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work
and had planned to seduce Rick with dinner in bed. But when returning
home, he was nowhere to be found, so she poured two glasses of
Coppola Red Zinfandel and waited. The Rochester deal had exhausted
her. Struggling to keep her eyes open after settling in with her
glass of red, she sprawled across the bed. Breathing deep and heavy,
she was unaware that anything was amiss until awaking, almost 11
hours later.
    Pulling the panties
off, she noticed that they left a crisscross imprint on her rear end.
She put on her workout clothes. He
could be on the couch or one of the guest rooms, perhaps he didn’t
want to be bothersome.
    Downstairs, the couch
was empty; the half empty bottle of Red Zin sat on the coffee table,
in the same spot Allie left it. In the kitchen, Rick’s keys weren’t
on the wooden key holder, his shoes not their usual spot next to the
side entrance, and his pea coat missing from its hook. The basement
was empty and cold. Rick was gone.
    I
should call the police department, the hospital. But it
was too soon. She returned to the bedroom and rolled out the fold
away treadmill from underneath the bed, in hopes to run off the
anxiety and not feel not so helpless.
    She set an uphill
program, for 30 minutes, skipping the usual warm up. She attempted to
push out the worrisome thoughts, but was inundated once her body
settled into a rhythm, uneasiness resonating from past experience.
She thought of her ex, Kevin.
    * * *
    After ten years of
marriage and having the girls, Allie had felt immobile from the
inertia of her life. She struggled balancing her finishing her last
classes, for her bachelor’s in marketing, and caring for the
children. Kevin’s career as a defense attorney meant working over
70 hours a week, allotting little time for the family. Allie began
resorting to food for comfort. Over time, the dependency caused her
to become 50 pounds overweight at thirty.
    The first time Allie
awoke to an empty bed she had panicked: He’s
not working this late. Maybe he was in an accident. She
called Kevin’s office phone, called the hospital, and even the
police department, all dead ends. The phone remained silent until
around noon the next day.
    “Allie, I was out
with a client last night, and we got a little carried away at the
bar. I crashed at a friend’s,” Kevin said.
    “I was worried sick
about you, calling all over the place. I thought you got into some
kind of accident,”
    “I’m a grown man,
and I don’t need you talking to me like a child.” Kevin’s voice
carried a frustrated tone. “You know what kind of stress I’m
under at this job. I just needed to blow off some steam is all. I’ll
see you for dinner.” He hung up the phone.
    Over the following
months, Kevin was absent from his side of the bed more often. And
Allie knew something was wrong, but couldn’t grasp what. She didn’t
want to. The evidence of Kevin’s infidelity manifested in a visit
from a soft-spoken high school English teacher.
    The doorbell rang on a
Saturday morning, Allie had just finished feeding her youngest, LuLu.
She rarely answered the door when Kevin was out, but the unassuming
man at the doorstep seemed harmless enough, unaware that his words
would wound.
    “Hi, you must be
Allie.” The man wore heavy framed glasses and held a folder. “My
name is Greg Reich. I’m here to talk to you about your husband . .
. I think it would be best if you sat down.”
    Allie invited the
hawkish man in. He had a way about him that was strangely graceful.
He sat at the kitchen table opening his folder to show Allie three
photographs of Kevin with an older woman: one sitting in a car
together, one entering a hotel, and the last one showed them kissing.
    “The woman in this
picture is my wife, Elizabeth Reich; she’s a senior partner at the
law firm where your husband works,” Greg said. “I had private
investigator following her for over a year. She cheated before . . .
swore up and down that it was over, but I knew