seemed slightly wary of me. I answered all of their questions: Greg had brown eyes and light brown hair flecked with gray; he was thirty-five years old, five-ten, one hundred ninety pounds; he had no birthmarks or tattoos. They asked where he was when I last saw him and where did I believe he disappeared from, as well as some bizarre questions like who were his family doctor and dentist—I realized later that dental records could be used to identify a body. I was also asked to list all vehicles he could be driving—one, an Acura RL. Compounding the surreal quality of the interview, one of the officers ushered Mom into the dining room, questioning us separately.

For the first time, reality began to dawn. Initiating the report would be irreversible. The thought gave me an uneasy sense of permanence. Then, it occurred to me that the officers were ensuring we had nothing to do with Greg’s disappearance. That train of thought made me feel wildly out of control.

The detective interviewing me had kind hazel eyes and gray hair. He smiled comfortingly with every answer, and I gained confidence as we continued. After about ten minutes, Mom joined us in the living room. She put her hand on the back of my chair in a show of comfort and support. We gave them Greg’s spare hairbrush and about fifteen photos from the past year. The officer asked a lot of questions about our marriage: were we happy, did we have a fight, what was Greg’s relationship with the girls? After a few minutes, I realized he was trying to figure out if Greg ran away. When he finally finished, he put away his notebook and pen.

“Are adult men ever kidnapped?” I asked, controlled, not hysterical, not shaky anymore.

He sighed. “Sometimes, if he witnessed a crime, or possibly for money.” He answered cautiously, obviously trying to walk the line between brutal truth and blatant lie. I must have given him the impression I could handle the truth, because he added, “Mrs. Barnes, I have to be completely honest with you. We will investigate this. We’ll track down his last movements, where he was, who he saw, what he ate, and what he did. We may find him. We might figure this out. But
very
few adult men are kidnapped. Unless you have a million dollar trust fund you failed to mention?” I shook my head. “There’s no motive in that. Money, that’s it. With women and children, kidnappings are frequently religious or sexually based. Or with women kidnappers, sometimes children are taken because the woman wants a child. But for men? What would the motive be? So assuming he’s alive, we have to explore the possibility that he may not want to be found. Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Mrs. Barnes?”

I nodded, too confused to talk. I
did
understand what he was saying, but I needed him to stop saying it.

The officers left with a promise to follow up sometime in the next day or so, after they had time to initiate the investigation. Mom sat next to me, not talking, with her hand on mine. Next to me, my cell phone trilled. I snatched it up with shaky hands and looked down at the caller ID.
Drew.
I didn’t feel like explaining everything yet. I hit the silence button, and the call went to voicemail.

Mom asked, “Who was that?”

“Drew.” I motioned to the phone and rubbed my forehead. “I didn’t feel like talking about it.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, but I think I need to be alone for a minute. I’m going out to look for Cody.”