The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  “And?”

  “She wanted to know the implications to you and Spencer of this lawsuit against Jason. Is something going on?”

  “Of course something’s going on. That woman’s trying to take us for every dime she can get. I’m sure Susanna’s just worried about me, but I’m not stupid. We could end up broke. I’ve already thought about that. I can go back to catering. Spencer can go to public school. The good thing about growing up poor is that you already know what it’s like.”

  The thought of returning to the East End was intolerable. We could go somewhere else and start over. Scottsdale or Tampa. One of those places that normal people go to.

  “It wasn’t merely a general sense of worry, Angela. Susanna specifically asked me whether you could protect yourself by filing for divorce before any kind of judgment is entered.”

  I sighed. “The thought never crossed my mind. I’ll talk to her. Don’t worry about it.”

  “But that’s why I came over. It never crossed my mind, either, and I realized I owe you an apology for that. When this all came down, I told you—as your friend—that you didn’t have to stay. And you told me you wanted to, at least to get Jason through this. But I didn’t talk to you about that decision as a lawyer. And since then, all I’ve been trying to do is help Jason.”

  “Me too.”

  “Just hear me out so I can live with myself. If you filed for divorce now, there’s a good chance that you could take your part of the assets and shield them from a judgment. You could get the house—”

  “I could never afford to carry it—”

  “That’s not the point. You’d have the equity. Half of his pension, half the liquid assets. It’s possible they’d argue that your settlement with Jason was a sham to try to protect assets, but given the nature of the allegations against him, it would look completely legitimate. And if you and Jason get back together down the road, well, then, so be it. A court’s not going to stop you from getting remarried. Or, who knows? Maybe you’d want to be on your own by then.”

  “Does Jason know you’re telling me this?”

  “No, and at this point, I honestly don’t give a fuck if I’m violating professional ethics. I figured I’d tell you the options, and if you want me to talk to him about it, I’m happy to. If not, I’ll never bring it up again. Not to defend much of what Jason has done, but he really is trying to protect you.”

  “It doesn’t always feel that way.”

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but since I’m an open book today, Olivia Randall called me yesterday. She wanted me to see if you’d do some kind of public interview, basically saying you and Jason had an open marriage.” Before I began to respond, he had a rebuttal prepared. “I told her you would never agree to that, and as your friend, I would never suggest it. Importantly, she said that Jason refused to ask you, too.”

  “That woman’s a pit bull.”

  “Well, she’s Jason’s pit bull.”

  “She’s really good, huh?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I recommended her. Up there with the very best.”

  “Plus, she’s a woman,” I said.

  “Well, yes. It doesn’t hurt to have a woman speaking up for you on this type of a case.”

  “She’s pretty, too.” I blurted what I had been wondering since I first met her: “Are you guys a thing?”

  “We went out a few times. It was a while ago. Olivia’s not—a relationship person. Why did you ask?” His eyes were filled with a blend of fear and hope. I remembered the way a certain look from Jason used to be able to stir something overwhelming in me. I felt a yearning for something I never thought I would miss.

  I shrugged, but held his gaze. “I was just wondering. It seemed to make sense, the two of you, together.”

  “No, of the women I’ve let slip by, she’s not the one who makes sense for me.”

  The one. The one he wished he had met at Susanna’s party the night she met his best friend instead.

  “That thing you said about splitting things up, what do you think I should do?”

  He sighed heavily. “Please, don’t ask me that. I’ll do anything else for you, but not that. He’s still my friend.”

  “And I’m still his wife.”

  He looked up at the ceiling. “Fuck, I hate this.”

  I leaned toward him, pausing to see if he’d stop me. He didn’t. I kissed him, gently at first, and then so urgently, I was on my feet, leaning into him.

  “Angela, wait—”

  “You said anything. You’d do anything.”

  He drew in his breath.

  “This is what I need right now,” I whispered. “I need this.”

  The first time was clumsy and frenzied, almost violent, the edges of the cold kitchen tile scraping against my back. When it was over, he rolled me on top of him and held me in his arms. I didn’t speak because I didn’t want him to leave. I remained perfectly still while he held me, stroked my hair, tickled the small of my back, whatever he wanted. When I felt him respond beneath me, I slid lower, not worrying about whether those flashbacks that came and went beyond my control would suddenly return. I took him by the hand and led him upstairs, opting for Spencer’s room only because I didn’t want Colin to see reminders of Jason and stop what we had started.

  I didn’t care that I was in my son’s bed, or with Jason’s best friend. For the next two hours, I wasn’t a mother, and I wasn’t a wife. I was with this man who knew me and wanted me and had made me want him, at least for this day. We did everything I wanted, at the pace I set, and when we were finally done, I asked him to leave and to never mention it again.

  When he was gone, I ate the food he had brought until I couldn’t take another bite, then went upstairs to my room to reread, once again, the printout that Susanna had given me at the courthouse.

