The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  When I picked up the phone, she said, “Hey there, Angie.”

  My name isn’t Angie. To the extent I ever had a nickname, it was Gellie, and only my parents ever used it. I guess women who shorten Jennifer to Jen assume that Angelas are Angies. “Thanks so much for your offer to cater another dinner!!” Exclamation points added. “But we thought you might want a break next year.”

  We. I immediately wondered which of the other moms was involved in whatever change was about to be decreed. “Seriously, Jen, it’s the least we can do.” My use of we felt smaller.

  I immediately imagined her telling Theo over cocktails that night: “How many times does she have to remind us that she used to cater to the rich and famous in the Hamptons?” It was the only real job I ever had. At the time, I was pretty proud of myself, but women like Jen Connington would never stop seeing me as someone who had peaked as the help.

  “Well, call me a radical feminist, but we thought it was about time for some of the dads to do their equal share, so to speak.” She laughed at her play on the title of Jason’s bestselling book, Equalonomics. “Don’t you think we should convince Jason to come out of hiding?”

  I had told her I wished he were in hiding. I would see him more often.

  Jason’s trademark thing was how companies could maximize profits by making corporate decisions based on principles of equality. It was perfect fodder for liberal Manhattanites—keep your one-percenter perks and be a good, moral person, all at the same time. His book spent nearly a year on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list before it was released in paperback to enjoy another forty-week run. In the time that passed, the media appearances to promote the book evolved into stints as a talking head, which led to the podcast. And at the suggestion of his best friend, Colin, he started an independent consulting company. I was happy for him—happy for us—but neither of us had adjusted to his newfound celebrity.

  My catering prize would no longer suffice for our auction give. Jen tried to soften the rejection by returning to her theme of letting Jason do his fair share of the work: “Every year, the moms bust their butts for this auction. Next year, we’ll let Dad do the work.”

  It was the second time she had referred to Jason as Spencer’s dad. I didn’t correct her. There was no reason to.

  When Jason and I, to my surprise, started to become serious the summer we met, I could tell how hard he tried to include Spencer. He taught him how to duck-dive waves at Atlantic Beach, played tennis with him at the courts in Amagansett, and climbed to the top of the lighthouse at the end of Montauk, a summer adventure intended for onetime tourists, but which Spencer never tired of.

  When autumn arrived, Jason asked us to move with him to the city. God, how I wanted to say yes. I was only twenty-four years old, and had only lived in two places: my parents’ house and a house in Pennsylvania I would have never gone back to, even if the city hadn’t torn it down. I had never really had a relationship with a man who had met me as an adult. I dated a couple of guys on and off who I knew from childhood, but nothing that would have ever led to marriage. The last thing I wanted was to be another generation of East Enders, barely scraping by in life, especially when I wasn’t in love.

  And Jason wasn’t just a good man who loved me. He was educated, intellectual, and refined. He had a good job, an apartment in Manhattan, and apparently enough money left over for a Hamptons rental in the summer. He wanted to take care of me. I could finally move out of my mother’s house. I could work year-round in the city instead of having to work my ass off every day all summer trying to squirrel away enough cash for us to make it through the off-season.

  But I couldn’t. I wasn’t the main character in a fairy tale, ready to be saved by Prince Charming. I was a mother to a six-year-old who didn’t speak until he was three. Whom the doctors said might be autistic, merely because of his silence and a tendency to avoid eye contact. Who required supplementary tutoring during kindergarten to “prepare” him for what I wasn’t supposed to call the “normal” classroom, rather than the “special” one his kindergarten teacher was suggesting. He was now about to start first grade at a school where he had friends, in the only stable home he had ever known. I couldn’t uproot him into the city for a man I’d known for three months. When I told Jason I couldn’t move, I was prepared to say good-bye, both to him and to our whirlwind romance. I tried to tell myself that other girls my age would have had a summer fling by now.

  Again, Jason surprised me. He rode the train out from the city every other weekend, staying in the cheapest room at Gurney’s, with a view of the parking lot. He helped Spencer with his homework. He even managed to endear himself to my mother, who doesn’t like anyone. In December, I accepted his invitation to bring Spencer into the city to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. We went ice-skating. It felt like a movie. For the first time since Spencer and I came home to live with my parents, my son spent the night under a different roof.

  Jason showed up unexpectedly the weekend before Memorial Day. The season would officially kick off in a week. I was already booked for twenty-seven parties. I was in the kitchen making hundreds of bacon-wrapped dates that I could freeze for future use when I heard the doorbell. He dropped to one knee on my mother’s front porch, opened the ring box, and asked me to marry him. I screamed so loudly that a passing bicyclist almost swerved into traffic.

  He had every detail planned out. We’d move into his rental for the summer. I’d hire extra helpers to work the catering jobs I had already booked, and would stop accepting others. We’d return with him to the city in the fall. He’d ask friends to pull strings to get Spencer into a good school. He wanted to get married at Gurney’s this summer, if it wasn’t too soon. Last October, he’d put down a deposit to hold a date in July.

