Winnie stares up at me from the white down comforter on the king-sized bed. Who puts a baby with a full diaper straight onto a white comforter? A man who doesn’t do laundry, that’s who.
“Mommy?” Pearl tugs at my slacks and holds up a diaper and wipes. She’s such a good little helper.
“Thank you, sweetie,” I say, pulling myself together. I wrangle Winnie out of her carrier. Thankfully, it wasn’t a blowout. By the time I’ve got her cleaned up, she’s almost asleep.
Pearl is exhausted, too. While I was cleaning up her sister, she put herself to bed, kicking her shoes off and crawling under the covers on the other side of the bed. It’s so far past her bedtime.
Guilt grips me hard. I shouldn’t have brought them with me, but I wasn’t admitting anything to myself three hours ago, was I? Delusion is so weird. You suspect the truth, else why would you bother deluding yourself, but you don’t let yourself confront facts. You basically gaslight yourself.
I want to be deluded again. I want to be Cinderella like I was an hour ago.
I scoop Winnie into my arms, and after I kick off my shoes, I settle onto the bed next to Pearl with my back propped against the padded headboard. Winnie snores, her head lolling back like a fat cantaloupe on the end of askinny vine. I shift my elbow to support her better and then sit motionless, staring at the dark TV across the room.
I feel like nitroglycerine. If I move an inch, if I follow a single train of thought to completion, my life will explode the rest of the way. I have no choice but to sit on top of this comforter, legs stretched straight and crossed at the ankles, and keep my mind a perfect blank until the door opens softly, and my husband quietly steps through.
His dark hair is wet. He showered. The tux is gone. He’s wearing gray slacks and a collared sweater that zips. He’s dressed like any guy you’d see on Wall Street, but somehow, he looks twice as imposing, twice as rich, twice as classy. Likeheelevates his clothes, not the other way around like most men.
Schmidt is right behind him.
“Cora, let’s talk in the other room. Schmidt will watch the girls,” he says, stepping aside so Schmidt can come in.
I cuddle Winnie tighter to my chest. Adrian’s voice is so commanding, so collected, so sure that I’ll do what he asks.
Everyone always does their very best to please him. Especially me, and not because I “won the trailer trash lottery” like our old housekeeper said before Adrian canned her, but because I love him. He could have chosen any rich or famous or high-achieving woman he wanted, but he picked me. He wantedmeto be the mother of his children.
No one at the nursery thought he’d actually marry me, but he did because he loves me, and I love him. There has to be an explanation. His head is high. He’s not ashamed.
He must have a reason. A secret twin. Amnesia. Maybe I’ve had a mental breakdown, and this is a hallucination.
MaybeIdid something horrible—or someone framed me—and this is his revenge, and when he learns that I’m innocent, he’s going to plead for my forgiveness on hisknees, and it’ll be someone else’s fault, not his or mine, so we can go back to our life together like this never happened.
I clutch that idea like it’s the edge of a cliff. He does look icily furious. That’s what’s happening—a terrible miscommunication. We can fix this. It’ll be hard, but I can forgive him. I love him. I love our life.
I kiss Winnie’s head and pass her to Schmidt. He offers me a hand to help me off the bed, his expression perfectly blank, and I take it. Adrian’s jaw flexes.
“We’ll be in the living area,” Adrian says to him brusquely. “Stay here.”
Adrian gestures for me to go ahead of him through the door. I pad barefoot back down the hallway like I’m heading to the electric chair. I’m vaguely aware that my husband’s entourage has gathered in the kitchen.
Adrian Maddox never travels alone. His security—Landry and Wilson—are leaning against the counters while James, the bodyman who carries a big bag and takes care of tasks like calling for the car, and Michelle, the personal assistant who always interrupts us when we’re having dinner, have already set themselves up at the breakfast bar, scrolling their phones.
“No interruptions,” Adrian says to them as we pass, and Landry nods. The others act like they can’t even see us.
They must all know about Delaney. Were they in the apartment, too, hanging out in a spare room, waiting for my husband to nut?
Everyone assumes I married Adrian for his money, but you couldn’t pay me enough to twiddle my thumbs, waiting for a guy to blow his load. That’s undignified.
Adrian leads me to the elegant, beige camelback sofa in the front room. I sit. He lowers himself into an armchair across the coffee table and folds his hands loosely in his lap, considering me like a problem.
That’s how Adrian looks at people who catch his attention, how he looked at me until we really got to know each other. Like I’m data. Dread trickles down my spine.
If I look down, will the floor still be there? Because it doesn’t feel like it will.
I keep my eyes locked on his face.
Adrian is almost supernaturally good looking. His body is honed from rowing, sailing, and golf, and he has a black and white movie star’s face—defined cheekbones, strong jaw, coal-black eyes, sweeping lashes, straight nose, and perfect full lips. Sometimes, when he’s asleep, I watch him by the light of my phone and wonder how it’s possible that a person can look like him without a filter.
He can also be cold as ice. Not to me, not since the very beginning, but to other people. I heard one of his business associates call him a shark once, and another guy corrected him and said, “No, he’s a megalodon.Themegalodon.” That felt very accurate. It does seem like he’s swimming far deeper than the rest of us, and always, always moving. But not now.
