Next, I check in her pillowcase and then the medicine cabinet. No luck. I wander back to the middle of the room and turn in a circle, surveying the shelves and bins, cabinets and baskets, trunks and play kitchen complete with refrigerator, oven, microwave, and dishwasher, all of it overflowing with toys. So much fucking plastic.
So many places two small rings could be. She’d wanted something understated. A solitaire engagement ring. A simple gold wedding band.
I thought she was trying to please me, showing me that she didn’t intend to abuse my generosity after we married. Maybe she was. Regardless, I chalked it up as yet more evidence that I’d chosen wisely. I was so fucking smug.
Soshortsighted.
I could buy her the Pink Star or the Oppenheimer Blue, and she wouldn’t soften in the least. Her eyes are different now. They changed the instant those elevator doors opened, but in all the years before that, my head was so far up my own ass, that I hadn’t thought to commit how she looked at me to memory. So now, I remember that it used to be different, but I can’t picture the look, and that feels like all the symptoms of a heart attack, all the things you’re supposed to act on immediately, but there is absolutely nothing I can do.
Did she really throw the rings in the river?
I scan the room. Picture books. Blocks. A pink trunk with lace flounces sticking out. I sink to my knees on the rug woven with a map of a fairy tale village, hissing when my patella lands on the spoiler of a Matchbox car. I didn’t realize that Hansel and Gretel tool around in a Dodge Viper.
I drag the trunk closer, flip the clasp, and throw open the lid, revealing a morass of sequins, frills, and boas with bare rubber legs and arms sticking up at random. I sift through it, raking the bottom with my fingers, but there are no small pieces, nothing that could be a ring. Where are the shoes and purses and whatnot? I’ve given Pearl enough of these dolls. They come fully equipped.
Rising to my feet, I search the higher shelves, and there, above the stove, is a clear tub filled to the top with accessories. Bingo. Of course, Cora keeps choking hazards away out of reach. I grab the tub and return to my seat on the rug, dumping the contents out on top of a dyed wool castle with a friendly dragon waving from the turret.
Like some kind of mad gold miner, I comb through plastic high heels and hair brushes, boots and barrettes, lipsticks, binoculars, phones, umbrellas, mirrors, cameras, sunglasses, jewelry, travel mugs, credit cards, and briefcases, headphones and travel pillows. No rings.
Exhaling, I lean back and survey the mess I’ve made. I’m a grown man with a dwindling buzz, sitting on the floor in the middle of a workday rooting through a pile of pink children’s toys. A feeling like heartburn crawls up my throat.
I don’t want to be here. To be likethis. It was never the plan. I was never going to care for real.
I was going to have it all—the wife, the children, the happy home—and I was never going to have to pay for it, not in any currency other than money.
If I risked nothing, there was no way I could lose. I gamble for a living. I know how to beat the house.
How did I end up here with this knot in my gut that won’t go away, this perpetual dread, this sensation that all the air in every room has been sucked out, and this incessant fucking drumming in my head, morning, noon, and night, this relentless hammering—you did it to yourself.
You did it to yourself.
I have never been lower.
I’ve never hated myself before.
I bend forward to scoop the toys back into the tub, and as I reach for a miniature plastic beach ball that rolled off the rug, I happen to glance up, and I see it—a white sock hanging from a slat under the daybed.
Well, who would think to look there?
After picking the last of the miniature combs and credit cards from the rug’s weave, I put the trunk and tub back where they belong and then lift the bed, propping it up on my thigh as I untie the sock. It’s bulging with diamonds, gold, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. At the very bottom, in the toe, I find Cora’s engagement and wedding rings. I slip them into my pocket, and return her stash to its hiding place.
I’m keeping them until she’ll take them back.
And she will. I’m not living like this until the girls are grown, and she leaves me. I won’t.
I can’t.
14
CORA
I actually forgetto hate Adrian for the next several days. We go back to having breakfast as a family, and the bread basket has lots of new muffin flavors—blueberry, apple cinnamon, and chocolate chip. He works from home and takes breaks in the afternoon to play outside with the kids. He goes with us to the Holiday Mart in the local village. He has a new phone, but it doesn’t ring.
He keeps asking me to spend time alone with him, but he doesn’t try to kiss me or talk to me about the past, and I try to forget that he asked me about Baltimore. I knew he must’ve had me vetted when we met. He vetted the guy who delivers our heating oil and the guys who pump the septic tank.
Mrs. Flowers told me I’d be fine as long as I kept things vague. Say “elementary school” not “James McHenry Elementary,” say “when I lived in Baltimore,” not “when I was at Villa Theresa.” It was easy to do what she said. My memory of those days is fuzzy at best anyway.
Adrian has access to the best investigators in the world, but the ruse held. He can wonder all he wants about those six months. He can dig if he wants. There’s nothing to find.
