The golden couple, p.19
The Golden Couple, page 19
She snips the end of the thread and ties a knot, then stands up and walks to the staircase, folding the shirt as she climbs it. She enters Bennett’s bedroom and hovers on the threshold for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dim glow of his night-light. His giant FAO Schwarz dog is in one corner, leaning against a bookshelf that’s filled with the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series.
Marissa places the shirt on top of his dresser so he can see it first thing when he wakes up. Then, even though she is tempting fate, she walks over to her son and presses her lips to his forehead. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. Even if she were blindfolded and a hundred little boys were lined up, she could recognize Bennett simply by his smell.
“Mama,” Bennett murmurs as he rolls onto his side and instantly falls back asleep.
Long ago, Marissa had read a newspaper article about a teenaged girl who was flying a small airplane. The instructor was seated next to the girl, and her father was in the back. The plane crashed, and all three died. One detail of this tragedy stood out to Marissa: the father was found with his arms wrapped around his daughter. Even at the terrifying moment of his death, his fear was dwarfed by his need to protect and comfort his child.
Marissa looks down at Bennett, thinking that she understands the ferocity of that kind of parental love.
He is wearing his favorite Spider-Man pajamas, which he won’t give up even though the cuffs extend only to his forearms and the bottoms barely reach his shins. Marissa pulls the covers up more securely around him, then eases away and heads back downstairs.
In the distance, she hears the wailing of a car alarm that must have been triggered by the storm. She wraps her arms around herself, wondering if she should turn on the gas fireplace and curl up with a book or maybe take a hot bath. She can’t seem to get warm.
She puts on a soft fleece that she keeps in the hall closet and picks up an Anita Shreve novel she’s forever been meaning to read, but her mind is too jittery to process the story.
Every minute that passes brings her closer to the Monday meeting in the coffee shop. Avery seems so confident that she knows what to do, but what if she’s wrong?
Marissa’s eyes flit to the sofa again, seeing herself as she was that night: her back arched, her lips parted, her body set aflame by the slow touch of strong hands.
Enough, she orders herself, reaching for the remote and selecting a mindless comedy.
She watches two episodes while simultaneously scanning Instagram and replying to a few work emails, then turns off the downstairs lights and rechecks the house alarm, as she does every evening. Crime rates are surprisingly high in their neighborhood, and although most are simple car break-ins late at night, there is an occasional home invasion, and last year two armed men held up the neighborhood pharmacy where Marissa buys vitamins and gets prescriptions filled.
Marissa has just finished smoothing on her favorite night serum and climbed into bed when the home phone shrills. She’s tempted to let it ring. Only two categories of people call the house phone: telemarketers, and her parents, who prefer landlines to cells.
But telemarketers are prohibited from calling after 9:00 P.M., she remembers.
Her parents, who open the store at 7:00 A.M., go to bed early. If they’re calling now, something must be wrong. She throws off the covers and hurries to the side table where the phone rests in its charger.
It isn’t her parents: caller ID shows a 202 area code, which is for D.C.
“Marissa?”
The female voice is familiar, but Marissa can’t immediately place it.
“This is Renee Hammerman.” Matthew’s new secretary, the woman Marissa met just today.
“Hi, Renee. Is everything okay?”
“I’m sorry to call you so late at home, but I’m still in the office and need to speak to Matthew briefly. I wouldn’t bother him unless it was urgent.”
“Wait, isn’t he there with you?”
In the pause that follows, Marissa feels her skin prickle.
“No, he left about forty-five minutes ago.… I keep trying his cell, but he isn’t answering.”
There’s no traffic at this time of night, so the ride home should be twenty minutes, tops. Even if he’d stopped for gas, Matthew should be here.
Unless—Marissa clutches at the thought—he was hungry and picked up something on the way. Typically when he works late, Matthew gets takeout from Giovanni’s, the restaurant across from his office, and eats at his desk. But maybe his routine changed.
She shares this thought with Renee, but Renee immediately replies, “I actually picked up his dinner because he had to jump on a call.”
Marissa grabs her cell phone off her nightstand and hits the button to dial Matthew. “Renee? Hold on a second.… I’m trying him now.”
When it goes to voice mail, she taps out a text: Where are you? Please call me.
Maybe Matthew had gone to meet a client unexpectedly, though it would be highly unusual for him to not let her know.
“I can’t reach him,” she tells Renee. “Can you explain exactly what happened when he was leaving?”
“He told me he was heading home and emailed me a final electronic document to format and send. He said to make sure to get one of the security guards to walk me to my car, and that I should come in late tomorrow. When I was reading through it, I realized he hadn’t signed one of the pages. I’ve been trying to reach him, but like I said, he’s not answering his calls or texts.” Renee hesitates. “Which we both know isn’t like him,” she concludes with a nervous laugh.
“Let me keep trying him. I’ll call you back.”
The rain seems to be falling even harder, pounding down relentlessly, as she stares at the tiny image of her smiling husband in the circle at the top of her phone screen. The line rings and rings and then goes to voice mail. She sends him another text: Getting worried. Please call me ASAP.
