Melissa having this baby with no father on the scene would be having this baby with the father on the scene.
His name was Lester Cody. Thirty years old. A regular at Denny’s. He’d never hung on to a job longer than three months, and none of those had ever paid a penny more than minimum wage. Always ended up injured. Hurt his back. Threw out his shoulder. Sprained his ankle. But luckily, no matter how badly he might have gotten hurt, he could still play his Nintendo Wii. Lester lived in his parents’ basement, still had Spider-Man posters on his bedroom wall. His favorite hat was adorned with a plastic dog turd.
Ellie cried for the better part of a week before she was able to accept that her daughter was really going to have this child, that she was not going to marry Lester Cody, and that Ellie was going to become a grandmother.
“This baby’s coming,” she said to Wendell. “There’s not a damn thing I can do about it.” So she took up her knitting again.
Sometimes, it was all more than Wendell Garfield could stand. The tension between his wife and daughter, the relentless discussions Ellie wanted to have with him about what their girl was going to do with her life. And now all this new talk about the baby. How would Melissa manage? Would she need to move back home? Would the man who got her pregnant step up to the plate and accept some responsibility?
The discussions never stopped.
Wendell Garfield wondered if it was all this that had driven him into the arms of Laci Harmon, or if it would have happened anyway.
THREE
Wendell
They both worked at Home Depot, Wendell primarily in plumbing and Laci over in home lighting fixtures. They’d had coffee breaks together, talked about their families, the joys and-mostly-heartaches of raising kids. She had two boys, aged fifteen and seventeen, who did nothing but fight with each other. Laci confessed once, only half jokingly, that she wished they’d have one final no-holds-barred battle and kill each other.
Wendell laughed. He said he knew exactly how she felt.
He always found reasons to stroll through the lighting section.
Laci often seemed to be passing through the plumbing supplies aisle.
It started with friendly teasing, then double entendres. When Laci wandered by, she’d narrow her eyes and say she needed help with her plumbing. When Garfield was over in light fixtures, he’d bump into Laci on purpose and say he wondered if she could help him keep his light switch in the up position.
It was all in fun.
Then one day Wendell had been asked to assemble, for display purposes, a vinyl-sided utility shed. He was inside the nearly finished structure, tightening up some bolts to make sure the thing wouldn’t blow down in the wind, when Laci Harmon stepped inside, slid the door shut behind her, and placed his right hand on her left breast.
It was a Thursday. That night, when Ellie was doing the weekly grocery shopping, Wendell slipped away from home and met Laci at a Days Inn. They had been finding ways to rendezvous once or twice a week since then, always in places that were nicer than a vinyl-sided utility shed, although not always by much. Laci’s Dodge minivan, for example. Wendell longed for these moments away from home, away from the endless stresses that Ellie and Melissa provided.
He’d only just got off the phone with the police when it rang.
“Hello?”
“Oh, Wen, I just had to get in touch.”
“Laci, this isn’t a good time.”
“But I can’t stop thinking about you, about what you must be going through,” she said. She wasn’t whispering, which told Garfield that she was alone in her house.
“Where’s your husband? The boys?” he asked her.
“They’re out. It’s just me,” Laci said. “Wendell, you have to talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Have they found out anything? Do the police know what happened? I watched the press conference. I watched it at six, and I watched it again at eleven. It was very moving. You were very good, if you know what I mean. You held it together really well. I think if anyone knew anything, if they knew anything at all, they’d call when they saw that.”
“I just got off the phone with the police,” Wendell told her. “They haven’t received any good tips.”
“I feel… I feel so… it’s hard to explain,” Laci said. “I feel sort of guilty, you know? Because of what we’ve been doing behind her back.”
“They don’t have anything to do with each other.”
“I know that, but I keep thinking, what if someone finds out? What if someone finds out what’s going on between us, and they think it has something to do with what’s happened to Ellie? And if, God forbid, something has actually happened to Ellie, then how is it going to look if-”
“Laci, please, don’t go there,” he interrupted. “Maybe she just decided to go away for a while, clear her head.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. But I suppose it’s a possibility. I mean, they haven’t found her car or anything. If something had happened to her around here, you’d think they’d at least have found her car. We’re into the third day now.”
“So you think she just decided to drive away? Like to Florida or something?”
“Laci, I don’t know, okay? I don’t have any goddamn idea.”
His tone stopped Laci for a second. “You don’t have to get angry with me.”
“I’m going through a lot right now. I’m just trying to keep it together.”
“How’s Melissa coping?”
“Not so well.”
“What about that guy who got her pregnant? Is he still in the picture? Can he be there for Melissa at a time like this?”
“She hasn’t heard from him. Honestly, I don’t think it would make things any easier for me if he was around.”
“I was just-Oh my God, I just thought of something,” she said.
“What?”
“They’re not tapping your phone, are they? They’re not listening in?”
He felt a chill run down his spine. Could they be? He could kick himself. It hadn’t even occurred to him until she mentioned it. He’d been doing such a good job being the distraught husband, he didn’t think there was any reason for the police to bug his phone. Sure, he knew the cops would probably be looking at him sooner or later, but he didn’t believe he’d given any indication that he was in any way responsible for his wife’s disappearance.
“I mean, if they hear us, and know we’ve been seeing each other, then-”
“Hang up, Laci,” he said.
“-then they might think that you had something to do with it, you know, so that you could spend your life with me and-”
He slammed down the phone. If the police had been listening, the damage had been done. They’d know he’d been having an affair. They’d know he and Laci had been seeing each other for weeks now.
Not good, not good at all.
Wendell was totally rattled. He tried to calm down, told himself he was going to get through this. He just needed to keep his wits about him. Even if the police found out he’d been sleeping with Laci, it didn’t have to mean he’d had anything to do with this business about his wife.
They hadn’t found a body. Or her car.
