The kind shared by people who have circled the same rotten joke before.
My entire body went cold.
I stood there in the dark just outside the door, still holding the bourbon, while the inside of my life rearranged itself in seconds. Drew was not only talking about my life insurance policy, a policy I had increased the previous year when my company expanded employee benefits, but sitting around with friends treating my disappearance like a financial strategy. And my sister, Rachel, was apparently part of that private fantasy too.I did not burst in. I did not scream. That almost scares me more now, how calm I became.
I stepped onto the porch, set the bourbon down by the front door where he could see it later, and backed away without making a sound. My suitcase wheels bumped once against the wood, and I froze, but the men inside only laughed louder at something else. No one came out.
I drove ten miles before pulling over.
Then I called no one.
Not the police, not my sister, not Drew. I sat in a gas station parking lot with my hands locked around the steering wheel until dawn started bleaching the sky and one thought cut through the shock with absolute clarity: if he could joke like that, I had no idea what else he was capable of.
And for the first time in years, disappearing sounded less like a threat and more like a plan.
Costa Rica was not a dramatic choice. It was the first place I could book quickly, somewhere I had once saved in a folder called Someday because of the jungle hotels and volcanic hot springs and the fact that no one in my family had any connection to it. I did not go there to heal. I went there to become unreachable while I figured out whether my husband was merely despicable or actually dangerous.Books & Literature
By the time my plane landed in San José, Drew had called twenty-three times.
