“Are you sure?” But Gretchen felt suspended between collapsing and vomiting as she pushed to her feet. It was true: She needed a break.
“Gretchen, not only willyoukill me if I don’t handle this, but RichardandHilary will too,” he said. “I promise. Go home, rest. That’s what Richard would want, and Hilary would insist. Let me do my job without worrying about you. This whole thing is some bullshit mistake. Overreacting will only get you in deeper trouble. That’s the way these things are.”
—
In the end, Gretchen had Sam drop her at the bottom of Central Park and then walked the rest of the way home. Twenty-nine blocks along the park, the rhythm of her legs, the chilly morning air steadying her. It wasn’t even 8:00 a.m. yet. There weren’t that many people to see her pajama bottoms, which really did look like pants anyway.
It was also calming to focus on the task at hand—getting to Oppy’s welcome assembly. When it was over, she could tell Cassandra about the situation with Richard. But the truth was that she was still holding out hope she wouldn’t have to. That Scotty would get the police to come to their senses between now and when the curtain came down.
By the time Gretchen was turning in to her building, she was already imagining how she’d graciously accept an apology from the police. So she was startled when she came face-to-face with Joseph, who was still on duty. He looked equally alarmed to seeGretchen—ashen, actually—but he tried to cover, smiling broadly. Even so, the whole thing was terribly awkward. Joseph was young and rather new and, under the best of circumstances, he vacillated between overly familiar and overly formal, so she wasn’t surprised when his eyes shot to the ground as if he were embarrassed for her, or maybe for himself. Both, probably.
Gretchen cleared her throat. She would not be made to feel humiliated. Not when none of this was their fault.
“Well, good morning, Joseph,” Gretchen said, bright and crisp. Defiant. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered, eyes still down.
“Have a lovely day,” she called as she strode to the elevator.
As soon as the doors shut, Gretchen found herself blinking back tears. She forced her shoulders square. Fanned her eyes with her well-manicured fingers. Pretend. To survive, she was going to have to pretend. And Scotty was right. She was just exhausted.
Gretchen’s relief at reaching the apartment was short-lived. As she swung open the door, she could see that it had been utterly ransacked. In every direction, drawers were open, their possessions strewn about the floor. Detective Reyes had warned her, but nothing could have prepared her for the extent of the damage. Across the foyer in the living room, she could see that even the couch cushions had been lifted and tossed around.
Gretchen was still standing in the entryway when she heard a key turn in the lock behind her. Lita. Their housekeeper. Lita had lived in with them ever since they’d moved into the apartment, but since Becks left for college, she worked only nine to five. Sometimes Gretchen thought about inviting her back to live. They were so fond of each other, and the house was so empty without the children. But she was worried Lita might feel obligated, and if Gretchen was completely honest with herself, Lita did seem happier now that she was living out.
“Good morning,” Lita called cheerfully as she entered. But her smile fell and her hand went to her mouth when she saw the chaos. “Ay, dios mío!”
Gretchen nodded. “Yes, it’s a mess,” she said. “Tu hermana?”Lita sometimes called her sister when there was a big project. And getting everything back in order definitely fit the bill.
Lita nodded gravely. “Sí, sí.”
Gretchen still didn’t speak much Spanish despite several genuine attempts with Duolingo—which was somehow slightly racist, according to Elizabeth. Simply employing Lita wasalsoapparently racist, or so Elizabeth had proclaimed in high school—though neither Richard nor Gretchen could understand how paying someone far above market rate and providing health insurance and other benefits like vacation days could possibly be a bad thing. It was true that the language gap meant Gretchen’s conversations with Lita were limited, and that did always seem a little wrong. However, at the moment, her limited Spanish meant Gretchen was spared having to explain why the apartment was in such a state.
Instead, Gretchen excused herself upstairs, glancing down at her new watch. Gaudy, itwasgaudy. Gretchen had pushed the thought away when she first saw it because it had seemed cruel and ungrateful. But even after all these years of living with great wealth—partly earned by him!—Richard did still occasionally stumble in this regard. It was cute, most of the time.
Of course, none of this would have happened if Richard hadn’t gone on the trip to begin with, and the watch was a reminder that it was Gretchen who’d eventually acquiesced. Richard and “the boys”—as he liked to call his college group—took an “adventure trip” nearly every year, hadn’t missed one since graduation. And Richard was certainly capable of such activities, even in his mid-fifties. He was an experienced hiker—Patagonia, the Alps, the Dolomites. And he was fit: He’d run the New York City Marathon twice, the last time only a few years ago. And after all he’d been through as a child, he was calm and resourceful, exceptional in an emergency.
But Kilimanjaro was next-level, and Gretchen blamed Brooks. The whole thing had been his idea. Gretchen and Richard knew a couple who had made it within spitting distance of the summit only to have the husband suddenly felled by mountain sickness. Hehad stopped breathing right in front of his poor wife, who apparently hated hiking and had gone along only to be a good sport.
“No” had been Gretchen’s unequivocal response when Richard had first floated the idea. She’d even snapped the newspaper she was reading for emphasis. “Absolutely not.”
Richard had not backed down. And so Gretchen had argued with him, making a point of mentioning their friend who haddiedand subtly reminding him that—as the wife—she would have the deciding vote. So it was in their world: happy wife, happy life. All the husbands in their circle respected that rule, even the cads. And Richard was not a cad. He was one of the good ones. No, he was a great one.
And yet, Richard had seemed out of sorts ever since he’d been promoted to co–head of investment banking at Goldman Sachs ten months before. After all his hard work, he’d finally reached the very top—the pinnacle from which there was realistically nowhere left to ascend. And, somehow, this had sucked the wind from his sails. Gretchen had gathered that maybe he needed something else to conquer, and so here was this mountain.
Richard hadn’tsaidthat. But Gretchen was his wife. Sometimes she knew him in ways he didn’t know himself. And so her answer had been yes in the end. To love someone that deeply you had to be willing to tolerate all kinds of risk.
Gretchen checked her absurd watch again. Eight-forty a.m. She needed to get going: Oppy’s assembly. She was never late. She couldn’t be late, or Cassandra would know that something was wrong. And Gretchen was still hoping her children might never have to know about this mess. Anyway, things were going to be fine. Thingswerefine. All of this was nothing more than a nuisance.
A shower. That was what she needed. A shower always made everything better.
—
Afterward, standing at one of the two sinks in their vast en suite bathroom, Gretchen saw herself in the steamy mirror. Shelooked awful, even after washing her face and using every single face cream and potion known to man. Puffy and exhausted, if not downright ill. No one would be mistaking her for Grace Kelly today—a compliment she’d heard regularly since she was a teenager. Cassandra would definitely know there was something wrong. Her oldest child had a nose for trouble. As a little girl, Cassandra could predict bad weather for a month’s-end birthday party with meteorological precision. In fact, all her children were that way—highly attuned. Perhaps there should have been a certain comfort in this. Friends and relatives often pointed to it as a sign of their collective intelligence.
But it was also exhausting. Gretchen had occasionally longed for children who were far more oblivious. It would have allowed for a much greater margin of error.
Gretchen put some moisturizer on her hands and rubbed them together. They were bonier and bonier with each passing day. Maybe she didn’t look as bad as she thought she did? Exhaustion could blur how one saw things. Makeup would make an enormous difference, she told herself. But every time she lifted the mascara wand, her hand trembled too much to risk going anywhere near her eye. She settled instead for concealer and lipstick, startling when her phone rang.
