Little Girl Gone: The can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller. Alexandra Burt

a property deed to a brownstone in shambles with a huge mortgage on it. I took a risk and it didn’t pay off. Are you happy now?’

      I stared at him, suddenly realizing that I knew next to nothing about him. Buying and selling houses was one thing, but taking on such a risky and expensive project, one that by his own admission failed miserably, when he didn’t even own a toolbox?

      ‘I’m working on it. The permits have come in, they are in the process of completing the renovations. It’s not a big deal. It’s just an investment property. You make it seem like it’s such a betrayal on my part. What did you want me to do? Tell you I’m behind on a mortgage I can’t afford? Worry you even more? You’re doing a great job at that already.’

      ‘I’m your wife, I think I ought to know about our finances.’

      ‘There wasn’t any trouble until you started with your obsessions, all those doctor visits while you were pregnant, and all those tests you insisted on, all those specialists you consulted, over nothing. Do you have any idea how much I had to pay for those tests and doctor visits that you went to without any referral? It cost me a fortune.’

      ‘Everything is always about money for you. I’m trying to get help for our daughter.’

      ‘She doesn’t need help. She doesn’t need another test, another doctor. She needs you to be her mother. So don’t make this about me. You are the one who—’

      ‘The one who spent all your money on needless tests.’

      ‘I didn’t say that. But I’m the one paying those medical bills.’ He raised his voice louder now, I could feel him dropping the façade. ‘We have perfectly adequate health insurance. But you insisted on all those specialists. And I get it, you know I get it. You were worried. But you didn’t stop there either, did you? Even after Mia was born, you continued …’

      I could tell he was looking for words, looking to put a name on my madness. Am I even mad? Was there such a thing as a little bit crazy? A lick of mad? I worried about Mia. I still do. Every waking minute.

      ‘You’ve been feeding that dragon ever since, haven’t you?’

      I chuckle. Nice analogy.

      Feeding the dragon? But what about our daughter? I knew what he was going to say. But what kind—

      ‘You started taking a perfectly healthy baby from doctor to doctor. And that’s not normal.’

      Normal? What kind of mother would I be, Jack, if I didn’t try to help my child? What kind of mother would I be?

      ‘There’s something wrong with her. She cries too much. Don’t you get that?’ My accusation seemed to trigger additional resentment on his part, and, as always, Mia’s excessive crying was just a figment of my imagination.

      ‘There’s nothing wrong with her, nothing. The fact that you can’t handle a baby doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with her. You’ve been taking Mia from doctor to doctor and they all tell you the same thing. A colic, she’ll grow out of it. You can’t continue to insist on all these tests that make no sense. I’ve been allowing you to do this for the longest time but I need you to stop this madness.’

      Jack stared at me for a long time. Then he took a step back. His voice was calm but his neck was covered in blotches.

      ‘I don’t know what to do but I can’t allow you to go on like this.’

      Jack’s mind was not prepared to wrap itself around such an unwelcome emotion; he didn’t know what to do. He had been trying to put me back together but now he realized he was finally out of options. You shatter into a couple of pieces, Jack can put you back together again. But when I shattered, the pieces were too many to count. It wasn’t even a matter of how many, but how much. Like sand. Uncountable.

      His decision to get married because I was pregnant had backfired on him. Not only was I not keeping up my end of the bargain, but at the same time I kept him from fulfilling his. There was work to be done, lots of work. An infinite workload of case files, preparing witnesses, and interviews. And even though he was exhausted, I knew that the pressures of his job felt perversely comfortable to him compared to what awaited him at home every night. I threw my head back and burst into an overly animated gesture of joy.

      ‘This whole marriage was a mistake. Come on, Jack, this is your way out.’

      Jack walked towards me as if to grab me. ‘Just listen to yourself … you’re irrational. You follow me to work, you come to my office, embarrass me? That’s not rational. I don’t know what’s going on, but you need help.’

      I just stared at him as I watched him pause just long enough to shake his head.

      Then his voice turned to ice. ‘I find you here, in my closet, while Mia is screaming her head off. Does that strike you as rational?’

      Mia stirred, her little hands reaching for something invisible, sounds of distress escaping her lips. Jack’s eyes were darting left and right. When he finally spoke, his voice was down to a whisper.

      ‘You’re irrational and I no longer trust you with my daughter. This stops tonight.’ He kept switching Mia from one arm to the other while she was growing visibly upset. Tears started to well up in her eyes and short of a bottle nothing was going to calm her down. ‘Estelle, this can’t go on any longer. Why can’t you just—’

      ‘Just what? Be normal? Is that what you want me to be? Normal?’

      He stood there, didn’t say a word. A normal woman is all he wanted. And I was everything but. Cha ching, you lose, Jack.

      ‘You need to get help,’ he said. ‘I’m taking tomorrow off and we’ll go see somebody. You need professional help.’

      I stood there, waiting until he left the closet, cautious not to turn my back on him. I went to the kitchen and, while the bottle warmed in the microwave, I slid the gun into the back of the junk drawer.

      I fed Mia, put her in her crib, and went into the study where Jack was perched over a case file. He looked as if nothing had happened at all. When he saw me, his demeanor changed. He looked agitated.

      I sat in a chair in front of his desk and crossed my legs. I managed a smile and hoped my face didn’t seem too contorted. I wanted to appease him, to seem as rational as possible.

      ‘There’s something we need to talk about,’ Jack said.

      I took in a deep breath, then I exhaled. ‘This is when you’re going to tell me about your girlfriend, the one from your office earlier?’

      ‘There’s no girlfriend. I … I wanted to tell you when the moment was right, but hell, no moment is right lately.’ He paused for a second. ‘The woman at my office was Victoria Littlefield.’

      The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place it.

      ‘She’s from the DA’s office and we were discussing a position.’ He got up, stepped closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Until you barged in like a maniac that is. I can’t even blame her that she didn’t offer me the job once she found out I have a lunatic for a wife. This job is all I ever wanted. Ten years from now I could be DA. But that doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?’

      His eyes communicated what he didn’t say out loud. That the way I acted earlier was the wrecking ball that tore a gaping hole into the walls of our already fragile marriage. And his career. Jack wasn’t an adulterer, affairs are messy and unpredictable, no, Jack wanted to become DA and I had busted yet another dream of his; no happy family, no career.

      ‘You’ve no idea what I’ve been going through,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I drive an hour out of my way just to get gas. That hour in the car, by myself, is the closest I’ve come to normality in months.’

      I held back the tears. He was a trapped man. A man trapped by a woman who didn’t measure up.

      ‘I