Someone Else's Husband(4)

Gretchen hung up and stared at the phone in her trembling hand.

“Mrs. Falk?” Detective Reyes approached, looking even more attractive in the light and not at all short. (At six-five, Richard had a way of shrinking other men.) Reyes took a seat next to her, a sympathetic but authoritative expression on his handsome face. Like a doctor there to deliver bad news—regrettable, no one to blame but the fates. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, and for the middle-of-the-night disruption.”

“?‘Disruption’? That’s certainly an understatement, Detective. It was all extremely…dramatic,” Gretchen said, to her credit, very calmly. Detective Raul Reyes was not a man who would be moved by anger. That was obvious. “It would help to have some more information, at least—like why you’re searching our apartment in the first place. This is all quite…upsetting, to be honest.”

She could be upset. Worry, fear, anxiety—these were female emotions men were willing to tolerate. They shrunk women down to manageable size. But Richard had never needed Gretchen to be anything other than exactly who she was, never needed her to pretend to feel any way that she did not. And she’d fallen in love with him because of it.



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*

There was something odd but also endearing about the guy in the faded Sonic Youth T-shirt who said hello as he took the seat next to her in Carpenter Hall on the first day of Introduction to the History of Art in the Ancient World. Especially when combined with his very fastidious-looking notebooks and his perfectly organized pencil box. What college student had a pencil box?

“Can’t wait for this,” he said, not directly to Gretchen, but she was the only one in the vicinity.

“For art history?”

“I think art gives the world meaning.” He said this so emphatically, Gretchen thought for a minute he might be joking. But he didn’t seem to be.

“You’re an artist?” She didn’t bother to hide her skepticism. She would have guessed basketball player. Crew, it turned out.

He shrugged sheepishly. “No, but if I could do anything…I’ve always felt that way since I was a little kid. I used to take art books out of the library and read them under the covers with a flashlight, like they were porn or something.” He laughed. “Things like art weren’t exactly part of the place I grew up.”

“You still can do anything. If you want. You’re in college. That’s the whole point.”

“We’ll see.” He searched her face for a moment. “Not sure the real world and art are especially compatible, no matter where you are.”

Gretchen couldn’t argue with that. Sure, art was fine. Her parents were on the board of the Met, and she’d always enjoyed an afternoon there. But studying art? Art giving the world meaning? It seemed to her excessive and, well, dumb. Gretchen wasn’t sure what she wanted to do yet, but law school had popped into her mind more than once. She wanted to make a positive difference in the world. She wanted to help people.

“I think people give the world meaning,” she added, even though she wasn’t looking to further the conversation.

“Fair,” he said. “People first then, art second.”

Gretchen turned to focus on the professor, who had stepped onto the stage in the huge lecture hall. She could feel the guy still staring at her.

“Wow, you are really gorgeous,” he added. “You must know that, but still…”

She turned her head, ready to shut him down. Some small talk in class was one thing. She didn’t appreciate being hit on, though, especially when it maybe came with a dig about her being arrogant. But he was smiling now. And his expression was so open and hopeful, she was immediately disarmed. The boys she knew dispatched compliments like heat-seeking missiles—all calculation and no heart. But this was different. This odd boy with the shaggy hair and the sincere eyes was unlike anyone she had ever met.

“Oh, God, and smart, too. You can really see it, in your eyes.” He gave a low whistle. “That’s a dangerous combination.”

“Dangerous for whom?” Gretchen asked with remarkable poise, given how her heart was racing.

“Dangerous for me.” He laughed as his smile changed to something deeper and more serious. “Good for the world, probably.”

Gretchen decided she wasn’t going to fall for any of this. “Ah, yes, the threat of the smart woman,” she shot back. “Every man’s favorite backhanded compliment.”

“That sounded wrong, didn’t it?” He closed his eyes for a moment and lowered his head in mock defeat. “I’m Richard.” His eyes were much softer now. “Can we start again? I’ll try to get my foot out of my mouth.”

An uncomfortable flutter rose in Gretchen’s belly. Richard didn’t seem the least bit put off by her chilly manner—“patrician,” her friend Brooks liked to say (or “bitchy,” when he was teasing her). Still, as far as Gretchen was concerned, men were a threat until proven otherwise. Besides, she wasn’t at Dartmouth for boyfriends. She was there to plan her future. She was not going to end up subject to the whims of a man. She shook her head and looked away, just as the professor began his lecture.

Richard and Gretchen might never have spoken again had it not been for Brooks, who, it turned out, rowed crew with Richard (technically, Brooks was just the coxswain) and whom Richard asked to advocate on his behalf. Brooks assured her that Richard was a stand-up guy—a scholarship student who came from a small town near New Haven. Plus, he was genuinely smitten with Gretchen. So Gretchen gave Richard a chance. After all, Brooks was a good person, bookish and a little nerdy, sure, socially awkward even, at times. (The Dartmouth boys didn’t call him “Encyclopedia Brown” for nothing.) But he was kind, and he knew Gretchen in a way that few people did. Maybe in a way that no one did. They’d been friends since kindergarten, and she trusted him. But no one seemed more surprised than Brooks when she and Richard actually stuck.