In Crestmore, no one spoke of the summer of 2021. It clashed with the crisp white gloves of the doormen, the green lawns cut twice a week, the fresh lilies on polished teak surfaces, the perfect smiles and surgically corrected noses on trophy wives who sported three-carat rings. That year, three residents of Crestmore disappeared. Here one day, gone the next. For some, like Roxanne Kendal, their disappearance was immediately noticed. Police were called, search parties sent out, investigations conducted. For others, like David Batcher, it started with whispers, followed by questions, suspicions, then outright accusations. Country club memberships were rescinded and friendships broken. With all three, we never got an answer. Bodies were never found, the crimes unanswered for. That summer was a bloodstain on our perfect community, one that eventually faded, the spot scrubbed clean until it was as if it had never happened at all. But for the three of us, we didn’t forget that stain. We couldn’t. That history was a part of our lives, the stench of it heavy in our households, the air tainted with the ghosts of the missing. We were the spouses, and in 2026, our ghosts came back.
Chapter 1 Andrea Kendal “She’s a trophy wife. Think plastic Barbie with a head full of nothing.” 1442 Kingsmere Drive Hole 6, Stone Hollow Andrea Kendal sat in a rocking chair on her wide front porch, a steaming cup of espresso in hand, and watched the parade of masked men swarm the tee box across the street. They were all in blue jumpsuits, waders on, with sticks, cameras, and flashlights in hand, methodically combing the neatly cut golf course fairway and venturing into the neighboring woods. It was, to put it lightly, out of the norm for Crestmore Estates, a neighborhood that prided itself on perfection without disturbance. Andrea took a sip and pondered what they might be looking for. Was this an environmental inspection? Was there a radiation leak? She had a moment of concern for her own health, then noticed a group of three men, standing by one of the all-white vehicles, all mask-less. One of them strode around the front of the car, and she saw the big block letters across the back of his jacket. 2 SFPD San Francisco Police Department. A chill ran down her spine, and she set her mug on the small adjacent table and stood. She walked slowly and calmly, in case they were watching, down the row of rocking chairs and to the mansion’s double front doors. She sneaked a glance over her shoulder, but the men were still focused on the course. Pushing down on the door handle, she quickly stepped inside and closed the door. “Eric!” she called out to her husband, who was in their formal dining room, with the newspapers and his breakfast. He subscribed to three—The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Dozens of trees killed every year just so he could flip through the stacks while eating three boiled eggs and extra-crispy turkey bacon. In an attempt to manage their carbon footprint, Andrea had a section of the garage dedicated to recycling bins—one for glass, one for paper, and one for plastics. The containers were beside the compost depository and emptied twice weekly. But recycling didn’t make up for the waste, which was why a seed of irritation ran through her each morning she collected the newsprint stack from the front porch. “What?” Eric called, his voice muffled by the thousand-square-foot stretch between them. She hurried to the entrance to the dining room so he could hear her better. “Something’s happening on the golf course. They’re looking for something.” “They lose balls all the time, honey.” He flipped a page and shook out the newspaper, getting it into place. “No, this is the police. There’s dozens of them.” This got Eric’s attention. He set down the paper and looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. “The police are out there?” She jerked her chin in a stiff nod. “Come look.” She moved the curtains on one of the front windows aside and pointed. It was hard to see past the porch furniture, columns, and mature landscaping, but across the road, the men were visible. 3 Eric rose and journeyed down the long table to join her side. He glanced through the part in the curtains,
