Another nasty, empty morning. Ethan thought he might still be drunk. He was definitely hungover. His hands and wrists ached. He had crawled into bed somewhere around three in the morning, after writing nearly eighty pages of material. He’d never tapped in so completely. His previous one-day record was fifty pages and that had taken sixteen hours, with regular breaks, when he was young and dumb and didn’t know any better.
He’d written almost a third of the story in one sitting. And it was good. Solid. Usable.
He did some light stretching, popped a few Advil and drank a liter of water, made tea, choked down some cereal, and reopened the manuscript.
His thoughts bounced between the story and Sutton. He was consumed by images of her. The lines were becoming blurred. Whose story was he writing? His? Hers? Theirs?
Waking, sleeping, writing, he couldn’t escape her. He didn’t want to, reveled in the memories. When he needed a break, he looked at old photos. Then he turned back to the pages, and wrote. He didn’t know what to make of this. His wife missing, his life interrupted, but his block broken.
The tone and texture of the book was changing, altered by the subliminal situation brewing in the back of Ethan’s mind. He typed and thought, typed and thought.
They’d been so happy. He thought they were happy, at least. The Saturday date nights, dinners around town, expensive bottles of wine. The walks on Sunday down the Franklin streets, arm in arm, dodging baby carriages and young mothers in baseball caps, then with their own three-wheeled running carriage, the finest he could buy. The parties to which they were invited, their photos always making it into the society magazines. They were such a great couple, everyone said so. Such an adorable family.
Yet he’d screwed it up, again and again and again.
He was human. He was a man. He was even semifamous, and beloved among many.
Where were all the sycophants now?
His world had narrowed to three components: eat and drink, sleep, worry about Sutton by writing the story of a lifetime.
Eat was making itself known again. He made a late lunch with the last bits of the groceries. The tea tin was nearly empty; he scraped the last of the butter on his toast. He added the groceries needed to the iPad built into the refrigerator and clicked Order Now. The grocery delivery service would automatically bring the items requested in two hours. All hail modern technology.
As he chewed, the same refrains played, over and over. Where did she go? Where had she gone? Why had she taken money and disappeared?
How will it end? How will I draw the story through? Where is the next turn? Stay away from that saggy middle, it’s getting marshy.
At the end of the day, he had another hundred pages. This, this was his atonement. This was his punishment. He was bound to the story, to the computer. Bound to the idea of a lost life.
And while he wrote, while he hid, while he lost himself, the police made the case against him.