A certain kind of wife would figure her husband had simply forgotten to charge his phone. Another might assume her husband had stopped off at a bar to meet some buddies and couldn’t hear the ringer over the loud music. A third might suspect her partner was with another woman.
But Matthew never lets his phone battery dip below 50 percent. He also doesn’t have a group of drinking pals. And despite Marissa’s own infidelity, she does not believe Matthew would exact revenge. Especially after the connection they shared at his office just this afternoon.
There has to be some logical explanation, but the only one that comes to mind is even worse than the final scenario she conjured.
She hurries downstairs, her phone in hand, and checks the family room, in case Matthew slipped inside while she was getting ready for bed. Maybe he’s slumped on the couch, decompressing after a long day. But all the lights are off and the house is still. She peers out the window, futilely searching for a glimpse of his headlights coming up the driveway.
With every minute that ticks by, her worry grows.
She calls Renee, who answers midway through the first ring.
“He’s still not home.”
“Maybe he stopped to run an errand or something.…” Marissa can tell from those few words that Renee is uncomfortable; she hasn’t been working for Matthew long so she can’t know him well, and perhaps she has mentally run through the same scenarios as Marissa.
“Why don’t you head home. I’m sure the document can wait.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stay a little longer.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from him.” Marissa hangs up.
Because she can’t sit still, she flicks on some bright lights and begins to pace, doing a loop through the family room, formal living room, kitchen, and dining room.
Any minute now, she tells herself, Matthew will walk in and stretch out his arms to envelop her. He’ll apologize for worrying her and promise it won’t ever happen again.
She looks down at her screen, hoping—praying—to see the three dots that indicate Matthew is typing a response to her calls and texts. Marissa enters Matthew’s study and stands still for a moment, forcing herself to think harder. Maybe the explanation is the simplest one. Renee said Matthew had forgotten to sign a document. He probably remembered this on his way home and is driving back to the office right now.
But even as Marissa considers this, she knows it can’t be. Even if Matthew had driven all the way home, he would’ve made it back to the office long before now. Plus she’s fairly certain he could simply use DocuSign.
In any case, this still doesn’t explain why he’s not answering his phone.
Where is he?
She wraps her arms around herself, suppressing a shiver; she’s wearing only a camisole and pajama bottoms, and the house is so cold.
She’s walking through the dining room when she hears the joyful, welcome noise—a faint scraping.
Matthew is turning his key in the front-door lock. He must have had car trouble and taken an Uber home; that’s why he isn’t coming in through the garage. Perhaps he left his phone in his car—it all makes sense now! She runs to the door and reaches for the handle, her movements swift and reflexive, propelled by an enormous wave of relief. Just before she throws open the door, she realizes there was no chime on her cell phone to alert her to a presence at the door.
She peers through the peephole.
She steps back, shaken to her core.
The stoop is empty.
Did she imagine the scraping sound because she so desperately wanted to hear it, or was it simply the wind, rustling through the bushes and shaking the trees?
The storm is still raging, increasing in strength; her husband is somewhere in the dark night, amid the sheets of rain and driving wind.
Marissa texts Renee and again urges her to head home. I’m sure everything is fine, Marissa types, but her hand is trembling so badly that she needs to backspace and retype the word fine.
Then she begins to call hospitals. There are several in the area: Georgetown, Sibley, GW, Suburban …
But no one will give her any information. All the hospitals refuse to confirm or deny whether a Matthew Bishop has been brought in.
“It’s the law,” one of the operators explains, her voice sympathetic yet firm.
Marissa dials 911, and the dispatcher puts her through to the local police precinct. The officer who answers the phone is kind and tries to be reassuring, but clearly he doesn’t consider this an emergency.
She can’t help it; she breaks down. “I know my husband. Something terrible has happened.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s—”
His sentence is interrupted by the clicking of another call.
She looks down at caller ID, and in block letters Marissa sees the information she has been dreading: GEORGETOWN HOSPITAL.
She quickly accepts it, ending her call with the police.
“Mrs. Bishop?” a man asks.
“Yes, yes, this is she,” Marissa blurts.
“This is Dale Whitaker, I’m a nurse here at—”
Before he can finish, Marissa blurts, “What happened to my husband?”
Marissa’s legs give out and she sinks to the hardwood floor as she listens to the efficient yet soothing voice of the ER nurse informing her that Matthew was brought into the hospital by ambulance earlier that night.
A car accident, Marissa thinks. She knew it: the rain, his speeding …
Her body begins to shake uncontrollably. Matthew would have called if he could have. He must be seriously hurt.
But he’s alive, she tells herself. He has to be, or wouldn’t the police show up at her door to relay the devastating news?
Marissa wipes her eyes and braces herself for the words that will come.
Whatever happened—if Matthew broke a half dozen bones and totaled his car or crashed into another vehicle and injured its driver—they’ll face it together.
She’s so certain she knows the origin of the incident that brought him to the ER that it takes her a moment to process the nurse’s words:
“Your husband was assaulted and lost consciousness. He’s awake now and is going to be fine, but we’re monitoring him overnight.”
