Silver Girl (41 page)

The caller ID said,
NUMBER
UNAVAILABLE
,
and Meredith’s brain shouted out a warning, even as she picked up the phone and said hello.

A female voice said, “Meredith?”

“Yes?” Meredith said. It wasn’t Connie, but the voice sounded like she knew her, and Meredith thought,
Oh, my God. It’s Ashlyn!

The voice said, “This is Rae Riley-Moore? From the
New York Times?
”

Meredith was confused. Not Ashlyn. Someone else. Someone selling something? The paper? The voice sounded familiar to Meredith because that was how telemarketers did it now; they acted like you were an old friend. Meredith held the phone in two fingers, ready to drop it like a hot potato.

“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” Rae Riley-Moore said.

At home.
This wasn’t Meredith’s home. If this was a telemarketer, she wouldn’t have asked for Meredith. She would have asked for Connie.

Meredith said nothing. Rae Riley-Moore was undeterred.

“And so early. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Meredith swallowed. She looked down the hall to the closed door of Toby’s room. He would still be fast asleep. But a few days ago, he’d said,
If you need to come into this room for any reason, just walk right in. I am here for you, Meredith. Whatever you need.

At the time she had thought,
Here for me? Ha!

Meredith said, “I’m sorry. What can I do for you?”

“I’m calling about the news that broke this morning?” Rae Riley-Moore said. “In regard to your husband?”

Meredith spoke without thinking. “Is he dead?” Suddenly, the world stopped. There was no bedroom, no old boyfriend, no beautiful island, no $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Meredith was suspended in a white-noise vacuum, waiting for an answer to come through the portal that was the phone in her hand.

“No,” Rae said. “He’s not dead. And he’s not hurt.”

Things came back into focus, though Meredith was still disoriented. This wasn’t Ashlyn, and it wasn’t a telemarketer trying to sell her a subscription. This was something about Freddy. Meredith sat down on the smooth, white cotton of Connie’s bed. There, on the nightstand, was Connie’s clock radio, its blue numbers said 7:16. Certainly, Meredith knew better than to answer the phone. If the phone rang at seven o’clock in the morning, it was for a terrible, awful, disturbing reason.

“What then?” Meredith asked. “What is it?”

“Federal investigators have found evidence of an affair between your husband and a Mrs. Samantha Deuce. Your interior designer?”

Decorator,
Meredith thought automatically. Samantha wasn’t certified in interior design.

“And at two a.m. this morning, Mrs. Deuce made a statement to the press confirming the affair. She said that she and your husband had been together for six and a half years.”

Meredith gagged. She thought,
Oh, God, it’s true.
She thought,
It’s true, it’s true, Samantha and Freddy, Samantha confessed, it’s true!
She thought,
Hang up!
But Meredith couldn’t bring herself to hang up.

“Is this news to you?” Rae asked.

Was it news to her? It was. And it wasn’t. “Yes,” Meredith whispered. Her lips were wet with saliva.

“I’m sorry,” Rae said. And she did, Meredith had to admit, sound sorry. “I didn’t realize… I thought you knew.”

“Well, now I hope it’s clear,” Meredith said. She cleared her throat. “I hope it’s clear… that I knew
nothing
about what Freddy did behind closed doors.”

“Okay,” Rae Riley-Moore said. “So it’s fair to say you’re shocked and hurt.”

Shocked. Could she honestly say
shocked?
Hurt, yes. And nothing about this was fair.

“You’re telling me Samantha
confessed
to this?” Meredith said. “You’re telling me she said they’d been together for six and a half
years?
”

“Since the summer of 2004,” Rae said.

Summer 2004: Meredith rummaged. Cap d’Antibes? No, Sam had never been with them to France, though she’d dropped hints, hadn’t she? Southampton? Yes, Samantha had come to their house in Southampton all the time—she and Trent had a place in Bridgehampton. Samantha, it now seemed to Meredith, had always been around. She had decorated three of the Delinns’ four homes, down to the teaspoons, down to the hatbox toilets. Samantha had been their tastemaker, their stylist. She and Meredith used to go shopping together; Samantha picked out clothes for Meredith and clothes for Meredith to buy Freddy. She had insisted on the Yankees memorabilia and the antique piggy banks for Freddy’s den.

