Page 27 of Happy Wife

But she’s off without another word, winding back through the halls of the building toward the treatment rooms where we just were. I watch her go and then pull out my phone to dial Dean Morrison’s mystery number again.

“I heard you were out today, but I honestly didn’t believe it,” an unwelcome but familiar voice tsks.

I spin around and find myself face-to-face with—

“Constance.” I drop the baby ice pack I’ve been holding to my forehead, mortification creeping up my neck.

“Tippy said she saw you at the gym, and now Botox?” There was an air of superiority to her posture as she folded her arms across her chest. “Fritz had said you didn’t seem too concerned with Will’s disappearance, but this is beyond the pale. Even for you.”

For me. Who had the audacity to marry her ex-husband while also being nearly twenty years his junior. For me. Who probably eats people like some mythical monster.

Constance and I had gotten off to a rocky start, and suffice it to say, things did not improve from there.

I consider asking how she heard from Tippy so quickly, but that line of questioning feels like a dead end. There must be some Winter Park Wives group text chain I am too plebeian to be invited to join—reserved for Hill House’s Nap Dress drop alerts, Herend china cleaning tips, and now, Nora sightings.

“Of course I’m worried about Will—”

“Are you? Because it really doesn’t seem that way.” Constance takes a step closer so that I can hear the vitriol hidden just beneaththe surface. “This is my daughter’s father we are talking about, and you’re out exercising and maintaining your beauty regimen.”

A tense silence settles between us, and I can almost see the battle lines being drawn at our feet.

She continues after a beat. “This side of two years ago, Will and I were figuring things out. We were co-parenting quite well and finding our new normal after the divorce.”

It takes effort not to roll my eyes at the phrase “new normal.”

“And then you came along and now he’s…” She makes a gesture with one hand as if to say “poof.”

Like some kind of fucked-up magic trick. Now you see him. Now you don’t.

The insinuation is bullshit. There is so much more to the story. For starters, Constance divorced Will. Not the other way around.

“Who knows how long you would have kept his disappearance a secret from the rest of us,” she continues. “Fritz said you fed him some preposterous story about Will working hours so long he disappears for days at a time—”

“Some story?” I finally clap back, fed up with her tirade. “Will disappears for work all the time. You know that better than anyone else. Isn’t that why you left him?”

Her eyes narrow at me. This is the first time I’ve ever come close to standing up to her, but if she’s surprised, she masks it with rage. “As hard as Will ever worked, he never disappeared for days,” she snaps. “And now you’vewasteddays when the police could have been helping us…” She stops herself as if too overwhelmed to continue.

Someone bring in the fainting couch.

“It’s almost as if you waited on purpose. To give yourself time to clean up whatever evidence—”

“Mrs. Somerset,” a voice calls from down the hallway, and we both turn to look.

“Yes,” we both say at the same time.

Of course she kept his name.

A young nurse comes around the corner and looks at the two of us.

“Hi, Dylan. I’m here,” Constance says. She looks back at me, taking a parting shot. “I’ve barely been able to get out of bed sinceFritz called me with the news. The Botox is for migraines. I suffer from terrible headaches in times of stress.”

And there you have it. The picture of what a good wife would be doing under the circumstances. She would be bedridden. She’d be swearing to avenge her daughter’s father. She gives me a flaying glare, and then she’s gone in a huff.

This is hell. I’m in hell. Fritz has Ardell in his pocket. Constance has Tippy, her self-righteousness, and the weight of Winter Park social capital. And I can’t even get Austin at the Verizon store to be on my side.

Este finds me a few minutes later still standing where Constance left me. Stunned.

“Sorry,” she sighs. “It must have gotten balled up in the paper they use for the exam tables. We had to go through the trash, but they found it.” She holds up her phone as proof of the victory. Then she looks me over. “You’re pale. Let’s get you something to eat.”