Thought I Knew You (10 page)

In the bike aisle, I was struck with a memory. Months ago, Hannah had asked Greg if she could have a two-wheeler for Christmas because Annie down the street got one for her birthday. Greg and I made eye contact over Hannah’s head with the same thought that we each had on a regular basis.
Our baby is growing up.
Our conversation later that night after the girls went to bed was one of the last times I felt us connect. We talked for an hour, about our lives, the girls growing up too fast, what we thought they would be like when they were teenagers. We laughed. We each had a glass of wine, and for once, the television remained dark.

I felt a ray of hope. A pinhole in my balloon of despair was letting in a small, yet unmistakable beam of light. If I could make Christmas extraordinary, fill our house with laughter and voices and magic, maybe we’d start the climb out of our black gorge of sorrow. I was so tired of feeling tired, of feeling helpless and hopeless. I looked around at the people in the store—mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents—all vying for the best present, the favorite present, anything to extract the brilliant smile of a child. I could be one of them, if only for a moment.

“Can I help you?”

I turned to a young man of maybe eighteen and tried on a smile. He smiled back.

“I want a pink bicycle. Not Barbie or Dora or anything like that. Just pink and sparkly with streamers on the handlebars and a bell.”

He laughed and brought me around the aisle. He pointed at a bike in the rack that fit my description.

Pushing my luck, I continued, “What about a tricycle? Do you have anything similar?”

He showed me all the tricycles, and I spotted a pink one. No streamers, but it did have a bell. “I’ll take one of each.”

“Do you want me to ring it up?” he asked.

“No, I’m not done yet.” I felt jittery…
excited.
To have any emotion but despair felt alien, but wonderful. I had spent about half of the three hundred that Mom had given me. I returned to the aisles that mere moments before had seemed overwhelming.

Barbies! Hannah had no Barbie dolls; I put three boxes in my cart. Then as an afterthought, I grabbed a Ken.
Someone around here should have a man.
I rounded the corner to the dress-up aisle. Into the cart went two dresses, one for each of my daughters. Shoes to match? Surely. I selected a new doll for Leah, as she only had hand-me-downs, and also picked out a canopy doll bed, complete with bedspread and pillow shams. I bought them each electronic reading systems, with a few books. I found markers, crayons, paints, coloring books, Play-Doh, and two pads of paper, along with a purple bucket to hold it all. By the time I was done, my cart was filled to the brim, not including the two bikes waiting at the register.

The total rang up to five hundred and seventy-five dollars, more than I had ever spent on Christmas for the two of them. A very small part of me was appalled, but more than that, I was excited. At the last minute, I threw in three rolls of wrapping paper and some ribbon, then ran my credit card to cover the difference. I was filling the void Greg had left in our lives with material possessions, and while some would argue it wasn’t healthy or was only temporary, I didn’t care. For the moment, I felt alive, human, and normal. And maybe my high would be contagious.
Maybe
some of that Christmas magic would rub off on the girls, and for one day, we would all be happy again.

However high on shopping I was, I knew my moods were fickle, and that by Christmas, I could very well be back underwater, drowning in sorrow, and all my efforts today would be for naught. But one person could help. He could buoy my capricious moods and keep the spirit of Christmas afloat despite the weight of sadness heavy in the air. I got in the car, started the engine to get the heat going, and pulled my cell phone out of my purse to dial a number I knew by heart.

“Hi, it’s me,” I said when he picked up. “Got any plans for Christmas?”

I stood in the guest bedroom, surveying the white sheets tucked under the mattress with folded precision. I’d never cared much about the state of the room for Drew, but it had somehow started to matter. I opened my grandmother’s handmade quilt— zigzag triangles of green and red on creamy white—and shook it out, letting it fall to rest squarely on the bed.

I thought of the Christmas four years ago when Drew had visited. Hannah was a newborn, red and colicky, and I was exhausted all the time. I’d invited him every year, and he’d always said no. But for some reason, that year, he agreed. When I opened the door, he handed me a bottle of red wine.

