Chapter 1: You’re Imagining Things
“Meg, you’re imagining things. Again.”
My husband said it gently. That was always the worst part. Scott never yelled. He leaned against our kitchen counter in his light-blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, coffee mug in one hand, and looked at me over his black-framed glasses the way you’d look at a dog that keeps barking at the mailman.
I was holding my phone against my chest like it might get away.
“I’m not imagining a notification,” I said. “Lily’s soccer bag. Tuesday night. 11:14.”
I didn’t have to show him. I’d read it so many times I could see it with my eyes closed. Lily’s Soccer Bag was found near 4410 Wren Court.
Our daughter is thirteen. She plays center midfield for the Overland Park Strikers U14 girls, and she loses everything she owns, so last spring I slipped an AirTag into the lining of her soccer bag. On Tuesday after practice, she left the bag in the back of Scott’s car. On Tuesday night, Scott texted me at 8:40 that the bank’s quarterly close was a nightmare and he’d be at the branch till midnight.
At 11:14, the bag was on Wren Court. Six miles from the bank.
“Those things are wrong half the time,” Scott said. He set the mug down. “It probably pinged off some guy’s phone driving by. You know how they work.”
“I know exactly how they work.”
“Okay.” He held up both hands, palms out, very calm. “Then you know I was at the branch. Ask Dennis. Ask the security guy. Meg, I sat at my desk eating cold lo mein until midnight, and I come home and you’re standing in the kitchen with a map.”
He said map like I’d brought a Ouija board.
“Who lives at 4410 Wren Court?” I asked.
“I have no idea.” He didn’t even blink. “Do you?”
I didn’t. Not then.
He came around the island and put his hand on my shoulder. Warm. Heavy. “Hey. Look at me.” I did. “Your mom died eleven months ago. You haven’t been sleeping. You had that panic attack at Costco in August. I’m not saying it to be mean. I’m saying it because I love you and I’m worried.”
There it was. My mother. He always brought her in, like a witness for the other side.
“This isn’t about my mom.”
“It never is.” He squeezed my shoulder and let go. “I made you an appointment with Dr. Patel. Thursday at four. Just talk to her, okay? For me.”
He kissed my forehead. He took his coffee upstairs. I heard the shower start.
I stood alone in my kitchen, in my yellow cardigan, and did what I always did after a conversation with Scott. I checked my own memory like it was a stove I might have left on. Did I see it? Did it say Wren Court? Am I sure?
I was sure.
I’d been sure about the perfume on his gym jacket last March, too, and about the four hundred dollars missing from savings in June, and about the night in July he said he’d told me he’d be in Topeka. Every time, by the end of the conversation, I was the one apologizing.
I opened the AirTag app one more time. 4410 Wren Court. I put the address into a search bar, and nothing came up but a real estate listing from 2019 and a map pin in a cul-de-sac near Blue Valley.
Then, for no reason I can explain except instinct, I opened the team app for Lily’s soccer club. The one with the practice schedule and the snack sign-up and the roster with every family’s address, because the coaches use it for carpools.
I scrolled down the list of parents.
Price, Mark & Jenna. 4410 Wren Court.
Mark Price was Lily’s coach. The high school chemistry teacher with the whistle and the windbreaker, who taught my daughter to stop apologizing when she took a shot and missed.
Under his name was his cell number. Blue and underlined. One tap away.
Upstairs, the shower shut off.
My thumb hovered over Mark Price’s number.
