The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  “Is this my fault?” I asked quietly, before realizing the words were coming out of my mouth. “I mean, I knew—or suspected, at least—that you weren’t always at the office. You didn’t always have a faculty meeting. You could go out with Zack. Flirt at a bar. Maybe more. I figured it was part of a deal, because of me, because it was a fair trade.”

  He was looking at the door, like he’d rather be back in whatever cell he slept in the previous night.

  “I didn’t know we were that far apart, Jason. The police were here. They told me about the woman who was in the car when you had that fender-bender in the Subaru. I saw the date. It was a couple of months after that night, when we were still in the old apartment. I’m not sure what’s worse: the hooker or Kerry—you were never supposed to care about them.”

  “The police talked to you?”

  “That prostitute remembered everything she did with you.”

  He was starting to cry. “Try to remember that you know me,” he continued. “You’re finding out every horrible thing I’ve done during our entire marriage, all at once. And I know it’s terrible, but I’m still me. I’m still in—a hundred percent with you—if you are. I don’t expect you to believe me, but that was the only time that happened. With a person like that, I mean. After that night—that fucking awful night that changed everything—I didn’t know how to approach you that way again. I’d hold you, walk in while you were showering, all the old ways we used to get started. And you were . . . just . . . gone. And I missed you. And I felt so guilty for what I did to you, about how I must have made you feel that night. But I was angry, too. How many times had I suggested therapy? You could go alone, or with me, or with your mother. But you didn’t. And I could see that you were still scarred. Of course you were. I’ve pretended to understand the decision your parents made, but—I’m sorry, Angela—it’s totally whacko.”

  “I don’t like to dwell on it. I thought you understood.”

  “I tried to, I really did. But before I knew it, we had that terrible night, and we were . . . broken. That’s how fast it felt to me. Like we were perfect, and together, and then someone dropped us to the floor and we shattered like glass. And then I’m coming back from a meeting in Long Island and see this woman, and I just know why she’s on the street. And, I swear, Angela, in my mind I justified it. I didn’t want to cheat. I didn’t want to connect emotionally to any other woman but you. It seemed like a way to do something empty and meaningless, without really crossing that line. The next thing I know, a taxi’s sideswiping the car with this stranger in the passenger seat. I should have insisted right then and there that you and I make it right. That we fix the break. But instead, I kept making bad choices.”

  I remembered him, after that night, trying to convince me to go to therapy. It was the last time we ever spoke about the possibility until all this happened. But at the time, I didn’t think it was my problem, or even his. It was just something that happened. It was us. We’d deal with it.

  And then, about a year later, I rode by Cyril’s and saw him flirting with that girl, and he came home with a filled-in tan line on his ring finger and the need to take a shower.

  So I knew. He crossed that line, and I crossed it with him. That’s how we dealt with it.

  We both thought we had our secret, and we’d go on. But now the dangers of an “unspoken understanding” were clear. There had been no understanding at all. We had no meeting of the minds.

  I didn’t want to connect emotionally to any other woman but you. That’s how he had felt when he picked up that hooker, but that’s not how he felt after he met Kerry.

  “So it is my fault,” I said, trying to maintain my composure. “I’m the reason this is happening.”

  “Of course not. I’m just trying to explain what went on in my head, from my perspective.”

  “You had an affair, Jason. You cheated. It was more than three months, wasn’t it?” He said nothing. “Please stop lying. I wish you would trust me that the worst part of this has been the lying.”

  Now, he didn’t bother to hide the tears. He just shook his head.

  “How long?”

  “Longer than three months, okay?”

  “The date they listed in court was in April, not that day you met her at her house. Was she planning this for two months?”

  “I have no idea. Olivia thinks she picked a previous date so she could claim she only came forward after reading the news about Rachel. It might seem hard to believe that I’d do something even worse right after someone else filed a complaint.”

  “So were you with her that night? At the hotel?”

  “Jesus, Angela, I don’t know, okay? I didn’t keep a log of every time I saw her. Right now, I’m worn out.”

  I imagined him going through his calendar, trying to reconstruct all of the nights he had lied to me to find time for her. Well, I had already beat him to it, studied all the possibilities. That night, he said a client was freaking out about quarterly financial reports. Now I had so many suspicions. The weekend he was supposed to be at Stanford. The trip to London last month. How much of it was bullshit?

  “Did you love her?”

  He closed his eyes, and I could feel his shame across the room. He slept in Spencer’s bed that night.

  When I woke up the next morning, he was already gone. So was his phone. So were his earbuds and running shoes.

  When he got home an hour later, he was covered in sweat and had a yellow mailing envelope in his hand. “We need to call Olivia. I got served with papers. Kerry and Rachel are suing me.”

  34

  The lawyer who sued Jason was even more famous than he was. Her name was Janice Martinez, and according to Wikipedia, she graduated from University of Michigan Law School, started out as a prosecutor in Brooklyn, and then opened a private practice specializing in “seeking justice for crime victims in civil court.” Glamour had featured her as a “Fighter for Feminism” four years earlier. Airbrushed photos of her in Escada dresses and Louboutin heels accompanied summaries of her best-known sexual harassment and assault lawsuits.

