The Other Widow (8 page)

She turns on her iPod and drifts into the music. She could have loved Tomas, with his seductive accent, the way he said her name. Karen, the way he breathed it, like a poem, the way, no matter what was going on in his life, he always seemed to have time for her. She'd met him on the train, going home from a symphony when he'd got on at the same stop. Their legs touched as the train left the station. Lightly. A brush. He smelled of coconut and musk.

“I saw you at the concert,” he'd said. “I was behind you walking out. It was very nice, although Wagner is not my favorite.”

“Nor mine,” she'd said.

“What is?”

“I don't know,” she'd told him. “Anything with a glass of wine.” And he laughed.

If anyone had asked her if she'd meant to see this stranger again, she would have said no. Absolutely not. It was only after two more times chatting on the train after symphonies that she'd begun to wish they'd sat together, yawning through the performance, leaving together afterward, crossing through the lobby, side by side, to the blanched, leftover heat of evening.

He worked in a garage near Waltham. Hoods, and she'd made a point to take both her car and Joe's in for anything, no matter how trivial—a hesitation in the starter, a worn-out wiper blade. He never charged her for labor. “My friend, Karen,” Tomas would introduce her whenever she came in. “Primo treatment on her car, guys.” And he would wink at her.

“We're friends,” she'd told Alice at the time. “We're only friends. We sometimes get a lunch together, grab a coffee in town. He's fixed my car a couple times when he was working at his friends' garage, but that's it, really. Simply platonic.” And it was. Eventually he found a job at Mass General, where he worked as an orderly—he'd been a nurse in Honduras—and after that she saw him less and less. A good thing. Karen loved her husband, and even if they'd grown apart, even if he was out of town too much and brought home a dog that hated her, Joe was still the man she married. She'd understood even though he never pressed the matter that Tomas had wanted more than she could give.

In the end, he'd gone back to Honduras. “My mother is very ill, Karen,” he'd told her on a lush, green day two years before, sitting on a bench in the Public Garden. Spring hung like perfume in the air.

“Oh,” she'd said. “My God! How long will you be gone?” But he shook his head.

“I don't know.”

She could have loved Tomas. But Karen's always known passion isn't everything. She understood that, watching her parents wrestle through their lives in their cardboard house with hard blue rugs, where their daughters learned to live on their toes, dancing, edgy, like birds on a hot wire, always ready to break and run. No. For love. For passion. For Tomas, Karen would not leave her husband.

She parks. She checks her makeup in the rearview mirror and looks around before unlocking her car door. Is she getting paranoid, living all alone the way she is now? Maybe she should sell the house and get a place in Boston, an apartment downtown, somewhere close to Alice.

Is that all this is? Nerves? But there were the footprints, the figure in the trees at the cemetery. Maybe she'll confide in Edward. She opens her car door and turns to lock it before walking quickly toward the restaurant. The wind howls off the water and she pulls her scarf over her head, tucks her chin down, against the icy gusts. And then Edward is there, puffing up behind her; steam flies from his mouth and lingers in the air.

He hugs her. A lengthy hug, she thinks, but they're both grieving, after all. Edward's bulk lends some protection, but still the wind flings her hair across her cheeks, steals their words, their breath. After a few short stabs at conversation, they walk in silence, pushing through the door into the welcome warmth of Legal's.

Edward raises two fingers and they are immediately escorted to a table near a window, where a waiter takes their orders, leaning down to straighten a coaster before he hurries to the kitchen, pad in hand.

“Are you all right?” Edward is himself again—solicitous and attentive. He leans back and looks hard at her face. A rock, she thinks. Edward is a rock, but then she notices his bloodshot eyes, remembers that he's ordered a martini, extra dry, and that it's barely noon.

“Yes,” she says. “I'm okay.” She looks at Edward's face and decides not to mention the footprints after all. He might feel duty-bound to stay there at the house. For her. For Joe.
He'd want me to
, he might tell her, and then she'd be stuck with Edward draped across her grief. Worse yet, across her living room. “Actually.” She sticks her napkin on her lap. “I'm not
fine
at all. I miss Joe. I keep expecting him to come through the front door. He was gone so much, it seems as if he's only away on business, that he'll be coming back.”

