I want to believe him. I do. I’m so tired and overwhelmed by now that I’m willing to climb into the idea like a hot bubble bath and potentially never get out.
I squeeze his knee and look up at him. “Mat?”
“Yeah?”
“Promise me everything’s going to be okay.”
He turns his face toward me for a beat, eyes off the train of brake lights ahead of us, and I get the full force of the blue. “Everything’s going to be okay,dikarka.” He rests a palm on top of mine, sandwiching me. “I’ve got you. I’ve got both of you.”
Back in the city, he drops me in front of my building. Just before I get out, after checking to be sure no one is watching, he snags my wrist to drag me back in the car and kiss my knuckles.
Then, once I’m marked with his lips, he lets me go back upstairs to my husband.
That’s what I expected to go upstairs to, at least.
But the penthouse is vacant.
The housekeeper, has obviously been in. The foyer table has fresh peonies and the air smells faintly of the lemon polish she uses on the credenza. But it’s lifeless. Raymond’s coat isn’t on the rack. His keys aren’t in the dish. His shoes aren’t lined up by the door.
I stand in the foyer with my bag still on my shoulder and listen. No sounds emerge, though.
“Well,” I whisper to no one, “this is unexpected.”
I walk through the apartment slow, room by room. Kitchen: empty. Dining room: empty. Living room: empty. Raymond’s study: locked, of course, but no light under the door.
Our bed is made within an inch of its life. The master bathroom shower is dry as a bone. His sink is spotless. His razor is in its little chrome stand. His towel is hanging on its hook, dry and unused.
So where is he, then?
Monday comes. He doesn’t come home.
Tuesday comes. He doesn’t come home.
By Wednesday morning, I don’t know whether to breathe or to start the official meltdown. I sit on the kitchen island in my socks with a piece of dry sourdough in one hand and the burner in the other, and I text Mat once again:
Still nothing.
He texts back inside of a minute, the way he has every time since he dropped me off.
Stay where you are. Don’t go looking.
Yes, sir.
I like the sound of that.
Eat something wholesome. I know you’re starving yourself over there.
You’re not the boss of me, Satyrin.
Thank God for that. I’d never get any work done with you around, distracting me.
By Wednesday afternoon, the news has caught up to what we already know. There is a small item in the Times.
William Oglethorpe, longtime partner at Snyder & Oglethorpe LLP, dead at sixty-eight, of cardiac arrest during a weekend at a Hudson Valley retreat. Survived by his wife, Susan, andthree grown children. A private service will be held Thursday morning at St. James on Madison.
Cardiac arrest. That’s what they’re going with. I almost laugh. Then I almost cry. Then I just close the laptop and stare at the wall for a while.
Dani calls twice, but I let it go to voicemail both times. I’m just not up to face her right now. She’s in the throes of young puppy love and I’m in the throes of—well, it’s notpuppylove, but maybe wolfish love? Whatever you’d call it, mine is a little wilder and a little more dangerous and has alotmore fangs involved. Point is, we’re not operating on the same plane at the moment.
