Thought I Knew You (12 page)

He took a deep breath. “He was insecure about our relationship—mine and yours, that is—and he confronted me about it.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I literally said nothing. I didn’t deny anything; I didn’t confirm anything. I just remained silent. He was resolute, Claire, adamant in what he was going to believe. I didn’t answer, and he went upstairs.”

I thought back to that night, heat flushing my cheeks. Something had shifted after that. I had tried in a roundabout way to question Greg, who feigned ignorance and scoffed as though I were imagining things. I couldn’t tell him I’d been eavesdropping like a child and heard part of the conversation on the stairs. Before that night, I had never seen Greg jealous. I had never witnessed insecurity in him at all. He seemed above all that, brash in his knowledge that I loved only him. Or so I thought. I even deluded myself into believing our lovemaking that night had been about us. But in hindsight, the sex was completely territorial. He should have just lifted his leg to urinate on me.

I laughed out loud at the thought. Drew looked up in surprise, raising his eyebrows.

“I heard part of it,” I blurted. “I was on the stairs.”

“Ahh, Claire…” Drew stared into his wine glass, swirling the red like a witch doctor looking for answers in a bubbling cauldron.

The silence stretched out between us, taut like wrapped canvas. His face was hidden in shadow, unreadable for so many reasons. I felt nakedly vulnerable and wished I could reach out and pull the words back. Regardless of what Drew said next, they would always be there between us, the suggestion of Drew’s tightly guarded feelings, that up until now, I had perhaps not even acknowledged to myself.

Drew reclined the chair with an audible creak, stretching out his long legs and crossing them at the ankles. In his supine position, eyes on the ceiling, his face went from unreadable to invisible. “Remember the day we played hide and seek?”

I could see only his feet, which gave the atmosphere an aura of a confessional cloaked in such darkness. “We did that all the—” I stopped. He was referring to a specific day. “My first kiss. A first kiss for each of us, I assume. We were ten, so probably a safe bet.”

I’d done a good job of hiding. I played a trick on him, surreptitiously moving to spots he’d already checked. He looked for twenty minutes and began to sound panicked as he called for me, while I lay flat against a long fallen tree, the organic scent of dirt and leaves surrounding me. Then, he stopped calling, and I heard only the resounding silence, the occasional call of a bird, and a woodpecker incessantly
tap-tap-tapping
in the distance
.
I stood and crept through the woods. I found him at the edge of my yard, sitting on the rock wall with his head in his hands. I tiptoed up behind him and grabbed his shoulders. When he whipped around, his mouth was open as if about to speak, but instead, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine in a chaste childhood kiss that both intrigued and disgusted me. Vaguely aware of the underlying power of being female, I had laughed and run away.

The memory, dusted off from the catacombs of my mind, felt surreal, as though it had happened to someone else.
Is that how long you’ve been in love with me?
I didn’t have the courage to ask.

“I’ve fallen out of love with you a hundred times since that day,” he said from the darkness of the chair. “Sometimes by choice, a forced break. Sometimes, especially in college, because you were just so damn infuriating and I was so sick to death of you.”

I tried to remember college: hazy nights of drinking, crackling chemistry when I visited, coy advances I’d later retract.
All in good fun.
I’d been sure of that. I recalled my piercing jealousy when he’d answer the door, girlfriend in tow, and the drunken fight that would ensue later. Those fuzzy recollections seemed so silly as an adult. I felt embarrassed by my nonchalance, the ease at which I’d dismissed those days.

“I wasn’t nice back then, I guess,” I said finally. “I didn’t know, really.”

“There’s a difference between not knowing and not wanting to know.” His tone was soft, unaccusing, and I wished I could see his face. “This is pointless, you know? We’ve had years to talk about all this and never did. So why now?”

Even I couldn’t miss the answer, so blatant and obvious.
Because I chose to.
Unable to bear the truth in that, I stood and crossed the room. I stopped in front of his chair, and he held my gaze with a small smile, sad and wry at once.

He reached out and grabbed my hand. “It’s water under the bridge, Claire-bear.”

But my bridge was crumbling.

