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

It’s funny, I can’t quite get a bead
on her, like who she really is
. And: 
You just seem kind of
not yourself with her
. And: 
There’s a difference between
really loving someone and loving the idea of her
. And

---

finally: 
The important thing is she makes you really happy
.
Back when Amy made me really happy.
Amy offered her own notions of Go: 
She’s very …
Missouri, isn’t she?
And: 
You just have to be in the right
mood for her
. And: 
She’s a little needy about you, but then
I guess she doesn’t have anyone else
.
I’d hoped when we all wound up back in Missouri, the
two would let it drop – agree to disagree, free to be you
and me. Neither did. Go was funnier than Amy, though, so it
was a mismatched battle. Amy was clever, withering,
sarcastic. Amy could get me riled up, could make an
excellent, barbed point, but Go always made me laugh. It is
dangerous to laugh at your spouse.
‘Go, I thought we agreed you’d never mention my
genitalia again,’ I said. ‘That within the bounds of our sibling
relationship, I have no genitalia.’
The phone rang. Go took one more sip of her beer and
answered, gave an eyeroll and a smile. ‘He sure 
is
here,
one moment, please!’ To me, she mouthed: ‘Carl.’
Carl Pelley lived across the street from me and Amy.
Retired three years. Divorced two years. Moved into our
development right after. He’d been a traveling salesman –
children’s party supplies – and I sensed that after four
decades of motel living, he wasn’t quite at home being
home. He showed up at the bar nearly every day with a
pungent Hardee’s bag, complaining about his budget until
he was offered a first drink on the house. (This was another
thing I learned about Carl from his days in The Bar – that he
was a functioning but serious alcoholic.) He had the good
grace to accept whatever we were ‘trying to get rid of,’ and
he meant it: For one full month Carl drank nothing but dusty

---

Zimas, circa 1992, that we’d discovered in the basement.
When a hangover kept Carl home, he’d find a reason to
call: 
Your mailbox looks awfully full today, Nicky, maybe a
package came
. Or: 
It’s supposed to rain, you might want to
close your windows
. The reasons were bogus. Carl just
needed to hear the clink of glasses, the glug of a drink
being poured.
I picked up the phone, shaking a tumbler of ice near
the receiver so Carl could imagine his gin.
‘Hey, Nicky,’ Carl’s watery voice came over. ‘Sorry to
bother you. I just thought you should know … your door is
wide open, and that cat of yours is outside. It isn’t
supposed to be, right?’
I gave a non-commital grunt.
‘I’d go over and check, but I’m a little under the
weather,’ Carl said heavily.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s time for me to go home
anyway.’
It was a fifteen-minute drive, straight north along River
Road. Driving into our development occasionally makes
me shiver, the sheer number of gaping dark houses –
homes that have never known inhabitants, or homes that
have known owners and seen them ejected, the house
standing triumphantly voided, humanless.
When Amy and I moved in, our only neighbors
descended on us: one middle-aged single mom of three,
bearing a casserole; a young father of triplets with a six-
pack of beer (his wife left at home with the triplets); an older
Christian couple who lived a few houses down; and of
course, Carl from across the street. We sat out on our back

---

deck and watched the river, and they all talked ruefully
about ARMs, and zero percent interest, and zero money
down, and then they all remarked how Amy and I were the
only ones with river access, the only ones without children.
‘Just the two of you? In this whole big house?’ the single
mom asked, doling out a scrambled-egg something.
‘Just the two of us,’ I confirmed with a smile, and
nodded in appreciation as I took a mouthful of wobbly egg.
‘Seems lonely.’
On that she was right.
Four months later, the 
whole big house
lady lost her
mortgage battle and disappeared in the night with her three
kids. Her house has remained empty. The living room
window still has a child’s picture of a butterfly taped to it, the
bright Magic Marker sun-faded to brown. One evening not
long ago, I drove past and saw a man, bearded,
bedraggled, staring out from behind the picture, floating in
the dark like some sad aquarium fish. He saw me see him
and flickered back into the depths of the house. The next
day I left a brown paper bag full of sandwiches on the front
step; it sat in the sun untouched for a week, decaying wetly,
until I picked it back up and threw it out.
Quiet. The complex was always disturbingly quiet. As I
neared our home, conscious of the noise of the car engine,
I could see the cat was definitely on the steps. Still on the
steps, twenty minutes after Carl’s call. This was strange.
Amy loved the cat, the cat was declawed, the cat was never
let outside, never ever, because the cat, Bleecker, was
sweet but extremely stupid, and despite the LoJack
tracking device pelleted somewhere in his fat furry rolls,
Amy knew she’d never see the cat again if he ever got out.

---

The cat would waddle straight into the Mississippi River –
deedle-de-dum – and float all the way to the Gulf of Mexico
into the maw of a hungry bull shark.
But it turned out the cat wasn’t even smart enough to
get past the steps. Bleecker was perched on the edge of
the porch, a pudgy but proud sentinel – Private Tryhard. As
I pulled in to the drive, Carl came out and stood on his own
front steps, and I could feel the cat and the old man both
watching me as I got out of the car and walked toward the
house, the red peonies along the border looking fat and
juicy, asking to be devoured.
I was about to go into blocking position to get the cat
when I saw that the front door was open. Carl had said as
much, but seeing it was different. This wasn’t taking-out-
the-trash-back-in-a-minute open. This was wide-gaping-
ominous open.
Carl hovered across the way, waiting for my response,
and like some awful piece of performance art, I felt myself
enacting Concerned Husband. I stood on the middle step
and frowned, then took the stairs quickly, two at a time,
calling out my wife’s name.
Silence.
‘Amy, you home?’
I ran straight upstairs. No Amy. The ironing board was
set up, the iron still on, a dress waiting to be pressed.
‘Amy!’
As I ran back downstairs, I could see Carl still framed
in the open doorway, hands on hips, watching. I swerved
into the living room, and pulled up short. The carpet glinted
with shards of glass, the coffee table shattered. End tables
were on their sides, books slid across the floor like a card

---

trick. Even the heavy antique ottoman was belly-up, its four
tiny feet in the air like something dead. In the middle of the
mess was a pair of good sharp scissors.
‘Amy!’
I began running, bellowing her name. Through the
kitchen, where a kettle was burning, down to the basement,
where the guest room stood empty, and then out the back
door. I pounded across our yard onto the slender boat deck
leading out over the river. I peeked over the side to see if
she was in our rowboat, where I had found her one day,
tethered to the dock, rocking in the water, her face to the
sun, eyes closed, and as I’d peered down into the dazzling
reflections of the river, at her beautiful, still face, she’d
suddenly opened her blue eyes and said nothing to me,
and I’d said nothing back and gone into the house alone.
‘Amy!’
She wasn’t on the water, she wasn’t in the house. Amy
was not there.
Amy was gone.

---