Who are you? she thought.
He was a stranger inside her house, her bed, her heart.
And where is Geneva?
There were always little things, Selena’s mother said when she came clean about Dad’s many affairs. A phone call at a strange hour. Once an earring clasp—something cheap and insubstantial—found while she was cleaning the car. A receipt in his pocket from a restaurant in a city she wasn’t aware he’d visited. He traveled for work; there were women in his life—clients and colleagues. Everything was easily pushed away. She wanted to push things away; she’d admitted this. If she acknowledged what she knew in her heart to be true, she’d have to do something about it. Incurious, that was the word she used. Willfully incurious.
Selena’s father became bolder, almost flagrant. Her mother became blinder, developed migraines. Selena remembered the closed door, how she’d push inside to the dark room and see her mother lying on the bed with a cool cloth over her eyes. Selena would slip in beside her and her mother would wrap her up in her slender arms without a word. How unhappy Cora must have been. How had she borne it?
Selena hadn’t understood, not really, when her mother finally confided to Marisol and her about the affairs—years after their divorce. She pretended to understand. But secretly she wondered—how could you, Mom? How could you let him treat you that way? She understood now, how you turned away until you couldn’t. Until the pain of knowing and doing nothing was greater than the fear of what might come next.
She should have turned Graham away on Friday night. She should have told the police he was sleeping with Geneva. But what about the boys?
Now what would happen?
Don’t you wish your problems would just go away?
Geneva wasn’t the problem. The problem was Graham.
She went inside, closed the door. The house felt hushed, as if everyone were holding their breaths. The boys were quiet; the television droned upstairs.
“I don’t have to say it, right?”
She startled. Graham was standing in the arch between the living room and the hallway. “What?”
“That whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me.”
He stood there watching her. And for a moment it was as if she was seeing him for the first time. Her husband. The adulterer. The liar. What else?
“Selena,” he said. His voice was almost stern. “Say something.”
The world spun.
Then the doorbell rang, startling them both. When she opened it, Detective Crowe stood waiting there.
“Mrs. Murphy,” he said. “I think we’ve found Geneva Markson’s vehicle parked on your street. Did you know she’d left it?”
Selena shook her head, felt something catch in her throat. “No.”
She wasn’t even sure what kind of car Geneva drove; the other woman never parked in their driveway and she always used their second car, a late-model Subaru, to drive the boys around.
She followed the detective’s gaze and saw a white Toyota parked across the street. People had started to gather. A squad car arrived.
“Were you planning on going anywhere today?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ll work from home.”
“Your husband.”
Something about the way he said it made her stomach bottom out. “He’s—between jobs at the moment.”
Between jobs? That sounded shady. But the detective only nodded, polite, neutral.
“So, yeah, he’ll be here, I mean.” Graham stood in the dark of the hallway, stiff, frozen.
“We may come back with more questions,” said the detective. Was there something in his tone? “We’d appreciate it if you could both be around.”
“Of course. We’ll be here.”
She closed the front door as he walked down the path.
“Selena,” said Graham.
In the kitchen, her phone was buzzing. She walked away from her husband, slipping instantly into crisis management mode. She’d call her mother and ask her to take the boys for a few days until this all worked itself out. Then, she’d call Beth and tell her what was going on—as little as possible. Will was a lawyer; he would be her next call. Not that they needed a lawyer. But they might. William was famous for saying that if the police show up at your door and you don’t call your lawyer, you’re basically handing over your rights. It sounded dramatic, very lawyerly. Until it sounded like solid advice.
When she picked up the phone, there were a string of texts from yet another unknown number.
Hey, girl.
How’s your day going? Time for a drink after work tonight?
It’s Martha, by the way.
From the train.
FOURTEEN
Anne
Anne let her finger drift over the diamond bracelet on her slim wrist. A Tiffany Victoria line bracelet. Small, the lowest carat count. But still. More than ten thousand, for sure. Closer to fifteen. The sun coming in from the windows caught on the gems and cast rainbow shards of light on the walls, on the ceiling. It should have been enough, the payout from Kate. The look on her face. But somehow it just wasn’t.
“Do you like it, darling?” said Hugh. She loved that even though he’d been caught, that surely his whole life with Kate hung in the balance now, he still couldn’t resist her. The power of that was delicious.
“I love it,” she gushed. “It’s beautiful.”
The grift. The con. It was almost an old-fashioned idea, the stuff of noir novels and black-and-white movies.
The Nigerian prince seeking help from afar: Give me your bank account and I’ll transfer my wealth, pay you handsomely for the favor! The shell game: Next time you’ll get it! The pigeon drop: Hey, buddy! Did you drop your wallet? Whoa—look at all this cash. There were a hundred ways to separate a fool from his money. Except it was never about the money. It was about the thrill, the intimacy of being taken into someone’s trust, of extracting from them a thing they didn’t even know they wanted to give. And they did want to give it.
You can’t con an honest man. That’s what Pop always said.
That was true without being the whole truth. Anne had a bit of revision. You can’t con someone who doesn’t want something, who wasn’t willing to wade into a gray area to get it. You can’t con someone who is a stranger to desire, to need.
Take Hugh for example. He thought that he’d seduced Anne. But in a way, hadn’t she led him to it, gently, delicately? Even though she’d come to the firm, ostensibly, to work, to go straight, as Pop liked to say. Hadn’t she seen an opportunity pretty quickly, maybe even subconsciously? She knew immediately what kind of man Hugh was. A flat come-on would not have worked. He needed to think it was his idea.
A little flattery: I’m learning so much from you! A little vulnerability; she’d let him catch her crying over a breakup. （Except there wasn’t a breakup. And she’d never actually cry. Especially not over a man.） Standing a little too close in the elevator. One or two accidental brushes of her hand against his. It was so subtle. She was subtle. Maybe too subtle. After a while, she thought maybe she had him wrong. That he was a faithful husband, in love with his wife.
Then the hand on her knee. Right there, her plan to go straight went right out the window.