  41

  I was freshly showered and getting ready to leave a voice mail for Susanna when she picked up. “Oh thank god, I was starting to think you were never going to speak to me again.”

  “That would never happen.” I hadn’t talked to her since we were at the courthouse yesterday.

  “I was giving myself one more day before I was going to call you.”

  “But you did call Colin,” I said.

  “He told you?”

  “Of course he did. You asked him whether I should get a divorce.”

  “Honey, please don’t be mad at me. I am seriously worried about you. What you said to me the other day about Jason—that’s not normal in a marriage. You’ve got me looking at this whole thing in a different light.”

  “You think he’s guilty.”

  “No, I didn’t say that.” The way she said it made it clear that she didn’t not say it either. “Hear me out. I don’t think it’s for me, or even you, to decide whether he did this or not. He has the courts for that. My main priority is to look out for my best friend and her son.”

  I could feel the phone start to shake in my hand. This didn’t feel real.

  “Look, when Kerry first came forward, I assumed she’d be some kook and a DNA test would clear the whole thing up. Then when the DNA came back, I thought, well, so he’s an asshole who cheated on my friend, but he’s not a criminal. I was standing right next to you in the bunker, ready to defend him, because he’s our Jason. But I’m stepping back now, Angela. He’s not the good guy here. Whether he’s guilty or not, he’s a liar. And a cheater. He hired a fucking prostitute, for Christ’s sake, and that’s only the one time you know about. And then whatever happened between the two of you—it sounds like he let you think all these years it was somehow your fault. And I don’t think it was. If he was doing something you didn’t want him to do, that is never your fault.”

  “You don’t need to tell me what rape is.”

  “I’m sorry, but I think that’s exactly what I need to do.”

  The article she gave me was supposedly an explanation for why some women don’t realize when they’ve experienced an assault that would leg
ally constitute rape. According to the author, women are taught to fear strangers who lurk in alleys and behind bushes, emerging from the shadows with a gun or a knife to attack us when we least expect it. We’re also taught that victims of the crime are damaged, broken like Humpty Dumpty, never to be put back together again.

  In reality, most women are attacked by someone they know—the essay said about 80 percent. Only about 11 percent of cases involve a weapon.

  The author suggested that women underreport sexual assault because they aren’t sure it’s a crime when their case doesn’t fit the armed-stranger stereotype. They tell themselves it was a drunken date gone bad, that he must not have heard them say no, that it was somehow their fault. She posited that “cognitive dissonance” was at work: for their own psychological survival, women would rather excuse what happened to them than to label themselves with the ultimate stigma—rape victim. Some went so far as to apologize to their assailants for even momentarily suggesting that the “r-word” might apply.

  Susanna was trying to tell me I was one of those women. “You went through something unimaginably horrible as a teenager, Angela. I’m not equating anything that may have happened with Jason to that. But isn’t it possible that you convinced yourself it was normal because at least it wasn’t what you suffered through before?”

  “Don’t even compare them.”

  “I’m not. Jason is not that Franklin monster. But that doesn’t mean Jason is good, or loving. You obviously experienced something traumatic with him. I know how much you love him. And then you told me that something happened between you, and for three years you’ve been allowing yourself to live in this constructed world, trying to pretend like you’re okay, the way you always have.”

  “I really did think we were okay. I don’t understand why this is happening.”

  “Please, trust me. I’ve spoken to so many survivors about this, women who spent years feeling alone and self-conscious, and then they tell the story of what happened to them, and it’s like the sky opens up. What happened that night with Jason? I promise, you can tell me.”

  I was regretting ever mentioning this to her. I could tell she was never going to leave me alone until I gave her some explanation. “We were—you know. And everything was good. Really good, better than usual. And then I told him that he could tie me up.”

  Susanna was silent on the other end of the line. I was glad I was telling her this over the phone. I felt my face burning.

  “I had read one of those magazine articles about how to spice things up in the bedroom and got it into my head that I needed to make an effort. He was pretty into it when I was the one to bring it up. He took a belt and he wrapped it around my wrists. When he buckled it to the headboard, it’s like a switch flipped. I freaked out, and had a flashback, but it was too late. I couldn’t move my arms. I was just . . . there. When it was over, he realized I was upset and felt guilty about it. I think it made him afraid to touch me again.”

  “What do you mean, it was too late?”

  “I mean, I had already told him I wanted to do it.”

  “But when you freaked out, what happened?”

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to answer her question.

  “Angela, what happened?”

  “I was trying to pull my arms free and telling him to stop, but he kept going. He didn’t realize until after, when I was crying. And then we never really talked about it. It was this thing we couldn’t get past.”

  I could feel Susanna thinking through the phone line. “Okay, this is what we’re doing,” she announced. “You’re packing a bag and coming over here right now. And I’m hiring a separate lawyer for you.”

  “I’m fine—”

  “Damn it—” I had to hold the phone away from my ear. I could not remember ever hearing her raise her voice, let alone to me. “Stop saying you’re fine. You may think you’re fine, but your situation is not.”

