The grass and the tulips shimmered in the sunlight and went out of focus, as though the laws of gravity had been set in abeyance and would not be restored anytime soon.
An Excerpt from The Wife
Please enjoy this preview from Alafair Burke’s new novel, The Wife, coming from Harper in January 2018.
Prologue
In an instant, I became the woman they assumed I’d been all along: the wife who lied to protect her husband.
I almost didn’t hear the knock on the front door. I had removed the brass knocker twelve days earlier, as if that would stop another reporter from showing up unannounced. Once I realized the source of the sound, I sat up straight in bed, hitting mute on the TV remote. Fighting the instinct to freeze, I forced myself to take a look. I parted the drawn bedroom curtains, squinting against the afternoon sun.
I saw the top of a head of short black hair on my stoop. The Impala in front of the fire hydrant across the street practically screamed “unmarked police car.” It was that same detective, back again. I still had her business card tucked away in my purse, where Jason wouldn’t see it. She kept knocking, and I kept watching her knock, until she sat on the front steps and started reading my paper.
I threw on a sweatshirt over my tank top and pajama pants and made my way to the front door.
“Did I wake you?” Her voice was filled with judgment. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”
I wanted to say I didn’t owe anyone an explanation for lying around my own house, but instead, I muttered that I had a migraine. Lie number one—small, but a lie nonetheless.
“You should take vinegar and honey. Works every time.”
“I think I’d rather have a headache. If you need to talk to Jason, you can call our lawyer.”
“I told you before, Olivia Randall’s not your lawyer. She’s Jason’s.”
I started to close the door, but she pushed it back open. “And you may think your husband’s case is on hold, but I can still investigate, especially when it’s about an entirely new charge.”
I should have slammed the door, but she was baiting me with the threat of incoming shrapnel. I’d rather take it in the face than wait for it to strike me in the back.
“What is it now?”
“I need to know where your husband was last night.”
Of all nights, why did she have to ask about that one? For any other date of our six-year marriage, I could have offered a truthful account.
I already knew from Jason’s lawyer that this wasn’t the stuff covered by spousal privilege. They could haul me in to a grand jury. They could use my failure to answer as proof that I was hiding something. And a detective was at my door with what seemed like a simple question: Where had my husband been the previous night?
“He was here with me.” It had been twelve years since a police officer last asked me a direct question, but my first instinct was still to lie.
“All night?”
“Yes, our friend brought over enough food to last the whole day. It’s not exactly fun to be seen in public these days.”
“What friend?”
“Colin Harris. He brought takeout from Gotham. You can call the restaurant if you need to.”
“Can anyone else vouch that your husband was here with you?”
“My son, Spencer. He called from camp around seven thirty and spoke to both of us.” Words kept escaping my mouth, each phrase seemingly necessitated by the previous one. “Pull up our phone records if you don’t believe me. Now, please, what’s this all about?”
“Kerry Lynch is missing.”
The words sounded funny together. Kerry Lynch is missing. This woman who had been batting us around was suddenly gone, like a sock that never makes it out of the dryer.
Of course it was about that woman. Our entire life had been about her for the last two weeks. My lips kept moving. I told the detective that we streamed La La Land before falling asleep, even though I had watched it alone. So many details, tumbling out.
I decided to go on the offense, making it clear I was outraged the police had come straight to our door when Kerry could be anywhere. I even suggested indignantly that the detective come inside and take a look around, but in reality, my thoughts were racing. I assured myself that Jason could answer questions about the film if asked. He had seen it on the plane the last time he flew home from London. But what if they asked Spencer about the phone call?
The detective was obviously unmoved by my exasperation. “How well do you really know your husband, Angela?”
“I know he’s innocent.”
“You’re more than a bystander. You’re enabling him, which means I can’t help you. Don’t let Jason take you and your boy down with him.”
I waited until the Impala had left to reach for my phone. Jason was in a client meeting, but took my call. I had told him the night before that I didn’t want to speak to him again until I had made some decisions.
“I’m so glad you called.”
With one stupid conversation, I had conformed to the stereotype. I was complicit now. I was all in.
“Jason, Kerry Lynch is missing. Please tell me you didn’t do this because of me.”
I
Rachel
1
The first piece of trouble was a girl named Rachel. Sorry, not a girl. A woman named Rachel.
Even teenagers are called young women now, as if there is something horribly trivial about being a girl. I still have to correct myself. At whatever moment I transformed from a girl to a woman, when I might have cared about the difference, I had other things to worry about.
Jason told me about the Rachel incident the same day it happened. We were at Lupa, seated at our favorite table, a found pocket of quiet in the back corner of the crowded restaurant.
I only had two things to report from my day. The handyman fixed the hinge on the cabinet in the guest bathroom, but said the wood was warping and would eventually need to be replaced. And the head of the auction committee at Spencer’s school called to see if Jason would donate a dinner.
