Dear Wife

The novel alternates among three narrators whose stories appear separate but prove deeply intertwined. Beth, a woman fleeing her abusive husband, narrates in second person, addressing the man she is escaping but never naming him. Jeffrey Hardison searches for his missing wife, Sabine, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Detective Marcus Durand of the Pine Bluff Police Department investigates Sabine's disappearance. The connections among all three build toward a twist that reframes the entire narrative.

Beth opens the story driving west on the Muskogee Turnpike in Oklahoma after seven years of marriage to a violently unpredictable man. She has spent ten months planning this escape, using a paper map and an unpowered burner phone to avoid electronic tracking. Only one person knows she has left. At a McDonald's, the same chain where her husband first charmed her with a Hot Wheels toy, she meets Nick. She has hired him to make erratic ATM withdrawals on a debit card bearing her real name, laying a false trail across the country.

In Pine Bluff, Jeffrey Hardison returns from a business trip to find his wife, Sabine, a successful real estate broker, has not come home. Her car is missing, and she is not answering her phone. Sabine's twin sister, Ingrid, immediately suspects Jeffrey. He admits to himself that during a heated argument, Sabine shoved him and he hit her. His career has stalled while Sabine's income sustains their lifestyle, and the house is in her name.

Beth transforms her appearance at a motor lodge outside Tulsa, cutting her long dark hair short and dyeing it blonde. She applies for an apartment using her real identification, knowing the background check will create a false trail pointing west. She buys a used Buick Regal with cash and drives south through Dallas, then east toward Atlanta. She chose the city because it was the site of her husband's first act of violence against her, making it the last place he would think to look.

Marcus Durand arrives at Jeffrey's home to take the missing-person report. Ingrid has prepared detailed notes about Sabine, making Jeffrey appear uninvolved by comparison. Jeffrey's earlier lie about when he last spoke to Sabine is exposed. The detective visits the show house Sabine was supposed to attend and finds it undisturbed. Sabine's boss, Lisa O'Brien, confirms she never arrived and also missed a staff training, behavior entirely out of character.

In Atlanta, Beth finds Morgan House, a boardinghouse run by Miss Sally, a tall transgender woman who does not ask for identification. She meets Martina, a fellow resident who connects her with a fake Georgia driver's license under the name Beth Louise Murphy. Martina also gets Beth a cleaning job at the Church of Christ's Twelve Apostles, a megachurch led by Reverend Erwin Andrews. Despite Beth's bitter feelings toward organized religion, she accepts, and the Reverend tells her she is safe.

Jeffrey discovers Sabine's affair by finding a hidden Gmail account on her laptop filled with messages between Sabine and Dr. Trevor McAdams, an obstetrician who bought a house through her. Jeffrey confronts Trevor, who admits the affair and reveals that Sabine visited him at the hospital the afternoon she disappeared. When pressed, Trevor confirms Sabine is pregnant. Jeffrey punches him.

Marcus updates Jeffrey and Ingrid at the station: Sabine's car has been found at a Super1 grocery store, but security footage shows she never returned to it after purchasing items inside. Her iPhone is missing. Jeffrey claims he spent the afternoon at a park after landing in Little Rock but cannot verify his whereabouts. He later arranges an off-the-record interview with Amanda Shephard, a local television host, that he knows she is secretly recording, planting the narrative that Sabine has a history of mental health crises and may have left voluntarily.

Marcus uses cell phone GPS data to determine that Jeffrey was not at the park but at a urologist's office in Little Rock during the critical hours. He confronts Jeffrey, accusing him of lying and suggesting he may have hired someone to kill Sabine. Jeffrey demands a lawyer.

Subtle details about Marcus's personal life accumulate throughout the investigation: His wife, Emma, is absent, supposedly at a retreat for depression. His mother grows suspicious after finding the house in disarray and Emma's car still in the garage. At Easter, Emma screamed when Marcus tossed her a pack of napkins, a reaction consistent with someone conditioned to expect violence.

Beth develops a genuine friendship with Martina despite mutual wariness. On the Reverend's office television, she sees a national news alert about Sabine's disappearance and is visibly shaken. When collection money goes missing, suspicion falls on Beth. The Reverend's son, Erwin Jackson Andrews IV, runs the church's IT department. He corners Beth, accuses her of stealing, and makes a threatening sexual advance. Beth knees him and flees.

She leaves Morgan House, writing Martina a note confessing to taking the money, and checks into a dangerous motel. On a newly purchased laptop, she discovers that Sabine's body has been found in a pond, strangled.

Beth and Sabine met when Sabine showed Beth and her husband a house. Beth recognized that Sabine was also being abused. Sabine later left her own abusive marriage and became a board member at a battered women's shelter. Over months of secret meetings, she helped Beth plan every detail of her escape.

Beth knows her husband killed Sabine, and she has been deliberately leading him to her. Every check-in to the Pine Bluff police website, every still-active burner phone, every digital breadcrumb has been intentional, designed to draw him to Atlanta. She buys two Sig P320 handguns and a single hollow-point bullet. Despite her husband's years of mocking her aim at the shooting range, she is an excellent shot who always missed on purpose.

Martina texts Beth a photograph of a man leaving the church. The man breaks into Beth's Buick and leaves a Hot Wheels car on the dashboard with a note telling his wife he has found her. Beth arms herself and goes outside. Her husband steps from behind a van, and his identity is revealed: He is Detective Marcus Durand. Beth's real name is Emma Durand.

Marcus confesses to killing Sabine: He discovered she was helping Emma escape and intercepted her in the Super1 parking lot, strangling her. He confiscates the unloaded Sig from Emma's waistband and forces her toward the stairs, intending to stage her suicide. Emma head-butts him in the stairwell, breaking his nose, and runs to the rooftop. She draws the loaded Sig from her bag and forces Marcus to surrender his weapons. When he lunges, she fires the single bullet, nicking his ear, and the impact sends him staggering over the roof's edge. He falls three stories.

Four months later, Emma returns to the church and drops a cashier's check for the stolen money plus interest into the collection basket. She was arrested and initially charged with second-degree murder, but a GPS sports watch on Sabine's body tracked her final movements to the pond, matching Marcus's patrol car GPS. The charges were reduced to fines, and Marcus's supervisor, Chief Eubanks, granted Emma full line-of-duty death benefits and personally apologized. Emma still hears Marcus's voice in her head, but she has learned to ignore it. She calls Martina, identifying herself by her real name for the first time: Emma Durand.