“Yes, ma’am. This is strictly confidential”—he leaned forward to whisper in her ear—“but we’re calling the development on the old Cargill site ‘Burning River.’ I’ve pulled in half a billion in investment so far. Cleveland’s going to be one hell of a metropolis when I’m through with her.”
“Wow,” Hailey said, and she meant it. “To Cleveland.” They clinked glasses and moved on to other topics: children and marriage and divorce.
Hailey tried to stay professional as she listened to the intricacies of his heartache, and she tried to keep her private life private while still getting him onside, but she was riding a wave of Bacardi, and before she knew it, a scale had tipped, a pendulum swung, and then she was taking her turn too, telling him about Mack, and how she didn’t know what to do with him lately, and about the pressure she was under to hold their family together, how it made her fearless and fierce and more than a littlecrazy. David Rainier felt this pressure too—with the added live grenade in the mix that was Rebekah—and so when he asked if she wanted to take the bottle of wine to go, to get out of there and see a spectacular sunset, Hailey thought, Whynot? It was like she was back in high school, when she’d peeled off from the prom with a shaggy-haired boy she’d never spoken to before, simply because they could both see the wood right in the thickest part of the teenage trees. She’d sit and get drunk with David Rainier too, on pinot this time instead of Boone’s Farm, and that would be it. She had already betrayed Mack in the worst way possible, complaining about him to a man like this.
They’d only been on I-90 for a few minutes when she had a terrible realization that tore through her bravado: David was heading toward Bratenahl. They’d left the too-intimate conversation in the bar, she was sitting in some strange man’s very nice car, speeding toward her own neighborhood, toward her husband and children. Did this guy know what he was doing? TheCleveland Socialarticle hadn’t printed their address; she’d made sure of it. But it would be easy enough to find out.
“I live here,” she finally said as he turned off Lake Shore.
“Bratenahl? You’re kidding. Then my view will be old news for you, I guess.”
But it wasn’t. She’d figured he’d joined the Shoreby Club, that he was going to show her the view from the terrace, which, even though Hailey had seen it dozens of times, was pretty spectacular. She was trying to decide whether she was too drunk to be seen in public with a man who wasn’t Mack, especially at her own club, and then David pulled into the parking garage for Two Bratenahl Place. This must be where he was living now when he was in town; did the firm know this? Did he own this place too, a missed asset? Hailey the lawyer would not surrender quietly, and nor would Hailey the wife: the notion that Mack might be out walking Gulliver, might see her here in this fishbowl lobby, did skitter across Hailey’s gray matter. But all these thoughts tangled together and fell right out of her head, and nothing, legal or marital or otherwise, stuck to the sides once the lobby door shut behind her. And so it was just Hailey, stripped down to her most fundamental self, who followed David between wood-paneled pillars and across the ice-white floor; it was this Hailey who waited as he pushed the button to call the elevator.
The silence as they began to ascend was unbearable; there was no way that David Rainier couldn’t see the rise and fall of Hailey’s chest as she fought to slow her breathing. Somewhere around the sixth floor he turned toward her, took her face roughly in his hands, and kissed her.
“I didn’t plan this,” he said. “I swear it.” His mouth was strong on her own, the force of it powerful enough to press Hailey up against the back wall of the elevator. Someone else’s arms—not hers, surely—reached for his chest, pulled on his shoulders to bring him closer, slid up the back of his neck into his hair, which was surprisingly soft. Softer than Mack’s, and curly around the edges. She could feel his hands on her shoulder blades, smell starch and cologne instead of dog and peanut butter.
When the doors opened, he pulled her into the hall. As he turned away and fumbled for his keys, there was a brief moment of awkwardness when Hailey could have escaped. She could have straightened herself up, laughed, made a joke about that last drink—what the hell was in it?—and fled.
She did not do that.
After, as she lay naked under gray linen sheets in his bed in an apartment that was nondescript except for its vista over the dark lake—they had missed the sunset—all she could think about was hisotherness: how solid he was, thighs like tree trunks, his arms curving in all the places Mack’s didn’t. At close range this man breathed differently, spoke less, smiled not at all—he had too much intensity for that. He was not some college kid playing at adulting; here lying next to her was the real thing. And perhaps now at last, Hailey was a grown-up too. In a matter of ten minutes (David would have said more like twenty), she had left Mack behind, entered some strange country she’d heard stories of but had never planned to visit. Is this how her clients felt, or their soon-to-be-exes? Howdidshe feel? She needed to get out of here to decide.