then continued on to the front stateroom, which was their interior designer’s term for the large sunlit area that overlooked the front gardens and tree-lined road. It was one of Andrea’s favorite rooms, especially in the mornings. Once Cameron and Ryder were happy and settled into their activities, she loved to open the windows and curl up in one of the big soft chairs by the built-in bookshelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling. During the winter, she liked to light a fire in the small hearth; if there was a more perfect combination of smells than smoky charred wood and the vanilla scent of the sweet box shrubs outside the windows, she didn’t know what it was. It had been Roxanne who had designed the layout of the room and worked with the designer on the feel and utility of the space. Eric’s first wife had had a degree in interior design, and there had been no need for Andrea to change anything when she moved in with Cameron on her hip. Some women in the neighborhood had thought it strange, Andrea using another woman’s house as is, so over time she’d redone some of the social spaces, just for appearances’ sake—but it had never felt right, like the house was wearing clothes that didn’t fit. It had been better before. Everything had seemed better before. “I wonder if someone’s on the run. Those dogs are probably following a scent.” Eric pointed to a pair of German shepherds who were straining on their leashes, heading toward the woods. Andrea thought of the news footage from five years ago—the packs of search dogs that had scoured the park for weeks, trying to find Roxanne’s body. They hadn’t been successful in following her blood trail or scent, though they had unearthed a pile of bones that gave the public a burst of excitement, until it was revealed they were coyote remains. One of the police turned in their direction, and Andrea immediately stepped back, away from the window. “Do you think they can see us here?” “They aren’t looking. This isn’t about us. Don’t we have binoculars somewhere?” His nose was almost touching the glass, which fogged from his breath. Andrea moved to the built-in cabinets underneath the bookshelves, opening the doors and uncovering board games, a few extra throw blankets, and . . . There. She grabbed the binocular case and opened it up. The manual and tags were still on the expensive pair, and she peeled off the protective sticker from the lenses before handing it to Eric. “Maybe someone’s lost. A kid or someone with dementia. There’s that older couple down at the end of the lane. There was an ambulance in their driveway last week.” A lost individual was more likely than someone being on the run. It wasn’t as if they lived near a prison or a bad area. Just to get in the neighborhood, someone had to go through two gates and a security checkpoint. There wasn’t a house in this neighborhood worth less than $4 million, which was probably why there was this level of response. Wealthy areas rarely had to call the police, but when they did, law enforcement scrambled into action. So different from the area she’d grown up in. There, they had been taught, from the time they could talk, that a uniform was the one person you never ran to for help. If a cop asked questions, you pinned your lips shut. And the disdain had gone both ways. If anyone called the police for help, it might be an hour before one showed up, assuming they did at all. Her husband adjusted the scope on the binoculars, his shoulders hunched forward, stance stiff. Eric had attended Stanford, then med school at UCLA. He was a stickler for rules, had been his whole life. Prior to Roxanne, he had never had any interaction with law enforcement other than a pleasant exchange over a minor traffic infraction. His breakfast wouldn’t get finished today. Not with this far more interesting distraction. “Look.” Andrea tapped on the window, at a golf cart that was approaching from the left. “More cops.” 5 “I think those are the neighborhood security—but look over here.” He passed her the binoculars and pointed to the edge of the woods. “That’s the police chief. He wouldn’t be here unless it was something big.” “Is this what it was like at the park? This many people?” Treveley Park. Blood all over the scene. His first wife: gone. “No.” Eric shook his head. “At least not when I was there. I saw a half dozen officers. But maybe there were more in the woods. They didn’t let me go there.” Andrea thought of the woods around the parking lot. The thick trees. The running path that went deep into the park. The lot had been at the north end of the Treveley Park trail and rarely used at that time of day. Not a good place for a woman, alone. The crime scene photos from Roxanne’s attack were all over the internet, mostly on sites run by her family, who still hadn’t given up the hunt. The photos detailed in high resolution the blood smears on the Audi’s door handle and on the monogrammed leather steering wheel. Too much blood. Overkill. Andrea lowered the binoculars, suddenly nauseated at the thought. “You should go get changed for work. I’ll watch and tell you if anything happens.” He gave one last look out the window and nodded. “Don’t worry,” he repeated. “This isn’t about us.”
