Hank woke up to find his phone indicating ten missed calls and a similar number of voicemail messages. He did not recognize the area code. After several run-ins with Chinese robo-marketing spam calls, he had set his phone to kick unknown numbers to voicemail. Usually, Beijing Betty did not leave a message.
His daughters were not yet up, so he began to listen to the messages. It was then that he learned that his wife, Randi, was not in Jacksonville, Florida, visiting her parents and sister for the weekend like she told him she would be. Instead, she was in the burn unit of a hospital in Boulder, Colorado.
Hank paused for a moment. His phone gave him push notices of news. It was usually a nuisance, but taking the time to turn off that feature had never seemed worth it. Something about fires stuck in his mind. He realized he had seen a news headline with the words "fire" and "Boulder" as his phone screen came to life that morning. He got onto the phone home page and saw the news wire headline: "Freak Wildfire Consumes Suburban Boulder Subdivision Overnight."
Interesting.
Hank would be the first to admit that sometimes he was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he really could think of only one reason that his wife of seven years would lie about where she was going to spend a weekend.
He slowed himself down on purpose. No point rushing into anything. He made coffee. The girls would not be up for at least an hour yet. He took the coffee over to his wife's work nook in the dining room. He found her laptop. He opened it to find that it was now password protected with a password that he did not know. But Randi was absent-minded and lazy, so he searched for a password written on some scrap of paper, and found it buried at the bottom of the drawer of the little desk.
After getting access, he found that she had not even closed her e-mail browsers. She had just snoozed her computer, relying on her new password and apparently on her confidence that Hank would not invade her privacy. All assumptions existing in this family before this morning are no longer operative, Hank thought.
There it was. Flipping obvious. She was hooking up with her old college boyfriend, Josh Turner, at his Boulder home on a weekend when Josh's wife would be away. This was the guy that broke Randi's heart by falling in love with the woman who became his wife, but it seems like he developed buyer's remorse over the years. There was not a lot of detail in the e-mails, mostly just confirmations of arrival times. Hank assumed that they poured their hearts out to each other over the phone.
One interesting factoid popped out. Her parents and sister knew and had agreed to cover for her. That was not in the e-mails but in the Facebook Messenger chats that were also still open. They all thought that she should have married Josh, whose family had money.
Hank was just numb, like he was watching a slow-motion car wreck happen and could not look away. He took the time to breathe deeply. If he didn't, his fricking Apple Watch told him that it was Mindfulness time anyway. He really had to figure out how to turn that feature off. But, Hank knew, if he did not breathe deeply and calm down, he was liable to punch holes in the sheetrock walls of the house.
He called the hospital in Boulder. When the switchboard answered, on a hunch, he asked if a Josh Turner was a patient. When they asked Hank to identify his relationship with Mr. Turner, he said he was a friend. The operator then said that she could not provide any information. That sort of answer sure made it sound like they had a patient named Josh Turner.
Hank then called the number left on his voicemails. It was the direct line to the hospital admissions office.
After he identified himself, a clerk there told him that Randi was brought in with third-degree burns over 80% of her body, including damage to her lungs from smoke inhalation. The fire, it seems, had flared up suddenly in the drought-stricken area, spread rapidly with high winds, and cut off the only line of escape from the development. Over 100 homes had been destroyed.
"Sorry," Hank said. "It can't be my wife. She's in Jacksonville, Florida. You must have incorrect information."
He hung up. He knew that it was her in Boulder now. He could feel it, but he was not going to make this easy on anyone.
He looked at his wife's computer again and found Josh's Facebook page. Randi had actually made him one of her friends. It was then easy to see who Josh's friends and family were, and he discovered Josh's wife. She had made a public post from her own family's home in San Diego, asking for prayers because she had just learned that her husband was hospitalized with severe burns in Boulder. Time to get those prayers answered by a god of vengeance, Hank thought, as he contacted Josh's wife on Facebook Messenger to identify himself and share what he had figured out, leaving his phone number.
A short while later, as he finished his coffee, he saw another notice light on the phone icon, indicating a missed call. He did not recognize the number, but there was a voicemail. It was from Josh's wife, Tina. Hank called her back.