“Assaulted?” Marissa gasps. “By who?”
“I don’t have any information on that.”
Marissa is racing upstairs to her bedroom to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt. She can’t—won’t—process the words now. She only needs to get to Matthew.
“I’ll be there as soon as possible,” Marissa says breathlessly. “Can you please tell him I’m on my way?”
She’s slipping on her sneakers before she realizes she can’t leave Bennett home alone. If he woke up, he’d be petrified not to find her here.
It’s almost midnight. The fastest solution would be to ask a neighbor for help. She looks out the window at Louise Johnston’s house across the street. The Johnstons have two children, and Marissa once watched their five-year-old daughter when their son had to be rushed to the doctor because he’d shoved a marble up his nose and they couldn’t get it out. But the Johnstons’ home is dark, and Marissa doesn’t want to wake them at this hour. The only house she can see with a light on is owned by Max Carrey, or, as Bennett calls him, Scary Carrey. He is clearly not an option.
Hallie is a junior in high school and probably asleep. She needs to be up for school in another six or seven hours, but Marissa taps out a text to her anyway. There’s no reply.
Marissa has no one else.
If only her parents lived nearby, Marissa thinks, or if she had a close friend to call for help.
Matthew’s father, Chris, lives just a few miles away, but Marissa knows her husband would be furious if she called him. Matthew has made it clear through the years that he never wants help from his father. She scrolls through her contacts, rapidly dismissing possibilities, until she gets to the Ws. Polly.
Bennett doesn’t know Polly well, but he has met her. Although he’d be startled to find his mother’s assistant here in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t completely freak out. Plus, Polly got a stellar reference from the family she worked for as a nanny last year.
With any luck—and she definitely could use some tonight—Bennett will stay asleep.
I wouldn’t ask unless it were an emergency, Marissa begins her text. Matthew was injured and is in the hospital-could you come to the house and stay in case Bennett wakes up?
Polly’s response comes so swiftly it is as if she were staring at her phone when the text landed: On my way.
Before Polly’s VW comes to a stop in the driveway, Marissa is in her car, pulling the seat belt across her body. She waves at Polly and watches to make sure Polly gets inside the front door Marissa left cracked open, then she presses down the gas pedal. As her windshield wipers swoosh fervently back and forth, her heartbeat keeps pace.
Who would want to hurt Matthew?
Perhaps that disgruntled employee, the one Matthew fired last year. Or maybe it was a random attack; someone could have seen Matthew pull up at a stoplight, the engine of his expensive car idling, and decided to carjack him. If Matthew tried to resist—and knowing her husband, he might have—it could have turned violent.
Between the heavy rain and her damp eyes, Marissa can barely see the road. When she approaches a stoplight on Macarthur Boulevard just as it turns yellow, she is tempted to accelerate through it. At the last second, though, she slams on the brakes. The only thing that could make this night worse would be getting into an accident of her own.
She finds a spot in the visitors’ lot and hurries toward the hospital entrance, holding her coat over her head to shield her from the rain.
She gives her name to the employee at the front desk and shows her driver’s license, and a moment later a nurse appears and escorts Marissa to Matthew. Navigating past the curtained partitions, Marissa hears the beeping of cardiac monitors and a patient loudly calling for more ice.
In all of their years together, the only time she and Matthew have been in this hospital together was when Bennett was born.
How lucky they have been.
The nurse parts the curtain to Bed Six, revealing Matthew lying on a gurney, an IV needle buried in his forearm. He’s wearing a blue hospital gown, his bare feet are sticking out from beneath the sheet that’s draped around his lower body, and a white bandage is on his forehead.
But his eyes are open, and he’s smiling at her.
“Hey, babe,” Matthew says as she steps toward him.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse says. “Just press the call button if you need me.”
Other than the bandage and some dried blood by Matthew’s hairline, he looks the same. He looks like her Matthew.
Although Marissa swore she wouldn’t, she begins to cry again.
“It’s okay. I’m fine. Just a few bruises.”
She holds his hand with both of hers, soaking in the warmth of his skin. “I’m just so relieved. I thought…”
“Shhh. I just wish I could’ve gotten a swing at the other guy.” He mock punches with his free hand.
With those motions, his torso shifts, and beneath the gaps in his gown, Marissa sees eggplant-colored marks on his ribs.
She gasps. “Why would someone do this to you?”
“No idea.” Matthew shakes his head, then grimaces. “I keep wondering the same thing. One minute I was about to get in my car, and the next I’m on the ground with some asshole kicking the shit out of me.”
Marissa winces, trying to block out the image of her husband being hurt.
“It’s not that bad.” Matthew pulls his gown closed. “I thought I could make it home. But, well, guess I was wrong. I passed out and crashed just as I was exiting the garage.”
“I don’t understand. Was he waiting for you in the parking garage? Did you see him?”
“I didn’t get a look at his face. He came at me from behind.”
A terrifying thought sears through Marissa’s mind. “Your keys! Did he take your wallet and keys?”
