Look Closer(60)

I’m surprisingly calm, staring at the loss of all my hard work, the loss of my retirement money. But panicking isn’t going to help me get that money. I have a competitor, and she appears to be formidable, but this isn’t my first time in competition.

And I’ve never lost.

“He’s not filing until the day before your anniversary,” I say. “November the second. That’s, what, a week from tomorrow?”

Vicky nods, chewing on a nail.

“So the question is: What we do now?.”

“I’ll tell you what I’d like to do,” she says. “I’d like to break his neck.”

“And what if that happened?” I ask.

Vicky blinks, her expression changing.

“You said you care about him,” I say. “How much do you care about him?”

Vicky walks over to the window, looks out over the alley. My guess is she’s spent the last forty-five minutes asking herself that very question.

“If he dies before our tenth anniversary,” she says, “the money stays in the trust. I don’t get a cent. It won’t be marital property.”

Interesting answer. Interesting because she didn’t say, I could never do something like that, I could never hurt Simon. She’s just saying that it wouldn’t work. That means she’s keeping an open mind.

“Lauren’s married,” I say. “Someone named Conrad?”

She flips a hand. “Apparently.”

“How about we tell him about the affair?”

“He probably already knows,” says Vicky, turning to me. “And if he doesn’t, so what? Sounds like their marriage is in the dumper, too.”

I sit down at the table. I’m not coming up with many answers here.

“He’s been different,” she says.

“Simon has?”

She nods. “He’s been more distant the last few days. I didn’t—didn’t think much of it. He gets that way a lot, lost in his thoughts. I didn’t think anything of it.”

I blow out a breath. “What if—What if Simon were injured but not killed?”

“C’mon.”

“What do you mean, ‘c’mon’? I’m serious.”

Vicky takes a moment with that. “Like, injure him enough that he’s out of commission but not kill him, just to buy us a week until November third comes and goes?”

“Exactly,” I say.

“Exactly? And how exactly does that happen? Hit him with a car hard enough to hospitalize him but not enough to kill him? Shoot him but miss all vital organs? Hit him over the head hard enough to put him into a coma but not enough to end all brain activity?”

“Okay, okay.”

She touches my arm. “Believe me, if I could pull that off—But it’s not feasible.”

“Well. Then maybe, Vicky Lanier, maybe it’s time you started being really, really nice to your husband?”

She takes a moment to catch my meaning, then rolls her eyes. “That won’t work.”

“You can be charming.”

“Not that charming. Not with Simon.”

“No? Says in those pages that he loves you, but you don’t love him back. Maybe you show him you do?”

She thinks about it but shakes her head. “It’s too late. If I’d had any idea this was happening, that’s exactly what I would’ve done.” She thumps her forehead with the butt of her hand. “How did I miss this?”

You missed it, Vicky, because you were counting dollar signs in your head, and you were falling for me.

We go silent, thinking. Dead air filled with desperation, bordering on outright panic. I’m watching everything I’ve worked for circle down the drain.

“What if I confront him?” she says. “Be direct? I could beg him. I’d do that. I’d beg. For ten million dollars, I’d beg.”

Yeah, but that’s only half. You want it all, Vicky. So do I.

Anyway, I’ve already considered her idea and rejected it in my own mind. “The one thing you have going for you,” I say, “is that he’s dreading the thought of doing this to you. That tension, that pressure, works for us. If you tell him you know, then the ice is broken, the tension is broken. He might as well just file for divorce at that point.”

“But you read what that bitch said to him. File first, tell me later.”

“I know, I know—but you’ll make it worse if you confront him. It’ll open the floodgates. He can’t know that you know.”

She grips her hair, letting out a low moan.

“I have to go,” she says. “If he comes home, and the laptop and notebook are missing, he’ll know I’ve seen it.”

“When does he come home?”

“Probably not until later.”

“Probably? ‘Probably’ isn’t much to bank on.”

She agrees, nods her head. “He has a lot of flexibility with his job. He had a class this morning, early. Nothing in the afternoon. He usually works into the late evening, writing his law review articles and blog posts. But yeah, he could come home in the afternoon if he wanted.”

“Especially if he realizes he left his laptop and diary at home.”

“Shit.” She touches her forehead. “You’re right. I’m gonna go. I can come back around six.