Chapter 15

C
hristmas Day, we had moments
of melancholy, but the celebration was mostly joyous. Drew did that—well, along with the overabundance of material things.
Bikes will make kids forget what ails them
. I had taken the easy way out, but what other options did I have? I promised myself that the next year would be easier, and we wouldn’t need all the overindulgence.

Mom and Dad came for dinner, and I served my pre-prepared elaborate spread. Everyone stuffed themselves sick, and even Leah said her belly hurt after the meal. I felt warm, loose-limbed, and content.

I thought of Greg often, but only in small vignettes—Greg in the kitchen on past Christmases, announcing the carving of the “Roast Beast,” his surprising ability to give fantastic and thoughtful Christmas presents. He always had at least one gift that I never knew about, even for the girls.

After I put the kids to bed, I pulled out a small wrapped box and placed it on Drew’s lap.

He grinned. “A present!” He tore into his gift. I had gotten him a macro lens for his camera. He’d mentioned in passing that he wanted to get into macro photography. “Wow, these things are like five hundred bucks! Why would you do this? That’s great. Thank you, Claire-bear.”

I shrugged. “Call it my Christmas of buying everyone’s affection.”

He held up his finger, then went to his bag. He returned with a square velvet box.

“You didn’t have to,” I said.

He rolled his eyes, and I opened the lid. A white gold bracelet was nestled inside, formed like a three-strand braid, smooth on the inside. At each end was a solid ball.

“This is beautiful, Drew. Where did you get it?”

He waved his hand as if my question didn’t matter. He turned the bracelet so I could see the engraving.
All the strength you need is inside of you.
My eyes welled with tears. As usual, Drew had said and done the perfect thing.

He took the bracelet and, sliding it on my wrist, said, “A braided rope is over a hundred times stronger than each strand individually. And it’s ten times stronger than steel. No one strand bears all the weight.” He held my hand, and I understood his message.

I am never alone.
I closed my eyes. “Thank you,” was all I could manage.

The day after Christmas, Drew packed his duffel and headed back to the city. Hannah and Leah went to my parents’ house for the afternoon, and I rambled around the house, cleaning up from the holiday. Rain pattered off the bay window in the living room, blurring the outside world, creating a protected cocoon inside the house.

Feeling bold from my Christmas success and strong from my bracelet, I went upstairs and cautiously opened the door to Greg’s study. I was assaulted by the smell—leather, Greg’s cologne, a corporate citrusy scent, and man.

I sat down at his desk with no idea where to start and looked around as though in the room for the first time. Bookshelves lined the walls behind the desk, which was in the middle of the floor, like an office at a law firm, not a home office. The computer, surprisingly dust-free, sat in one corner of the desk next to a half-inch stack of bills and paperwork, neat and cornered. I could see him in the chair, squaring the corners and tapping the bottom of the stack on the desk. Getting his affairs in order? The corners of each of the September-dated bills were stamped “PIF.”
Paid in Full.

I opened the top drawer. A black address book lay on top. I thumbed through it: miscellaneous notes, business cards, phone numbers—all household-related and vaguely familiar. Nothing jumped out at me.
What was I looking for?
I laid the book on the stack of bills.

The brown notebook Detective Reynolds had taken a few weeks ago rested on top of a separate stack of papers. He’d returned it the week before Christmas, and still unable to face the study, I’d asked him to put it back. I gingerly picked up the notebook, as if it were contaminated, and fanned through the pages. It contained personal notes, a jotted journal of a man on the go: pieces of a thought, some functional, some endearing; a list of songs to add to his MP3 player; a “To-Do” list that included “exercise more, lower cholesterol, be a better husband”; a stanza from a song or a poem. I felt like a voyeur. Except when he left it all behind, did he have the right to privacy anymore?

Call Karen at Omni S.D.
The note was jotted sideways, as if the book had been held at an angle, perhaps while he was on the phone, holding it between his ear and his chin, searching for something to write on.
S.D. San Diego?
Two of the four times, we believe he was in San Diego.
I hit the power button on the computer. Having not been booted up in two months, the machine took a few minutes to come to life. Once the familiar desktop appeared, I opened the web browser and Googled “Omni San Diego.” Omni San Diego Hotel appeared at the top of the searches.

