The One Who Got Away (11 page)

Confirmation. I exploded. I threw the phone. The battery came off and rattled against the floor tiles. The feeling I had
in that moment is one I wouldn't wish on anyone. It was like cymbals going off in an all-white room.

I picked up the phone. Put it back together. My hands were trembling. David had been calling. Texting. Trying to reconnect. If I didn't respond soon, he'd come home. But I didn't want him in the house. I called him back. Put on my calmest voice.

‘Listen, I'm on the way,' he said.

‘No,' I said. ‘You don't come here. There is no here for you here. No home.' I was speaking gobbledegook.

David's voice came back broken up. Had I damaged my phone? Maybe. Or else he was dropping in and out on his way up Mountain View Road. ‘If you … explain … not what … think …'

‘Don't tell me, “It's not what you think,”' I said. ‘I'm not an idiot.'

‘Let me come home. Let me explain.'

No. I could not have the conversation that I had to have, in our home. Not in the place where my precious daughters kept their pretty things. It would filthy up the place. I'd never get it clean.

Somehow, I agreed to meet David at the In-N-Out Burger. Yes, the In-N-Out Burger. Oh, the irony! There is no point going over what I said to him when he got into the passenger seat of my car. I can barely even remember. Inside my head was all white fog. Except that David said yes, he'd been having an affair. He was desperately sorry. He didn't even like Lyric, let alone love her.

I screamed at him: ‘Then why are you fucking her?'

I'm embarrassed to write what he said: David said that he has a sex addiction.

I laughed in his face. To see David sitting there in his expensive suit in the seat beside me, saying: ‘No, I think it's serious. It's a proper mental disorder. I've been googling and it is a real thing.'

OMG, as the girls might say. What a crock. It made me want to choke him. But you can't do that, can you? I demanded details. He wasn't forthcoming, saying he couldn't remember how or why it started. No, of course he didn't love her. He loved me. But things had changed between us. We hardly ever had sex. I never seemed interested. He didn't want to push me, but he was starved for sex. And Lyric was willing. He had been weak. He had been stupid.

‘You're right,' I said, ‘you have been very stupid. And it's going to cost you.'

David nodded. ‘But wait,' he said, suddenly looking desperate. ‘There's something else.'

There was something else? Something else like what?

‘We're broke. I'm sorry, Loren. I've been trying so hard to keep this from you, and I wish there was another way to say it. There isn't. We are in real financial trouble.'

Hearing those words – we are in real financial trouble – did something strange to my head. David kept speaking but all I could hear was a drumming noise. I kept thinking,
This cannot be true.

I managed: ‘How can we be broke?'

‘Right,' he said, ‘well, it's complicated.'

It was actually quite simple. David had been stealing from Peter to pay Paul. He'd been taking money from new investors and giving it to older investors to make it appear they had made a huge profit, in the hope that they would brag loudly enough to encourage men like Fat Pete to turn up and beg to be allowed in.

‘It started out kind of innocent,' he said, running his hands through his hair, ‘and I figured, as long as I'm still making money, I can keep a handle on it. But remember a couple of years back, the stock market had been up, and then it suddenly went down?'

I remembered. There had been a financial crisis. Stock prices had fallen. I knew that. But they'd come back.

‘Right,' said David, ‘but the problem is, some of the Big Fish wanted their money out. I managed to put some of them off, but others were insistent so I took funds from other investors …'

My heart sank. ‘And now they want out and you have nothing left?'

‘Right,' said David. He was as close to tears as I'd ever seen him.

I sat quietly for a moment, as the news sank in. ‘Well, this is not my problem,' I said, suddenly shaking my head. ‘You may be broke, but we're not. I'm not. Because we have the house. And half of it is mine. Because you surely don't think I'm going to stay with you after this revelation, do you?'

And that's when David dropped his next bombshell.

‘We don't have a house,' he said. ‘I've borrowed against the house. I had no choice.'

‘What are you talking about? How could you even do that without talking to me?'

