She is the angry, ogre version of Sabine, the kind that bathes in swamp water and gnaws on bones under a bridge. When Sabine’s twin-sister Ingrid can’t reach her sister on the phone, she storms into Jeffrey’s house and interrogates him. Should he call the cops, report a disappearance-tell them that his “wife missed her curfew?” Curfew seems like a suspect word. She lives on her phone-a phone that rings into the night when Jeffrey calls it, which is most unusual.
Jeffrey’s wife is a high-powered realtor. Not exactly what my parents were hoping for when they paid for my college, but a better paying job, a job I’m actually qualified for, would send up a smoke signal you might spot. She’s flooded with memories of her husband yanking her long hair although she admits that chopping it off with scissors is “a hell of a lot less painful than when you grab me by the ponytail and lift me clear off the bed.” Beth might clean the bathrooms of a similar joint one day. Beth checks into a seedy hotel and does what every escaping woman does: she cuts her hair before she dyes it. That was my instantaneous hypothesis.īut niggly little facts and descriptions warred with my conclusion. Let’s put two and two together: Beth drives away on Oklahoma’s Muskogee Highway, she meets an accomplice in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jeffrey and Sabine share a house on the Arkansas River: ergo Beth must be Sabine.
Her husband Jeffrey comes home from a four-day seminar to find his house empty. But no matter, she tells herself: “Those days, like Arkansas, are in my rearview mirror.”Īlternating with Beth’s escape narrative is the story of missing wife Sabine Hardison. As in, “you have three moods lately: offensive, enraged or violent.” Unlike the glamorous married life of the victim that Julia Roberts portrays in Sleeping with the Enemy, Beth’s former life appears pedestrian and brutish. What readers don’t find out is the name of her abusive husband-in Beth’s anguished musings, he’s you. Kimberly Belle goes into exquisite detail about how Beth planned her getaway, what steps she takes along the way to bury her identity, and how and why she makes Atlanta her destination. A real, full-body breath that blows up my lungs like a beach ball.
I hit my blinker and merge onto the Muskogee Turnpike, and for the first time in seven long years, I take a breath. Her initial thoughts are worthy of a country-song anthem like Martina McBride’s “ Independence Day.” Meet Beth Murphy, a woman on the run from her abusive husband. Dear Wife by Kimberly Belle is a psychological thriller about escaping abusive relationships: after plotting for a year, Beth Murphy is on the run from her abusive husband, and Sabine Hardison’s husband comes home to find Sabine is missing… but one detective will not quit until these missing women are found.
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