Meredith had
seen
them together in his den; Meredith had
seen
Freddy’s hand on Samantha’s lower back. But Meredith had turned a blind eye, thinking,
No, not Freddy. Never.

“Were they… are they… in
love?
” Meredith asked. She couldn’t believe she was asking a total stranger, but she had to have the answer. She tried to remember: Had Samantha been at the indictment? No. Had she been at the sentencing? Meredith wasn’t sure, since she herself hadn’t attended the sentencing. Meredith hadn’t heard from Samantha when the news broke—not a phone call, not an e-mail—except for an invoice for a small piece of artwork that arrived after Freddy was already in the city jail. Meredith had handed the invoice over to her attorneys. She didn’t have the money to pay for it; it was something for Freddy’s office. It was, she remembered now, a photograph of an Asian city that Meredith hadn’t recognized.

“Malacca,” Freddy had said. Meredith had been visiting Fred at the office a few weeks before the collapse. She had noticed the photograph hanging behind his desk, and she’d asked about it. “It’s the cultural capital of Malaysia.”

The invoice had been for twelve hundred dollars.

Twelve hundred dollars,
Meredith thought now.
For a photograph of a place we’ve never been.

Meredith had thought the invoice might have a note written on it, an expression of sympathy or concern. But no.

“Did she say they were in love?” Meredith asked again, more forcefully. “Mrs. Deuce. Samantha. Did she say that?”

Down the hall, the door to Toby’s room opened, and Toby stepped out. He stood, in boxers and a T-shirt, looking at her.

Meredith held up a finger. She needed to hear the answer.

“She said she was writing a book,” Rae Riley-Moore said.

Meredith hung up the phone. She walked toward Toby, and Toby walked toward her, and they met in the middle of the hallway.

Toby said, “I have some bad news.”

The bad news was that Toby had been awoken by a commotion outside. There were news vans lining the road at the edge of Connie’s property.

“I assume they’re here for you?” Toby said.

“Oh, my God.” Meredith couldn’t have felt more exposed if they’d caught her stepping out of the shower. How did they know where she was staying? The police dispatcher, maybe. Or someone at the salon. Or they’d been tipped off by the wretched person who was terrorizing her.

“Do you know what it’s about?” Toby said.

Meredith peered out the window. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it.”

“Did something happen?” Toby asked. “Who was on the phone?”

“A reporter from the
New York Times,
” Meredith said.

Toby stared at her.

“Freddy had an affair with our decorator, Samantha, for six and a half years.” Meredith said these words, but she didn’t believe them. She understood they were, most likely, the truth, but she didn’t
believe
them.

Toby reached out for her. Meredith closed her eyes. Toby smelled like warm sleep. If she were brutally honest with herself, she would admit that she’d been wanting Toby to hold her like this for days. She’d been pushing him away, scorning him at every opportunity—he was still a teenager in so many ways, he had never grown up—but the truth was, she yearned for a little piece of what they’d had back then. But now, with this news, the only man she could think about was Freddy. Was it possible that she still loved Freddy? And if that wasn’t possible, then why did she feel this way?

“The guy is a bastard, Meredith,” Toby said.

Right,
Meredith thought. That was the predictable answer. Freddy had cheated so many people, why would he not cheat Meredith? He was a liar; why would he not lie to Meredith? Mmm, impossible to explain.

Meredith had believed that Freddy had adored her. Worshipped her.

The idea that she might have been wrong about that—so very, very wrong—made her dizzy and nauseous. She pulled away from Toby and bent at the waist, bringing her head to her knees. The pike position in diving. She thought,
Okay, this is where I crumble, where I dissolve. I fall to the floor and I… I cry.

But no, she wouldn’t. She took a breath and stood up.

“What do we do about the reporters?” she asked. “How do we make them leave?”

“Call the police?” he said.

“Are they breaking the law?” she asked.

“If they set foot on the property, they’re trespassing.”

“They won’t set foot on the property,” Meredith said. “Will they?”

“Call the police anyway?” Toby said, “Or… you could give them what they want. Give them a statement.”