I ran downstairs and found the piece of paper I had used to document the dates. Back upstairs, I picked up the phone and dialed the number on the screen before I could think myself out of it.

“Omni San Diego Hotel. This is John. How may I help you?”

“Hi, my name is Claire Barnes. I have a credit card statement saying that my husband Greg Barnes stayed at the Omni on May twenty-second, but he swore he stayed at the…” I referred to the screen and picked the next hotel down the list “… the Chariot.” I forced a laugh. “I’m sorry. He travels practically weekly for work. It’s impossible for us to keep all this straight, so we just now realized the discrepancy. Can you look to see if a Greg Barnes checked in on May twenty-second?”

“Let me check that for you, Mrs. Barnes.” The man’s tone was crisply official. After a moment, he came back on the line. “Mrs. Barnes, would you be okay with verifying your home address?” I rattled off our home address. “Yes, we have a Greg Barnes listed here on that date.”

I thanked him, hung up, and called Detective Reynolds. When he picked up, I ran through my discovery. “Do you think it means anything?” I asked.

“We’ve checked a lot of this already, but nothing’s popped.” The loud crinkling of shuffling papers came through the phone. “Hold on, okay?” When he came back on the line three minutes later, he seemed interested. “Yep, we show a corporate credit card charge on May twenty-second for the Omni. In February, he stayed at… hmm… the Grand Del Mar, it looks like.” He let out a low whistle. “That’s a five-star hotel. Surely his company wouldn’t pay for that.”

“No. But they have a special ‘cheating on your spouse’ policy that allows you to use your corporate credit card for personal expenses, and they take it out of your paycheck.”

“Wouldn’t the spouse realize the paycheck was about four hundred dollars short?”

“I wouldn’t. I don’t manage the money. I
used
to like it that way. I’m rethinking that.”

Detective Reynolds cleared his throat. “Okay, so we know where he stayed in San Diego. We knew that before, from his credit card statements. But what does that get us?”

“Nothing, I guess.” I slumped in the chair. “Who is Karen? Maybe she’s our mystery woman?”

“We’re considering it. We’ve pulled the guest lists for all the times Greg stayed at the Omni, and there were a few Karens, but none that would fit our mystery woman. They all were there with families or other people, and none of them knew Greg.” He was quiet for a moment. “But that doesn’t really mean anything. I’d be skeptical that she was even registered, much less had her own room.”

True. If Greg were cheating on me, he wouldn’t have paid for two rooms. We chatted for a few more minutes about the holiday and hung up.

I opened the bottom drawer of the desk. I desperately needed to understand our finances. I pulled a handful of the files and fanned them on the desk. Each file had a label: ING, First Bank, and then one labeled “Inheritance.” The last one commanded my attention. The first page, dated the previous January, looked like a standard bank statement. The sequential pages dated all the way back to May 2001. The statements had Greg’s and my name in the top left-hand corners. In the description column, several transactions were recorded, with interest added and at what percent. When my gaze traveled to the bottom right-hand column, I blinked to see if I had misread the number. The figure next to “Total” was $657,997.23.

I couldn’t comprehend that number. Did that mean six hundred and fifty seven
thousand dollars?
How was that possible? Was that ours? I grabbed the file for ING and scanned the contents. The Total column there was less impressive, only about eight thousand dollars and change. I did the same for First Bank and was relieved to discover that, as of September, we had enough in our checking account to cover the checks I’d been haphazardly writing, although I desperately needed to go lighter on my credit card. I doubted what we had in checking would cover what I’d charged over the last two months.
We.
We
didn’t have anything in checking.
We did have a moderate savings account, both of our names typed officially at the top of the statement.

Satisfied, I piled the paperwork and pushed it off to the side. Then, another thought occurred to me. Did I have access to our accounts if Greg was only missing and not confirmed to be dead or alive? I went back to the “Inheritance” file and spread all the statements out on the desk. After about an hour of studying, I figured out that sometime in 2001, after the death of his mother, Greg inherited a little over a half-million dollars. He had put the money, untouched, in a joint account that I never knew we had. But Greg’s mother had been broke.
He
had told me she was broke.