The Couple Next Door(9)

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Anne has a complicated relationship with her parents. When Marco and Anne are having issues with them, which is frequently the case, Marco tells her that her relationship with them is fucked up. Maybe it is, but they are the only parents she has. She needs them. She makes things work the best she can, but it isn’t easy.

Marco comes from an entirely different kind of background. His family is large and squabbling. They yell good-naturedly when they see one another, which isn’t often. His parents emigrated from Italy to New York before Marco was born and own a dry-cleaning and tailoring business. They have no money to speak of, but they get by. They are not overly involved in Marco’s life, as Anne’s wealthy parents are in hers. Marco and his four siblings have had to fend for themselves from a young age, pushed out of the nest. Marco has been living his life on his own—and on his own terms—since he was eighteen. He put himself through school. He sees his parents occasionally, but they are not a big part of his life. He isn’t exactly from the wrong side of the tracks in anybody’s book, except for Anne’s parents’ and their well-heeled friends at the Grandview Golf and Country Club. Marco comes from a middle-class, law-abiding family of hardworking people, who have done well enough but no better than that. None of Anne’s friends from college or from her job at the art gallery think Marco is from the wrong side of the tracks.

It is only old money that would see him that way. And Anne’s mother is from old money. Anne’s father, Richard Dries—actually her stepfather; her own father died tragically when she was four years old—is a successful businessman, but her mother, Alice, has millions.

Her wealthy parents enjoy their money, their rich friends. The house in one of the finest parts of the city, the membership at the Grandview Golf and Country Club, the luxury cars and five-star vacations. Sending Anne to a private girls’ school, then to a good university. The older her father gets, the more he likes to pretend that he’s earned all that money, but it isn’t true. It’s gone to his head. He’s become quite full of himself.

When Anne “took up” with Marco, her parents acted as if the world were coming to an end. Marco looked like the quintessential bad boy. He was dangerously attractive—fair-skinned for an Italian—with dark hair, brooding eyes, and a bit of a rebellious look, especially when he hadn’t shaved. But his eyes lit up warmly when he saw Anne, and he had that million-dollar smile. And the way he called her “baby”—she couldn’t resist him. The first time he showed up at her parents’ house, to pick her up for a date, was one of the defining moments of Anne’s young adulthood. She was twenty-two. Her mother had been telling her about a nice young man, a lawyer, the son of a friend, who was interested in meeting her. Anne had explained, impatiently, that she was already seeing Marco.

“Yes, but . . . ,” her mother said.

“But what?” Anne said, folding her arms across her chest.

“You can’t be serious about him,” her mother said.

Anne can still remember the expression on her mother’s face. Dismay, embarrassment. She was thinking about how it would look. Thinking about how she would explain to her friends that her daughter was dating a young man who came from nothing, who worked as a bartender in the Italian part of the city and rode a motorcycle. Her mother would forget about the business degree Marco had earned at the same university that was considered good enough for their daughter. They wouldn’t see how his working his way through school at night was admirable. Maybe nobody would ever be good enough for her parents’ little girl.

And then—it was perfect—Marco had roared up on his Ducati, and Anne had flown out of her parents’ house and straight into Marco’s arms, her mother watching from behind the curtains. He kissed her hard, still straddling the bike, and handed her his spare helmet. She climbed on, and they roared away, manicured gravel spitting up in their wake. That was the moment she’d decided she was in love.

But you aren’t twenty-two forever. You grow up. Things change.

“I want to call my mother,” Anne repeats now. So much has happened—has it been less than an hour since they returned home to an empty crib?

Marco grabs the phone and hands it to her, then sits back down on the sofa with his arms crossed in front of him, looking tense.

Anne dials the phone. She starts to cry again before she’s even finished dialing the number. The phone rings, and her mother answers.

“Mom,” Anne says, dissolving into incoherent sobbing.

“Anne? What’s wrong?”

Anne finally gets the words out. “Someone has taken Cora.”

“Oh my God,” her mother says.

“The police are here,” Anne tells her. “Can you come?”

“We’ll be right there, Anne,” her mother says. “You hold on. Your father and I are coming.”

Anne hangs up the phone and cries. Her parents will come. They have always helped her, even when they’re angry at her. They will be angry now, at her and Marco, but especially at Marco. They love Cora, their only grandchild. What will they think when they hear what she and Marco have done?

“They’re on their way,” Anne says to Marco and the detective. She looks at Marco, then looks away.





FIVE


Marco feels like an outcast; it’s a feeling he often gets when Anne’s parents are in the room. Even now, with Cora missing, he is ignored, while the three of them—his distraught wife, her always-composed mother, and her overbearing father—slip into their familiar three-person alliance. Sometimes their exclusion of him is subtle, sometimes not. But then again, he knew what he was getting into when he married her. He thought it was a deal he could live with.