The Good Twin(42)

Ben shook his head. “Sorry, Mallory, that’s not going to happen.”

“You still need me. There are documents I have to sign.”

“And you’ll sign them if you want to see any money at all.”

She stormed out of the room in a fury. Ben had expected that response, but it didn’t change anything. In the end, she’d have to accept what he offered. He turned the game back on, satisfied that he’d played it just right with Mallory.

A few minutes later, Ben heard his name but didn’t look up. Mallory called it again, louder. He held up his hand to shush her, without turning his head. “A minute. Key play here.” The Celtics were ahead, but the Knicks had a chance to take the lead. It didn’t matter that the game had been played almost fifty years ago; it was still exciting to watch.

Now, she said his name sharply. He paused the TV and swiveled around. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open, while his heart felt like it would explode in his chest. He rubbed his eyes and prayed that it was just an apparition he was seeing.

“Hello, Ben,” Charly said, a smiling Mallory by her side.





PART TWO

CHARLOTTE





CHAPTER 30

October 2016

My husband is having an affair. I don’t think Ben knows that I’m onto him. I wanted to scream, to let out the fury inside me, but of course, I couldn’t. Not while in the gallery.

Our relationship has been strained for a while, yet every time I tried to talk to Ben about it, he retreated. Finally, I hired a private investigator. I know—how clichéd. But there it was. I didn’t trust Ben and paid someone to follow him. I needed to understand what had happened to us. Her name’s Lisa. A social worker. I’ll bet he’s told her terrible things about me, that I’m spoiled and cold and don’t care about him, only about my business and . . . and, maybe some of that was true. Not that I didn’t care about him. I did, a great deal. Even loved him, I thought, before receiving the envelope that lay on my desk. But my business has taken a lot of time and effort to get established. There’s a great deal of competition in the art world. My mother’s connections helped a little, but it was a long time ago that she was on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She died almost sixteen years ago. Still, Dad has a lot of friends with money to burn, and he’s steered many of them to my gallery.

I looked at the pictures that accompanied the report and wondered what he thought was so special about her. Plain brown hair that hung straight to her shoulders, an upturned nose, eyebrows that needed tweezing. Pretty, in an ordinary sort of way. Her clothes looked like they’d come from someone’s castaways. They just didn’t seem to suit her body—her much-larger-than-mine body. Every time I retained water, Ben asked me if I’d gained a few pounds, yet this woman who was kissing my husband had at least fifteen pounds on me.

I couldn’t stop staring at the pictures. Should I confront him? Tell him I know? What if he wanted to end our marriage? Do I want to end our marriage? I thought about that and realized I couldn’t handle Ben cheating on me. Marriage counseling was an option, I supposed, assuming he agreed to immediately stop seeing Lisa. But is that what I wanted? He’d betrayed me, after all I’d done for him. No. I didn’t want him back. He was tarnished goods now.

I was supposed to be working on the gallery’s books, but instead I was wound up with thoughts about Ben and that woman—Lisa. My reverie was interrupted when Sandy, my assistant, called out to me that my father was on the phone. I put the investigator’s report and his pictures back in the envelope and placed them in my bottom desk drawer, then picked up the phone.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Sweetie, I have some bad news.”

My father never had bad news. He put a positive spin on everything. Everything except Ben. “What is it?”

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. I have liver cancer.”

Suddenly, nothing about Ben mattered anymore. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I couldn’t find any words.

“It’s terminal.”

I began to sob. “No, don’t say that. There has to be something. A liver transplant. I can be tested. Maybe I’m a match.”

“It’s too late for that. It’s spread too far.”

My sobbing intensified. Sandy peeked her head into the back room and, upon seeing me, came over and put her arms around me.

“It’s okay, Charlotte. I’ve accepted it. I’ve suspected for a while something was seriously wrong. That’s why I had testing done.”

“B-b-but you never told me.”

“I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily.”

“I can’t lose you, too.”

“You were always going to lose me. It’s just come earlier than we expected.”

“Where are you now?”

“At home.”

“I’m coming over. Right now.”

“I’d like that.”

I was shaking when I hung up. My hands kept shaking all the way to my father’s apartment. I let myself in with my own key, then called out to him.

“I’m in the den,” he called back.

I hadn’t seen my father in a few weeks—rare for us, but he’d begged off the last two Sundays—and I was shocked by how he looked. His skin was sallow, and he’d already lost some weight. I walked up to him, and he wrapped his arms around me.