Page 34 of The Wife He Accused

"I wanted to check in on you. I know the last few days have been — trying."

"Mm."

"I know these things are difficult, darling, but I want you to know that you do not have to go through them alone. I am your mother. Whatever you need, I am here."

He did not answer. He was counting. He had learned, in the last few days, that counting was a useful thing to do while his mother built toward the part of a phone call that was the actual reason for the phone call. He could usually get to eleven or twelve before she arrived at it.

He got to nine.

"I had lunch with Genevieve Langley yesterday."

There it was.

Genevieve Langley was Vivienne's mother. Genevieve Langley had gone to school with Catherine at a place in Connecticut with a Latin motto and had been lunching with Catherine once a month for the better part of forty years. The lunches were not social. Catherine did not have social lunches.The lunches were the place where the two women quietly adjusted the orbits of their children.

"She asked after you. I told her you were — well, I said what one says. She mentioned that Vivienne has been thinking about you. She and Vivienne have both been thinking about you, actually. Vivienne came home last weekend and there was some conversation, and Genevieve said —"

"Stop."

The word came out flatter than he had meant it to. His mother did not stop.

"— Genevieve said that Vivienne had always understood you in a way that, well, some women simply understand men who come from certain backgrounds, darling. Genevieve thought, and I agreed, that in light of the — the situation with Melody — it might not be the worst thing in the world to allow yourself a quiet dinner with someone who knows you. No pressure. Just dinner. Genevieve was going to suggest to Vivienne that —"

"Stop talking."

The secondstopwas not flat. The secondstopcame out of him with a tight edge his voice developed when a board meeting was about to become a different kind of meeting. Catherine, who had been on the receiving end of that tone exactly twice in her adult life, stopped talking.

"Alexander."

“I’m going to come over. I am going to come over right now. Do not call anyone else. Do not call Genevieve. Do not call Vivienne. Do not call anyone else in the Langley orbit. I’m leaving the apartment in ten minutes and I’ll be in Greenwich by eleven. I need you to be in the house when I get there. Is your calendar clear?”

“You don't need to —"

"Is your calendar clear?”

A pause.

"Yes."

"Good."

He ended the call.

He wasangry. He was angry the way a man was angry when someone he loved had been waiting for the end of his marriage since before the marriage had begun, had been positioning for it the whole time, and had chosen when to make her move.

The housein Greenwich was the way the house in Greenwich always was: long, pale and set well back from the road behind a drive that curved like a compliment, the trees on either side of it planted two generations ago by a landscaper whose family had since died out. The gravel made the same sound under the tires of the car that it had made under the tires of his father's cars when he was a child. The housekeeper, Louisa, opened the door before he had finished climbing the front steps.

"Mr. Winters. Your mother is in the morning room."

"Thank you, Louisa. Would you give us the room, please. Whatever you're working on, take the next hour off. On me."

Louisa, who had been working for his family for twenty years and had never once been told to take the next hour off on anyone, looked at him.

"Yes, sir."

He walked past her into the morning room.

His mother was at the small pale writing desk by the window in the navy cashmere twin set she wore when she was planning to be photographed by the morning light. The small silver coffee service was on the tray table next to her. She looked up as he came in, and her face arranged itself into the warm version ofitself she used for family crises. He understood that she had been practicing the expression in a mirror before he arrived.