Before I could talk myself out of it, I threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, gathered my cell phone and purse, and hurried out the front door.
Chapter 40
I walked up Arlington Avenue, then crossed over to Karen’s apartment. Twice. I studied the street where Greg must have been hit, and irrationally, I looked for blood on the pavement. My thoughts were so jumbled. I tried to work it out in my head. Was this sane? Would a normal person do this? I stood outside her apartment building with my back to the bustling street, my palms slick with sweat. A young guy in khakis and a yellow polo shirt hurried up with keys at the ready, and I knew it was my shot. I smiled at him, easy and carefree like I would have years ago, and his eyes lit up. He held the door open for me, and I followed him across the lobby. He opened his mouth to say something, but I slipped into the stairwell just as he turned the other direction.
When I heard the thunk of the elevator doors closing, I went back out into the lobby and studied the mailboxes. Caughee, K. 4D. To avoid Polo Shirt, I slipped back into the stairwell and took the steps two at a time. On the fourth floor, 4D was the first door I saw.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I closed my eyes and knocked. Dinnertime on a Saturday night, what were the chances? But the door opened.
“Hi, can I help you?” A woman stood impatiently, with one hand on the door and the other held a cell phone to her shoulder. I was struck by her age, so incredibly young. Twenty-something at the most.
“I… do you have a minute? I’m Claire Barnes… You might not know me. Or maybe you do? I’m Greg’s wife.”
She held my gaze and brought the cell phone to her face. “I’m going to have to call you back.” She clicked the end button, seemingly without waiting for an answer. “Greg’s wife?” Her voice trembled for a second.
“Greg Barnes,” I said. “He’s been in an accident.”
“Um… the only Greg I know is Greg Randolf. Are you sure you have the right place?”
The name knocked the wind out of me. Randolf had been Greg’s mother’s maiden name. How creative. I felt like laughing. “You’re going to want to let me in.”
I sat at her kitchen table and took in the sparse apartment. Newspapers were piled up on the sideboard, but the place was clean and sparingly decorated in modern, angular furniture. I watched Karen as she busied herself with the coffee pot. She had several inches on me and was naturally thin. Lithe, even. Never in my life could I have been called lithe. I couldn’t stop comparing. She had long blond hair and moved with the assurance of a dancer.
“I travel for work, so I’m sorry for the mess.” She placed two steaming mugs of coffee on the table and settled in the chair across from me. She was pretty, but not beautiful, and that made things better somehow. “You said there was an accident?”
“Two years ago, Greg was mugged and pushed into the path of an oncoming car. He was in a coma at St. Michael’s until six months ago. When he woke up, he didn’t remember anything, not his name, where he was from, nothing.” I spoke slowly, but flat and unemotional. The drawn shades and darkened kitchen lent a surreal cast to the moment, a made-for-TV movie quality that I couldn’t shake.
“Is he okay?” she asked through a hand-covered mouth, her eyebrows knitted in worry.
“Yes, sort of. He will be. Right now, his memory is spotty. He remembered your name, though. And mine and our children.” I purposefully left out any mention of his trouble with recalling Leah; she had no business knowing that.
“Greg was married.” Her statement shocked me. She hadn’t known, then? “It makes sense. I could never call him; he was always travelling, he said.”
“How did you meet?”
“Where else? In a bar. He was here for work. It had to be… oh, three years ago now?” She looked up, as if the ceiling held the memory and gave a small secretive smile, which lit a quick fire in me. Does she have the right to a private memory?
“You didn’t know about his accident, then? The nurses said it was in the paper.” I stirred my coffee and fought the urge to throw my mug against the wall.
“The night he broke up with me was the last time I saw him.”
“What night was that?” My voice was sharper than I’d intended, but I knew the answer before she said it.
“I don’t know the date exactly. I guess it was September… late September.”
“September thirtieth?”
“Maybe. It was a Thursday night. I remember because I was leaving on Friday. I had a concert in New York. I cried the entire bus ride.” Her manner was cool as she appraised me over the rim of her coffee mug, her long thin fingers tapping on the ceramic.
My anger was creeping up, choking me, though it felt misplaced. “Tell me everything, please?” I didn’t look at her, instead choosing to stare into my mug, stirring it slowly.