‘I had no choice. We were going under. I had nothing to sell. The cars are leased. My retirement fund is empty. I'm paying my staff – nannies included – out of loans. I've been doing it for you, Loren. Because I knew you'd be horrified. I've been trying to turn things around. And I can. I just need time. I need time. What I can't afford to happen – what we can't afford to happen – is for anyone to get a whiff of what's going
on. Because if word gets out, and people start asking for their money back … well, that would destroy us.'

I wish I could describe what was going on in my guts while David told me all this. The feeling wasn't a pain, exactly. It was more like churning. Like I might vomit, which I then did, right into the centre console.

‘Oh, God, I am so sorry, Loren.' He popped the glove box and started groping around for napkins or baby wipes. ‘I know it's a shock. I've betrayed my vows. I'm ashamed of myself. I deserve whatever I have coming. But you don't deserve any of this.'

I snatched the wipes from his hands and put one to my lips.

‘What are you saying?' I managed eventually. ‘If I walk, I walk with nothing?'

‘But you don't have to walk,' said David, taking my hands in his. ‘You can stay! Please! I'm begging you to stay. Because together, we can fix this. Think about it, Loren: if you go, I'll have to sell the house. And we'll have nothing to show for it. There won't be enough for a new house for you. There certainly won't be enough for two new houses. And how will that look? You renting on the Low Side with the girls? Me renting somewhere else? The girls being taken out of Grammar. That will definitely cause a run on the business. That would be a catastrophe.'

He had started to cry, and really, as far as I was concerned, that was the end of the conversation. I had never seen David cry. Never, not once. And so I decided – right then and there – that whatever happened, I would not divorce him. And yes, I realise that some people will think that I'm crazy, and maybe I am. Maybe I should have said, ‘You think I care about money? This is not about money. You are a liar and a cheat who has run us into debt and put our girls' future in real jeopardy. I have been a
kind and loving wife, who has been patient,
trusting
and true to you. And now I'm out of here.'

But how could I do that? Where would I even go? To Dad's? To Molly's? To a Low Side rental? How would I pay the rent? I have not worked since before the girls were born. Yes, I have a college degree. It's something, but it's not worth much on its own. What kind of job would it get me, after so many years out?

So I decided to stay. And it isn't only because of the money. It's also because – however awful he's been to me, however badly I've been betrayed – I love being Mrs Wynne-Estes and I love David. Which is ridiculous, obviously, but I do.

I love him.

I always have.

I love him, and I want to fix our marriage. I want to work through this with David, and I want to get past it. Which is why I think this Mexican vacation idea is a good one. Our therapist suggested it. I guess I'm pretty lucky in that Molly can organise it for me. I went over there yesterday, the first time I'd been in that cute little apartment for a while. We had a chat. She was all: ‘The main thing is, where do you want to go? There's a Four Seasons at Punta Mita – sunset sailing, whale watching – or there's a golf resort at Bahia de Banderas …'

‘No golf!' I said, raising a hand.

We decided – she decided – on the villas at Cabo San Lucas on the tip of the Baja Peninsula. Two nights with a personal butler and dinner at the Michelin-starred restaurant, and an old-style Juliet balcony with views over the sea arch; and then five nights on a 100-berth sailing ship called the
Silver Lining
.

The cruise ship was my idea. I love cruising. You don't have to pack and re-pack. We'll have five nights to concentrate on each other and connect. But like I told Molly: ‘Be careful what
you book. I don't want the same ship as the first honeymoon. It was alright but this has to be fantastic. I don't want one of those monstrous, 1000-berth, floating cities. David would hate that. Something intimate. Something sweet.'

The brochure for the
Silver Lining
looked great. It's a small ship – two hundred passengers and eighty crew – but it's luxurious. I mean, four decks and three pools, plus one of those pools where you swim in the sea. It has waiters in black tie, standing ready to whip the cloche off your plate, and chefs in tall paper hats.

‘I don't want yard-glass party people,' I said.

‘There'll be none of those,' said Molly.

So anyway it's all booked and it's not just a vacation. We're calling it a second honeymoon. The girls will stay with Janet. Molly wasn't happy about that. I tried to wave it away saying they would just be happier staying at home which they will but also, I'm not sending them to live in an apartment on the Low Side. I'm just not. So, we'll fly down to Cabo and get on the ship and we'll head out to sea. We'll talk. We'll cry. We'll make love. We'll reconnect. Because what choice do we have? At the end of the day, I love him, and – as everyone who has ever been married already knows – when you love somebody, divorce is not an option.

