The Wives

Summoning her most dazzling smile and her most direct eye contact, she said, ‘Officers, I have children in the car. I assure you that I have not been drinking. I didn’t think I was speeding either, but I suppose it’s possible. If so, I’m very sorry about that.’

At the mention of children, the male officer took his flashlight and began walking the perimeter of the car. He didn’t seem to care that the light was shining directly in the boys’ eyes. Karolina could see them all squint.

‘Mom, what’s happening?’ Harry asked, sounding nervous.

‘Nothing, honey. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. Just let them do what they need to do.’

With this, the male officer called to the female officer and gestured to something with his flashlight. They exchanged looks. Karolina felt her heart do a little flip-flop, though there wasn’t a reason in the world she should be nervous.

‘Mrs. Hartwell, please get out of the car. Slowly,’ the female officer said.

‘Excuse me?’ Karolina asked. ‘Why on earth would I get out of my car? I’m not even wearing a coat—’

‘Now!’ the male cop barked, and it became immediately clear that this wasn’t a routine traffic stop.

Karolina jumped out of the driver’s seat so quickly that she didn’t bother to use the running board, and as a result she twisted her ankle and had to grab the door to keep from falling.

The officers exchanged another look.

‘Mrs. Hartwell, we have observed both reckless driving and empty bottles of alcohol in the backseat of your vehicle. Keeping your arms down by your sides, please walk in the middle of the street for a distance of approximately twenty feet. Our officers are stationed down the road, so there will be no oncoming traffic.’

‘Wait – you found what? In my car? You must be mistaken,’ Karolina said, trying not to shiver. ‘My husband is going to be livid when he finds out about this!’

The female officer gestured toward the very road Karolina lived on, now slick with rain, and motioned for her to walk. Immediately and without thinking, Karolina wrapped her arms around her chest to keep warm in her too-flimsy silk blouse and began to stride confidently toward her house. If there was one thing Karolina could do better than nearly anyone else on earth, it was work a catwalk. But what she hadn’t expected was seeing her neighbors’ doors and curtains open, their familiar faces squinted toward her, recognition dawning on their features as they realized who was performing a field sobriety test like a common criminal on their beautiful, quiet street.

Is that Mrs. Lowell? Karolina wondered, seeing an elderly woman peek out behind a crisp linen curtain. I didn’t realize she was visiting now. I can’t believe she’s seeing me like this. Karolina could feel her cheeks start to color despite the cold, and somehow she must have missed the small pothole in the road, because the next thing she knew, she’d stumbled and nearly fallen.

‘Did you see that?’ Karolina said to the officers, who were watching her closely. ‘We’ve been telling the town forever that this road is badly in need of repair.’

They gave each other that look again. Without a word exchanged, the male cop approached Karolina and said, ‘Ma’am, you’re under arrest for suspicion of driving while under the influence. You have the right to remain—’

‘Wait – what?’ Karolina shrieked, before noticing that Harry had stuck his head out of the Suburban’s window and was intently watching the entire scene. ‘Under arrest?’

‘— silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to …’

The words were familiar, of course. So many police procedurals she’d watched with Graham, and nights of Law & Order marathons in her single days, but who knew they actually said those things in real life? Was this actually happening? It seemed so surreal: one moment she was just another mom driving home her son’s friends, and then next she was being escorted into the backseat of a police cruiser.

‘Wait, excuse me! Sir! Listen please, I can’t just leave the children in the car!’ Karolina called as the car door slammed closed. She was alone in the backseat, entirely cut off from the world with a thick layer of presumably bulletproof glass.

The officer’s voice came through some sort of speaker. ‘Officer Williams will look after your son and his friends and ensure that everyone gets home safely. I’ll be taking you to the station now.’

The engine started, and with it, the sirens went on. She couldn’t hear Harry, but she could see that he was screaming ‘Mom’ and trying very hard not to cry. Hand against the window, she mouthed to him, ‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine,’ but Karolina knew he couldn’t see. With lights and sirens blaring in the quiet night, the cruiser pulled away from Karolina’s son.

‘How dare you!’ she screamed at the officer, before noticing a camera with a blinking light mounted in the corner right above her window, but the officer didn’t so much as glance up. Never in her life had she felt so completely helpless. So totally alone.

