The Break(59)

“You and Lila were sleeping in our bedroom,” he says slowly, the emphasis like a prickly slap on my wrist. “I told June to keep her voice down, and she did.”

“Thank heavens you thought of that,” I say, rolling my eyes. “God forbid your heart-to-heart woke me up.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Gabe says, stepping forward, making the oak floor creak beneath him. Time seems to slow. Standing in the living room like this, staring at each other, reminds me of our wedding, when we stood just like this during the opening notes of our first dance, about to show off the ballroom lessons we’d been coerced into taking by Gabe’s mother. Neither one of us wanted to do it, so why had we bent so easily to Elena’s will? And now it’s a decade later and we’re uncomfortable for way worse reasons; for a darker twist we never could have seen coming.

“Do you think I don’t know how serious this is?” I ask. And then because I can’t bear to stand here a moment longer, I leave him there alone and go sit. I take Lila out of the carrier and get her settled in my arms, gathering my courage to say what I’m about to. “You’re lying to me about something, Gabe. Why in the world would our twenty-two-year-old sitter seek out you in her time of need?”

Guilt floods me for asking him what I’m about to right in front of Lila.

“Were you sleeping with June?” I ask, my skin on fire. Time seems to whip past me and then slow, leaving a long space in which I ask myself: Would I leave him if he had sex with her?

Yes. I would. But the answer doesn’t come as easily now that Lila’s here, which scares me. There’s so much more at stake now, and my heart thumps against my ribs. Could I really have missed something as big as an affair? Me, the solver of mysteries?

Gabe looks down at Lila and his face is angrier than I’ve ever seen it. I feel a sick satisfaction for being the one to make it so. Isn’t that one of the cruel things marriage does to us? The one-ups and resentments; the agony of battle, of climbing back on top, of losing and winning and never being on the same team the way you were when you first fell in love.

“How could you even ask me that?” he growls, but he doesn’t meet my eyes.

“Because something isn’t right here,” I say. I can sense Lila’s starting to wake up, and nothing makes me sicker than dragging her into this. “June coming here, you lying to the police. None of it makes sense. If you didn’t sleep with her, then you did something else, and I want to know what.”



“All I ever did to June was care about her and try to look out for her because no one else was,” Gabe says.

“Oh my God, Gabe, get off your high horse for once. Really, do try.”

“Screw you, Rowan,” he says, and it takes the breath right out of me.

My phone rings. I look away from Gabe, and with trembling fingers I swipe the bar to answer it.

“Mrs. O’Sullivan,” says a deep male voice. I’m pretty sure it’s Detective Mulvahey, but for reasons I can’t yet put my finger on, I don’t want Gabe to know.

“Yes,” I say crisply, businesslike.

“This is Detective Mulvahey,” the voice says. “I’m very glad I caught you.”

Here’s the funny thing: it’s the sound of fake kindness in his voice that tips me off that he knows we lied to him. Or at least, that Gabe did. “We finally got access to that video footage from the entrance of your apartment building,” he says into my ear. I avoid looking at Gabe as he goes on: “And it’s fascinating, really, because we found out that in fact you did see your sitter again. Or at least, she was trying to see you. June Wallenz arrives at your apartment building at ten twenty p.m. Tuesday night. She talks to Henri Andersson, who gestures for her to go inside. He watches her ass as she walks into the building, which I was none too fond of, having daughters myself. And here’s where it gets really interesting: there aren’t cameras inside your building, only the one on the front door. And would you believe: June never leaves your building. Your doorman, the lascivious Henri Andersson, tells us there’s a back door out to a garden and an alley behind the building, but we don’t have much reason to think June would use the hidden back door of your building and exit into an alley in the middle of the night. Henri’s memory of the night aligns with the footage: he let June up and never saw her come down, and he just assumed she did so while he was in a back office or using the bathroom. But here’s the strangest thing of all: you and your husband told us that neither of you had seen June since you saw her in the café that morning.”

There are so many of my bodily systems betraying me—I swear I’ve peed myself hearing everything he’s just told me, and blood is so hot on my face I think my skin will melt—but I still gather myself enough to speak up and defend myself.

“And that’s still true for me,” I say into the phone. I look up at Gabe. He’s standing very still, his eyes on me.

Mulvahey’s quiet on the other end of the line, and if I were writing his inner monologue, I’d be debating whether to believe me, and the implications of such. Because if I were him, and if I believed the wife and suspected the husband of foul play, I’d secure the connection by extending a verbal olive branch, a trick, a sleight of hand to get the unsuspected wife on my side.

“Is your husband within earshot?” he asks softly.