  “You’re insane,” I told him. “I know what that place costs. You paid a fortune, all on a bet.”

  “I don’t bet. When you’re an economist, it’s called researching and playing the market.”

  “When you’re a normal human, it’s called being a dork.”

  “If it helps, they gave me a discount when I told them what it was for. They love you there. Almost as much as I love you. Marry me, Angela.”

  I asked him why it was such a rush.

  “Because I don’t want to see you every ten days. I want you with me every night.” He wrapped me in his arms and kissed my hair. “Besides, I don’t want some other summer guy laying his eyes on you at a friend’s party and stealing you away from me.”

  “And Spencer?”

  “I want him to have a father. I want to be his father. Jason, Angela, and Spencer Powell. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  At that point, Spencer had my last name—Mullen. There had never been any consideration of another option. Now that Jason was talking about marriage, I saw the benefits of becoming Angela and Spencer Powell, in a big, crowded city. He would still see his grandparents. He had adjusted to kindergarten and then to first grade. He’d be able to transition to a new school. The benefits would be worth it.

  I still remember Jason telling me how much his parents would have loved me the night after I said yes.

  We got married at Gurney’s on the date Jason had held, but at my request, there was no ceremony, just a dinner party for twelve. No puffy gown, no veil, no announcement in the Sunday Styles section. A nondenominational minister I found on the Internet showed up for cocktails to make it official. Jason’s lawyer and best friend, Colin, filed the paperwork to change Spencer’s name the following Monday. Legal adoption would take longer, but Spencer and I were officially Powells.

  Two years later, over a table at Eleven Madison Park, I asked Jason if Colin was still working on making it official. His face immediately fell, as if I’d interrupted dinner to ask him to take out the garbage. “Is this really what you want to talk about on our anniversary?”

  “Of course not. It’s just the date—it’s a reminder.” I wasn’t a lawyer, but it didn’t seem
possible it could take this long. There was no other father in the picture. “Did Colin tell you what the holdup was? I can get police reports if he needs them. I’m sure Detective Hendricks could explain—”

  Jason rested his fork on the plate next to his half-eaten duck breast and held up a hand. “Please,” he whispered, looking around as if anyone had been listening. “You’re always the one saying you don’t like thinking about that. That the past doesn’t matter. So can we please not talk about it on our anniversary?”

  “Fine.” It was a reasonable request. He was right. I’d seen a counselor a few times when I first came home, but nothing that anyone would call real therapy. It was almost like I started life over again at the age of nineteen. I didn’t need counseling. The only thing I ever needed was for people to understand that I was fine. I am fine. The couple of times Jason suggested that I “talk to someone,” I shut down the possibility, and not gently. For me to raise the subject in passing over the dinner table was unfair.

  But I couldn’t ignore my suspicion that something had changed. What sounded like a pile of annoying paperwork a couple of years ago felt like an actual hurdle now, a line Jason no longer wanted to cross. Maybe it had seemed easier to imagine being a permanent father to Spencer two years ago, when we both assumed we’d have another child, a little brother or sister for our son, together.

  I got pregnant the second month after our marriage. Two months after that, I wasn’t. I had never seen Jason cry before. That night in bed, we said we’d try again. I was still so young. It only took four months to get another plus sign on the stick. Then after two months: gone. Two miscarriages in a year.

  The third time lasted almost to the first trimester mark. I was starting to look forward to sharing the news. But then we lost him . . . or maybe her. The doctors remained optimistic, telling me that my chances for a successful pregnancy were still over 50 percent. But I felt like I had already flipped that coin too many times, and it was going to keep coming up on the wrong side. I, of all people, needed predictability. I needed to know what was going to happen, and because I knew that about myself, I really only had one choice—to give up. I asked for the insertion of an IUD so I could have control over my body again.

  Jason did his best not to seem disappointed. He said that no matter what happened, we still had Spencer, and he was enough. But I could tell that he was trying to convince himself more than anything. And I noticed that I was the one holding him. I was the one doing the consoling. Because we both knew that in some ways, the loss was more his than mine, because Spencer would always be more mine than his. Jason didn’t have a child of his own.

  And now Spencer still wasn’t adopted.

  “I thought maybe we’d gotten an update,” I said softly.

  He reached across the table and held my hand. When he looked into my eyes, he was no longer frustrated. “I love our son. And that’s who he is now—our son. You know that, right?”

  “Of course.” I smiled. “It’s been two years since you locked this down.”

  “Best decision I ever made.”

  “Just figured we’d have locked down Spencer legally by now, too.”

  He gave my hand a squeeze. “Time flies when you’re happy. I’ll call Colin tomorrow. I promise.”

  He kept his promise. When Colin sat me down and explained the process, he said it would be easy. We simply needed to notify Spencer’s biological father and get his permission to terminate his parental rights. “Or,” he explained, “if he never had any real ties to Spencer, we can argue abandonment and potentially skip the notification if you think it’s going to be a problem.”

  I tried to keep my voice completely neutral. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, even better.” He immediately offered an awkward apology, and I assured him it was fine. “Condolences, I guess? Anyway, all we need in that case is a copy of the death certificate.”