“Didn’t we just do that?” he asked, taking a large bite of the burrata we were sharing. “You were going to cook for someone.”
Spencer is in the seventh grade at Friends Seminary. Every year the school asks us to donate not only money on top of the extraordinary tuition we pay but also an “item” to be sold at the annual auction. Six weeks earlier, I opted for our usual contribution at this year’s event: I’d cater a dinner for eight in the highest bidder’s home. Only a few people in the city connected me now to the summer parties I once planned in the Hamptons, so Jason helped boost my ego by driving the price up. I convinced him to stop once my item had “gone” for a thousand dollars.
“There’s a new chair of the committee for next year,” I explained. “She wants to get a head start. The woman has too much time on her hands.”
“Dealing with someone who fastidiously plans every last detail months in advance? I can’t imagine how awful that must be for you.”
He looked at me with a satisfied smile. I was the planner in the family, the one with daily routines and a long list of what Jason and Spencer called Mom Rules, all designed to keep our lives routine and utterly predictable—good and boring, as I like to say.
“Trust me. She makes me look chill.”
He feigned a shudder and took a sip of wine. “Want to know what that crowd really needs for an auction? A week in the desert without water. A cot in a local homeless shelter. Or how about a decent lay? We’d raise millions.”
I told him the committee had other plans. “Apparently you’re a big enough deal now that people will open up their wallets for a chance to breathe the same air. They suggested dinner with three guests at a—quote—‘socially responsible’ restaurant of your choosing.”
His mouth was full, but I could read the thoughts behind his eye roll. When I first met Jason, no one had heard of him other than his students, coworkers, and a couple of dozen academics who
shared his intellectual passions. I never would have predicted that my cute little egghead would become a political and cultural icon.
“Hey, look on the bright side. You’re officially a celebrity. Meanwhile, I can’t give myself away without getting rejected.”
“They didn’t reject you.”
“No, but they did make it clear that you were the member of the Powell family they want to see listed in next year’s brochure.”
We finally settled on a lunch, not dinner, with two guests, not three, at a restaurant—period, no mention of its social consciousness. And I agreed to persuade one of the other moms to buy the item when the time came, using our money if necessary. Jason was willing to pay a lot to avoid a meal with strangers.
Once our terms were negotiated, he reminded me that he would be leaving the following afternoon to meet with a green energy company based in Philadelphia. He’d be gone for two nights.
Of course, I didn’t need the reminder. I had entered the dates in my calendar—aka the Family Bible—when he first mentioned it.
“Would you like to come with me?” Did he actually want me to join him, or had my expression given me away? “We could get a sitter for Spencer. Or he could tag along.”
The thought of ever returning to the state of Pennsylvania made my stomach turn. “The chess tournament tomorrow, remember?”
I could tell that he did not, in fact, remember. Spencer had little in the way of organized hobbies. He wasn’t a natural athlete and seemed to share Jason’s aversion to group activities. But so far, he was sticking with the chess club.
The subject of his intern, Rachel, did not arise until the waiter brought our pasta: an order of cacio e pepe split between two bowls.
Jason let it slip like it was nothing: “Oh, something a little odd happened to me today at work.”
“In class?” Jason still taught at NYU during the spring semester, but also had his own corporate consulting company and was a frequent talking head on cable television. In addition, he hosted a popular podcast. My husband had a lot of jobs.
“No, at the office. I told you about the interns?” With the university increasingly upset (jealous, Jason thought) about his outside activities, Jason had agreed to start an internship program, where he and his consulting firm would oversee a handful of students each semester. “One of them apparently thinks I’m a sexist pig.”
He was grinning as if it were funny, but we were different that way. Jason found conflict amusing, or at least curious. I avoided it at all costs. I immediately rested my fork against the edge of my bowl.
“Please,” he said, waving a flippant hand. “It’s ridiculous, proof that interns create more work than they’re worth.”
He smiled the entire time he described the incident. Rachel was in either the first or second year of her master’s study. He wasn’t sure. She was one of the weaker students. He suspected, but wasn’t certain, that Zack—the associate he’d tapped with the job of selecting candidates—had included her for purposes of gender diversity. She entered Jason’s office to deliver a memo she had written about a chain of grocery stores. She blurted out that her boyfriend had proposed over the weekend, and held up her left hand to show off a giant diamond.
“What am I,” Jason asked, “her sorority sister?”
“Please tell me you didn’t say that.”
Another eye roll, this time slightly less exaggerated. “Of course not. I honestly don’t remember what I said.”
“And yet . . . ?”
“She says I was sexist.”
“She said this to whom?” I was pretty sure the correct usage was whom. “Why would she say that?”
“She went to Zack. These are the kinds of students we’re accepting these days—a graduate student who doesn’t understand the hierarchy at the firm where she works. She assumes Zack has some kind of power, because he was the one who hired her.”
