Someone Else's Husband(26)

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The apartment was largely put back together. Lita and her sister were dusting tranquilly in the living room as Gretchen headed straight for the stairs to avoid having to explain anything to Lita’s sister, with whom there was absolutely no language barrier. She closed the bedroom door behind her and leaned against it for a long moment. Like she was holding the entire awful situation at bay.

She’d avoided looking at her phone the whole Uber ride home, but now she dug it out of her purse and checked for a voicemail from the blocked number. Nothing. Maybe it was a misdial.

Of course it was them.

Gretchen dropped down onto the bed, bag in hand, shoes still on. Shoes on in their bedroom! Proof of how completely out of control her life had become. On the opposite wall was the small abstract collage they’d bought on the trip to Paris they’d taken to celebrate Richard’s first big promotion, twenty years ago now. They’d been to Paris several times since, but Gretchen still remembered that trip (which they could have afforded to take years earlier), mostly for the ways in which it had not gone how she had wanted. It was supposed to be a celebration: Richard finally a senior vice president! At the time, the vice president title had seemed like the summit of Manhood Mountain. And, at long last, they had finally arrived! Gretchen had been sure it would mean Richard would be home more. As it turned out, there had been several more peaks to come.

Richard had been miserable on that trip. “Succeeding” didn’t feel the way he thought it would—that was all he could say, which Gretchen found baffling. They were in Paris, for heaven’s sake, surrounded by fresh croissants and newly blooming tulips! Though perhaps a certain amount of ennui was to be expected from Richard, given that he didn’t really care all that much about material things, and he lived—or, rather, they lived—in a world centered on acquisition. Not that Gretchen could relate to his disappointment. She’d never thought she’d be just a wife and mother. But once she’d decided to pivot away from law school, she’d been fully satisfied by her one and only purpose in life—to take care of Richard and the children. To love her family. Everyone made choices. The key was to choose to see them as the right ones.

And so she’d decided just to let Richard be while in Paris. Talking on and on about his “feelings” would have just made them worse. Instead, they’d spent hours and hours in the museums—Rodin, Picasso, the Musée d’Orsay, and, of course, the Louvre. Richard’s mood had brightened considerably. Though when he had whispered, “This is what my life should have been about,” while standing in front of The Raft of the Medusa, Gretchen had to fight back the urge to scream.

Richard could barely draw a stick figure. She wasn’t even sure his taste in art was all that good. But she’d refrained from saying a thing, letting his malaise bounce right off her as they stopped for macarons at the place all her friends talked about. Besides, what was marriage if not giving each other the space to be a little lost?

That afternoon they’d bought the small collage that hung on the wall opposite their bed. Richard had prided himself on being drawn to the specific one that the gallery owner proclaimed afterward was his favorite, a stupid abstract square by a young Ukrainian painter with “exceptional promise.” It seemed not to have occurred to Richard—master negotiator—that the man probably said that about every painting, and so he had spent fifty-three thousand dollars for something Becks could have painted.

These days Richard had several dealers he worked with, and their walls were filled with acclaimed artwork, which was all well and good. But now it seemed Richard had apparently moved on to collecting the artists themselves.

Gretchen stood up, plucked the ugly square off the wall, and looked around the room for a place to stow the enraging painting. Finally, she sat back down on the bed and slid it between her feet, slinging it so hard that the painting shot across the hardwood and cracked against the wall up by the headboard like a bowling ball.

“Good,” Gretchen said aloud with venom that made her own skin prickle. She didn’t want to be this angry, not at Richard, not right now.

It wasn’t until Gretchen turned back that she noticed a strange outline in the wall where the painting had hung. The safe. She’d forgotten about it entirely.

Gretchen stood again and moved closer, tracing her finger around the edges of the square, then pressed down firmly in the center. Sure enough, a small door in the wall popped open on a spring. Behind it was the safe itself, closed and locked. Whoever had searched the room had evidently overlooked it.

The pandemic had been the first time she and Richard ever used the safe. With all the talk of the banks shutting down, he’d put some cash in there just in case. But Gretchen hadn’t wanted to worry about things becoming that dire. She’d even refused to let Richard give her the combination.

But now she was worried, wasn’t she? Worried that Richard had put something else in there, knowing she’d never see it.

Gretchen took a deep breath and rubbed her damp palms together. It had to be 27-02-14, the days of the three children’s birthdays in age order—the same code they used for the garage in East Hampton, the front door of the Vail house, and their bike room in the basement. Richard didn’t use the sequence for important accounts, of course. For those, he had some app that set carefully randomized passwords.

Richard was so cautious, so good at taking care of them. There was no way he’d have risked everything over this woman. But who could really say? In the past week or so, Gretchen had done things she would have sworn she never could have. Recklessness born of heartache was the most dangerous kind.