  She was the kind of lawyer who was known more for her work in front of a camera than in court, and she was milking her case against Jason for every bit of attention. Two hours after the process server stopped Jason on the sidewalk, Martinez held a press conference, which was carried live by the major cable news stations. She stood at a lectern at the head of a conference room filled with reporters and cameras, flanked by Rachel Sutton and Kerry Lynch.

  Martinez explained that Kerry had come forward with her case only after seeing Rachel demonized on social media. “This is an example of women standing up for other women. Only because Rachel braved the storm did Kerry step into the light. We believe there may be other victims out there. I want them to know we are here for them. There is power in numbers.”

  The most serious claims were related to Kerry: battery and false imprisonment, which Olivia said was holding someone against their will, no matter how short the amount of time. Rachel was suing for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

  I clicked off the television, thinking that I had more cause for emotional distress than either of these women.

  I remembered that detective telling me that Olivia Randall was Jason’s lawyer, not mine. It seemed like everyone had a lawyer looking out for them except for me.

  I found the detective’s business card, zipped in the smallest side pocket of my purse. She had written her cell number in cute, round digits along the bottom, followed by “24/7!”

  I made a call, but not to Detective Duncan.

  Susanna picked up immediately, in a hushed voice. “Hey.”

  “Did you see it?”

  There was a pause, followed by “I was there. I just walked out of the room. Angela, I’m so sorry. Janice Martinez doesn’t take a case unless she expects major media attention and a huge payout.”

  35

  Ginny was using the hose of a Dyson vacuum to suck up Cheerios b
eneath the Colemans’ sofa cushions when Lucy walked into the den, a mop in one hand, her cell phone in the other. “Sorry, Gin, but Kayla texted from the salon. Your son-in-law’s in the news again.”

  Ginny powered off the vacuum. “I know. He’s out on bail. I tried getting Angela to come out here, but she’s determined to be the good wife, standing by her man.” She’d been sworn to secrecy by Angela about the actual facts of the case, but made a point to add, “It’s more complicated than the news makes it sound. He’s innocent.”

  “Okay, but turn on the TV. Kayla said there’s some kind of press conference.”

  Ginny caught the tail end of it on the television in the Colemans’ kitchen, enough to know that these women wanted Jason’s head on a stick—and they wanted money.

  She went to the driveway to call Angela out of Lucy’s earshot. Angela answered with a depressed “Hey.”

  “You need to let Jason deal with this on his own, Angela.”

  “Jesus, Mom, he’s my husband. If someone had accused Dad of something horrible, would you have up and left him?”

  “Your dad didn’t cheat on me with some crazy woman who tried to ruin his life when she didn’t get what she wanted.”

  Her daughter was so tough and so smart, but was also remarkably trusting, at least of the people to whom she was closest. Where most people might have a sliding spectrum of trust, Angela was all or nothing. She avoided strangers, assuming the worst about them. But she was loyal to a fault to the few people in her inner circle: Spencer, Ginny, Jason, Susanna, Colin. Ginny could murder someone, and Angela’s response would be, “Well, they must have had it coming.”

  So, Angela being Angela, of course she didn’t believe that Jason had actually victimized this woman. Ginny felt a sour taste in her mouth, just thinking about it. The way she saw it, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Two accusations from two women? He was probably guilty of something.

  But Jason was playing Angela like a fiddle. He had her so worried about protecting him that she was glossing over the fact that he wouldn’t be in this boat if he hadn’t cheated on her.

  She was not going to let her daughter go down with the ship.

  “He might be innocent of this charge—”

  “Not ‘might,’ Mom.”

  “But he’s not innocent. The man had an affair.”

  “He doesn’t deserve to go to prison for that.”

  “No, but you also don’t deserve to be miserable—or broke—because of what he did. I saw that lawyer on TV. Do you know who she is? She makes a living suing celebrities for their penis problems.”

  “Oh my god—”

  “Wake up, Angela. Have you asked yourself what would make this woman lie?”

  “I told you—”

  “You told me what he told you, and I’m not buying it. No woman makes this up to help some company out of trouble. If she’s lying—and that’s a big if—it’s because she’s hurt. He made her feel bad enough that she thinks this is fair payback.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Mom.”

  “I’m saying that maybe he made her feel victimized, even if it’s not how the law sees it. He probably told her he loved her. Made her think he’d leave you to be with her. That she was going to be the one standing next to him when he ran for mayor. That she’d get to live in that fancy house. She’s a woman scorned, Angela. He cheated on you—for months. He doesn’t deserve your loyalty.”

  “Mom, please, stop.”

  Ginny could tell that her daughter was seconds away from hanging up on her. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Please, all I’m asking is that you talk to a lawyer. If these ladies take him to the bank, you’ll lose everything too. At least try to protect what’s yours and Spencer’s, okay?”