Murder, yes, but not divorce!

 

‘Forbidden fruit – there's a reason
why it tastes so sweet!'

Tweet by Lyric Morales

 

H
e broke her heart.

David broke my sister's heart.

He had been cheating. If that wasn't bad enough, he was broke and threatening to pull his little girls out of their lovely High Side school.

Had David walked into the house at that moment, I would have smacked him just for that.

I put the journal into my handbag and made my exit from the house, battling past the media pack without answering any of their crazy questions.

I was doing my best to keep my composure. It wasn't easy because I was fighting an image that kept appearing in my head. It was of Loren alive in the cold water, crying as the ship sailed away, leaving her alone in the dark.

I got into my car with the idea of heading over to David's parents' house to see if the twins were there. The problem was that I knew that at least one of the media cars from Loren's house was tailing me and I didn't want to lead the media to the twins.

I was still trying to figure out what to do, when my phone rang. I took the call, hands-free. It was Dad, saying that he'd told Mom, and she agreed with him: we had to go to Mexico.

I stopped my car and put my forehead on the steering wheel.

I hadn't really wanted to go to Mexico. I wanted to stay and confront David. But I couldn't let my father go to Mexico to search for Loren on his own.

‘Okay, fine. Like I said, Dad, I'll get some things from my apartment and meet you back at home.'

I stayed the night in the narrow bed in my old room. It was impossible to sleep, mainly because of the images in my head but also because Dad couldn't stop trying to reach David. I've lost count of the number of ways we tried to track him down. I phoned. I texted. I went through Facebook and left messages there. I called the hotel where he'd stayed with Loren before they boarded the
Silver Lining
. We tried Janet, and we tried his parents, but nobody picked up.

Finally, we gave up, and went ahead and booked our tickets down to Mexico. Then we called Gail Perlot and left a message to let her know we were coming.

Gail called back. ‘Oh, Molly, it's really not a good idea … David is due to head home himself in the next twenty-four hours. I'm just not sure that you coming here will achieve anything.'

Dad told her to stop. He wasn't going to be turned away.

The plan was for Mom to drive us to LAX first thing in the morning.

Being Mom, she tried to pack a meal for us to eat on the plane.

‘You won't like what they serve,' she said, using one hand to wipe tears off her cheeks and the other to cut Dad's sandwich into triangles. ‘It might be spicy and that will unsettle you.'

I tried to dissuade her. ‘Mom, no way is security going to let us through with a Thermos of chicken soup and a ham sandwich.'

But it wasn't about the soup and the sandwich. Mom just wanted to do something.

It took a little under three hours to get to the airport. We started in pre-dawn darkness and arrived in morning light. Mom let us out by the kerb. Dad leaned over to kiss her like it was for the last time. A security guard came and threatened us with a ticket. I felt like saying, ‘Have some compassion … he's just lost his daughter,' but what would have been the point?

‘Be careful,' said Mom.

‘Of course we will.'

I'd told Dad to bring on-board luggage only, but Mom had packed way too much for him, so we ended up having to check his suitcase in. That slowed us down, and then we got stopped at the X-ray machines.

‘What's this?' the guard asked, signalling towards a dark shape in Dad's over the shoulder bag.

I tried to explain. ‘Dad gets bad indigestion so Mom made that soup for him …'

‘Yeah, that's not going on the plane. He eats that now or it goes in the trash,' the guard said.

‘Just throw it, Dad,' I said.

‘I can't throw it. Your mom made this.' He stepped out of the line, unscrewed the lid, and began slurping down soup.

‘Dad, we're going to miss the plane.'

That got him moving. He poured the rest of the soup out, and on we went, at least until we got stopped again.

‘Why so many stamps for Mexico?' said the guy from customs, flicking through my passport.

‘My business is there,' I replied.

‘You have business in Mexico?'

I was about to explain, when Dad said: ‘My daughter's missing.'

The border-patrol officer looked up. ‘Your daughter's missing?'

‘Off a cruise ship. It's been on the news.'

