Stranger in the Lake(41)

The finder is more of the same. Work projects filed by address and dates, personal folders with copies of passports and tax reports. I’m about to move on when I spot it, a folder marked Katherine.

Something tight and icy-hot spirals across my scalp at the sight of Paul’s first wife’s name, a yellow folder of memories and who knows what else sitting on his hard drive. I hover the mouse over her name, wavering between dread and curiosity.

If I open this file, I can’t unsee what’s in it. I won’t be able to pretend I don’t know. There’s no going back from this.

And yet I’ve already reached the point of no return, haven’t I, simply by seeing her name on his hard drive. Even if I don’t look inside this folder, for the rest of my life I will wonder what’s in it, this digital mystery stashed on his laptop.

And that, somehow, feels even worse.

I click her name, and there are two subfolders, Legalities and Memories. I don’t know which one is scarier.

The first file contains pdf documents, filed by name and date. Her birth and death certificates, their marriage certificate, bank statements and tax returns. Her will is complicated, trusts and properties and a whole bunch of legalese I don’t understand, no list of assets other than that they all went to Paul. I back out and click the most recent bank statement, a portfolio summary from J.P. Morgan, and my eyes bulge at the amount. Before Katherine died, her investments had a market value of almost six million dollars.

Maybe this is why we don’t talk about money, because if we did, he’d have to tell me that the majority of his wealth came from a former swimmer who sank to the bottom of the lake she did laps in every summer morning. It’s a hard pill for even the most trusting, most gullible wife to swallow. No wonder Sam thinks the worst. If I didn’t know Paul so well, I might, too.

I back out and keep scrolling, and a file catches my eye: Fertility Eval. A chart, a long list of medical tests and terms. It doesn’t take me long to get the gist. Katherine was infertile, something about ovulatory dysfunction and a diminished ovarian reserve, and I think back to Paul’s reaction on the boat, his obvious joy when he found out he was going to be a father, and an invisible fist punches into my chest and squeezes my heart. Finally something I’ve beaten her at, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like a tragedy, especially for Paul.

I shake it off and move on to the Memories folder, and it’s pictures. Thousands and thousands of them. Smiling. Kissing. Gazing lovingly into the other’s eyes. Capturing moments from the time they met, in grad school at Cornell, to the weekend before she died. Glamorous shots from their wedding, grainier shots at parties and on vacations, candid shots at home—Paul’s home, the one I can’t quite think of as mine because it’s her hyacinth bulbs that push through the dirt each spring.

I zoom in on a shot of her sunning on my favorite chair on the dock, and she really is lovely. Long and lean, with high cheekbones and eyes so aqua it’s hard to look away. I take her in, but it’s Paul’s face I concentrate on. He looks happy. Relaxed. I measure the edges of his smile, compare them to the one he aimed at me two days ago when I told him I was pregnant. Did he smile bigger with her? Was his face brighter?

And what was it Sam said? All you have to do is take off the blinders.

My eyes flutter shut, and I steel myself against something ugly and dark.

The door bangs open, and I jump so hard my body loses contact with the seat. Chet shakes off the snow and his coat, hanging it on the door handle.

“Deli was closed. Everything is, even the post office. It’s like a ghost town out there. What? What’d I do now?”

I shake my head. “It’s not you. It’s just...” I gesture vaguely to the laptop screen. “I was going through Paul’s computer. I don’t like what I found.”

Chet leaves a trail of snow and ice on his trek across the office, nodding knowingly. “Porn?”

“What? No, not porn.” I frown. “Stuff about Katherine.”

It takes him a second or two to place the name. “Wait—isn’t Katherine his wife?”

“First wife. Was. The wife he refuses to talk to me about, ever. She was loaded, Chet.”

“Well, of course she was. Her daddy was Pete-O-Pedic.” He sings part of a jingle anyone in fifteen counties would recognize: “‘Buy your mattress from a local dealer, get it for a little cheaper.’ Remember those commercials?”

I remember. They only played them every five minutes on the radio. Those stores were everywhere until Mattress King swooped in and bought Pete out. He died of a heart attack less than a year later.

Chet leans over the desk, craning his neck to see the laptop screen. “Whoa. No wonder you’re so bent out of shape. She’s hot.”

I snap the laptop closed. “Oh my God, you are literally the worst brother in the world.”

“What? She was. And how’d you get on his computer, anyway?”

“I know his password. Everybody here does. We all have the same ones.”

Chet points at me over the desk. “See? You’re good, then. A husband with something to hide is going to lock down his technology. One hundred percent.”

“Then why keep the pictures on his hard drive?”

“So what if he does? She’s not here, and you are. From where I sit, that means you’re winning.”