The Stranger (9 page)

A
dam sent several desperate texts
to try to get Corinne to reply. They included:
“this isn't the way to handle this,” “please call me,” “where are you,” “how many days,” “how can you do this to us”
—stuff like that. He tried nice, mean, calm, angry.

But there was no reaction.

Was Corinne okay?

He gave Janice some lame excuse about Corinne still being stuck and having to cancel. Janice insisted that he take two veal Milanese home with him. He was going to fight it, but there seemed little point.

As he pulled onto his street, he still held out hope that Corinne had changed her mind and gone home. It was one thing to be mad
at him. It was another thing to take it out on the boys. But her car wasn't in the drive, and the first thing Ryan said to him when he opened the door was “Where's Mom?”

“She has some work thing,” Adam said in a voice equally vague and dismissive.

“I need my home uniform.”

“So?”

“So I threw it in the wash. Do you know if Mom did the laundry?”

“No,” Adam said. “Why don't you check the basket?”

“I did.”

“How about your drawers?”

“I checked there too.”

You always see your or your spouse's flaws in your child. Ryan had Corinne's anxiety over small matters. Big matters—house payments, illness, destruction, accidents—didn't bother Corinne. She rose to the occasion. Maybe because she overcompensated by worrying the minor stuff into a ground stump, or maybe, in life, like a great athlete, Corinne was clutch when it mattered.

Of course, to be fair, this was no small matter to Ryan.

“Then maybe it's in the washer or dryer,” Adam said.

“Already looked.”

“Then I don't know what to tell you, kid.”

“When will Mom be home?”

“I don't know.”

“Like at ten?”

“What part of ‘I don't know' is confusing you exactly?”

There was more snap in his tone than expected. Ryan was also, like his mother, supersensitive.

“I didn't mean—”

“I'll text Mom.”

“That's a good idea. Oh, let me know what she says, okay?”

Ryan nodded and texted.

Corinne didn't reply to him right away. Nor in an hour. Or even two. Adam made up some excuse about her teachers' conference being extended. The boys bought it because the boys never looked too closely at stuff like that. He promised Ryan that he'd find the uniform before his game.

Adam was, of course, blocking to some extent. Was Corinne safe? Had something terrible happened to her? Should he go to the police?

The last part felt foolish. The police would hear about their big fight, see Corinne's text about letting her be, and shake their heads. And really, when you step back, is it so bizarre that his wife would want a little distance after what Adam had just learned?

Sleep came in small chunks. Adam constantly checked his phone for texts from Corinne. Nothing. At 3:00
A.M.
, he sneaked into Ryan's room and checked his son's phone. Nothing. This made no sense. Trying to avoid Adam, okay, he could get that. She might be angry or scared or confused or feeling cornered. It would make sense that she might want to get away from him for a few days.

But her boys?

Would Corinne really just up and leave her boys in the lurch like this? Did she expect him to just make excuses?

. . . 
YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS.
DON'T TRY TO CONTACT ME. . . .

What was that all about? Why shouldn't he try to contact her? And what about . . . ?

He sat up as the sun came through the windows. Hello.

Corinne could abandon him. She could even want to—he didn't know—force him to take care of the boys.

But what about her students?

She took her teaching responsibilities, like most things that mattered, very seriously. She was also a bit of a control freak and hated the idea of some ill-prepared substitute taking over her class for even a day. Funny now that he thought about it. Over the past four years, Corinne had missed only one day of school.

The day after her “miscarriage.”

It had been a Thursday. He had come home late from work to find her crying in bed. When the bad cramping started, she had driven herself to the doctor. It was too late, but in truth, she said, the doctor wouldn't have been able to do anything anyway. These things happen, the doctor had told her.

“Why didn't you call me?” Adam had asked.

“I didn't want you to worry or rush home. There was nothing you could do.”

And he had bought it.

Corinne had wanted to go to work the next day, but Adam put his foot down. She had gone through something traumatic. You don't just get up and go to work the next day. He had picked up the phone and handed it to her.

“Call the school. Tell them you won't be in.”

She had reluctantly made the call, informing the school that she would be back by Monday. Adam had thought at the time that this was simply Corinne's way. Get back to life. Get back to work. No reason to dwell. He had been amazed at the speed of her recovery.

Man, how naïve could one man be?

But then again, was that his fault? Who the hell would be looking for dishonesty in such a traumatic moment? Why would he question her word on something so serious? Even now, with hindsight, he had no idea why Corinne would have done something so . . . heinous? Crazy? Desperate? Manipulative?

What?

But that didn't matter right now. The point was, Corinne would be at school. She might choose to take time off from him and maybe even her boys, but there was no reason why she wouldn't be at school today.

The boys were old enough to get ready for school on their own. Adam managed to avoid them, ducking their questions about Mom's whereabouts with quick shout-outs from his bedroom and the pretense of a long morning shower.

When the boys were gone, he drove over to the high school. The bell for homeroom would have just sounded. That would be perfect. Adam could enter and confront her as she walked between homeroom and first period. Her homeroom class was room 233. He would wait for her by the door.

The high school had been built in the seventies and reeked of it. What had been considered sleek and modern had weathered like an old sci-fi movie set, like
Logan's Run
or something. The building was gray with fading aqua trim. It was the edificial equivalent of Cheez Whiz or a hockey player's mullet.

There were no free spaces in the school's parking lot. Adam ended up parking illegally—live on the edge—and hurrying toward the school. The side door was locked. Adam had never done this before—visited Corinne during a school day—but he knew that all schools had taken up stringent security protocols in the wake of
shootings and other violence. He circled toward the front door. It was also locked. Adam pressed the intercom button.