‘In Mexico?'

‘Yes, off the coast of Mexico.'

The border-patrol officer shook his head sadly and stamped Dad's passport and mine. ‘Good luck,' he said, pushing the documents back.

Our plane was due to leave from the farthest possible gate. Dad did his best, but he's a big man and it was slow going even on the travelators. Eventually we arrived at the departure lounge. Dad squeezed himself into a moulded plastic chair. I used the few minutes we had before boarding, to check the news on my iPad.

Loren's disappearance was the top story on the
Bienveneda Bugle
's front page. They had used one of the photographs from her Facebook page. It wasn't one that I remembered seeing. Loren was wearing the pendant she had described in her journal, with a little moon, a star and the sun. Her blue eyes were flecked with gold, and although her hair was tied back, one soft tendril had come loose. She wasn't even a little bit made up yet she looked so pretty. That was always Loren's luck. Maybe there were times when she felt down, but she was born gorgeous.

The story about her disappearance had been written by a reporter called Aaron Radcliffe. I recognised the name. He had been leaving messages on my phone, asking me to comment. How he made the link between Loren and me, and how he'd got my number, I don't know. In any case, he'd mucked the story up, because the headline said: honeymoon tragedy – bride missing off cruise ship.

Loren hadn't been on her honeymoon. She'd been on her second honeymoon, trying to save her marriage, although why she'd wanted to do that was beyond me.

Couldn't she see that David was toxic?

Anyone could see it.

* * *

‘Come straight out and my driver should be there.'

Dad and I had landed in the airport at Cabo San Lucas. Gail had promised to send a car to meet us, but I couldn't immediately see anyone holding a sign with our name on it.

‘It's okay,' I said, ‘we still have to get our bags. Then we'll go out and find the driver.'

Dad's suitcase was easy to locate. Mom had strapped one of her purple belts around it.

We got through customs quite quickly, mainly because the line had dwindled down to nothing while we'd waited for Dad's bag. Gail's driver was easy to spot. He was holding a sign that said: ‘Mr Wynne-Estes.'

‘Hello,' I said to the driver, ‘I'm Molly.'

Dad stuck out his hand. ‘I'm Danny Franklin.'

The driver seemed confused. ‘Family Wynne-Estes?'

‘That's my son-in-law,' said Dad. ‘I'm Danny Franklin. That's David.'

I stepped in. My Spanish isn't great, but I do know a few words. I said: ‘No, that is us. I'm sorry. My dad's tired. Wynne-Estes. Yes. Thank you.'

The driver said: ‘Your lady is missing from the ship?'

‘Yes, that's right. My sister. Missing. We're here to see Gail Perlot.'

The name worked. ‘Yes, Gail, we go, we go to Gail,' the driver said.

We stepped out of the airport into the heat. Drops of perspiration popped instantly onto Dad's forehead. The driver said: ‘Come, come, come …' His car was typical of embassy cars – it was an SUV with tinted windows and air-conditioning – but the ride was not smooth. The traffic out towards Gail's office was bumper-to-bumper, with mostly old cars that liked to honk and brake, on terrible roads.

‘Bad traffic,' the driver kept saying. ‘Bad traffic.'

‘No kidding,' said Dad. He was holding onto the passenger strap.

Gail's office was in a building adjacent to the largest of the lavish hotels on the beach at Cabo, all of which are positioned to take advantage of views of the sea arch. Security inside the building was tight. We passed through a metal detector and had our digital fingerprints taken, before being allowed in.

Gail stood to greet us. She was an officious woman with a wide butt that made the vents at the back of her jacket flare. The centrepiece of her desk was a small, steel model of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima.

‘I am so, so sorry to have to meet you under these circumstances,' she said, extending a hand with an old-fashioned engagement-and-wedding-ring combination. ‘I can't imagine how this feels.'

‘I'll tell you how it feels,' said Dad, wiping sweat from his brow, ‘it feels like we're being given the run-around. It seems like nobody wants to tell us what's going on. Twenty-four hours we've been trying to reach David. No luck, but don't worry because I've got plenty of questions for him now.'

Gail's expression switched from empathy to something like anxiety. ‘I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but David has left Mexico.'

