“I have no intention of moving,” Bonnie said, but less firmly than before. “From the shop or from my home.”
His perplexed frown deepened into a scowl as he made the connection. “You’ve already admitted you can’t afford the rent,” he said, rising. “Your husband might not find living among college kids as appealing as you do.”
“My husband and I stand together on this.”
“We’ll see.” He put on his coat and nodded toward the binder. “Keep that. Like it or not, you’re going to need a new location. If you don’t like the one I picked, choose for yourself, but choose fast. All of the other tenants have the same binder.”
“I already said I’m not moving.” She thrust the binder at him. “And if I were to move, I would never rent from you.”
“We would have offered you a good price for the condo and an excellent rent in another building.” He returned the binder to his briefcase, shaking his head. “Now you’ll have to take what you can get.”
He picked up his briefcase and strode from the office. “I’ll do just fine, thank you,” she said, but he ignored her. Beyond him she saw Sarah standing in the middle of the store.
Sarah turned to watch Greg leave, then spun back around to face Bonnie, eyes wide. “Wasn’t that Gregory Krolich?”
Bonnie nodded, drained, and sank onto a stool behind the cutting table. What was she going to do? What could she do? She could not have afforded that outrageous rent even in the shop’s best days.
“I knew it,” declared Sarah. “The real estate business must be treating him well. He’s driving an even more expensive car than the last time I saw him.”
Suddenly it registered that Sarah had identified him by name. “You know him?”
“Barely. I haven’t seen him in years, not since I first moved to Waterford. He wanted to buy Elm Creek Manor and raze it so he could build a few hundred student apartments on the property.”
“Obviously he didn’t. So he’s just a lot of threats and bluster in a nice suit?”
“On the contrary, I’m sure he would have gone through with it if Sylvia hadn’t found out about his plan. She refused to sell to him once she learned the truth.”
“Oh.” Bonnie dropped her gaze and tried to compose herself, her momentary hopes swiftly fading. She would have to come up with a plan, and Craig would have to help her. Even if he did want to move, even if he was no longer in love with her, surely pride would compel him to intercede when someone tried to intimidate his wife and drive them from their home.
But that evening Craig did not come home, nor did he call. The next morning Bonnie phoned his office from Grandma’s Attic, but his assistant said his morning was booked solid with staff meetings and maintenance on campus to supervise, and that he would probably not return until lunch. “Should I have him call you before he leaves for his appointment?” she asked.
“What appointment?”
“I don’t know. He just told me he has to leave for an appointment at four.” His assistant chuckled. “Maybe he’s planning a big surprise for Valentine’s Day.”
If he was, it was not for Bonnie. She hung up and eyed the store’s displays of pink, red, and white fabric and ribbon with distaste. They should have reminded her, but she had forgotten today was the fourteenth. She had probably blocked it out. Craig seemed to every year.
She searched the storage room for their St. Patrick’s Day decorations and selected green and white fabrics from the shelves so that she could expunge all signs of the romantic holiday from her shop first thing the next day. As she worked, pausing to assist the occasional customer, the idea that Craig might be planning a Valentine’s surprise for someone else gnawed at her. He was obviously up to something. A man didn’t stay away from his wife that long without cause. While she longed to believe he had been staying up nights planning that second honeymoon in Paris they once talked about, she knew they had moved well beyond any chance of that. It was a bitter truth to accept, but she forced herself to be realistic.
He had planned to cheat on her once. He might have cheated on her since.
She had to know what this appointment was about.
When Diane came in at two, Bonnie made an excuse about needing to leave early. Diane assured her she would be happy to close the shop alone, so at three-forty, Bonnie bid her good-bye and hurried across campus on foot. She wished she had departed earlier. If his appointment was far away, he might have left already. Then another realization stopped her in her tracks: He might have already returned home for his car. He never drove to work; the employee parking lot was farther from his building than their home. She had not checked for his car before leaving.
She would just have to wait outside the Physical Plant building and hope for the best, she told herself, and resumed walking at a brisker pace. She rounded a copse of snow-shrouded evergreens and nearly crashed into a couple engrossed in an intense discussion.
“Excuse me,” she mumbled, hurrying on.
“Bonnie?”
Bonnie stopped short and whirled around. She recognized Judy before her friend lowered her scarf. “Oh, hi. Hi, Steve.”
“Hi,” said Judy’s husband, smiling. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“Oh, well—” Bonnie fumbled for an excuse before realizing she didn’t need one. “I’m going to see if I can catch Craig before he leaves work. You didn’t happen to see him pass this way?”
They shook their heads. “If we do, should we tell him to meet you somewhere?” asked Steve.
“No, that’s all right.” Bonnie forced a smile and backed away. “I’d better hurry.”
“See you tonight at the business meeting,” said Judy. As Bonnie turned to go, she heard her ask Steve, “Do you think she overheard?”
Bonnie understood at once that she had interrupted an argument and wished with all her heart she had not. If the happiest married couple she knew argued, what chance did she and Craig have if he made her resort to spying?