"Ms. Turner? Your first name is really Tina?" he had to ask.
"Yes," she said with a sigh. "I knew what would happen with the name going into the marriage. I did it for love. It's just an ice-breaker now. You must be Randi's husband."
"Yes."
"I knew about her, of course, when Josh and I got together. He's been acting funny lately, but I never knew why. Now it is all making sense. Is that your story, too?"
"Kind of. I knew about Josh. But Randi was not acting funny that I noticed."
"You're taking it calmly, Hank. How are you doing that?"
"My damned phone keeps telling me it is Mindfulness time and to take deep breaths. I don't even want to look at what it thinks about my heart rate."
Tina chuckled.
"You sound calm, too."
"I'm taking pills," Tina said. "I don't know what they are. My sister had some. Josh is badly burned. They've already got him in a medically-induced coma. He is probably not going to make it. I lost it when I heard that. Now,... Now, I am just in shock, especially now that I know the truth about what really happened. What's your wife's story?"
"Badly burned. I don't know more. I told them it could not possibly be her because my wife is in Florida."
Tina chuckled again.
"Oh!" she said. "The hospital is calling again. Let me get this, and let's keep in touch!"
She hung up, and Hank saved her number in contacts so that spam-blocker would not kick it to voicemail.
A new call came in. This one was from Randi's father, Bob. Bob must have seen the news and gotten worried.
"Yes?"
"Hank?"
"Yes?"
There was a pause. Bob had never liked Hank. And Hank had disliked Bob right back when it was clear where he stood with the man. But they had always maintained a veneer of polite interaction. Bob noticed that was missing.
"Hank, have you heard from Randi?"
Hank paused. That question must have cost Bob blood, morally speaking.
"Why would I hear from her without you knowing? She's up in her old room, isn't she? Spending time with you, that shrew of a wife of yours, and your other twat daughter."
Bob now knew that Hank knew. He sighed.
"Hank, she does love you. I know we've never gotten along..."
"Bob," Hank cut in, his voice rising in volume, "That is a load of bullshit. And before you keep talking and annoy me more, the deal is that you always disliked me. I guess you never thought I was worthy of your daughter but that Josh was. Your wife and other daughter have both been smarmy cunts around me, too. I've put up with it to keep the peace, but that's over now. And I want to be clear. If you were standing in front of me right now, I would punch you in the mouth over and over again until you spit out blood-soaked teeth. And then I would piss down your throat. After that, I would beat both women with a tire iron, just for fun. So, fuck you to death, you and your lying, fucking family, you miserable fucking fucks!!"
Hank hung up. There really was no more to say. To save time though, he blocked Bob's phone numbers and those of his mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
"Daddy, why are you yelling?" his daughter, Nicole, asked him, walking into the kitchen. Her younger sister, Rebecca, followed her.
"Daddy said a bad word!" Rebecca announced.
"He did?" Nicole asked. "Say it again, Daddy! I didn't hear it."
Hank had to smile.
"What was the bad word, Becky?"
She frowned.
"I can't remember."
"I think you must have heard wrong. Now let's get breakfast."
Today would be a pancakes day.
Three pancakes each and some orange juice later, both girls were watching cartoons. It was Saturday morning, after all. They liked Bubble Guppies. Hank hoped those were gateway cartoons to something more substantive like Pinky and the Brain or Phineas and Ferb.
The phone rang again. It was Tina Turner.
"The pills aren't working."
"What?"
"The pills that I told you that I was taking to calm me down? The ones that my sister gave me? Well, they aren't working."
"Why do you say that, Miss Tina Turner?"
"The hospital put me through to where they have Josh in intensive care. The nurse put me on speaker. She thought that it might help for Josh to hear my voice, even though they have him in a coma."
"What happened?"
"I lost my temper. I yelled that his girlfriend is also badly burned and is probably going to die and that it's his fault and that, after you and I both get our life insurance payments, we're going on a round-the-world cruise and spend the whole time fucking each other into a stupor for payback. He almost went into cardiac arrest after he heard me."
"Even though he's in a coma?"
"Yeah. Hard to say if my yelling caused it or that was just a coincidence. He pulled through though."