A camera whirred down on him, and the weary female voice that could only belong to someone working in a school's main office asked him who he was.

He put on his most disarming smile. “It's Adam Price. Corinne's husband.”

The door buzzed. Adam pushed through the doors. A sign read
CHECK IN AT
THE MAIN DESK.
He wasn't sure what to do here. If he signed in, they would want to know why and probably buzz down to the classroom. He didn't want that. He wanted to surprise Corinne or, at the very least, not need to explain to the staff why he was here. The office was on the right. Adam was about to turn left and just hurry down the opposite way when he saw the armed security guard. He aimed his most disarming smile at the guard. The guard offered one back. No choice now. He'd have to go to the main office. He veered through the door and weaved past a few local moms. There was a huge laundry basket in the middle of the floor where parents dropped off lunches for their kids who forgot to bring them in the morning.

The clock on the wall grunted and ticked. It read 8:17
A.M
. Three minutes until the bell rang. Okay, good. The sign-up sheet was on the tall counter. He picked up the pen as casually as possible—Mr. Without A Care—and quickly signed in with intentionally messy handwriting. He grabbed a visitor pass. The two women behind the desk were busy. They didn't bother to even glance his way.

No reason to wait, was there?

He hurried back down the hall, flashing his visitor pass at the guard. Like most high schools, there had been additions over the
years, and that helped make traversing your way inside these arteries somewhat tricky. Still, when the bell sounded, Adam was perfectly situated to observe the door to room 233.

The students streamed out and collided and clogged the corridors like some medical documentary on heart disease. He waited until the flow of students petered out and then halted. Then, a few seconds later, a young man Adam guessed was probably under thirty came out and turned left.

A substitute.

Adam just stood there, pressing himself against the wall to let the student stream rush past him and not get caught in its current. He wasn't sure what to think or do. Was he even surprised by this development? He didn't know. He tried to put it together, tried to think about the links here—the fake pregnancy, the stranger, the confrontation—that had led to his wife's choosing to run off for a few days.

It made no sense.

So what next?

Nothing, he supposed. At least, not right this very moment. Go to work. Do your job. Think it through. He was missing something. He knew that. Corinne had as much as admitted that, hadn't she?

“It isn't what you think, Adam. There's more to this.”

When the flow of students turned into a trickle, he started back toward the front exit. He was lost in thought and about to make a turn when he felt fingers like a steel talon grip his arm. He turned and saw his wife's friend, Kristin Hoy.

“What the hell is going on?” she whispered.

“What?”

Her muscles clearly were not just for show. She pulled him into
an empty chemistry classroom and closed the door. There were workstations and beakers and sinks with high faucets. A giant chart of the periodic table of elements, both a staple of every science classroom and a cliché, dominated the far wall.

“Where is she?” Kristin asked.

Adam wasn't sure how to play it, so he went with honesty. “I don't know.”

“How can you not know?”

“We were supposed to meet for dinner last night. She never showed.”

“She just didn't . . . ?” Kristin shook her head in confusion. “Did you call the police?”

“What? No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. She sent a text. She said she needed some time away.”

“From what?”

Adam just looked at her.

Kristin said, “You?”

“Seems so.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Kristin stepped back, chastened. “So why are you here?”

“Because I want to make sure she's okay. I figured she'd be at work. She never calls in sick.”

“Never,” Kristin agreed.

“Except, it seems, today.”

Kristin considered that. “I guess you guys have been fighting a lot.”

Adam didn't really want to get into it, but what choice did he
have? “Something has recently come up,” he said in his most noncommittal legal voice.

“It isn't any of my business, right?”

“Right.”

“But it is kinda my business because Corinne made it part of my business.”

“What do you mean?”

Kristin sighed and put her hand to her mouth. Outside the school, her outfits were all about accentuating her toned body. She wore sleeveless blouses and either shorts or small skirts, even when the weather didn't exactly call for it. In here, her blouse was more conservative, though you could still see the muscles near the clavicle and neck.

“I got a text too,” she said.

“What did it say?”

“Adam?”

“What?”

“I don't want to get in the middle of this. You get that, right? You two have been having issues. I get that.”

“We haven't been having issues.”

“But you just said—”

“We have
an
issue, one, and, well, it just came up.”

“When?”

“When did the issue come up?”

“Yes.”

“The day before yesterday.”

“Oh,” Kristin said.

“What do you mean, ‘Oh'?”

“It's just that . . . I mean, Corinne has been acting strangely for the past month or so.”

Adam tried to keep a straight face. “Strange how?”

“Just, I don't know, different. Distracted. She missed a class or two and asked me to cover for her. She missed a few workouts and said . . .”

Kristin stopped.

“Said what?” Adam prodded.

“Said if anybody asked where she was, to just say that she was there with me.”

Silence.

“Did she mean me, Kristin?”

“She never said that, no. Look, I better get back. I have class—”

Adam stepped in her path. “What did her text say?”

“What?”

“You said she sent you a text yesterday. What did it say?”

“Look, she's my friend. You get that, right?”

“I'm not asking you to betray confidences.”

“Yeah, Adam, you kinda are.”

“I just want to make sure she's okay.”

“Why wouldn't she be?”

“Because this isn't like her.”

“Maybe it's just what she said to you. She needs time.”

“Is that what she texted you?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Wait, when? After school?”

“No,” Kristin said too slowly. “During.”