Edward clears his throat. “I get that,” he says. “Same at the office.” His voice is tired, brittle; it cracks on the last word. “Quiet as a tomb down there without him,” which Karen thinks is a poor choice of words, all things considered.

The waiter brings their food, but neither of them seems to notice. The waiter smiles, nearly bows before he trots back to the kitchen.

“An insurance investigator came by the office earlier this week.” Edward takes a swallow of his drink. “A woman. Brennan, I think she said. Maggie Brennan. Used to be a cop. She'll probably be calling you at some point. Asking you some questions.”

“What kind of questions?” Karen feels her anxiety level ratchet up a notch.

Edward shrugs. “My guess is they'll try to pass Joe's death off as a suicide. That way they don't have to pay out on your claim. I could be wrong.” Edward is already halfway through his second drink. He's barely touched his food. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

Karen picks at her salad and glances back at Edward. He looks a little vintage in the suit he's wearing, like a character from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. His eyes skip here and there around the room before settling on Karen. Gatsby, she decides. She takes a sip of water.

“I don't know quite how to put this.” Edward looks away. His eyes follow the waiter as he moves with expertise among the tables. “Delicately.”

“What?” Karen says, and Edward clears his throat again. He looks outside the window. The sky is so light blue, it's nearly white. “Did Joe ever mention anything to you about money?”

“We were
married
, Edward. What kind of question is—?”

“About the company, the downturn of the—”

“Well,” she says. “He told me Home Runs had a dip in the road. Hardly an anomaly these days with the economy the way it is.” She chews on a radish. The restaurant is filling up. People puff in from outside. The door opens and closes, letting in the cold; banter lingers in the air. At the next table, someone laughs too loudly, falls into a fit of coughing.

“It's a lot more than that, Karen.” Edward sounds uncomfortable. Desperate, maybe. “A lot more than a dip in the road.”

She leans away from the table, watches as Edward takes a small bite of trout.

“Did Joe ever tell you he'd withdrawn some money from the company?” He doesn't look straight at her. He watches the waiter and chews.

“I think that's called embezzling, Edward, and no. Of course not. This is Joe, the ex–
altar
boy. This is maddeningly honest
Joe
, who once drove all the way across town to return a five-dollar bill to a kid at a convenience store when he got too much change.” Of course, she sees him a little differently now. It can't be helped. There is the girlfriend. Not so much integrity in that.

Edward nods. He finishes his drink and wipes his mouth, tosses the napkin on the table. “I loved Joe like a brother. You know that. Still do. Always.”

Karen glares at him over her glasses. “You used to
rave
about Joe's honesty,” she says. “Have you forgotten?
Honest as the day is long,
you used to say. If something's wrong, you'd better take a look at your accountant. Or Francine, or whoever's handling the finances these days, because you and I both know Joe was no thief! I think I need a drink,” she says, and she looks around for the waiter.

Edward squints at her. His skin is dull and faintly gray in the light from the windows. “I should have kept a better eye on things. Hindsight's twenty-twenty and all that. Meanwhile, these discrepancies—fairly well hidden, but there, nonetheless. I just wondered if Joe—if he said anything to you that might help me figure—”

“Well.” Karen drums her fingernails against her water glass. “There you go. If things were well hidden, that proves it wasn't Joe. He wasn't good enough with money to
hide
whatever you're accusing him of. Brilliant, but mathematically . . . a little challenged.”

“Karen,” Edward says. “I'm not accusing Joe of anything. I've only mentioned this in case it comes out. If this Maggie Brennan digs around as much as I think she's going to, it probably will. And if it looks as if Home Runs is floundering, it could mean a delay in your settlement. That's all.”

“How so? You've lost me.”

He lowers his voice. He covers Karen's hand with his. His eyes are puffy, his pupils pinpoints in the brightness of the sunshine flooding in. “I know Joe would never take his own life. He loved you. He loved Robbie and Jon. Hell, he loved the
company
! But people do, Karen. They jump out of windows, lock themselves in garages with their cars running. People do all
kinds
of crazy things when they think they've lost what they spent their entire lives building. And the insurance companies are totally aware of this. They pursue this sort of thing, especially when there's a big payout involved. They'll take a look in that direction. That's all. Just keep this under your hat until I figure out what's going on.”