Greg stood behind me in the hall. “She can’t drink red anymore. Since the baby,” he commented, tilting his head to the side, in a way only I knew was condescending.

I rolled my eyes. He was right. My face burned bright at the first sip, a reaction to sulfites, I’d read. I didn’t care, though. Not that night.

“It’s fine.” I took the wine and went into the kitchen, retrieving two glasses from the cabinet. I set them on the counter and reached into the drawer for the corkscrew. Greg made a deliberate coughing noise in my direction and reached up to retrieve a third glass, raising his eyebrows at me with a small smile.

Drew stood over Hannah’s portable cradle, which we had set up in the living room, studying her. She was in a rare state of contented sleep. I crept up behind him and passed him a glass, cradling my own in my other hand.

“She’s so small,” he whispered.

“I know. She’s cranky, though. Wait ’til you see.”

“Nah. Uncle Drew is here. You wait. She’ll be a different kid; she’ll be so happy to see me.”

I nudged him with my elbow.

He nudged me back. “I can’t believe you’re a mom, now.”

“Right? I’m in charge of another person. God help us.”

“Oh, stop. You’re the most responsible person I know. You’ll be fine. Uncle Drew is going to have to show her how to have fun, though.”

Hannah twitched and then settled back into sleep with a soft baby moan. When I looked up, Drew was watching me, and our eyes caught, trapped by the shared sensation of a door closing. He gave me a small, sad smile.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He shook his head, ran his hand along the side of the cradle, then straightened and rubbed his hands together. “What’s for dinner? I’m starving!”

Drew and I cooked in a routine performed on sensory memory, having made dinners together for years, throughout college and beyond, whenever we’d gotten together. He always chopped onions. I always made the sauce. We had our strengths and our traditions.

Greg comforted Hannah as she screamed. The respite of concentrating on something other than Hannah, her needs, her comfort—or lack thereof—provided a balm for my remaining baby blues.

Drew nurtured a variety of mushrooms in butter, slapping my hand away as I tried to pick. Over Chicken Marsala, we reverted back to conversations about people from our childhood and from high school. At first, I tried to include Greg, but as I drank, I forgot. Greg shrank further and further into himself, tending to Hannah and finally getting up to put her to bed. We moved to the living room, where Drew and I reminisced about his parents—his mom’s homemade blueberry pie and his dad’s insistence that before Drew could get his license, he had to replace all the tires on the car.

“I miss them,” Drew said, letting his head rest against the couch cushion.

I assumed the same position and watched him. “Me, too. Remember your mom’s confused sayings? Brightest bulb in the drawer?”

“
Yes
! Oh, my God. Pitch white.” We howled.

Greg appeared in the doorway, his expression unreadable. I stood up, aware somehow that I had gone a bit too far, but grateful for Greg’s willingness to put himself last, even if for only one night. Glancing at the kitchen, where the dishes were piled on the counter, I inwardly groaned.

“Drew and I will take care of it, honey. Go on up,” Greg said, his voice light.

I watched him skeptically, looking for signs. Was he jealous? Angry? He didn’t seem so. “Are you sure? I can do it tomorrow…”

“Go to bed. We’ll start, and as far as we get, we get. Then, we can pick it up tomorrow.”

Knowing I only had about two hours of sleep before I was up again for a feeding, I walked down the hall. Shielded by the staircase, I paused in the hallway, listening.
What would they talk about? Me?
I stood silent and still, but heard only the sounds of glasses clanking as they made their way into the dishwasher.

I started up the steps, and then stopped when I heard Greg’s voice. “I wonder how long you’ve been in love with my wife.”

My heart hammered.
Why would he say that?
And then a new thought,
What would Drew’s answer be?
I leaned forward, keeping out of sight as much as I could.

Greg spoke again, a register lower. “… married
me
… sometimes… don’t know why, but she did…”

I tried to imagine Drew, what he would say. I waited for his reply, but heard nothing except the clattering of silverware.

