A Good Marriage(95)

“Oh, I’m looking for Sarah?” I began, hoping I could get through this without having to identify myself as Zach’s lawyer. The thought made me want to gag.

“Lunch and then a book-club outing to some author event at the 92nd Street Y,” he said. “I’d say come in and wait, but it’s more of a wine club than a book club. She’ll probably be gone for hours. You’re here about the emails, I suppose?”

“Yes,” I said, grateful for the gift of an alternate explanation as I made my way down the steps.

“You and the rest of the world,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “I can take your name if you want. But I do know she’s working on making the school get more information out to everyone. And I’m sure she’ll have another meeting about it soon. There are always more meetings. And they are always in my home.”

“I’ll try her another time then,” I said, smiling as I turned away and started down the sidewalk. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” he called after me. “Only do me a favor and don’t tell her you saw me here at home at this hour. I wanted to watch a little Wimbledon, and that woman will never understand the importance of sports.”

I nodded and smiled back. It was so hard to imagine this soft, affable guy with Sarah. “No problem.”

By evening, Sam had sent half a dozen texts I’d ignored—all some version of: “Please, Lizzie, can we talk?” He’d called, too. In the third voice mail, he’d started to cry.

“I never deserved you,” he’d said. “You’re kind and understanding and honorable. You’re a much better person than me, Lizzie. You always have been.”

I felt sick to my stomach.

I parked myself at Café du Jour again. I checked in with Thomas and my secretary, answered emails, then spent a couple hours finalizing the overdue cell-phone-battery motion to dismiss. When the café closed, I moved to Purity Diner near our apartment, which somehow survived even though it was always empty. Their spanakopita was crap, but even my mother would have approved of their fries. “A front,” I imagined my dad proclaiming as he so often did about such restaurants, with no evidence whatsoever. He never did like cheaters.

I stayed at Purity until there was at least a reasonable chance Sam would be asleep. If we’d had more money, I would have gone to a hotel. If we’d had more money, I probably would never have gone home. It wasn’t as if there was anything Sam could say now that would make me feel better. He didn’t know where the earring had come from and also couldn’t say for sure that it didn’t belong to some woman he’d screwed while too drunk to remember. That was really the beginning and the end of the conversation, at least the conversation I wanted to have.

And I was convinced Sam was telling the truth about not remembering. It would have been too much easier to lie. Part of me wished Sam had. That way we could have just continued on as we had been. We had deep fissures, sure, but we were still in one piece. Now we’d be trapped in a place where doubt would nibble at our edges until, at long last, it devoured us whole.

When I finally got home, Sam was asleep as I’d hoped, propped up on the living room couch, having apparently lost the battle to wait up for me. His head was tilted back, mouth slightly open. When I leaned in close, he didn’t smell of alcohol. Asleep and not passed out drunk. Victory once again.

Standing there watching him sleep, I wasn’t even angry anymore, only overwhelmed by grief. Alcoholic or not, Sam was still smart and kind and passionate. Seeing him across a room still made my heart pick up speed. My life had begun again when I met him. And yet none of that meant we should stay together. I’d been so foolish to think love could change the essential nature of anything.

My phone rang in my bag.

Sam bolted awake. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, go back to sleep,” I said, hurrying into the bedroom and closing the door. I dug my phone out and answered. “Hello?”

“You have a collect call from a New York State—”

I hit 1, cutting short the recording. Zach must have bribed somebody at Rikers—with what I didn’t want to know—to let him use a phone at that late hour.

“Hi,” Zach said, sounding positively cheerful once he was on the line. What a relief it must have been for him not to have to pretend anymore. Asshole.

“I spoke with your accountant,” I launched in. “As you are aware, there are no funds available to cover the experts’ retainer. It’s potentially soured your relationship with them, which was stupid because they’re really good. You will also need to pay them for the work they’ve already done. They’ll sue you if they have to. And then no one will work for you. You are going to need experts, too—a lot of them—in order to win this case.”

“Meaning what?” he asked, notably not sounding surprised.

“Meaning you’ll need to get the money from somewhere,” I said. “The fingerprint evidence is potentially exculpatory, and they only just got started. It’s the best chance you’ve got.”

“Exculpatory?” Zach sounded delighted.

I hated making him happy. But I refused to give him the satisfaction of getting emotional in response. This was something I was being forced to do, but I could treat it like any other job. If nothing else, I had always known how to get a job done.