Page 25 of Happy Wife

We climbed out of the pool and headed toward the outside bar. I did my best not to notice the disapproving looks of the mothers who had gathered to speculate about Will and me. In truth, their harsh glares felt like knives in my back.

Chapter12

Two days after

For the better part of thirty minutes, I’ve been at the Verizon store trying to get Austin, the store’s twenty-year-old ace employee, to help me track down Will’s phone records, only to be sidelined at every turn by company policies.

“Can you just tell me if any calls came from an account under the name Dean Morrison?” I ask. “I have the phone number right here. If you could just check?”

Austin gives a useless shrug.

The thing about second wives is that by the time I came along, Will had a system for everything. He even had a money manager who handled his bills, so I never had to worry about details like how or when the mortgage or taxes got paid. When we’d gotten married, he’d handed me a black card.

“Is this decorative? Feels like a paperweight,” I had joked, feeling the heft of the card in my open palm, heavier than any other I’d ever held.

“This will take care of whatever you need,” Will promised. And the card worked like a magic wand anywhere I went. It seemed so practical at the time. After years of living paycheck to paycheck, I could swipe all of my problems away. If I wanted to sign up for a yoga class…swipe.If I wanted highlights in myhair…swipe.A new outfit to go to dinner with Will?Swipe.Swipe. Swipe.

It was all so easy. Too easy. The vise grip money worries had had around my chest kept loosening until I almost stopped thinking about money at all.

But at the moment, I’m struck by how little I know about the logistics of his money—our money—which is really too fucking bad because being able to retrace his steps on, say, a debit card would go a long way right now.

So, that’s how I ended up here, laying my troubles at Austin’s underpaid feet.

Unfortunately, as with so many things in the life Will and I share, I’m not the account holder, so Austin is fending me off with all the authority of a mall cop.

My phone rings, and I step away from Austin to answer it.

“I’m at your house,” Este announces. “Where are you?”

“At the Verizon store.”

“Ew. Why?”

Will’s not the only one who outsources his bills and errands. I suspect Este hasn’t seen the inside of a cellphone store since grad school. I hold the phone away from my ear a little and make sure Austin can hear me as I respond to her. “I found something in Will’s desk and I’m trying to get more information that could help us find him.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s that going?”

“Terrible,” I concede with a sigh.

“Hey. Where did this frittata on your stove come from? It’s amazing.”

“Alma made it. She likes to cook for me when I’m sick.”

“Are you sick?” I hear a rattling clang that can only be Este dropping her fork, and I picture her holding her phone away from her ear as if germs could be transmitted via telecom. For as fierce as she acts, she’s a bit of a germaphobe.

“No.”

She exhales in relief. “Okay, well. Come home. We’re going to Kyle J’s HIIT class at noon.”

High-intensity interval training. The ritual sweat sacrifice of Winter Park wives. I’d rather run a marathon, barefoot over broken glass.

I have to find out who Dean Morrison is and what business he had with Will.

“I don’t—” I begin, but she’s not finished.

“And then we’re going for Botox. You’ve been frowning too much, and it shows.”

“Thank you. That’s a very nice thing to say.” I contemplate hanging up, but she has been by my side almost every second since Will left. “I’m not entirely sure that going to get Botox right now is the thing to do. Something about it feels…wrong.”