‘He's left?' Dad was wide-eyed. ‘What do you mean he's left? Didn't you tell him we were coming?'

‘I did tell him, but I know he flew out this morning. I was thinking that you might even run into him at the airport.'

So David knew that Dad and I were making a dash to Mexico yet he'd still upped and left?

‘I'm so sorry,' Gail said. ‘He got the nine am flight out. It's not a direct flight, but it's the first flight into the US. He'd have to go via San Francisco, and I don't know, can he drive from there? Down to Bienveneda?'

‘Well, he can,' I said, ‘but why would he? Didn't he leave his car at LAX? And why leave when he knew we were coming? You told him we were coming; I texted him. I've texted him a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours. I gave him our flight number. I said we'd see him. This sounds like he's avoiding us.'

Gail put her hands down on the desk. ‘Well, I guess I don't know for certain, because I spoke to David only briefly this morning. He said the police here in Cabo had no further questions for him at this point, and he told me he wanted to get home to the girls, because the girls need to be told. Provided they don't know already. He was dreading the idea of them finding out from the television, although I gather his sister is keeping them away from the news.'

Dad looked astounded. ‘But what is he going to tell them? That's a tricky conversation to have with five-year-olds, isn't it: “I killed your mother.” I mean, what else is he going to say?'

‘Dad, please,' I said, appealing for calm. ‘We can't waste any more time on David. Can you tell us how the search is going, Gail? Who is out there? What can we do?'

‘I know how agonising this must be,' she sighed, ‘because any minute now, you're going to read online that the search has been
called off. And I want you to know that's not quite right. There are still plenty of vessels out there. There's another cruise ship, and several yachts, plus the coast-guard cutter. They're under instructions to keep a lookout. But I do think, at this point, that we need to accept the likelihood that Loren will not be found.'

‘Hey, hey, hey,' said Dad, rising from his chair, ‘I think it's a bit early for that conclusion, don't you?'

‘I am so sorry,' said Gail, for what seemed like the thousandth time. ‘I wish there was something else I could say. I wish I could help. I really do. But I think we have to accept that Loren …'

‘Don't even say it. This is impossible to accept,' Dad said. ‘Could you just accept this? Could you just walk away, if this was your daughter? You say you've talked to David, but you've let him walk out of here without talking to us. You say the Mexican police have no further questions for him, but how can that be?'

Gail chewed on her bottom lip. Her brow was furrowed. She seemed to be weighing up whether to let us in on something that she knew, that perhaps we didn't.

‘What do you believe happened?' I asked. ‘Do you think my sister jumped? I mean, did she leave a note?'

Gail shook her head, like no, that wasn't it. She paused a while longer, then said: ‘As I tried to explain on the telephone, we – meaning the staff here, the embassy staff – wouldn't be in any position to hold David. Do you understand what I'm saying? We couldn't hold him even if we wanted to. This is Mexico. And the ship from which Loren disappeared, the
Silver Lining
, is Dutch. And those waters out the window there' – she pointed – ‘that's the Pacific Ocean. It's not US waters. It may not even be Mexican waters. It could well be international waters that Loren went missing in. So it's a complicated situation, and my understanding is that the police in your home state – in
California, and even in Bienveneda – do know about this case, and they will be making a statement.'

‘They will? But when?' I demanded. ‘And what will they be saying?'

From her pained expression, it was clear that Gail knew more than she was saying. Dad could feel it, too. He kept trying to press Gail, asking: ‘Did they search Loren's cabin? Have you talked to other passengers? Maybe we could see the surveillance tapes. Maybe we would notice something that the investigators don't even realise is important.'

Gail nodded. ‘Well, when you say “we” … there is the question of jurisdiction.'

Dad exploded. ‘So, what, David answers to nobody?'

Now it was my turn to try to calm the situation. I put my hand on Dad's big knee. ‘Please, Dad, please.'

Then, to Gail, I said: ‘Okay, I get the feeling from what you're saying that there are things you're not telling us, and while I don't understand why you simply can't fill us in, no doubt there are reasons, and I'm prepared to accept that for now. But what
can
you tell us? When was the last time anyone saw Loren on the ship? Surely you can tell us that?'