Right. They wanted a statement. They wanted Meredith to decry Freddy, call him a bastard, a liar, a cheater. She looked at Toby’s face uncertainly, although it wasn’t Toby’s face she was seeing; it was Freddy’s face. Just as Freddy had been unable to give Meredith certain things, so now Toby would be unable to give her the answer to… why.

Why? Had Meredith done something wrong? Was Samantha Deuce better than Meredith in some way? Was she able to give Freddy something Meredith couldn’t give him? Meredith had given him everything. Everything.

Toby said, “I’ll call the police anyway. And I have to call Connie. She’ll want to know that there are barbarians at the gate. Okay?”

Meredith nodded. Toby went for his cell phone. Meredith went into her bathroom, where she retched into the toilet until there was nothing left inside of her.

Toby brought Meredith a mug of coffee that she couldn’t even look at, much less drink, and his cell phone. He had Connie on the other line.

Meredith said, “Hello?”

Connie said, “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Meredith was in the kitchen. She was in a bright, sunny room with a pack of wolves at her back. “It’s a beautiful day,” Meredith said. “You and Dan should do something fun. You should avoid the house until we figure out what to do about all these reporters.”

“Dan called Ed Kapenash,” Connie said. “They’re sending someone out to disperse the crowd.”

“I hope that works,” Meredith said.

“Is there anything I can do?” Connie asked. “For you?”

Take me back to yesterday,
Meredith thought. “No,” she said. Everything that had to be done, she had to do herself.

“You don’t even sound angry,” Connie said. “Aren’t you
angry,
Meredith?”

Angry,
Meredith thought.

“You’re not going to let him off the hook for this, too, are you?” Connie said.

“I haven’t let him off the hook for any of his actions, Connie,” Meredith said. She heard something confrontational in her voice. She didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to feel. She wanted to
think.
She wanted to
know.
She said, “I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Connie said. “I love you, you know.”

Meredith had been waiting all summer to hear Connie speak those words. Meredith hoped she was sincere and not saying them out of pity. “I love you, too.”

She managed to wash her face and change into clothes. She put on a very comfortable white skirt and a soft pink T-shirt. She brushed her hair and her teeth. But something about all of these simple actions felt final, as though she were doing them for the last time. How could she go on?

Toby knocked at the door. He poked his head in. “How are you doing? Are you okay?”

She wanted to be left alone. But she was terrified of being left alone. She said, “They’re still out there?”

“Yes, but the police are coming any minute. I’m going down to wait for them. Will you be okay?”

Okay?
she thought.

Meredith tried to be calm and rational. Unlike the eighth of December, when she was forced to deal with a situation of such enormous proportions her mind could scarcely comprehend it, today was simple. Today was a man cheating on his wife. She, Meredith, was the wife.

She didn’t feel any pain yet; she was suspended in a kind of breathless shock. Why shock? She had seen Samantha and Freddy together in Freddy’s den. She had caught Freddy with his hand on Samantha’s back. Meredith had witnessed them together, but she had dismissed it. It was a piece of dandelion fuzz that she’d blown off her palm into the wind. And why? If she ignored it, then it wasn’t real? What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her? Was that true, also, of Freddy’s heinous crimes? Hadn’t she been staring them right in the face but been refusing to see?

Toby was still downstairs. Meredith crept along the hall, to Connie’s master suite. She opened the door to Connie’s bathroom.

The pills were there. Six amber bottles in a line. Meredith checked the label of each one, as though she’d forgotten the exact names of the drugs or the exact order she would find them in or the exact heft of each bottle in her hand. Connie hadn’t been taking the pills.

Meredith wanted the Ativan. And, yes, it occurred to her to take the whole bottle and end her life right there in Connie’s room. If what Samantha had told the press was true, if she and Fred had been
lovers—
at the thought of this word, Meredith gagged again—then what choice would Meredith have but to end her life?

She counted out three Ativan. She already had two, in a pill box in her bathroom. If she took all five, would that be too many? Maybe. She would save the two that she had and take three right here, right now. She knew what she was after: Something more than sleep, something less than death. She wanted to be knocked out, unconscious, unaware, unreachable, untouchable.