The Wife Between Us(54)

I sipped my Chablis as I soaked in her happy chatter and suggested we get together in the city soon. Sam had only come out to see me once since the wedding. I didn’t blame her; Westchester was boring to a single woman. I made it to Manhattan more often, and I would try to meet Sam near the Learning Ladder for a late lunch.

But I’d had to postpone our last lunch because I’d caught a stomach bug, and Sam had canceled the dinner we’d scheduled before that because she’d forgotten her grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party was on the same evening.

We hadn’t seen each other in ages.

I’d vowed to stay in close contact with Sam after the wedding, but nights and weekends—Sam’s free times—were also my only chances to be with Richard.

Richard never put constraints on my schedule. Once, when he picked me up at the train station after I’d met Sam for Sunday brunch at Balthazar, he asked if I’d had fun.

“Sam is always fun,” I’d said, laughing as I told him how after we left the restaurant, we’d come across a movie scene being filmed a few blocks away, and Sam had grabbed my hand and pulled me into the crowd of extras. We’d been asked to leave, but not before she managed to grab a big bag of trail mix from the craft-services table.

Richard had laughed with me. But at dinner that night, he mentioned that he would be working late almost every evening that week.

Before we got off the phone, Sam told me to pick a time for us to get together. “Let’s drink tequila and go dancing like we used to.”

I hesitated. “Let me just check Richard’s calendar. It might be easier if I come in when he’s out of town.”

“You planning to bring a boy home?” Sam joked.

“Why only one?” I bantered, trying to change the focus, and she laughed.

I was in the kitchen a few minutes later, chopping tomatoes for a salad, when our burglar alarm began to shriek.

As promised, Richard had a sophisticated alarm system installed right before we moved into the Westchester home. It was a comfort during the days when he was at work, and especially on the nights when he traveled.

“Hello?” I called. I went into the hallway, flinching as the high-pitched warning pulsed through the air. But our heavy oak door remained shut.

Our house had four vulnerable areas, the alarm-company contractor had said, holding up an equal number of fingers to emphasize his point. The front door. The basement entrance. The big bay window in the eat-in kitchen area. And especially the double glass doors off the living room that overlooked our garden.

All of those entrances were wired. I ran to the double glass doors and glanced out. I couldn’t see anything, but it didn’t mean no one was there, wasn’t hiding in the shadows. If someone was breaking in, I’d never hear the noise over the blaring alarm. Instinctively, I bolted upstairs, still holding the butcher knife I’d been using to cut the tomatoes.

I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand, grateful I’d put it back in its charger. As I burrowed into the back of my closet, behind a row of slacks, I dialed Richard.

“Nellie? What’s wrong?”

I clutched the phone tightly as I huddled on the floor of my closet. “I think someone’s trying to break in,” I whispered.

“I can hear the alarm.” Richard’s voice was tense and urgent. “Where are you?”

“My closet,” I whispered.

“I’ll call the police. Hang on.”

I imagined him on the other line giving our address and insisting that they should hurry, that his wife was alone in the house. I knew the alarm company would alert the police, too.

Our home phone was ringing now, as well. My heart pounded, the frantic throbbing filling my ears. So many sounds—how could I know if someone stood on the other side of the closet door, twisting the knob?

“The police will be there any second,” Richard said. “And I’m already on the train, at Mount Kisco. I’ll be at the house in fifteen minutes.”

Those fifteen minutes lasted an eternity. I curled into a tighter ball and began to count, forcing myself to slowly mouth the numbers. Surely the police would come by the time I reached two hundred, I thought, remaining motionless and taking shallow breaths so that if someone came through the closet door, they might not detect my presence.

Time slowed down. I was acutely aware of every detail of my surroundings, my senses intensely heightened. I saw individual flecks of dust on the baseboards, the slight variation in the hue of the wood floor, and the tiny ripple my exhalations made in the fabric of the black slacks hanging an inch from my face.

“Hang on, baby,” Richard said as I reached 287. “I’m just getting off the train.”

That was when the police finally arrived.


The officers searched but found no sign of an intruder—nothing taken, no doors jimmied, no windows broken. I cuddled next to Richard on the sofa, sipping chamomile tea. False alarms weren’t uncommon, the police told us. Faulty wiring, animals triggering a sensor, a glitch in the system—it was probably one of those things, an officer said.

“I’m sure it was nothing,” Richard agreed. But then he hesitated and looked at the two officers. “This probably isn’t related, but when I left this morning, there was an unfamiliar truck parked at the end of our street. I figured it belonged to a landscaper or something.”