The Wife Between Us(108)

The silvery scar above his eye, I think. The one he said was caused by a bike accident.

I picture Richard as a young teenager—a boy, really—dazed and in pain from the crash. Crying out for his mother. Failing to rouse his parents. Trying to wrench open the upside-down station wagon’s doors. Beating his fists against the windows and yelling. And the blood. There must have been so much blood.

“My dad had a temper, and whenever he got mad, he drove fast. I suspect he was arguing with my mother before the crash.” Maureen’s cadence is slower now. She shakes her head. “Thank God I always told Richard to wear a seat belt. He listened to what I said.”

“I had no idea,” I finally respond.

Maureen turns to look at me; it’s as if I’ve pulled her from a reverie. “Yes, Richard never talked about the accident with anyone but me. What I want you to know is that it wasn’t just when he was driving that my father lost his temper. My father was abusive to my mother.”

I inhale sharply.

My dad wasn’t always good to my mom, Richard had told me after my mother’s funeral as I sat shivering in the bathtub.

I think back to the photograph of his parents Richard hid in the storage unit. I wonder if he needed to literally bury it to suppress the memories of his childhood, so they could yield to the more palatable story he presented.

A shadow falls over me. I instinctively whip my head around. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” a nurse in blue scrubs says, smiling. “You wanted me to let you know when your brother woke up.”

Maureen nods. “Can you ask him to come down, Angie?” Then Maureen turns to me. “I think it would be better for you two to talk here rather than in his room.”

We watch the nurse retreat. When the woman is out of earshot, Maureen’s voice turns steely. Her words are clipped. “Look, Vanessa. Richard is fragile right now. Can we agree that you will finally leave him alone?”

“He’s the one who wanted me to come here.”

“Richard doesn’t know what he wants right now. Two weeks ago, he thought he wanted to marry Emma. He believed she was perfect”—Maureen makes a little scoffing sound—“even though he barely knew her. He thought that about you at one time, too. He always wanted his life to look a certain way, like the idealized bride and groom on the cake topper he bought for my parents all those years ago.”

I think of the mismatched date on the bottom of the figurines. “Richard bought that for your parents?”

“I see he didn’t tell you about that, either. It was for their anniversary. He had this whole plan that we’d cook them a special dinner and bake them a cake. That they’d have a wonderful night and start loving each other again. But then the car crash happened. He never got to give it to them.

“It was hollow inside, you know. The cake topper. That’s what I thought when I saw it broken in the hallway that day. . . . I guess he was bringing it to the tasting to show the cake designer. But Richard really has no business being married to anyone. And it’s my job now to make sure that it doesn’t happen.”

She suddenly smiles—a wide, genuine grin—and I’m completely unnerved.

But it isn’t for me. It’s for her brother, who is approaching us.

Maureen stands up. “I’ll give you two a few minutes alone.”


I sit beside the man who both is and is no longer a mystery to me.

He wears jeans and a plain cotton shirt. Dark stubble lines his jaw. Despite the fact that he’s been sleeping so much, he appears tired and his skin is sallow. He is no longer the man who enthralled me, then subsequently terrorized me.

He appears ordinary to me now, somehow deflated, like a man I wouldn’t look at twice as he waited for a bus or bought a cup of coffee at a street kiosk.

My husband kept me off-balance for years. He tried to erase me.

My husband also hugged my waist on a green sled while we sped down a hill in Central Park. He brought me rum raisin ice cream on the anniversary of my father’s death and left me love notes for no reason at all.

And he hoped I could save him from himself.

When Richard finally speaks, he says what I have wanted to hear for so long.

“I’m sorry, Vanessa.”

He has apologized to me before, but this time I know his words are different.

At last they are real.

“Is there any way you could give me another chance? I’m getting better. We could start over.”

I gaze out at the gardens and rolling green lawn. I had envisioned a scene much like this when Richard first showed me our Westchester house: The two of us side by side on a porch swing, but decades into our marriage. Connected by memories we’d constructed together, each of us layering in our favorite details with every retelling, until we’d created a unified recollection.

I’d expected to be angry when I saw him. But I only feel pity.

By way of an answer to his question, I hand Richard my cloth bag. He pulls out the top item, a black jewelry box. In it are my wedding and engagement rings. He opens the box.

“I wanted to give these back to you.” I have spent so long mired in our past. It is time to return them to him and truly move on.

“We could adopt a child. We could make it perfect this time.”

He wipes his eyes. I have never seen him cry before.