“No worries there.” Karen fumbles around under the table for her bag and starts to stand. She no longer wants a drink. She only wants to leave. “No worries at all, Edward, since this is total bullshit and you know it.”

“Excuse me, miss.” Their waiter is back, his hair impeccable, despite the noon rush. He sets a drink in the exact center of a flower-print napkin. “The bartender asked me to bring this over. Apparently, a gentleman ordered it for you on his way out. Chocolate Café Noir Cocktail with strawberries instead of raspberries.”

Karen digs her nails into her palms. “Strawberries. Why did you— Why not raspberries? Doesn't it always come with rasp—?”

Their waiter smiles; his hair is glossy in the bright light. “The gentleman was very adamant, according to the bartender. ‘With strawberries,' he said. ‘Make sure.' ”

Karen stands up, alarmed. She looks around the restaurant. Only she and Joe knew about her aversion to raspberries—she couldn't stand their texture, the squishiness—so she always ordered the cocktail with strawberries instead. It was a private joke between them. She glances at Edward, looking up at her, one eyebrow raised. Edward might know. They used to go out together all the time, the four of them, back when he was married to one or another of his flock of silly wives. But he's sitting right here with her, clearly not the “gentleman” who ordered her a drink on his way out.

“Who?” she says. “Where is he?”

The waiter shrugs. “I didn't see him. As I said, the bartender asked me to bring you the drink and whoever it was”—he looks around the restaurant—“well, whoever it was has apparently left.”

“When?”

“Probably just a minute ago.”

“Karen.” Edward reaches for her hand again, but this time he doesn't quite touch her. “There's something else we need to talk about.” But Karen shakes her head. She glances at the front of the restaurant, at the closing door.

“Not now, Edward. I've got to go find— Thanks, though. Thanks for the lunch. It was great,” she says, already slipping into her coat. She grabs her bag.

“Wait!” Karen has a vague impression of Edward standing up and hurrying across the room behind her, but she doesn't stop. She doesn't turn around. She runs across the restaurant and through the door to the street.

IX

DORRIE

D
orrie stares at the unfamiliar number in her cell, left the day they buried Joe, left while she huddled with the others, her feet stuck in slush, sleet sticking to her hair. Possibly, the call is from the insurance investigator who came to the office a day or two later. Brennan, Dorrie thinks. She'd seen the woman hesitating in the hall outside her office, heard Edward escort her loudly to the lobby while Lola the receptionist chatted on the phone—mentioned her name, actually. “Dorreen,” she'd said to someone on the phone, but Dorrie couldn't hear the rest, and Lola's not been back. Emergency at home, Edward said. Back on the farm. Wisconsin or Minnesota, one of those cold Midwestern states.
Something about her parents,
he'd said, waving his hand in the air.

Dorrie thinks she'll be proactive. She'll phone this number back, this possibly Brennan's number, preempt the strike. The other number—Joe's—she'll not call back. Not ever.

She leans against the kitchen counter near the window. Her eyes blur out of focus at a backyard strewn with branches, brown and dead, like skeletons across the snow. Sometimes she hears Joe's voice, feels him, like a buzzing underneath her skin. A background noise, like trains near the apartment she and Samuel had downtown when they first lived together. They were such a constant sound that almost right away she'd stopped hearing them. She only noticed late at night when they stopped running. She heard the absence of the trains, the silence, and Dorrie wonders if that's what will happen when she stops hearing Joe.

Lily was home, sulking on the couch when she got back from the funeral. The weather had turned too icy for skiing after all, and Dorrie stood in the doorway, secretly relieved, not only that Lily was safe and sound and not careening down a mountain on two strips of wood, but grateful, too, for the presence of her grumpy daughter, the dirty dishes in the sink, the dinner waiting to be made, these things that left no time or space to mourn. No time to worry about the threatening robotic call she'd gotten on the way to the cemetery or to ponder the strange number in her cell that she'd forgotten until now.