The Perfect Wife

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 STEP FOUR Purchase a vehicle for cash. Provide a false name. Remove all tracking devices (toll passes with RFID chips, satnav, OnStar car system, etc.)

 Root

 STEP FIVE Practice your new lifestyle. Get food to go. Never order from chain restaurants. Change your eating habits, e.g. if you are a vegetarian, consider eating meat. Use alcohol wipes on glasses and cutlery to avoid leaving fingerprints/DNA which can be read with an easily purchased BPac machine. Use a sleeping bag in (non-chain) motels. Always pay cash.

 ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ

 STEP SIX Reduce social media activity. Create a new, offline-only identity. (Do not make the common mistake of trying to obtain false papers in the name of a dead person)

 X0X0X0~~STEP SEVEN. Accumulate large amounts of cash. Getting into debt with a loan shark or drug dealer is a risky but effective ploy. They will come looking for you after your disappearance, which can help divert attention.

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 STEP EIGHT Tell people close to you you’re worried about being followed. Alternatively, tell them you’ve started hiking in remote locations. (Hiking is preferable to drowning as fewer bodies are recovered from hiking accidents.) Tell no one what you plan to do, not even those you trust the most.

 #&

 Purchase a baseball cap with LED lights under the flap. This will make your face a blur to infrared CCTV cameras when traveling.

 #&

 #&

 Entry

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 STEP NINE Create a corporation under a name not connected to you. This will be a legal entity able to lease an apartment, pay bills, run a checking account etc. Use the corporation account rather than your personal account to pay whoever set it up for you.

 Entr%%

 #&

 STEP TEN Ditch all your credit cards, personal possessions etc. Then leave.

43



   You stare at the pages. Whatever you’d been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been this.

Not an affair, after all. Not a suicide. A secret of a totally different kind.

You ran away.

True, not all the details match—the Web page specifically said not to fake being drowned, for example, and the iPad clearly hadn’t been hit with a hammer or boiled. But you must have decided your well-known love of surfing made the ocean more believable than a hiking accident. As for the iPad, perhaps you meant to take it with you. All the other details, such as the pills, are too close to be a coincidence.

You’re still alive.

The thought is shocking. Everything Tim believes—everything he’s done, from raising Danny on his own to reconstructing you—has been built on a monstrous deception. A lie, perpetrated on him by the woman he loved. The woman who always said she loved him in return.

   Ironically, by finding the information that finally clears Tim of your murder, you’ve discovered something that will completely destroy him.

But—why? That’s what you still can’t get your head around. You had a good life, an adoring husband. Okay, so he preferred you with braids and didn’t like it when you faked an orgasm. Hardly reasons to fake your own death.

And if you had stopped loving Tim for whatever reason, it would have been a shame—but there would always have been the option of divorce. This was a man who gave you a beach house as a wedding gift. You could have separated and both still been ridiculously wealthy.

Most of all, though, you can’t understand how you could ever have abandoned Danny. No mother, surely, would walk out on her child like that—especially not a child as heart-achingly vulnerable as him.

People do, an internal voice reminds you. It happens.

But not people like you and Tim. Not strong, unselfish, principled people. Good people.

If that’s what you are.

“Awesome,” Nathan breathes. He’s looking at the numbers flying across the screen. “I can literally see your mind working.”

“What do you mean?” you say sharply.

“Don’t worry—I can’t read your thoughts. Just see you’re thinking hard.” He glances at the printout you’re still holding. “Going to take that to the police?”

“I haven’t decided.” But already you can see how tricky that would be. The police will reopen the investigation. You don’t know if it’s legal to fake your own death, but you suspect that if they do find Abigail Cullen-Scott alive and well, at the very least there’d be a charge of wasting police time.

More to the point, Tim will know what you did. That you walked out on your marriage. Your disabled son. And him.

   You remember what Mike said, that time he came to see you. Remember how fragile he still is, would you?

You can’t hurt Tim like that. At least, not yet.

“If you take that printout to the cops,” Nathan says slyly, “they’ll confiscate the iPad. And there’s more on it, I bet.”

Abruptly, you reach down and pull the cable out of your hip. “Hey!” he protests. “That should be properly ejected—”

“How much more?”

“I’m not sure.” He gestures hungrily at the cable, now dangling from his laptop. “Hook me up again, and I’ll start another batch tonight.”

“No,” you say, taking a step back. “Unscramble some more, and then I’ll see about letting you plug it in again. Nothing gets nothing in this world—remember?”

SIXTEEN



   (FEEL FREE!) was probably Abbie’s highlight as our artist-in-residence. People would say to her, “How’re you going to top that?” and she’d just smile and shrug. “Something’ll come,” she’d reply. “It always does.”

But as the weeks, then months, went by, the smile faded. Someone suggested she could do a whole series of putty statues, and she just sighed and said, “Maybe I should,” as if they’d suggested she get a job in an insurance company or something. There was talk of a project making 3-D busts of our heads that came to nothing. It was ironic that, because of the time lag with social media, the height of her viral success with the pictures of (FEEL FREE!) coincided almost exactly with Abbie herself going through a lean period.

We felt disappointed, initially—we’d gotten used to the regular entertainment of her artworks; they lightened the mechanical drudgery of our lives—but we also felt protective of her. Why should she feel obligated to amuse us, like a magician pulling yet another balloon out of his pocket at a party, or a musician playing his greatest hit for the thousandth time? She was an artist, our artist, and her function was lofty and holy.