The Liar

Not even that, she thought, accepting. She’d suspected an affair, and he’d likely known she had. He kept it because he’d thought her too obedient to poke through his personal records.

And she had been.

The other lives he’d lived, he’d locked away. She hadn’t known where to find the key, would never have questioned him—and he’d known it.

How many other women? she wondered. Did it matter? One was too many, and any of them would have been more sophisticated, more experienced and knowledgeable than the girl from the little mountain town in Tennessee he’d knocked up when she was nineteen, dazzled and foolish.

Why had he married her?

Maybe he’d loved her, at least a little. Wanted her. But she hadn’t been enough, not enough to keep him happy, keep him true.

And did that matter, really? He was dead.

Yes, she thought. Yes, it mattered.

He’d made a fool of her, left her humiliated. Left her with a financial burden that could hound her for years and jeopardize their daughter’s future.

It damn well mattered.

She spent another hour going systematically through the office. The safe had already been cleared. She’d known about it, though she hadn’t had the combination. She’d given the lawyers permission to have it opened.

They’d taken most of the legal documents, but there was five thousand in cash. She took it out, set it aside. Callie’s birth certificate, their passports.

She opened Richard’s, studied his photo.

So handsome. Smooth and polished, like a movie star, with his rich brown hair and tawny eyes. She’d so wished Callie had inherited his dimples. She’d been so charmed by those damn dimples.

She set the passports aside. However unlikely it was she’d use hers or Callie’s, she’d pack them up. She’d destroy Richard’s. Or—maybe ask the lawyers if that’s what she should do.

She found nothing hidden away, but she’d go through everything again before she shredded or filed it all away again in packing boxes.

Hyped on coffee and grief, she walked through the house, crossed the big two-story foyer, took the curving stairs up, the thick socks she wore soundless on the hardwood.

She checked on Callie first, went into the pretty room, leaned down to kiss her daughter’s cheek before tucking the blankets around her little girl’s favored butt-in-the-air sleeping position.

Leaving the door open, she walked down the hall to the master suite.

She hated the room, she thought now. Hated the gray walls, the black leather headboard, the sharp lines of the black furniture.

She hated it more now, knowing she’d made love with him in that bed after he’d made love with other women, in other beds.

As her belly twisted she realized she needed to go to the doctor herself. She needed to be sure he hadn’t passed anything on to her. Don’t think now, she told herself. Just make the appointment tomorrow, and don’t think now.

She went to his closet—one nearly as big as the whole of the bedroom she’d had back in Rendezvous Ridge, back home.

Some of the suits had barely been worn, she thought. Armani, Versace, Cucinelli. Richard had leaned toward Italian designers for suits. And shoes, she thought, taking a pair of black Ferragamo loafers off the shoe shelf, turning them over to study the soles.

Barely scuffed.

Moving through, she opened a cupboard, took out suit bags.

She’d take as many as she could manage to the consignment shop in the morning.

“Should have done it already,” she muttered.

But first there’d been shock and grief, then the lawyers, the accountants, the government agent.

She went through the pockets of a gray pinstripe to be certain they were empty, transferred it to the bag. Five a bag, she calculated. Four bags for the suits, then another five—maybe six—for jackets and coats. Then shirts, casual pants.

The mindless work kept her calm; the gradual clearing of space lightened her heart, a little.

She hesitated when she got to the dark bronze leather jacket. He’d favored it, had looked so good in the aviator style and the rich color. It was, she knew, one of the few gifts she’d given him that he’d really liked.

She stroked one of the sleeves, buttery soft, supple, and nearly gave in to the sentiment to set it aside, keep it, at least for a while.

Then she thought of the doctor’s receipt and dug ruthlessly through the pockets.

Empty, of course, he’d been careful to empty his pockets every night, toss any loose change in the glass dish on his dresser. Phone in the charger, keys in the dish by the front door or hung in the cabinet in his office. Never left anything in pockets to weigh them down, spoil the line, be forgotten.

But as she gave the pockets a squeeze—a habit she’d picked up from her mother on washing day—she felt something. She checked the pocket again, found it empty. Pushed her fingers in again, turned the pocket inside out.

A little hole in the lining, she noted. Yes, he had favored the jacket.