They hadn’t allowed Karolina a phone call until nearly two hours after she’d been arrested. Was that even legal? she wondered, trying to keep calm. At least the woman officer had come by the holding room to tell Karolina that Harry and his friends were all home. The parents of the boys had each come to the station to retrieve their sons, and when Graham didn’t answer his phone, Harry had suggested they call his grandmother Elaine, who had swept in to take Harry back to her house. Karolina was relieved that Harry was safe, but she was filled with dread at the idea of retrieving him from her mother-in-law.

‘My husband isn’t answering,’ Karolina said to the officer overseeing her phone call.

He was slumped over a desk filling out paperwork. He shrugged without looking up. ‘Try someone else.’

‘It’s almost midnight on New Year’s Eve,’ Karolina said. ‘Who am I supposed to call to come pick me up in the middle of the night from the local police station?’

With this, the officer looked up. ‘Pick you up? No, sorry, Mrs. Hartwell. You’ll be staying here tonight.’

‘You can’t be serious!’ Karolina said, nearly certain he was joking.

‘Strict orders from above. All DUIs have to sober up for at least five hours before they can be released. And we only do releases between the hours of seven a.m. and midnight, so I’m afraid you’re out of luck.’

‘Do I look drunk to you?’ Karolina asked him.

The officer glanced up. He looked barely old enough to buy beer, and the blush that spread across his neck didn’t help. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Those are the rules.’

She dialed the only other number she had memorized. Trip, who was their family lawyer and Graham’s best friend, answered on the first ring.

‘Lina? Where did you say you’re calling from?’ he asked groggily. Leave it to Trip to be asleep before midnight.

‘You heard me, Trip. The local drunk tank at the Bethesda County Jail. Sorry to wake you, but I figured you’d understand. I tried Graham, but he’s nowhere to be found. Surprise, surprise.’

Trip and Graham had been roommates at Harvard Law and best men at each other’s weddings and were godparents to each other’s children. She’d always thought of Trip as almost an extension of Graham, an extra set of eyes and ears, an acceptable substitute, a brother figure. Usually they shared a warm, mutual affection. But tonight she didn’t even try to mask her displeasure that she was talking to Trip and not Graham.

‘Can you please get me out of this hellhole?’ she whispered into the phone. ‘They said they won’t let me out of here until morning, but that can’t be possible.’

‘Sit tight. I’ll call a few people and get this sorted out,’ Trip said with reassuring confidence.

‘Hurry, please.’

But either he didn’t hurry or there was nothing he could do, because Karolina didn’t speak to Trip again until he showed up to bail her out at seven the following morning. Without Graham.

Trip read her face immediately. ‘Graham wanted to come, of course. I was the one who advised against it.’

Karolina took a seat in one of the plastic chairs next to Trip. Her entire body ached from lying on a bench in the holding room – not a cell, exactly, more like an outdated boarding gate at an old airport.

‘I’m not an idiot, Trip. I understand pretty clearly that the optics of a sitting senator walking into a county jail to bail out his wife aren’t great. But you can’t blame me for wishing he’d done it anyway,’ Karolina said, trying to hold back tears. ‘Can you tell me what the hell is going on?’

Trip’s cell phone bleated, and he silenced it without looking at the screen. ‘I’m going to be honest with you, Lina. This is a first-rate shit show.’

‘You think I don’t know that? I’m the one who slept in jail last night. In jail. And where is my husband?’

Trip’s brow furrowed. He cleared his throat. ‘Lina, it’s not—’

Karolina held up her hand. ‘Don’t. First I want to know who has Harry. Who’s getting him to school?’

Another throat clear. Karolina almost felt bad for directing her anger with Graham at Trip. Almost. He looked so miserable. ‘Harry stayed the night at Elaine’s house.’

‘He’s still there?’

‘You know Harry called her when they arrested you last night. Naturally, some of the journalists picked up the story from the police scanner, and a few cameras were waiting outside your house when Elaine went to drop Harry off. She just kept driving and took him back to her place. The media has staked out your house, and we didn’t want to put him through that. At least now no one knows where he is.’