Chapter 2 Sara Batcher “Oh, I always knew Sara killed David. Meet her and you’ll see that her whole scrawny body is bottled up with the guilt—so much she’s, like, vibrating from it. I swear, her head’s going to pop off one day from keeping it all in. I’m telling you, it’s the women with the to-do lists that you should be the most scared of.” 16 Branwyn Hill Hole 18, Silverwood Preserve Sara Batcher was power-walking down the neighborhood’s main avenue, wrist weights on, music pumping through her headphones, when the crime scene investigation vans passed. An alarm bell chimed in her head at the sight of the white vans with bold green lettering. Not a good sign, and not something that belonged in this neighborhood, where Rolls-Royces were as common as guesthouses. The vans meant that someone would receive a visit from a set of uniforms, the officers’ faces grave, their voices somber. Today’s date would, for the rest of that person’s life, be a painful reminder of what had happened. May 5. That was her date. 7 That morning, David had joked with her about her inability to knot a tie. He’d kissed her on the way out, spirits high as his body responded to the pills. There had been no sense of foreboding. No mental warning that that kiss would be the last one she would receive. She hadn’t followed him to the door, or called him at lunch, or thought anything strange when he wasn’t home by dinner. It wasn’t until she’d woken up in the middle of the night, her body tense, her breath short, heart hammering, that she had a hint that anything was wrong. She’d lain there in the dark and tried to understand what the panic was from—what meeting she had forgotten, what email she hadn’t responded to, what voicemail she’d left unreturned. It had taken her forty-five minutes to fall back asleep, and she hadn’t, for one moment, considered that David was the source of her anxiety. A wife, alone in a bed, who hadn’t heard from her husband in more than eighteen hours . . . she should have at least called him. Looked to see if his location was turned on. Sent him a text just to see if he was up. Maybe he would have answered. Maybe he would have texted her back. Maybe his location had been visible and she would have been able to give the police something to help them in their search. Instead, she had rolled onto her side and gone through the fine points of the deposition questionnaire her company’s legal department had sent over. She thought about wording and positions and how the deposition could help or hurt the value of the company, until her eyes grew heavy and she fell asleep. May 5 had never received the proper level of alarm. There had never been a knock on Sara’s door or a solemn announcement. There had been no body, no crime scene, no clues—and therefore, no funeral, no tearful memory recaps or condolences offered. She had been cheated of all that and, instead, treated with a general mix of suspicion and pity. According to everyone they knew, Sara had either killed David or run him off. The judgment seemed to be evenly divided, and neither take garnered sympathy.
A police car passed, then another, then a K9 van. Sara paused her playlist and turned to look back, curious if there were more. She had lived in Crestmore for nine years and could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen a law enforcement vehicle inside the gates. The neighborhood’s security vehicles were always around. But San Francisco PD? No. Even when David’s disappearance had been deemed suspicious, it was a detective’s unmarked car that had pulled into the gates, not this level of alarm-inducing presence. “It’s strange, right?” The dark-haired woman in the house with the gaudy red metal roof stood at the end of her drive, one hand to her temple, shielding against the sun. “You have any idea what’s going on?” “No.” Sara strode across the cobblestone road toward her. “Some forensic vans passed by just a minute ago, so something must have happened.” “Maybe a murder.” The woman’s eyes gleamed and she craned her thin neck, trying to see down the road in the direction they had gone. “I gotta tell you, this would be the first exciting thing that’s happened in ages. Wouldn’t it be something if someone was killed? You know that big house on the hill? The one with the tennis courts? The husband was murdered there a few years ago. The wife cashed in big on the insurance, then started trotting around town with her yoga instructor.” Was that what they were saying? Sara shook her head. “No, that was just a rumor. He disappeared. There wasn’t a murder.” “Oh, because no body was found?” The woman scoffed and moved closer, crossing her arms and tucking her hands underneath her biceps, a move that pushed her already enormous breasts farther out the top of her lavender athletic set. “That just means the wife was smart. Trust me, I listen to all of the crime podcasts, and if there’s one way to hide a murder, it’s to make sure that the body is never found.” It was true. David’s missing corpse was likely what had kept the detectives from pursuing a deeper investigation into Sara. “The yoga instructor was gay,” Sara said—not that this woman’s opinion mattered. No one had listened or cared that Philip liked his sexual companions 9to be well endowed and bearded. All they cared about was that he was young, gorgeous, and at her home every day. “I mean, he still is gay,” she corrected. “Very gay.” The woman snorted. “Oh, I’m sure.” Sara bit back the urge to underline the point, since arguing with idiots wasn’t on her schedule this morning. “Well, I’ve got to go.” She checked the road to make sure no traffic was coming, then headed back across. “Be careful!” the woman called. “There might be a murderer out there!”
