The Expats (35 page)

AT TEN THIRTY Dexter returned from London, exhausted. It seemed like he’d left years ago, instead of this morning. They barely spoke—not a bad flight, meeting was all right—before he collapsed into bed, a hardback on his chest, a dense volume about financial markets.

He still hadn’t mentioned anything about the video camera in his office. He hadn’t said a word about anything that mattered.

She lay down beside him, picked up her magazine, opened to the table of contents, turned pages, trying to read but merely skimming, eyes wandering over words and images.

Soon Dexter fell asleep. Kate kept her eyes on the magazine, killing more time, turning pages quietly, staring at photographs, deconstructing them into their constituent pixels, abstractions of forms and color. It was a two-month-old glossy from the United States, outdated celebrity gossip and irrelevant cultural commentary and a long piece of political journalism that seemed like it was from not only a different country and continent, but from a whole different world. A planet where she used to live but now could barely recognize.

Kate waited five minutes after Dexter’s snoring commenced. Then crept out of bed.

She tiptoed downstairs, in the dark. She took his wallet to the bathroom, and shut the door. She locked the door. She removed every single
item from his wallet, one by one: credit cards and IDs, receipts, various denominations of different currencies.

Kate examined everything, and found nothing.

She plucked a tea towel off its kitchen hook, carried it to the desk where Dexter’s mobile phone sat, plugged in to its charger, red light glowing. She wrapped the phone in this towel, to mute the beep when she unplugged it. She returned to the bathroom and sat on the toilet, scrolling through contacts and memos and recent calls, any application that provided an opportunity to type and save a string of digits or letters.

She discovered that he hadn’t made any calls during his day in London. As she scrolled through his list of calls made or received during the past sixty days, she discovered that Dexter had never made any international calls whatsoever during any of his business trips, except those home to her.

She closed the phone, considering the oddness of a series of business trips that required not a single phone call. No secretaries to confirm meetings, no logistics to be arranged—no cars to beckon, no tables to reserve. No meeting follow-ups or previews. No details to discuss, ever, with anyone?

This didn’t seem terribly likely.

This was impossible.

Either he hadn’t gone on these trips, or he had another phone.

WHEN KATE USED to imagine what she didn’t want to do—how she didn’t want to investigate Dexter—this was the exact image in her brain: creeping through her own home in the dark of the middle of the night, picking through her husband’s private things while he slept.

This was why she’d promised herself that after they were married, she’d never investigate him again. She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to feel this way.

But here she was, carrying his nylon briefcase into the bathroom, locking the door. She felt around the interior pockets, unzipping, unsnapping, ripping Velcro, not expecting to find anything, but then something … what? … a silk tab at the bottom of his case—

Her pulse raced. She pulled this square black centimeter, suddenly hopeful. She lifted a sturdy nylon panel, and there it was: a hidden compartment. And inside, a phone. An unfamiliar little piece of plastic and metal.

She stared at this first bit of positive proof, the entrance to the rabbit hole from which she might never reemerge. She considered putting the thing back into its little pocket, the briefcase back into the hallway. Instead she could go upstairs, shake her husband awake.
What the fuck is going on, Dexter?

But she didn’t.

She powered on the phone. The screen blinked to life. She stared at the cool blue glow, the app icons, the reception bars. She hit the phone icon and the recent-calls button and stared at the list, the walls of the rabbit hole closing in, deepening, while she scrolled:

Marlena, yesterday at 9:18
A.M.

Marlena, the day before at 7:04
P.M.

A London number, country-city code 44-20, unsaved to contacts, at 4:32
P.M.

Marlena the day before that, and again, last Monday night.

Kate opened the contacts list: just two. Marlena, with a London number. And Niko, with a prefix she didn’t recognize. Kate memorized both.

Marlena and Niko: who the hell were they?

DEXTER WOKE LATE. He ate breakfast with Jake and Ben, and didn’t return upstairs to shower and shave until they all left for school. Lazy deadbeat, all of a sudden, after four months as an unrepentant workaholic.

But when Kate returned home he was gone. Back to the video camera that had recorded her. Back to his unexplainable office. Back to his secret phone, his unfamiliar contacts, his fifty million stolen euros. Back to his other life.

