“Yes! Oh, my God. Pitch white.” We howled.
Greg appeared in the doorway, his expression unreadable. I stood up, aware somehow that I had gone a bit too far, but grateful for Greg’s willingness to put himself last, even if for only one night. Glancing at the kitchen, where the dishes were piled on the counter, I inwardly groaned.
“Drew and I will take care of it, honey. Go on up,” Greg said, his voice light.
I watched him skeptically, looking for signs. Was he jealous? Angry? He didn’t seem so. “Are you sure? I can do it tomorrow…”
“Go to bed. We’ll start, and as far as we get, we get. Then, we can pick it up tomorrow.”
Knowing I only had about two hours of sleep before I was up again for a feeding, I walked down the hall. Shielded by the staircase, I paused in the hallway, listening. What would they talk about? Me? I stood silent and still, but heard only the sounds of glasses clanking as they made their way into the dishwasher.
I started up the steps, and then stopped when I heard Greg’s voice. “I wonder how long you’ve been in love with my wife.”
My heart hammered. Why would he say that? And then a new thought, What would Drew’s answer be? I leaned forward, keeping out of sight as much as I could.
Greg spoke again, a register lower. “… married me… sometimes… don’t know why, but she did…”
I tried to imagine Drew, what he would say. I waited for his reply, but heard nothing except the clattering of silverware.
I was paralyzed by humiliation. For Greg. For myself. For Drew. Was Greg right? All Drew had ever done was reject me. Was I that transparent? I crept up the steps.
As I waited in bed, staring into the dark, Greg’s words raced through my mind. Did he really think Drew was in love with me? If so, why had he never said anything to me? Why would he just fade in and out of the room, leaving Drew and me to catch up, talk, laugh? It didn’t make sense.
I heard the door creak open, and a few minutes later, Greg slid into bed beside me. I lay very still, pretending to be asleep. He moved across the bed, deftly sliding one arm under me as his other hand cupped my breast. His lips met my neck, and he pulled me into his body, a solid bulk form where I always felt sexy.
In the back of my mind, I tried to make sense of the conversation, fairly confident that Drew hadn’t confirmed Greg’s suspicions. Jealousy, surely, right? As his hand slid down, pushing off my pajama bottoms, my mind lost the ability to reason. In that moment, Greg’s questioning felt primal. And with his mouth leaving a hot trail of need down to my core, I no longer cared. He covered my body with his, in all its familiarity, made all the more tantalizing by the sides of my husband I perhaps didn’t know.
The next morning, I almost believed that I had dreamt the entire thing.
Chapter 14
Detective Reynolds shifted in Greg’s chair, waiting patiently for me to catch up.
My mind reeled, backpedaling, looking for an escape. “Four times?” I repeated.
The detective nodded slowly.
“Four times in the past year, Greg has lied about where he’s been.”
He added another nod, confirming my summary. Superfluous really. Receiving affirmation wouldn’t make my words feel real.
He cleared his throat. “Greg took eighteen trips last year. That’s actually quite a lot. We can confirm that fourteen of them are legitimate. We compared his itineraries with his manager’s training schedule. So the four trips that he lied about were February tenth, May twenty-second, July sixteenth, and then this one, September twenty-seventh.”
The trips were a blur to me, one long business trip—more accurately, the same trip repeated once, twice a month. I remembered only one, February tenth. We had a fight about it.
Really? Valentine’s Day? What kind of company commands travel on Valentine’s Day?
Claire, understand, Valentine’s Day isn’t actually a national holiday.
Well, then, your company should stop calling themselves the “Family Company” because they clearly don’t care about divorce rates.
You’re so dramatic. It’s one year, one time.
If he’d lied, he did it because he wanted to be somewhere else on Valentine’s Day. My hand over my mouth, I ran to the downstairs bathroom, retching my disbelief and hatred into the bowl. If only I could actually do that. I washed my hands and studied my reflection in the mirror. My complexion was pale and sallow, with bruised circles under my eyes from sleeplessness. I spotted wrinkles around my mouth and eyes that had not been there three months ago. I rinsed my face and my mouth and returned to the living room.