The Wife Between Us(109)

Maureen is between us in an instant. She takes the bag and the rings from Richard. “Vanessa, I think it’s time for you to go. I’ll see you out.”

I stand up. Not because she told me to, but because I am ready to leave. “Good-bye, Richard.”


Maureen leads me down the steps toward the parking lot.

I follow at a slower pace.

“You can do whatever you want with the wedding album.” I gesture to the bag. “It was my gift to Richard, so it’s rightfully his.”

“I remember. Terry did a nice job. Lucky that he was able to fit you in that day after all.”

I stop short. I’d never told anyone how close we’d come to not having a photographer at our ceremony.

And it has been nearly a decade since our wedding; even I couldn’t come up with Terry’s name that quickly.

As Maureen meets my stare, I recollect how a woman had phoned to cancel our booking. Maureen knew which photographer we were using; she had suggested I include black-and-white shots when I emailed her a link to Terry’s website and sought her opinion about Richard’s gift.

Her icy-blue eyes look so much like Richard’s in this instant. It is impossible to gauge what she is thinking.

I recall how Maureen came to our house for every holiday, how she spent her birthdays with her brother engaged in an activity she knew I didn’t enjoy, how she never married or had children. How I cannot remember her mentioning the name of a single friend.

“I’ll take care of the album.” She stops at the edge of the parking lot and touches my arm. “Good-bye.”

I feel cold, smooth metal against my skin.

When I look down, I see she has slipped my rings onto the fourth finger of her right hand.

She follows my gaze. “For safekeeping.”





CHAPTER





FORTY-ONE




“Thank you for seeing me today,” I say to Kate as I settle into my usual spot on her couch.

Though I haven’t been here in months—since when I was still married—the room is exactly the same, with magazines fanned on the coffee table and a few snow globes on the windowsill. Across from me, in the large aquarium, two angelfish languidly wind around a leafy green plant, while orange-and-white clown fish and neon tetra swim through a rock tunnel.

Kate is unchanged, too. Her eyes are large and sympathetic. Her long dark hair is brushed back behind her shoulders.

Richard caught me the first time I snuck into the city to meet Kate. I didn’t return for quite a while. When I did, I made sure to tell him I was going to visit Aunt Charlotte. Then I deliberately left my phone at her place while I rushed the thirty blocks here.

“I’m divorced,” I begin.

Kate smiles slightly. She has always been so careful to avoid letting me know how she feels, but even though we’ve met only a few times, I’ve learned to read her.

“He left me for another woman.”

The smile disappears from Kate’s face.

“But she’s not with him anymore, either,” I add quickly. “He had a kind of breakdown—he tried to hurt me and there were witnesses. He’s getting help.”

I watch Kate as she processes all of this.

“Okay,” she finally says. “So he is . . . no longer a threat to you?”

“Correct.”

Kate cocks her head to the side. “He left you for another woman?”

This time it’s me who smiles slightly. “She was the perfect replacement. That’s what I thought the first time I saw her. . . . She’s safe now, too.”

“Richard always did like everything to be perfect.” Kate leans back in her chair and crosses her right leg over her left, then absently massages her ankle.

The first time I met Kate, she’d merely asked me a few questions. But the queries helped me untangle the twisting thoughts in my mind: Can you tell me why you think Richard is trying to keep you off-balance? What would his motivation be for this?

The second time I came to see Kate, she’d reached for the box of tissues on the side table between us, even though I hadn’t been crying.

She’d stretched out her arm to pass them to me, and my gaze had fallen on the thick cuff bracelet on her wrist.

She’d held her arm still, letting me take it in. But she hadn’t said a single word.

Seeing that distinctive cuff shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, collecting information was part of the reason why I’d sought out Richard’s ex, the dark-haired woman he’d been with before me.

It hadn’t been difficult to find her; Kate still lived in the city and was listed in the phone book. I was so careful. I never even mentioned her by name when I wrote about our meetings in my Moleskine notebook, and when Richard discovered I’d snuck into the city, I told him I’d been to see a therapist.

But Kate was even more careful.

She listened to me thoughtfully, but she didn’t seem willing to share the story of what had happened during the years she and Richard were together.

I believe I discovered why during my third visit.

During our previous meetings, Kate had moved to one side after letting me into her apartment, gesturing for me to walk ahead of her toward the living room. When she stood up to signal our conversations had concluded, she motioned for me to go first and then followed to see me out.