Chapter 15: Whose Wife

Rachel drove her heel down on the top of his foot, right where the Ferragamo leather was thinnest.

Michael made a sound like a stepped-on cat. His grip loosened. She twisted her wrist out against his thumb, the weak side, the way a self-defense instructor at the Y had shown a room full of bored housewives one Tuesday night years ago, and she was free.

“Don’t you ever,” she said, “put your hands on me in this house.”

“This house.” He laughed, but it came out thin. He was rubbing his foot against the back of his calf like a flamingo. “Listen to you. How long have you been scrubbing his floors? You think he…”

The pantry door opened.

Mrs. Ruiz stood there holding an olive oil cake on a glass stand like it was a weapon she’d been trained on. She looked at Michael. She looked at Rachel’s wrist. She didn’t say a word.

Michael smoothed his tie, the Christmas tie, and squeezed past her with a smile. “Just looking for the powder room.”

“Second door on the left, sir,” Mrs. Ruiz said, in a voice that could freeze pipes.

When he was gone she held out the cake. “Pears are on the counter. You want to go out there, or you want me to?”

Rachel took the cake.

* * *

She served dessert. Later that night she’d lie awake and be prouder of that than of anything else she’d done in two weeks. She sliced olive oil cake into eight even wedges and fanned the poached pears beside each one and set the plates down from the left. She refilled Kemp’s coffee. She did not drop a single fork.

Her wrist throbbed. She could feel the outline of four fingers coming up under the skin.

What you stole from him.

Business accounts. Plural. A fraud report Michael’s lawyer had filed on her before she’d even known he had one. A refinance with a signature she couldn’t swear to. She’d been turning those over all week like puzzle pieces from different boxes. Now Michael had handed her the box top, and the picture on it was her own face.

He hadn’t just left her. He’d built something with her name on it. And whatever it was, it was pointed at the man at the head of this table.

So Rachel watched Julian. He hadn’t said much, but that wasn’t new; he never talked much at dinners. Tonight, though, his silence had a direction. When Michael talked, Julian looked at Michael’s hands. When Michael laughed, Julian looked at the knot of his tie. When Michael came back from the “powder room” and sat down, Julian looked at his shoes, both of them, and Rachel swore she saw the corner of his mouth move when Michael winced shifting his weight.

Kemp told a long story about a sailboat in Nantucket. Chloe laughed at all the right places. Twice, under the table, Rachel saw Chloe’s red nails dig into Michael’s thigh.

Nobody looked at the woman pouring the coffee except Julian, and the man whose foot she’d stomped.

At ten forty, Kemp stood. “Wonderful evening, Julian. Your girl makes a fine short rib.”

“Mrs. Ruiz made the short rib,” Julian said.

“Well.” Kemp smiled at the air somewhere above Rachel’s head. “Your girls, then.”

Chloe air-kissed Julian again in the foyer. On her way out she leaned close to Rachel, closer than she needed to, to grab her coat off the rack herself.

“Pearls look better on a neck that’s going somewhere,” she breathed, and was gone in a cloud of Baccarat Rouge.

Michael didn’t look back.

* * *

The dishwasher hummed. Mrs. Ruiz had gone home at ten, after one long look at Rachel’s wrist. The kitchen lights were down low, just the strip under the cabinets, and the rain had stopped, and the city outside the windows was so bright and so far away it looked fake.

Julian came in and leaned against the island. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled. He didn’t say anything.

Rachel stood at the sink with her back to him and her hands flat on the cold stone edge.

There was no good way. She’d tried six in her head while she scraped plates. All of them sounded like a soap opera.

So she turned around and said it like a fact. “Your CFO is my husband.”

Julian went still, and not surprised still. She’d seen him surprised. Once, a vase she’d dropped and caught an inch off the floor, and his eyebrows had gone up like a kid’s. This was different. This was the stillness of a man holding a full glass on a moving train.

She waited for the questions. How long. Why didn’t you tell me. Did you know. Are you lying. What did he take, what did you take.

He didn’t ask one. He looked at her wrist instead. She’d been holding it against her stomach without realizing.

“Did he touch you tonight?”

That was all. Rachel stared at him. Somewhere in the back of her head, the same cold counting part that had clocked Michael’s fear in the pantry made a small note and filed it: He didn’t ask a single question.

She held out her arm. In the under-cabinet light the marks were already going purple.

Julian looked at them for a long time. When he spoke his voice was low and very even, and she would have been scared of it if it were pointed at her.

“I’ll have him out of the building by Monday.”

“No.”

“Rachel.”

“No. You fire him on my word, and what does he say? The maid’s his crazy wife. Bitter. Jealous. He’ll have a lawyer on the phone before the security guard walks him to the elevator, and he already has a lawyer, Julian, he had one before I knew we were getting divorced.” She pulled her arm back. “And he said I stole from you. He said it like he could prove it. Which means somewhere there’s paper that says I did.”

“Did you?”

There it was, one question, finally. She almost laughed.

“No.”

He nodded, like that settled it. She didn’t know if it did.

“I want proof,” she said. “I want all of it. Every account, every signature, every dollar he moved with my name on it. And I want to be the one who finds it.”

Julian held her eyes for a while. Then he pushed off the island and came to stand beside her at the window, not touching, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his arm through the air between them.

“Then find it,” he said.

She looked down at the street to keep from looking at him.

Forty-two floors below, at the curb across from the building, a black Range Rover sat with its engine running. Headlights on. Not moving.

Pointed straight up at her window.