Thought I Knew You(2)

“The bigger question, Hannah-banana, is where on earth is your daddy?”





At six, I called Charlotte and canceled.

Then, I called my mom. “Can you believe he didn’t even call me? Should I be worried?”

“Nah, you never know when he’s coming home,” Mom reassured me. “Remember last month? His flight was delayed for a whole day.”



“Yeah, but he called at least.” I bit my bottom lip.

“Not until pretty late, though, right? He was stuck on the runway. It’s probably the same now.” I could envision her dismissively waving her hand in the air.

Her lightness eased something inside me, and I exhaled a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “I’ll bet he forgot. It’s so typical lately. I have no idea where his head is anymore.”

“Well, if his plane was delayed, I’m sure he can’t call. That whole ‘don’t use your cell phone while flying’ rule.”

Mom and Dad lived about ten minutes away in the same house where I grew up, and I talked to my mother no less than twice a day. She loved Greg and probably knew more about our life than a mother should, but she wasn’t privy to the small details. She didn’t know about Greg’s recent distance or our inability to have a conversation lately, or our apparent—mutual—sex strike, which caused our bed to be the scene of a new Cold War. Ups and downs, is all, I kept thinking. We all got ’em.

But when we had talked on Wednesday, things seemed a little better. Greg wanted to go to a movie; we hadn’t done that in a while. And he even suggested Mexican. His long silences, usually heavy with unsaid words, seemed lighter somehow. Almost easy. When I tried to end the call, I sensed an unusual hesitancy. Generally, Greg ended the conversation first, a sense of urgency coming through the line from the minute he said “hello,” but Wednesday had been different. Or maybe that was just my hopeful thinking.

Leah started crying from her high chair.

“Ma, I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”





After six o’clock, I secured the girls in the playroom in front of the television before bed and hiked to the back of the yard, skirting the edge of the woods. Behind the woods was a steep hill, ending at some little-used railroad tracks.



“Cooooody!” I called him over and over again. I expected him to come bounding over the hill, carrying some treasure from the tracks. When he didn’t materialize, I fought a sense of deep unease, of everything being slightly out of place, two voids in the house defying reason.

Worried about leaving the girls alone too long, I jogged back to the house. On the back porch, I turned once more to gaze out at the inky yard, a black, starless sky swallowing the earth that seemed to shift ever so slightly beneath my feet. Trying to convince myself that Cody would show up later, I went inside to wait for my husband.





I put the girls to bed with only a minor inquisition from Hannah about her missing daddy. I waved the question away with a cheerful façade. She let it slide, used to going days without seeing him. After calling Greg again and leaving yet another message, I curled up on the couch for some backlogged DVR. I skipped around, aiming for distraction as I fought the unease that settled in the pit of my stomach. Pulling the blanket up to my chin, I shivered from the end-of-season chill, wishing, suddenly, pitifully, that I had my husband to curl up on the couch with, even though it had been months since we’d done that. Briefly, I considered the irony, the way we’d avoided talking or touching in the evenings, but how when faced with a growing sense of anxiety, I longed for it. When he gets home, we’ll fix this.





I was startled awake at one thirty in the morning. As I sat up on the couch, I remembered. Greg. Was he home? I checked the doors—both still locked. I checked our bedroom—no suitcase on the floor, no Greg on the bed. I checked the garage—no car. I was angry. One lousy phone call. Hi, I’m stuck on a plane. Hi, I missed my flight. I tried his cell phone and left a third message. After I hung up, worry bore down on me, heavy and oppressive.



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?”