He'd noticed most when she'd stopped..
She'd stopped when she'd gotten pregnant--when a lot of things seemed to change. It hadn't been an easy pregnancy, though it had started out happily enough. They had talked about furniture shopping together and painting the nursery. He'd even made it to the first three office visits and signed them up for Lamaze classes. He was adamant about being a partner in the experience. Then things blew up at work. He had to go to New York for six weeks to help save his biggest corporate client from a hostile-takeover attempt. When he returned home, Beth had changed. Not just physically, though the difference between her fifth month and the seventh was undeniably dramatic, especially to a husband who had been away. It was more a matter of her mind-set and personality. She seemed worn down by the constant nausea--and it did seem constant. Early in the morning and late at night, Gus heard the honking from behind the closed bathroom door. Beth had called it morning sickness, and he had accepted the explanation at face value, knowing better than to argue with a pregnant woman. Now, however, he wasn't so sure. He was thinking of what Dr. Shippee had said, how the enamel on her teeth suggested that her eating disorder had been going on for a long time. Those awful sounds from the bathroom might well have been the early signs of trouble. He remembered how Beth had almost seemed happy about the nausea in the first couple of months, because it had kept her weight down. In hindsight, she'd seemed unduly intrigued by the rare reported cases of women with nausea throughout their entire pregnancy. Maybe it wasn't nature that had extended her morning sickness beyond the normal thirteen weeks. It might well have been as vulgar as a finger down the throat.
Had he not been so busy, maybe he would have taken a different look at her obsession with gaining no more than eighteen pounds, her insistence on wearing her tight blue jeans just as soon as the cesarian scar healed, her crying jag when she couldn't button them. Something more than pregnancy and hormones was going on. But Gus had let it go.
He'd let too many things go in the last few years. And, as Carla had said, it came with a price: He'd stopped knowing his own wife. He wondered what exactly that meant. Was she criticizing him for not being sensitive to her needs? Or was she telling him that if Beth came back today, if he sat down and really talked to her, he'd literally find he didn't even know her?
Whatever she'd meant, the entire train of thought was leading him in one direction. He was becoming ever more intrigued by something he'd been afraid to check out, something he could never have believed was true. Until now.
Gus put the earrings back in the box and went to the walk-in closet. It was huge, with rows and rows of his business suits on the left. To the right was Beth's space. It was more like a room than a closet. A silk-covered settee faced the big triple mirror. The lighting was indirect candescent, not the fluorescent kind that made it more difficult to determine subtle shades of color in fabrics. The shelves and built-in drawers were solid maple. Nearly an entire wall was devoted just to shoes and sweaters. Hanging clothes lined the other three walls, organized from casual to formal, left to right.
He opened a few drawers randomly, seeing nothing unusual. He flipped through some skirts and dresses on hangers, then stopped. One dress still had the tags on it. He pulled it down. It had an empire waistline. Beth hated that style. He remembered how she'd nearly died when an old sorority sister had gotten married and all the bridesmaids had to wear burnt-orange gowns with empire waistlines. She'd felt like the long, glowing end of those flashlights cops used to direct traffic. It was funny at the time. Not so funny now.
Gus scanned the rack for a dress he was sure she had worn. He found the beaded evening gown she'd worn to the firm's Christmas party and checked the label. It was a size six. He glanced at the other dress. Size twelve.
He draped it over his arm and quickly searched the rack for more dresses with tags. He found a sundress, size ten. A wool skirt, size two. Quickly, he did the same with the shoes on the shelves against the other wall. He found a pair of heels she used to wear and a pair of hiking boots. Both size seven. On the bottom shelf was a leather boot with no mate, the tag still on the sole, never been worn. Size eleven. A beige pump, size four. Again, no mate.
He felt chills down his spine. He stared into the triple mirror, seeing himself from all angles, his arms full of odd-sized clothes his wife could never wear.
It was just as Morgan had said. She was stealing things just for the sake of stealing. Clothes that didn't fit. Odd shoes with their mate still in the back storage room at Nordstrom's. She was filling her closet with useless trophies of the hunt.
"Dear God," he said softly. "What happened to you, Beth?"