“But why was she complaining?” I noticed a woman at the next table looking in our direction and lowered my voice. “What is she saying happened?”
“I don’t know. She started running on about getting engaged. She told Zack I said she was too young to get married. That she needed to live a little first.”
Was there something wrong with that? I’d never had a job in a formal office setting. It sounded rude, but not offensive. I told Jason that there had to be more to it if she was complaining.
Another dismissive wave. “That’s how ridiculous these millennials are. It’s considered sexual harassment even to ask someone about their personal life. But if she barges in my office and starts telling me about her engagement, I can’t say anything without melting the special snowflake.”
“So is that what you said? That she was too young and should live a little, or did you call her a special snowflake?” I knew Jason’s harshest opinions about his students.
“Of course not. I don’t know. Honestly, I was annoyed by the whole conversation. I think I said something as a joke. Like, ‘Are you sure you’re ready to get locked down?’ Probably that.”
It was a phrase I’d heard him use before, about not only marriage but anything that was so good that you wanted to hold on to it forever. “Lock that down.”
We put in an early offer on our house. “It’s priced to sell. We need to lock that down.”
A waiter telling us that there were only two more orders of branzino in the kitchen. “We’re good for one. Lock that down.”
I could picture him in his office, interrupted by an intern he’d prefer not to supervise. She’s babbling about her engagement. He couldn’t care less. You’re still in school. You sure you’re ready to lock that down? Jason had a habit of making teasing comments.
I asked him again if that was all that happened, if he was sure there wasn’t something else that could have been misconstrued.
“You don’t know how sensitive these college students are.” The words burned, even though he didn’t mean them to. I had never attended college. “If Spencer turns out like these micro-aggression asshole whiners, I’ll ground him until he’s forty.”
Seeing the expression on my face, he reached for my hand. Spencer actually is special, not a special snowflake. He’s not like these kids who were raised to think they’re extraordinary even though they’re extra-ordinary. Jason said he was kidding, and I knew he was. And I felt guilty because I realized I—like Rachel the girl intern—was being too sensitive, was feeling too special.
“So now what happens?” I asked.
Jason shrugged, as if I’d asked what he’d like to donate to the auction. “Zack will deal with it. Thank god the semester’s almost over. But screw her if she thinks she’s getting a recommendation.”
As I poured a little more wine into my glass, I really thought that was the only thing at stake in Jason’s interaction with Rachel—whether a graduate student would get a recommendation.
It would be four days until I realized how naive I had been.
2
New York City Police Department
Omniform System—Complaints
May 14
Occurrence Location: 1057 Avenue of the Americas
Name of Premises: FSS Consulting
Narrative:Victim states that suspect “encouraged” sexual contact during business appointment.
Victim: Rachel Sutton
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Race: White
Victim walked into precinct at 17:32 and asked to file a complaint. She proceeded to report that a coworker, Jason Powell, “encouraged” sexual contact between them. Victim presented calmly and did not appear distraught. When I asked her what type of sexual contact, she said, “He suggested that I should be sexual with him.”
When I asked her to explain what she meant by “encouraged” and “suggested,” she did not respond. I asked if there had been any physical contact between them or if he had threatened her or forced her to do anything she did not want to do. She abruptly accused me of not belie
ving her and left the station over my repeated requests that she continue her complaint.
Conclusion: Forward report to SVU for consideration of further action.
Signed: L. Kendall
3
The woman who called about Jason donating a meal to next year’s auction was Jen Connington. I no longer use names when I tell Jason what is happening in the parts of our lives he doesn’t see, because I know he won’t remember them. Jen is mother to Madison and Austin, wife to Theo. A top-three competitor for queen bee of the Friends Seminary Moms and newly appointed chair of the auction committee.
When I picked up the phone, she said, “Hey there, Angie.”
My name isn’t Angie. To the extent I ever had a nickname, it was Gellie, and only my parents ever used it. I guess women who shorten Jennifer to Jen assume that Angelas are Angies. “Thanks so much for your offer to cater another dinner!!” Exclamation points added. “But we thought you might want a break next year.”
We. I immediately wondered which of the other moms was involved in whatever change was about to be decreed. “Seriously, Jen, it’s the least we can do.” My use of we felt smaller.
I immediately imagined her telling Theo over cocktails that night: “How many times does she have to remind us that she used to cater to the rich and famous in the Hamptons?” It was the only real job I ever had. At the time, I was pretty proud of myself, but women like Jen Connington would never stop seeing me as someone who had peaked as the help.
“Well, call me a radical feminist, but we thought it was about time for some of the dads to do their equal share, so to speak.” She laughed at her play on the title of Jason’s bestselling book, Equalonomics. “Don’t you think we should convince Jason to come out of hiding?”
Waking Kylie Page 3