  Angela didn’t argue, and she didn’t hang up. Ginny hoped it was a sign that her point had been made.

  “How’s my grandson?” she asked.

  She could hear a sad sigh on the other end of the line. “He sounded good when he called last night. They ride horses and do archery. He learned how to navigate his way out of the woods with a compass and to hang garbage from a tree so the bears don’t come.”

  Ginny could tell how much her daughter missed Spencer. How long did she think she could protect him from the truth?

  “And to think, he could have stayed with his grandmother for free instead of being dropped in the middle of the Hunger Games. My offer stands for you to come out here. Or I’ll even go there.”

  Angela declined, as Ginny knew she would, but when she said “Thank you,” she sounded like she meant it.

  As Ginny was flipping radio channels on the drive home, a DJ was rating Angela and the two women who were suing Jason on a scale from 1 to 10. Apparently Angela would be an 8 or even a 9, except she seemed the type who would “just lie there like she was doing you a favor.”

  Her hands were still shaking on the steering wheel when she pulled into her driveway.

  36

  Jason was charged the day after he was arrested. He was sued the day after he was charged. And the day after he was sued, he was notified by the university that he was suspended from teaching immediately.

  An hour before the last class of the semester, the dean appeared in his office, accompanied by the university’s in-house counsel. His students were being notified by e-mail that class was canceled. Their final papers would be graded by another professor on a pass/fail basis. His interns did not need to finish their final week at FSS to earn their academic credit. He was prohibited from supervising or communicating with any students in his capacity as a professor until the cases against him were closed and the university had completed its own review.

  Jason called me with the news as he was boxing up files on campus to move to the FSS offices.

  “Are they still paying you?” I asked. I felt petty asking about money when his career was falling apart, but he was the one who had told me that we were on thin financial ice.

  “I’ll get my salary through the summer, but it’s obvious they’re going after my tenure. Olivia’s going to find me an employment lawyer, but told me to stay away from campus for the time being.”

  “What did Olivia say about the lawsuit?”

  “Not much. I’m supposed to meet with her at noon to talk about it. Colin said he’d go with me.”

  I pictured her logging more hours on her bill. I thought about that e-mail I had seen in Jason’s account from the Department of Human Resources. He had had a question about his retirement account. Was he dipping into it?

  “We can always sell the house,” I offered.

  “Jesus, Angela, where did that come from?”

  “Well, with the legal fees, and the lawsuit—”

  “We’re not losing our home, do you hear me? I’m the one who fucked this up. I’m the one who’s going to fix it, okay?”

  “Okay, fine.” I knew I didn’t sound either okay or fine.

  “I need someone to still have faith in me.” I could hear his voice crack. I hated the idea of him crying alone in his office, wondering if he’d ever be welcomed back into it again.

  “I still have faith in you,” I told him. I just wasn’t sure that faith was going to be enough.

  Susanna called me from my stoop a little after two o’clock. She knew I was ignoring knocks at the front door.

  She didn’t bother sitting down. She took one look at me and went directly into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “There’s no food in here,” she declared. “No wonder you’re skin and bones. Are you eating anything?”

  I gave her a quick hug. “Did we switch roles when I wasn’t looking? I’m usually the food pusher, and you’re the one starving.”

  “That’s because I’m the one still working on television next to a bunch of thirty-year-olds whose journalism credentials are a list of beauty pageants. You, my dear, are supposed to have a kitchen full of food.”

  “Spencer’s at camp, that’s all. Trust me, I’m eati
ng. Your story today was really good, by the way—like a how-to manual for a juicy episode of The Americans.” Susanna was beloved for her somewhat cynical but always cheerful morning banter, but I knew that this morning’s segment about fake IDs had been the result of nearly a year of research. “So what will happen to the employees who played along? If you ask me, they deserve medals of honor.”

  “The one story I can’t stop thinking about is Lucia’s. If she hadn’t gotten fake passports for her and her kids, her husband would have killed her when she tried to leave. And the passport clerk who handled the paperwork only did it because his sister couldn’t afford chemo. So, yes, if you can set aside the mafiosos in the middle, you could say it’s a win/win scenario.”

  I continued to press her for details about the ins and outs of her research for the story until she finally cut me off. “Okay, that’s enough with the change of subject, missy. You’re trying to avoid talking about the fact that you’re not taking care of yourself.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She followed me into the living room and sat next to me on the sofa. “You don’t sound fine.” She was staring at me, and I could feel her reading my thoughts. I wanted to hide. “Are you thinking about leaving Jason?” she asked. “Because no one would blame you under the circumstances.”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s something else bothering you,” she said, “more than what you’ve told me so far.”

  I hadn’t seen her in person since we had lunch at the 21 Club before Jason was forced to tell me about his affair with Kerry, but I had given her the bare-bones version of developments since then. It wasn’t the same as telling her what was really on my mind.