David didn’t seem thrown by her swift exit, or that she wouldn’t let him drive her anywhere, although he did make an earnest attempt. Before he opened the apartment door, he kissed her again. This time felt the most foreign of all, and not necessarily in a pleasant way. “I’m not sure what happened here,” he said to her, “but you should know that it isn’t something I do all the time.”
“No?” said a voice that must have been Hailey’s. “Gosh, I do. This is pretty much your standard Wednesday night, for me.” He laughed, finally, and she was proud of herself. Her years of experience in extricating people from difficult situations had finally paid off.
* * *
The lobby was deserted, and for a brief moment Hailey feared she was locked in, but with a second push one of the heavy glass doors opened into a night that was fresh and cool; the lake smelled as much like the ocean as it ever did. She took off her shoes, made her way across the grounds and through the iron gate that separated Two Bratenahl Place from the rest of the neighborhood. When she reached the sidewalk, she picked up her pace; Bratenahl was safe, mostly, but most people did not make a habit of walking around in the dark. This was still Cleveland, and Hailey had seen photographs on the Bratenahl Police Facebook page of all the guns seized from the cars pulled over on the interstate, just up the street. There was no main Bratenahl gate, only an unspoken understanding: turn left off I-90 and have a cocktail at the Shoreby and a swim in the pool. Turn right and—well, that’s where the violence was supposed to stay, one of the most dangerous areas of the country, according to the statistics. Hailey did not make the rules, but she counted on them being followed.
A figure appeared up ahead. Her heart threw off its exhausted stupor and jumped to attention. This was a man, tall and lanky. A split second later, and the adrenaline was for nothing—a streetlight revealed that he was holding a leash, with a small white dog attached to it. Mack would have called it frouffy; this creature made even Gulliver look like a pit bull. As she got closer, she realized it was just the old guy she saw all the time, the one with the twisty mustache who loved his perimeter. He was only a few yards away from it now, if he lived where she thought he did.
“Evening,” he said.
“Hello. Nice out, isn’t it? Feels like fall.”
This was perfectly normal, what Hailey was doing. She was heading back from a drink at the Shoreby Club, maybe. Much less weird than taking your ankle-biter for a walk late at night in the dark, when you had acres of private land for it to do its business in. He must be very lonely.
He ran a hand through his graying hair and pointed to a SAVEOURBEACHFRONTsign on the edge of his estate. “Shame what they’ve done to the beach access, isn’t it? It’s only going to get worse, with this new Huron Landing development. Have you signed the petition?”
She hadn’t; she couldn’t have cared less about the petition or the beach or the new development. She only smiled, nodded, floated past him around the corner, through the unmanned Magpie Court gate.
The house was dark. Gulliver made a stealth entrance impossible, and it wasn’t just the incessant barking. He knew she’d been up to no good. He sniffed at her feet, stood up on his hind legs for a whiff of her thighs, savoring all the strange and foreign smells. She pushed him down and went to the kitchen to get a drink; her mouth felt dry and swollen. She stood at the sink, washing her hands. She couldn’t just throw herself in the shower—Mack might be awake and think she wanted sex—but maybe she could disguise the smell of David Rainier with Mrs. Meyer’s hand soap. She was scrubbing in like a surgeon when she saw Mack sitting in the Eames in the corner of the family room. In the dark. Watching her.
He knew. They had been together too long; he could sense it, he could smell it like Gulliver could.
“Jesus. You made me jump. Why are you still up?”
“How was your night?”
“Fine. Boring. What’s wrong?” She would deny it until her last breath, Hailey decided in that moment. Like all the husbands did, even in the face of photographic evidence. The balls on them used to blow her mind, but now she understood.
“Are you drunk?”
“No.” Hailey caught sight of the little cardigan she had laid out for Gigi that morning, hung over one of the chairs at the breakfast counter. The thought of what was at stake flushed any last vestige of drunkenness from her body. “I left the car at the office, just to be safe, but I’m fine.”
“Good, because we need to talk.”