She reached Craig’s building with ten minutes to spare and brushed snow off a bench partially concealed from the front entrance behind the bare limbs of a lilac bush. She sat down and waited, mittened hands clutching the tote bag on her lap. Students passed on their way to and from classes, but just then she glimpsed a familiar burly figure in a blue Penn State coat and blaze-orange knit hat exiting by a side door. Bonnie tracked him with her eyes as he hurried across the quad toward downtown, but not in the direction of home.
She waited as long as she thought she could afford before pursuing him. She almost lost him trying to cross Main Street, but his blaze-orange hat stood out among the crowd on the other side. Once across, she had to run to close the distance between them. When she was within two blocks, Craig turned down an alley lined with bookstores and coffeeshops, then headed south. He was on his way to the residential area, Bonnie guessed, but he turned again and climbed the stairs of a three-story Victorian, one of the many former private homes on that street converted to offices. Outside, a steel blue-and-gray sign read UNIVERSITY REALTY .
Out of breath from the chase, Bonnie gasped and ducked behind a street sign. Her heart pounded; her face burned. What was Craig doing here? He must be meeting with Krolich, and not to demand an apology for the way Krolich had treated Bonnie.
Bonnie pulled up her hood and hurried away before either man chanced to step outside. Craig could have come to find out what University Realty was prepared to offer for the condo, but a phone call would have sufficed for that information. Bonnie paused, glanced back at the office, then crossed the street and entered a coffee shop. She ordered a mocha latte and found a seat by the front window with a decent view of University Realty. Her cup was empty by the time Craig emerged. He descended the steps with a jaunty gait. He appeared to be whistling.
Sick at heart, Bonnie gathered her coat and purse and left.
She took the long way home, longing for the comfort of Grandma’s Attic but too stricken to face Diane, too distracted to think of an ex
planation for her unexpected return. Exhaustion weighted her footsteps as she climbed the stairs to the condo. Craig was not there.
She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep until spring, but she went to the kitchen and cut up vegetables and leftover turkey for soup. The latest Contemporary Quilting magazine had come in the mail. She curled up on the sofa beneath a flannel Lady of the Lake quilt and read while the soup simmered.
At six she decided Craig wasn’t coming home, so she warmed a few slices of sourdough bread in the oven and ladled soup into a single bowl. The door opened just as she began to eat. “That smells great,” Craig called from the hallway as he hung up his coat.
It was the kindest thing he had said to her in weeks. Tears sprang into her eyes, but the automatic thank-you died on her lips. He bustled in, cheeks red, rubbing his palms together for warmth. Bonnie sipped her soup and pretended not to notice how he hesitated at the sight of her eating alone.
“Bread smells good, too,” he said on his way to the kitchen. She heard him fishing a spoon from the drawer, taking a bowl down from the cupboard, opening a beer. A few minutes later he joined her at the table.
She ate without looking at him, waiting for him to speak. Oblivious to her silence, he ate with his eyes glued to the paper. Bonnie returned to the kitchen for seconds, then sat at the table swirling the barley and thick slices of carrot without tasting a mouthful, realizing only then that she was no longer hungry. She had refilled her bowl only to prolong the meal.
Finally she said, “Don’t you have something you want to tell me?”
He set down the paper and studied her for a moment. “Oh. Right. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What were you expecting, chocolates and a dozen roses?”
It was all Bonnie could do not to fling her bowl at him. “I have a meeting,” she said, rising, clearing away her dishes. “Please put the leftovers in the fridge when you’re done. I’m taking the car. Don’t wait up.”
“Don’t worry.”
Fighting off tears of rage, she grabbed her tote bag and left. She endured the meeting, finding no comfort in her friends’ presence or their anticipation of the upcoming camp season. Then it was time to go home, but Bonnie dreaded the discussion—the argument—that would inevitably follow her return. She had to confront Craig; if he intended to tell her why he had met with Gregory Krolich, he would have done so over supper. Whatever secrets he kept could not be good for their home or Grandma’s Attic. Or their marriage.
When she pulled into the parking space behind their building, all the second-floor windows overlooking the back alley were dark. Inside, she found the pot of lukewarm soup sitting uncovered on the stove. Craig was gone, and so was the large duffel bag that once carried his workout clothes, but had sat on the floor of his closet, unused, for most of the past year.
He stayed away for three days. In the meantime, Bonnie called University Realty and left a message on Krolich’s voicemail declaring that the Markham home was not for sale. She wrote lessons for camp. She pored over the shop’s finances and concluded that she would have to cut her employees’ hours in half or let one of them go. Summer was out of the question, so it would have to be Diane. Reluctantly, she spent Sunday morning with the classifieds circling ads for commercial properties. There weren’t many choices, since three-quarters of the listings belonged to University Realty.
On Sunday afternoon Craig finally returned home. He ignored her as he went down the hall, tossed the duffel bag into the guest room, and continued on to the bathroom.
She went to the kitchen to fix a cup of tea. Eventually Craig came to the kitchen for a beer. “We need to talk,” she said, but he pretended not to hear as he rooted in the refrigerator. He left the kitchen and in a moment she heard a basketball game on the television.
She followed him into the living room and sat down. “I know you met with Gregory Krolich.”