Kate could barely breathe.

She set to work again. She dug through their basement storage, sifting through the American electronics that wouldn’t work here. She examined the back of the old television, the insides of lamp shades, the slots in the toaster, the filter of the coffeemaker. The box of old Tupperware, mismatched glassware, impulsively and wastefully purchased Chinese bowls. The summer tires for the car. The bicycle pump. The luggage. The luggage tags.

Among all this unused, unusable detritus was a wardrobe box,
KATE’S WORK CLOTHES
, dark wool suits and starched white blouses, collars just shy of frayed. Her old life, crated up and forgotten in a basement.

She went to the bakery, ordered a ham sandwich. Waiting, trying to figure out how she could begin investigating Marlena and Niko, other than calling their numbers. That would be traceable; she would be noticed.

If Dexter didn’t check the video footage, who did? What was the camera there for?

She looked in his sock drawer, underwear drawer, T-shirt drawer; the pockets of jeans and suit jackets and overcoats; the inside stitching of his belts. The linings of his neckties. The bottoms of his shoes, heels of shoes, insoles of shoes.

She collected the children from school, bought pastries, then parked them in front of the television, cartoons in French.
Bob l’Eponge
was, it seemed, always on.

She examined the liner notes to CDs, the big pockets in photo albums, the backs of photos, sitting there on the couch, with the children.

“Mommy?” Jake asked. “I’m hungry.”

She’d forgotten to feed her children.

KATE DIDN’T HEAR Dexter come in. The range’s exhaust fan was on; she was sautéing.

“Hi.”

She jumped, her right hand attached to the sauté pan, lifting it, chicken flying, the edge of the pan hitting her left forearm, quickly searing a line into her flesh, dropping the pan onto the vitro-ceramic cooktop, clattering. She yelped, short and loud.

“Oh!” Dexter said, rushing into the kitchen, but then helpless, no idea how to help.

Kate ran to the sink, turned on the water, put her arm under it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

For the past few seconds, she’d forgotten about the video camera and the money and Marlena and Niko. But now she remembered.

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Sorry,” he said again, kneeling, picking chicken off the floor, throwing it away. Then he gathered the pieces off the cooktop, put them back in the pan. “We can still eat this, right?”

She nodded.

“Should I go get the first-aid kit?”

The faint red line was two inches across the pale flesh of the inside of
her forearm. She held it under the stream of cool running water. “Yes. Thanks.”

She looked at her husband. At his eyes, locked with hers, worry across his forehead. He’d never burned himself cooking. He didn’t cook enough to make kitchen mistakes. He’d never peeled his thumb with a peeler, nicked his fingertip with a paring knife, scalded his arms in boiling water, burned bubbles on the back of his hand with splattering fat.

What he’d done was steal fifty million euros.

Dinner came and went. The adults read some books to the children, then read books to themselves, then Dexter fell asleep, without having mentioned anything about any video.

She lay awake next to him, sleepless.

Marlena and Niko.

“WHAT ABOUT DEXTER?” Claire was asking. They were waiting for three o’clock at school.

“Excuse me?” Kate was completely absorbed in her own obsessions. She still hadn’t discovered anything more of any value: no account records, no leads on Marlena and Niko, no information about anyone stealing fifty million euros from anyone, anywhere in the world. Plus the family was driving to Amsterdam that night, and Kate hadn’t yet packed. Dexter would be home at four thirty, itching to hit the road. She was running out of time.

“I was saying that Sebastian is
worthless
around the house. Is Dexter handy?”

“No,” Kate had to admit. “He’s not particularly useful. I do the household stuff.”

“You build the Ikea rubbish?” Claire asked. Kate had once built a chest of drawers composed of 388 individual pieces. “Yes,” she admitted. That chest had taken four hours.

“Sebastian will try,” Claire said. “But only if I beg him.”

“Is same with Paolo,” Sophia agreed.

“With Henrik,” Cristina said, leaning in, lowering her voice, “I have to blow him to get him to change a lightbulb.”

Kate knew Cristina was kidding about the fellatio. But maybe it wasn’t a bad idea, because Dexter didn’t ever—

He did, Kate realized, attend to a mundane household repair, unbidden. Just once.