Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

We stopped trying
. Everyone knows it means the
end of a marriage – it’s textbook. But I stopped trying. It
was me. I wasn’t the man I needed to be.’ Nick’s lids are
heavy, his speech off-kilter enough that his twang is
showing. He is past tipsy, one drink before drunk. His
cheeks are pink with alcohol. My fingertips glow,
remembering the heat of his skin when he had a few
cocktails in him.
‘So how would you make it up to her?’ The camera
wobbles for a second; the girl is grabbing her cocktail.
‘How 
will
I make it up to her. First I’m going to find her
and bring her home. You can bet on that. Then? Whatever
she needs from me, I’ll give her. From now on. Because I
reached the end of the treasure hunt, and I was brought to
my knees. Humbled. My wife has never been more clear to
me than she is now. I’ve never been so sure of what I
needed to do.’
‘If you could talk to Amy right now, what would you tell
her?’
‘I love you. I will find you. I 
will …’
I can tell he is about to do the Daniel Day-Lewis line
from 
The Last of the Mohicans
: ‘Stay alive … I 
will
find
you.’ He can’t resist deflecting any sincerity with a quick line
of movie dialogue. I can feel him teetering right on the edge
of it. He stops himself.
‘I love you forever, Amy.’
How heartfelt. How unlike my husband.

---

Three morbidly obese hill people on motorized scooters
are between me and my morning coffee. Their asses
mushroom over the sides of the contraptions, but they still
need another Egg McMuffin. There are literally three
p e o p le , 
parked
in front of me, in line, 
inside
the
McDonald’s.
I actually don’t care. I’m curiously cheerful despite this
twist in the plan. Online, the video is already spiral-viraling
away, and the reaction is surprisingly positive. Cautiously
optimistic: 
Maybe this guy didn’t kill his wife after all
. That
is, word for word, the most common refrain. Because once
Nick lets his guard down and shows some emotion, it’s all
there. No one could watch that video and believe he was
putting up an act. It was no swallow-the-pain sort of amateur
theater. My husband loves me. Or at least last night he
loved me. While I was plotting his doom in my crummy little
cabin that smells of moldy towel, he loved me.
It’s not enough. I know that, of course. I can’t change
my plan. But it gives me pause. My husband has finished
the treasure hunt and he is in love. He is also deeply
distressed: on one cheek I swear I could spot a hive.
I pull up to my cabin to find Dorothy knocking on my door.
Her hair is wet from the heat, brushed straight back like a
Wall Street slickster’s. She is in the habit of swiping her
upper lip, then licking the sweat off her fingers, so she has
her index finger in her mouth like a buttery corncob as she
turns to me.
‘There she is,’ she says. ‘The truant.’
I am late on my cabin payment. Two days. It almost
makes me laugh: I am late on rent.

---

‘I’m so sorry, Dorothy. I’ll come by with it in ten
minutes.’
‘I’ll wait, if you don’t mind.’ ‘I’m not sure if I’m going to
stay. I might have to head on.’
‘Then you’d still owe me the two days. Eighty dollars,
please.’
I duck into my cabin, undo my flimsy money belt. I
counted my cash on my bed this morning, taking a good
long time doling out each bill, a teasing economic
striptease, and the big reveal was that I have, 
somehow
, I
have only $8,849 left. It costs a lot to live.
When I open the door to hand Dorothy the cash
($8,769 left), I see Greta and Jeff hanging out on Greta’s
porch, watching the cash exchange hands. Jeff isn’t playing
his guitar, Greta isn’t smoking. They seem to be standing
on her porch just to get a better look at me. They both wave
at me,