She would have to wait to count it all. To calculate, estimate, decide whether what she already had was enough—which meant she’d have to decide exactly how much she needed, a question that only brought a dozen more in its wake. Enough for what? Enough for who?
Enough for two? she thought, and gripped the bag tighter still. To know what was “enough” required knowing what came next, and she didn’t. She’d been half-convinced that it would all fall apart before she could make it even this far.
Instead, it was all going better than she’d dared to hope, even with the setbacks. Her greatest fear was that Richard Politano would stand in the way of her getting what she needed; instead, he’d been all too eager to help. Of course he didn’t believe her about the divorce. He’d probably started stewing on that little possibility well before she arrived, calculating that Adrienne’s side would be the more lucrative if she and Ethan split up. But there was something else, too: a palpable sense, running throughout their conversation, that Rick had never really liked Ethan. That he not only enjoyed helping Adrienne, but also got a little kick out of doing it by moving money around behind her husband’s back. All the available funds were now in her name, spread through a series of brand-new accounts that Rick had promised she’d be able to access within forty-eight hours.
She wondered if she could wait that long. Or if she should. What if the additional money made the difference between getting away and getting caught? How much did a person need to make herself disappear? To become someone else and get the hell out of town, maybe even out of the country, a long drive south and across the border into Mexico—except that neither she nor her husband spoke Spanish. These were the things she needed to think about, should have already been thinking about. But even as she tried to focus, to plan ahead, her mind kept insistently circling back, revisiting everything she’d said and done so far that day. The commuting crowd on the sidewalk swept her along, and she drifted with it, holding the bag close but allowing her thoughts to wander. She picked through her memories, mulling over her missteps, realizing she was more worried about what she didn’t remember. How many mistakes had she made without knowing they were mistakes? It occurred to her, suddenly, how many security cameras would have picked her up as she journeyed from place to place today. Sitting in the waiting room at Rick’s office, crossing through the lobby at the bank. She had been smart enough to avoid toll roads on the drive back last night, to obey all traffic laws on the endless red-light-green-light slog down the nearly empty Post Road. But the city, with its noise and its bustle, had lulled her. As though she’d already begun to disappear, just another face in the crowd.
Now her face was on a half dozen cameras all over town, something she should have thought of earlier. If the police came knocking, if they decided to snoop, would they be able to track her movements? Would they think to look more closely? Her stomach lurched at the prospect, and she swallowed hard. She wondered how long it would take for them to match Ethan’s prints, which were all over the house at the lake, with the ones they’d taken two years back. It was a stupid, showboating arrest that went nowhere, but that little bit of damage was done: he was in the system now, his fingerprints permanently on file. And despite her confidence that morning, all that bold bravado—We are so close to finishing this, you just have to let me handle it—she knew that “we” would not be doing anything. Ethan wouldn’t be talking to anyone; if the cops showed up before they could run, it would be Adrienne who met them at the door, offered them coffee, answered their questions. Her husband would have to make himself scarce; even if he kept his mouth shut, one look at his guilty face was all it would take for them to realize the truth. And when they asked where she’d been since Sunday night, she would need to sell the lie.
I don’t know nothin’ about no murder, Officer. I’m just the beautiful wife of a wealthy financier, having a normal weekday.
Normal: a trip to the salon, a run to the bank, a meeting with the financial planner, and . . . dammit. Because she’d already screwed it all up, hadn’t she? Rick said it himself: her visit was “an unexpected surprise.” Adrienne hadn’t seen him in years, and he’d shuffled his schedule, maybe even canceled other clients, to accommodate the appointment. Not normal. Not normal at all.
She’d have to be more careful. She should stick to her routine. Do the kind of thing women did when they had nothing to hide, and they had all day, every day, to do whatever they wanted. She should buy a green juice for fifteen dollars. Get a manicure, a pedicure, or both. She should go to the stupid SoulCycle class after all, spend an hour riding to nowhere as fast as she could, post a picture of her glistening décolleté and hashtag it #SweatIsGold.