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Of course it has. Angela, don’t you see it? What you described to me? That is rape.”

  The word felt like a punch.

  “You’re his wife, and you were struggling and crying and saying no, and he—that is a crime. And if he did that to you, he could have done it to Kerry Lynch, too. And that bullshit story he told you about changing his clothes in front of his intern— No. You have to get out of that house before this all comes crashing down. I’m not going to let you stand by his side while he loses everything. You have to leave right now. When I called Colin earlier, he said that Jason’s lawyer already e-mailed him the discovery she got from the DA. You were in court yesterday. She was stalling the criminal case in the hopes of buying that woman off—the prosecutor himself said so. They could settle that case at any second. You have to protect yourself—and Spencer.”

  I was still reeling from her initial response. I was replaying that whole night in my head, looking at my bed as if I were an outsider, picturing myself with my wrists above my head, my face turned away from him. That wouldn’t have been a signal to him that something was wrong. I often turned my head. It was my way of dealing with the flashbacks. I’d close my eyes and wait for them to stop. I never told him, so I couldn’t fault him for that. But that night was different. I was struggling—thrashing—trying to get free. I said his name. I said stop and I said no, but he was in some other place, like I wasn’t there, until it was over.

  And while I was picturing myself, naked and crying with my arms bound while my husband processed what had happened between us, Susanna was talking about civil settlements and assets and timing and filing dates.

  I didn’t like Susanna’s use of the same word to describe that night with Jason and the three years of Charles Franklin’s torture. They were different. But what happened with Jason definitely wasn’t the same as what I’d just experienced with Colin. That’s why I had needed him today—to remember what it was like to share that act with someone who loved me. Maybe it was using him, and maybe someday I would apologize, but for now, it was something special, only for me. I would add it to my box of secrets.

  I thought about what my mother said, right after Rachel Sutton came forward. Misunderstandings don’t happen when a situation is black and white. They only happen when there are shades of gray, when there could be two different versions of the same damn thing.

  I was seeing two versions of what happened that night with Jason—the one I believed for the past three years, and the one I was seeing now.

  “I’m sorry, Susanna, I can’t do this right now. It’s too much.” It was taking everything for me not to scream.

  “Can I come over? Please?”

  “No. But thank you,” I offered quickly. “I know you’re looking out for me. I promise I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I needed to think. And I needed to read. I reached for my laptop and logged into Jason’s e-mail account. Susanna said Olivia had sent the case evidence. I wanted to see it for myself.

  My laptop was still open, in front of me on the bed, when Jason got home.

  He was emptying the contents of his pockets onto the tray on his nightstand. “Hey, I just talked to Olivia. Good news! That plaintiff’s attorney is open to settling. The idea of paying anyone a dime makes me sick to my stomach, but this might finally be going away. I can always do consulting work for another shop, but we may need to sell the house. I don’t have an exact number yet. I swear, I’ll make it up—”

  He didn’t seem to notice that I was glaring at him as he ran on about various settlement numbers, each of them more than my parents ever made in their best decade, combined. He seemed to have forgotten that I told him that I’d stand by him through this because I believed he was innocent and knew he needed me. He thought I would celebrate the “good news” of paying off his former mistress—or maybe victim, or both—as if he’d never cheated on me, as if there was no possibility that I was leaving.

  “Get out.”

  “Angela—”

  “Get out. Get OUT!” I
was slamming the laptop up and down on the comforter, seconds away from hurling it at him. I jumped from the bed and charged at him, pushing him out of the door to the staircase. “I swear to god, get out of this house. Now. Or so help me, I will call the DA myself and tell them whatever they want to hear.”

  He turned when he reached the bottom of the staircase, one hand on the front-door knob. He looked confused and hurt. He was waiting for me to change my mind.

  “Go. I just need some time. This is all too much.”

  His gaze dropped to the floor. “I don’t understand. What happened—”

  “Seriously, I can’t look at you right now. You need to leave.”

  When he was gone, I locked the door, knowing that his keys were still on the nightstand. I had the house to myself again, and it felt good.

  When Spencer called that evening, he told me about his new friend, Isaac, who used to be named Isabelle. Spencer said some of the noncity kids were freaked out until it turned out Isaac was basically better at everything than they were. I was about to say good-bye when he surprised me by asking to say hi to Dad.

  “Aw, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I forgot an avocado from the market and asked him to run over to Citarella.” I immediately regretted the specificity of the lie, but Spencer didn’t seem to suspect anything.

  “All right. Um, I guess, could you tell him that I did want to say hi?”

  “Absolutely. He’s going to be so upset to miss you.”

  “Whatever.” He was putting on a tough front, but I could tell that his self-titled “ice age” against his father was starting to thaw.

  I had no idea how I was going to tell him the truth, if I ever figured out what that was.

  I had just hung up when my cell phone rang again. The screen read “Colin Home.” I was about to decline the call until I realized how much I wanted to hear his voice.