  “But the father’s not listed on the birth certificate.” I didn’t explain that he was already dead and that Spencer was already two years old by the time that birth certificate was issued, listing me as his only parent.

  “Huh, okay.” I could tell that Colin was waiting for a more detailed explanation, but I didn’t offer one.

  “Well, that’ll be a little more complicated. The judge might ask if you know who the father is, in which case we could offer up the death certificate. They need to make sure there’s not some guy out there getting his kid taken away. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

  I nodded, knowing that Spencer was never going to have a legal father. When Jason got home that night, I told him everything I had learned about the adoption procedure. That was the last time we talked about it.

  The paperwork isn’t important. Spencer knows who his parents are. We have Jason’s name. As far as anyone is concerned, Jason is Spencer’s father, and that’s all that matters, right?

  4

  The day after Rachel Sutton walked into the Midtown South Precinct, Detective Corrine Duncan received a copy of a brief report filed by the desk officer. She found herself shaking her head as she read.

  She skipped down to the signature line at the bottom of the page. “L. Kendall.”

  Corrine had no direct knowledge of Officer Kendall, but immediately formed a mental image of him. Him, almost certainly, not only because of raw statistical odds but from the details of the report itself. The judgmental quotation marks around “encouraged” and “suggested.” The way he noted that she “presented calmly and did not appear distraught,” as if everyone knew that good victims cry.

  Corrine could already imagine the conversation that might have ensued had Rachel Sutton not left the precinct. What were you wearing? Why were you alone with him?

  Old-school. L. Kendall may as well have written don’t believe what she might say across the top in all caps. This was how police took a report when they meant to signal to the prosecution not to bother. If nothing else, it would give a defense attorney ammunition if the defendant were ever charged.

  Corrine wanted to think she had never written a report like that.

  She didn’t start out on the job with NYPD. Her first two years were as a patrol officer in Hempstead, on Long Island in Nassau County. Policing was different there. With fewer than 120 officers, the department expected officers to investigate their own cases, with the exception of major crimes. So she learned things like why a child abuse victim might accuse an innocent person (to protect a guilty parent), why domestic violence complainants often didn’t want to prosecute (out of fear or even love), and why sexual abuse complaints had more layers than any onion. “Embarrassment” didn’t begin to describe the dynamics.

  But in the NYPD, a patrol officer like L. Kendall didn’t need to know all that. He took the report and pushed the paper to a specialty unit for follow-up.

  She had already googled Jason Powell. The name hadn’t rung a bell in the context of a police report, but the search results immediately jogged her memory. According to his bio on New York University’s website, he had a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford, a PhD from Harvard, and was the somebody-something endowed chair in human rights investments and professor of economics. Despite the impressiveness of that résumé, it barely made the first page of Google hits. Powell was better known as an author and speaker. The first sentence of his Wikipedia listing: “Jason Powell is the New York Times bestselling author of Equalonomics, the chair of FSS Consulting, and a frequent media commentator.”

  Corrine preferred fiction, personally, but even she had heard of Equalonomics. About four years ago it had been one of those books that everyone read—or pretended to read, in Corrine’s opinion—to seem well informed.

  Now, according to Powell’s website, he hosted a podcast bearing the same name as his bestselling book. His Twitter account—a combination of business news, liberal politics, and snark—had 226,000 followers. Cosmo had named him one of the ten sexiest “gingers.”

  She recalled seeing the autho
r on Morning Joe a couple of years ago. The panelists fawned over Powell, asking whether he might be interested in running for office someday. It probably didn’t hurt that he was nice looking—trim, clean-cut, but with a little edge. A bit too pretty for Corrine’s taste, but to each her own.

  Next, she googled “FSS Consulting.” Fair Share Strategies. She clicked the “About” page. The company provided “human rights and social justice due diligence” to investors and investment groups.

  She wiggled her mouse, clicked on “Our Team,” and scrolled down. The list was short, only two names in addition to Powell’s: Zachary Hawkins, Executive Director, and Elizabeth Marks, Researcher.

  There was nothing more she was going to learn from her computer. She picked up her phone.

  The voice that answered sounded apprehensive, even slightly annoyed. “Hello?”

  Corrine asked if she was speaking with Rachel Sutton—she was—and then identified herself as a detective following up on the complaint that was filed yesterday.

  “Oh, of course,” Rachel said apologetically. “I’m so glad you called. It seems like no one is listening to me. I was positive the officer at the precinct was going to file it at the bottom of a dumpster.”

  “It’s all on computers, so . . .”

  “Right. So now what happens?”

  “Now, if you don’t mind, you get to repeat everything you already told Officer Kendall to me. We’ll go from there.”

  Rachel laughed softly. “Are you going to roll your eyes and interrupt me every few seconds, trying to make it sound like I’m lying?”

  “Was that your experience at the precinct?”

  “The guy was a jerk. I mean, I sort of expected that when I reported it at FSS because Jason’s the boss. So I wound up at the police station, but that managed to be worse—”