I was paralyzed by humiliation. For Greg. For myself. For Drew.
Was Greg right?
All Drew had ever done was reject me.
Was I that transparent?
I crept up the steps.

As I waited in bed, staring into the dark, Greg’s words raced through my mind. Did he really think Drew was in love with me? If so, why had he never said anything to me? Why would he just fade in and out of the room, leaving Drew and me to catch up, talk, laugh? It didn’t make sense.

I heard the door creak open, and a few minutes later, Greg slid into bed beside me. I lay very still, pretending to be asleep. He moved across the bed, deftly sliding one arm under me as his other hand cupped my breast. His lips met my neck, and he pulled me into his body, a solid bulk form where I always felt sexy.

In the back of my mind, I tried to make sense of the conversation, fairly confident that Drew hadn’t confirmed Greg’s suspicions.
Jealousy, surely, right?
As his hand slid down, pushing off my pajama bottoms, my mind lost the ability to reason. In that moment, Greg’s questioning felt primal. And with his mouth leaving a hot trail of need down to my core, I no longer cared. He covered my body with his, in all its familiarity, made all the more tantalizing by the sides of my husband I perhaps didn’t know.

The next morning, I almost believed that I had dreamt the entire thing.

Chapter 14

D
etective Reynolds shifted in Greg’s
chair, waiting patiently for me to catch up.

My mind reeled, backpedaling, looking for an escape. “Four times?” I repeated.

The detective nodded slowly.

“Four times in the past year, Greg has lied about where he’s been.”

He added another nod, confirming my summary. Superfluous really. Receiving affirmation wouldn’t make my words
feel
real.

He cleared his throat. “Greg took eighteen trips last year. That’s actually quite a lot. We can confirm that fourteen of them are legitimate. We compared his itineraries with his manager’s training schedule. So the four trips that he lied about were February tenth, May twenty-second, July sixteenth, and then this one, September twenty-seventh.”

The trips were a blur to me, one long business trip—more accurately, the same trip repeated once, twice a month. I remembered only one, February tenth. We had a fight about it.

Really? Valentine’s Day? What kind of company commands travel on Valentine’s Day?

Claire, understand, Valentine’s Day isn’t actually a national holiday.

Well, then, your company should stop calling themselves the “Family Company” because they clearly don’t care about divorce rates.

You’re so dramatic. It’s one year, one time.

If he’d lied, he did it because he wanted to be somewhere else on Valentine’s Day. My hand over my mouth, I ran to the downstairs bathroom, retching my disbelief and hatred into the bowl.
If only I could actually do that.
I washed my hands and studied my reflection in the mirror. My complexion was pale and sallow, with bruised circles under my eyes from sleeplessness. I spotted wrinkles around my mouth and eyes that had not been there three months ago. I rinsed my face and my mouth and returned to the living room.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Detective Reynolds nodded once, looking down at his notepad. “So the first two trips, we believe he was in San Diego, where he claimed to be, but there were no scheduled trainings on those dates. But for the last two, we found nothing. No credit cards, no cell phone records, nothing. All we have is five hundred dollars taken from the ATM in Newark each time and then no traceable activity for his scheduled three to four days until he boarded the planes to return home.”

“Where were the mystery trainings scheduled?” I knew the answer before he said it.

“Rochester.”

The room seemed to expand then contract until I could see only his eyes—compassionate and pitying.

I’d put Hannah and Leah in bed for the night and felt no obligation to hide my emotions. I let Detective Reynolds back into Greg’s study for the third time in two months so he could look for “supporting evidence.” I had yet to set foot in that room. I asked that he please shut the door when he left and tell me if he took anything.

He returned with a leather-bound journal that I recognized as Greg’s. “Is this okay? I’ll make copies and bring it back.”

I nodded mutely.

Once he was gone, I stood with my head against the door, gazing at the floor. When I felt a soft knock a few minutes later, I thought Detective Reynolds had forgotten something, so I opened the door without hesitation.