He raised the can to his lips, eyes fixed on the television screen.
She clasped her hands around her mug of tea. “I want to know why.”
“So he could make an offer on this place.”
“I already told you I don’t want to sell.”
“It’s a good offer. Better than we could get if we tried to sell on our own.”
“I don’t want to sell.”
“It’s not up to you.”
“Yes, it is.” Her hands shook so badly she had to set the mug on the table. “It’s up to both of us.”
“You’re a spoiled brat.” He looked at her with such venom that she shrank back into her chair. “You won’t admit this is the best opportunity we’re likely to see. Ever. You won’t admit you can’t afford the new rent for the shop. You can’t admit you should close that place before it sinks us any deeper.”
“Grandma’s Attic means the world to me,” said Bonnie. “I still have many loyal customers who would hate to see it go. For them, and for me, I won’t close it short of total bankruptcy.”
“Then we won’t have long to wait.”
After that, Bonnie no longer noted when Craig slept in the guest room or how many days he stayed away. A week after their confrontation, she was vacuuming the carpet when words came into her mind, so suddenly that it shocked her, so clearly that she knew she had been considering them for weeks.
I want a divorce, she thought, then said aloud, “I want a divorce.”
She shouldn’t. He didn’t beat her. He had not, as far as she knew, been unfaithful. He had been a reliable if critical father to their children. Maybe he was right and she was a spoiled brat. But she could not endure the current situation. Spending the rest of her life in a state of perpetual animosity was unthinkable. She didn’t think she loved him anymore; she barely even liked him most days. She was tired of the tension, tired of feeling at her worst when he was around, tired of feeling inconsequential when he did not even bother to tell her he wasn’t coming home.
Whatever happened with the store, with their home, they had to try marriage counseling again. It had helped them reconcile five years before when she had discovered and thwarted his planned rendezvous with a woman he had met on an internet mailing list. They simply could not throw away a shared history of thirty years. Things had never been worse between them, but she had to believe they still had a chance.
She wrote him a short but heartfelt note asking him to please come home for supper so they could discuss resuming counseling. She left it on the pillow of the guest room. It was gone by the time she returned home from work the next day, but Craig left no reply behind, and he did not show up for supper.
The last day of February was cold and overcast, with gusty winds that sent newspapers and trash scuttling down the alley behind their building. Bonnie rose early to pay the household bills before going to Grandma’s Attic, where she would have to complete the same chore. Craig’s paychecks were direct-deposited into their joint checking account at the end of each month; usually he brought home a pay stub telling her the amount, but this week he had not left the familiar envelope by the computer. Bonnie wasn’t sure how many of his late nights had actually been overtime, so she estimated conservatively when she entered the deposit into the account. She would inquire at the bank for the actual amount when she withdrew funds on her lunch break.
The ATM was down when Bonnie arrived, but she had beaten the midday rush and used her brief time in line to fill out a withdrawal slip. “Could you check on a deposit for me?” she asked the teller while he counted out her bills. “It was made by direct deposit either this morning or yesterday afternoon.”
The teller entered a few keystrokes, frowned at the monitor, and shook his head. “Sorry. The last deposit was on the twelfth for twenty-two seventy-eight.”
“That can’t be right. My husband’s paycheck comes by direct deposit from the college at the end of each month.”
“Yeah, I know. They all come the same day.” The teller, freckled and far younger than her chil
dren, pressed another key. “The last direct deposit was on January thirty-first.”
“Maybe the college delayed their transfer for some reason. A computer glitch or something.”
“I doubt it, ma’am. People with Waterford College IDs have been coming in all day.”
“Well—” Bonnie didn’t know what to think. “What is my balance without that deposit?”
“Oh. Sorry.” He handed her the receipt he had forgotten to give her with her cash.
Bonnie stared at the receipt in shock—$215.74. In a moment of confusion she thought the checks she had written that morning had somehow already cleared, then she realized the envelopes were still in her bag. “There’s been some mistake,” she said. “There should be at least a thousand dollars in this account.”
“Um.” The teller glanced over his shoulder. “Well, there was a big withdrawal yesterday. I could print out a statement for you, or you can see it online. Do you know about our online banking?”
Bonnie went cold. “What about the savings account?”
“You want me to check the balance?”
“Yes, yes, please.”
Her distress motivated him to hurry. “Twenty dollars and fifteen cents,” he said, not wasting time on a printed statement. “Just enough to keep the account open.”
“I don’t understand.” But she did understand. Craig. “Can you tell me if the money was transferred to another account? Or was it in cash?”
He studied the screen. “It was a cash withdrawal.”
“Did my husband—” She took a deep breath. “Did he open a new account and deposit the money in it?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you any information about accounts not in your name.”
“Please,” she said, fighting off tears. “Please make an exception just this once.”
His fingers clattered on the keyboard. He glanced over his shoulder again, then said, “I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to tell you that your husband did not open a new account at this bank.”
“Thank you.” Bonnie forced a shaky smile, which faded when she remembered the bills in her purse. “While I’m here, I need to transfer money from my business account into the checking account.”
Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter Page 12
