Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO THOUGHT I WAS ALREADY GONE
Teresa stared at Robert as though he had become a stranger.
“Two hundred and forty thousand?”
Robert nodded once.
“From our apartment?”
“Yes.”
“You told me it was in the retirement account.”
“I told you most of it was.”
Her voice rose.
“Most?”
I put one hand on the table.
“Teresa.”
She turned on me.
“Don’t tell me to calm down.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
That stopped her.
I looked at Robert.
“What did David say the money was for?”
“A Tokyo housing investment.”
“Meaning?”
“He said his company had access to an apartment through an executive property program. He said if I put in the money now, we’d earn interest while he was overseas.”
Teresa pressed both hands to her face.
“You believed him?”
Robert looked older than he had an hour earlier.
“He’s my son.”
Three words.
Three dangerous words.
I understood them more than I wanted to.
“Did you sign anything?”
“A transfer authorization.”
“Where did the money go?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
But he had the brass key.
The next morning, I drove into Manhattan with Margaret.
Not Teresa.
She wanted to come.
I refused.
“You’ve slept three hours.”
“So have you.”
“I’m forty-nine.”
“I’m seventy-six, not dead.”
That was the first thing Teresa said all morning that sounded like a person instead of my critic.
Still, I left her with Robert.
The storage building was near West Twenty-Eighth Street.
The key opened Unit 614.
Inside were six boxes.
A folded rug.
Two lamps.
A suitcase.
And a framed photograph.
David and Rebecca Sloan stood on a rooftop terrace overlooking Manhattan.
His arm was around her waist.
She was wearing the red scarf I had bought in Florence and somehow “lost” last Christmas.
Margaret muttered something I decided not to ask her to repeat.
One box contained kitchenware.
Another held men’s clothes.
David’s clothes.
Not old ones.
Current suits.
Shoes.
A framed photo of his parents.
A bottle of the cologne I gave him on our anniversary.
This was not storage.
It was staging.
Someone was preparing a second home.
Then Margaret found a hotel envelope.
Inside was a delivery card from a luxury apartment building on Riverside Boulevard.
Unit 21B.
David Hayes.
Rebecca Sloan.
I stared at their names.
“Can we go there?”
Margaret gave me a look.
“Legally? Yes. Emotionally?”
“I’m not asking emotionally.”
An hour later I stood in the lobby of a building where apartments cost more than some people earned in twenty years.
Rebecca came downstairs.
She was not what I expected.
That annoyed me.
I wanted cruel.
Smug.
Twenty-eight.
Instead she was forty-two.
Composed.
Dark blond hair.
Simple navy dress.
No theatrical lipstick.
No guilty panic.
She looked at me and smiled politely.
“Eleanor?”
I stopped.
“You know who I am.”
The smile disappeared.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“David showed me pictures.”
That hurt in a new way.
“Did he tell you I was his wife?”
Rebecca’s face changed.
“He said you were separated.”
Margaret shifted beside me.
I said nothing.
Rebecca continued.
“He said the divorce had been private because of your business interests.”
“We had breakfast together yesterday.”
Her color disappeared.
“What?”
“I drove him to JFK.”
She stared.
“He told me you hadn’t lived as husband and wife in almost a year.”
“We shared a bed Sunday night.”
Rebecca took one step backward.
“No.”
“I’m not asking you to believe me.”
I held up my phone.
“Our joint banking alerts might help.”
Her eyes landed on the Zao Zero transaction.
Then she looked at her left hand.
The diamond.
My fifteen-thousand-dollar diamond.
She slowly removed the ring.
“He said it came from his bonus.”
“He doesn’t have a bonus large enough.”
Rebecca looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
I had prepared myself for arrogance.
That sentence disarmed me more effectively than denial.
“How long?”
“Ten months.”
I closed my eyes.
Ten months.
Christmas.
My birthday.
Robert’s cataract surgery.
David had lived two lives through all of it.
Rebecca whispered, “He told me you wanted the separation.”
“I didn’t know we were having one.”
Her face tightened.
Now anger entered it.
Not toward me.
Toward him.
“He said Tokyo was your idea.”
I opened my eyes.
“What?”
“That you wanted four years apart before making the divorce public because your financial advisers thought it would be cleaner.”
Margaret made a quiet sound beside me.
Rebecca continued.
“He said he accepted the Tokyo role because you both wanted distance.”
“There is no distance.”
I looked toward the elevators.
“There may not even be Tokyo.”
Rebecca stared at me.
“The assignment is real.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m on the same project.”
There it was.
A reversal.
David had not invented Rebecca’s professional role.
“Are you going?”
She shook her head.
“The assignment changed three months ago.”
My skin went cold.
“What changed?”
“Tokyo was reduced to quarterly travel.”
No four-year relocation.
No reason to leave me.
No reason to move his parents into my house.
David had known for three months.
Rebecca looked sick.
“He told me he was still going because he’d negotiated a separate position.”
Margaret asked, “Did you see anything confirming that?”
“No.”
Rebecca looked at me.
“I thought we were moving into 21B together before his first trip.”
My mind went to Robert’s missing $240,000.
“Who paid the deposit?”
“I thought David did.”
“How much?”
Her voice dropped.
“Two hundred thousand.”
I nearly laughed.
Robert’s money.
His father’s retirement.
Rebecca put one hand against the lobby table.
“Oh my God.”
A familiar voice came from behind us.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
David.
He stood ten feet away carrying a leather weekender.
His face changed when he saw all three of us.
Rebecca held up the ring.
“You told me she was separated from you.”
David’s eyes moved to me.
“Eleanor, this is not what it looks like.”
That sentence should be illegal after a certain age.
Rebecca walked toward him.
“Were you going to Tokyo?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Show me the visa.”
He froze.
She laughed once.
“You don’t have one.”
“Rebecca—”
“Show me.”
He could not.
I stepped forward.
“Did you use your father’s money for this apartment?”
David’s jaw tightened.
“That was an investment.”
“For whom?”
“My parents would have benefited.”
“From your love nest?”
His face flushed.
People in the lobby were watching now.
David lowered his voice.
“You’re making a scene.”
“No.”
I smiled.
“You made the scene. We’re just standing in it.”
Rebecca placed the diamond ring in my hand.
“I’m done.”
David stared at her.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
She looked at him with something worse than hatred.
Embarrassment.
“I left a twelve-year marriage because my husband lied to me.”
Her voice stayed calm.
“I will not build my next life with another man who does the same thing.”
She walked away.
David started after her.
I caught his sleeve.
He looked down at my hand.
“Don’t.”
I released him.
“Your parents know about the money.”
His face went white.
That was the first moment all day I saw genuine fear.
Not fear of losing me.
Fear of facing them.
I drove home that afternoon expecting Teresa to be furious with Robert.
Instead, I found them sitting side by side on the sofa.
Robert’s hand covered hers.
Teresa looked at me.
“We need to tell you something else.”
I set down my bag.
“What now?”
She glanced at Robert.
Then back at me.
“David didn’t only ask us for money.”
Her voice trembled.
“He asked Robert to tell you we spent it ourselves if you ever discovered it was missing.”
I stood very still.
Teresa’s eyes filled.
May you like
“He was going to let you believe we took it.”
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