The Wife Between Us(6)

I remember moving in what felt like slow motion toward the basement, delaying the moment when I’d have to tell Richard, in front of all of his friends and business associates, what I already knew: There was no Raveneau in our cellar.


I pass the next hour or so waiting on a grandmother who requires a new outfit for the christening of her namesake and putting together a wardrobe for a woman who is taking a cruise to Alaska. My body feels like wet sand; the flicker of hope I’d experienced after helping Nancy has been extinguished.

This time, I see Hillary before I hear her voice.

She approaches as I’m hanging a skirt on a rack.

“Vanessa!” she calls. “I’m so glad you’re still here. Please tell me you found—”

Her sentence is severed as her eyes land on my wrist.

I quickly slip off the bangle. “I didn’t . . . I—I was worried about leaving it in the lost and found. . . . I figured you’d return for it, or I was going to call you.”

The shadow clears from Hillary’s eyes. She believes me. Or at least she wants to.

“Is your daughter all right?”

Hillary nods. “I think the little faker just wanted to skip math class.” She giggles and twists the heavy band of platinum onto her wrist. “You saved my life. George only gave it to me a week ago for my birthday. Can you imagine if I had to tell him I lost it? He’d divor—”

A flush blooms on her cheeks as she averts her eyes. Hillary was never unkind, I remember. Early on, she even used to make me laugh sometimes.

“How is George?”

“Busy, busy! You know how it is.”

Another tiny pause.

“Have you seen Richard lately?” I aim for a lighthearted tone, but I fail. My hunger for information about him is transparent.

“Oh, now and then.”

I wait, but it’s clear she doesn’t want to reveal more.

“Well! Did you want to try on that Ala?a?”

“I should get going. I’ll come back another time, darling.” But I sense Hillary won’t. What she sees before her—the dented button on the Chanel that is two years old, the hairstyle that could benefit from a professional blowout—is a vision Hillary desperately hopes isn’t contagious.

She gives me the briefest of hugs, then begins to leave. But she turns back.

“If it were me . . .” Her brow furrows; she is working through something. Making a decision. “Well, I guess I’d want to know.”

What is coming has the feel of an onrushing train.

“Richard is engaged.” Her voice seems to float toward me from a great distance away. “I’m sorry. . . . I just thought you might not have heard, and it seemed like . . .”

The roaring in my head suffocates the rest of her words. I nod and back away.

Richard is engaged. My husband is actually going to marry her.

I make it to a dressing room. I lean against a wall and slide down onto the floor, the carpet burning my thighs as my dress rides up. Then I drop my head into my hands and sob.





CHAPTER





THREE




On one side of the old steepled church that housed the Learning Ladder stood three turn-of-the-century grave markers, worn by age and hidden amid a canopy of trees. The other side contained a small playground with a sandbox and a blue-and-yellow climbing structure. Symbols of life and death bookending the church, which had witnessed countless ceremonies honoring both occasions.

One of the headstones was inscribed with the name Elizabeth Knapp. She’d died in her twenties and her grave was set a bit apart from the others. Nellie took the long way around the block, as she always did, to avoid passing the tiny cemetery. Still, she wondered about the young woman.

Her life could have been cut short by disease, or childbirth. Or an accident.

Had she been married? Did she have children?

Nellie set down her bag to unlock the childproof latch on the fence encircling the playground as the wind rustled through the trees. Elizabeth had been twenty-six or twenty-seven; Nellie couldn’t remember which. The detail suddenly nagged at her.

She began to walk toward the cemetery to check, but the church’s bell rang eight times, the deep, somber chords vibrating through the air and reminding her that her conferences would start in fifteen minutes. A cloud drifted in front of the sun, and the temperature abruptly dropped.

Nellie turned and stepped through the gate, pulling it closed behind her, then rolled back the protective tarp covering the sandbox so it would be ready when the children came out to play. A sharp gust threatened to yank one end away. She fought back against it, then dragged over a heavy flowerpot to secure the edge.

She hurried into the building and down the stairs to the basement, where the preschool was. The earthy, rich scent of coffee announced that Linda, the director, had already arrived. Ordinarily, Nellie would have settled her things in her classroom before greeting Linda. But today she bypassed her empty room and continued down the hall, toward the yellow light spilling out of Linda’s office, feeling the need to see a familiar face.

Nellie stepped in and discovered not just coffee but a platter of pastries. Fanning paper napkins beside a stack of Styrofoam cups was Linda, whose shiny dark bob and taupe pantsuit cinched by a crocodile belt wouldn’t have been out of place at a board meeting. Linda didn’t just dress like this for the parents—even on field day, she looked camera ready.