The Perfect Couple(82)

The ring had been Tag’s only misstep. Greer had gone in to see Jessica Hicks, the jeweler, about wedding bands. Greer thought it would be a nice touch for Benji and Celeste to have rings fashioned by a Nantucket jeweler. The instant Greer entered the shop, Jessica’s brows had shot up. She said, Did your daughter-in-law not like the ring, then?

Daughter-in-law? Greer had said.

The one who’s pregnant? Jessica said. Did she not like the ring?

The ring? Greer had said.

Your husband came in… Jessica said.

Oh, right! Greer had said enthusiastically, although a bad feeling had started to seep through her. Tag had said nothing about getting a present for Abby. And Tag wasn’t known for thoughtful gestures where the kids were concerned; he left that to Greer.

He told me about it but we’ve been so busy he hasn’t had a chance to show it to me, Greer said. And he wouldn’t do a proper job describing it anyway. What did it look like?

Silver-lace pattern, Jessica said, embedded with multicolored sapphires. Like this one. It’s meant to be worn on the thumb. Jessica had then shown Greer a ring that sold for six hundred dollars. So it wasn’t a fortune, wasn’t like a trip to Harry Winston for diamonds, but Greer had been near certain she would never see Abby wearing that ring.


Tag steps into the bedroom, closes the door behind him, and locks it.

“Greer,” he says. He holds his hands up as if she might strike him.

She would like to strike him. What has he done? The girl dead, the wedding canceled, their marriage, their life…

And yet all Greer can think to say is “I thought you were having an affair with Featherleigh.”

Tag’s eyes widen. “No,” he says.

“No,” Greer says. “It was Merritt.”

“Yes,” he says.

Greer nods. “If you want me to help you, you had better tell me everything. Everything, Tag.”

It started the night of the wine dinner, he says. They were both drunk, very drunk, and she came on to him. They slept together; it was unremarkable, regrettable. He thought that would be it but then he bumped into her again in the city, by accident, at a hotel bar, and she invited him to her apartment. He’s not sure why but he said yes. And then there was another time or two, but he finally demanded she leave him alone.

“You bought her gifts?” Greer says.

“No.”

“Tag.”

He sighs. “A trinket. It was her birthday a few weeks ago. That was when I ended it. She wanted to go away together. I said no. She persisted. I booked a room at the Four Seasons downtown…”

The Four Seasons? Every detail pierces her.

“She was late showing up and in the minutes that I was waiting, I came to my senses. I left the hotel and went home to you.”

“So how many times did you screw her?” Greer asks. “Sum total.”

“More than five, less than ten,” Tag says.

Greer feels ill. She can see the allure, she supposes. Merritt was attractive; she was young, free, unfettered. Merritt had the whiff of a rebel about her. Who wouldn’t want to shag Merritt? What makes Greer want to vomit on her shoes is the thought of her own self while all of this was going on those six, seven, eight times. What had Greer been doing? Was she writing her perfectly mediocre novel or was she planning their son’s wedding? Whatever she was doing, she wasn’t paying attention to Tag. She hadn’t given Tag a minute’s thought.

“And that was it?” Greer says. “Nothing more? You had an affair, you broke it off. She was upset about it. I saw her crying during the rehearsal dinner, in the laundry room, of all places. So when you talk to the police, you’ll tell them she was emotionally overwrought and that she threatened suicide if you didn’t leave me. You took her out on the kayak to try and talk some sense into her. You delivered her back to shore; you came to bed. She drowned herself.”

“Well,” Tag says.

“Well what?”

“It’s a bit stickier than that,” Tag says. He clears his throat. “She was pregnant.”

Greer closes her eyes. Pregnant.

“You’re going to the gallows,” she says.

Tag’s face crumples; Greer has landed the poison dart right between his eyes. The girl was pregnant. Pregnant with a Winbury bastard child. The thought is hideous, and yet it feels utterly predictable. Thomas Winbury the elder, known to most as Tag, has taken the family down. His poor judgment, his base urges, and his weak character have desecrated the Winbury name. He has committed murder, and he will be caught.

Greer can think ill of Tag all she likes, but in the end, she knows, she will say and do whatever she needs to do to protect him.

There’s a knock on the bedroom door.

It’s Thomas.

“The chief of police is back,” Thomas says. “He’d like to talk to you next, Dad.”

Tag looks to Greer. She nods but is afraid to say a word in front of Thomas. Tag should stick to the story they came up with. She tries to convey this with her eyes but Tag hangs his head like a guilty man. Greer would like to go into the questioning with him. Let her talk, let her present the argument. She, after all, is the storyteller.

But that, of course, won’t be possible. Tag got into this mess without her; he will have to go it alone.


Greer is exhausted. It’s nearly four o’clock, the hour the ceremony was to take place.