Chapter 3 Katie Morrow “Katie was an odd choice for a second wife. I mean, not that any man would blame Mark for wanting Katie. She’s beautiful and sweet and keeps her house in perfect condition. She’s just the polar opposite of Willow, which is why everyone’s eyebrows raised a few inches when they started becoming serious.” 28 Blackberry Summit Road Hole 1, Stone Hollow Katie Morrow stood in the middle of her giant walk-in closet and stared down at the pair of panties she’d just found tucked into the pocket of her husband’s suit. For a moment she stopped breathing, then forced herself to suck in a deep gulp of air. The suit was one of Mark’s heavier ones and rarely got any use because of its double lining and wool material. In the three years they’d been together, she’d never seen him wear it. Slowly, she unfurled the bit of lingerie and wondered how her husband would react if he did happen to pick out this suit and discovered this in the pocket. Would he tell her? 11 Would he throw it away? Or would he hide it, as a souvenir from her, a reminder of the life he’d once lived, the relationship he’d once had? It’s sad that you can be married to someone for two years and not know the answers to those questions. In some ways, they knew each other intimately. Beyond so. It felt like she could read his thoughts most days, they were so clear. Plus, there were the little things. Take, for instance, the fact that Mark’s celebrity crush was Jennifer Garner’s character in Alias. That his TikTok feed was full of sheepdog-herding videos and landscape remodels, and that if he needed to assemble a piece of furniture or replace the windshield wipers on her Porsche, he’d be helpless. She knew the temperature he liked his swordfish, his top-ten wine vintages, his pant-inseam length, the name of his cigar broker, and his biggest insecurity—his ears. All that, but she didn’t know how he would handle this expensive piece of pale-pink lace. It was obvious these had been worn. She stumbled backward on the plush white carpet and dropped into the chair beside the room’s makeup counter. When Katie had moved in, this closet was the one place she immediately both loved and hated. It was every woman’s dream. A massive space, over a thousand square feet in total, the masculine and feminine sections in quiet harmony, with discreet doors keeping all the messy items hidden and the open lit cubbyholes displaying the finer items like jewels in a case. It had a counter for Mark, with a sink for him to shave at, a rack of clippers and trimmers, his toothbrush, hair products, and colognes all in perfect rows along a crystal shelf. The female counter was built for a full glam squad, with every hair-care tool plugged in through the base and nestled in its own precut holder. The lights changed depending on the user’s choice, and there were a half dozen machines that were salon grade and ready for an intensive facial experience. When she’d moved in, all the clothes and 12shoes and purses had been relegated to the basement, but Willow’s makeup and beauty items had been left behind, likely forgotten or ignored by the moving crew, their curiosity and oversight not extending to the hidden cabinets and drawers in this section of the room. Katie was a woman who had always been fairly high maintenance, with a makeup drawer full of Sephora purchases, regular facials, quarterly Botox injections, and a healthy addiction to an evening skin-care routine. This setup took that level of self-care, laughed in its face, and raised it to the nth degree. Now, with the first scrap of Willow’s clothing in hand, Katie wondered if Mark’s ex had approached their sex life with the same fastidious level of attention she had devoted to her appearance. She hoped not. Add in any level of sexual gymnastics, and Katie would drop even further behind in this wives’ race. Putting your used panties in your husband’s suit pocket was a triple-twisting double back tuck compared to Katie and Mark’s own sexual adventures, or lack thereof. The issue wasn’t Katie. She was always prepped, shaved and clean. Always willing, though she could be more of an initiator at times. Still, she was always vocal and complimentary. Honestly, if someone stood outside their bedroom door, they’d think Katie was in a cheerleading competition, she was so damn enthusiastic. But their sessions never felt like Mark’s heart was in it. His orgasm was an effort. The erection was never at full attention, and it seemed like the act was often more of an obligatory chore. Maybe the panties weren’t Willow’s. The possibility knocked her in the gut, and she put a hand on her stomach, pressing her fist against the sharp pain. Maybe Mark had been cheating on her and these were his assistant’s, or a client’s wife’s, or some stranger’s from a bar. She should ask Mark. Just confront him with them and see what he said. Katie had always had a good bullshit meter. If she surprised him, she could judge his reation, his expression, the smoothness or 13anxiety of his reply. And maybe it was a conversation that would lead to a deeper dive, an uncovering of some of the details of the marriage he used to have. She straightened up, enthusiastic about the idea, even as the pessimistic side of her psyche laughed at the idea of Mark saying anything about his first wife. Mark never spoke about Willow. Ever. “Mrs. Morrow?” One of the maids stood at the entrance to the closet, her fist raised as if she might knock on the wall. “Yes?” Katie closed her hand around the thong, hiding it in her fist. “There’s someone here from the police department. They’d like to speak to you.”...
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