The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (9 page)

He gathered his clothes from the floor. Footprints marked the marble as he marched from the room.

The abrupt end to what had not even approached a proper apology infuriated me. How dare he act self-righteous? “You should sleep downstairs.” I didn’t want to wake Sophia, but I couldn’t control my volume anymore. “I don’t want you in our bed.”

“Whatever, Ana.” He sounded like a spoiled teenager. I’d won the part of nagging mom to his irreverent boy. Cruel casting. I shouldn’t have needed to scold him. He should have come home humble, apologetic.

“You know what? You’re right. My fault for worrying. I clearly shouldn’t have given a crap,” I shouted. “It’s not like you do anything around here, anyway.”

He spun so fast that I feared he’d slip on the wet floor. He advanced toward me. Eyes narrowed. Teeth glinting.

His fist unfurled as it flew toward my face. A pointed finger stopped inches from my nose. I flinched. In our five years together, Tom had never hit me. Before he’d lost his job, he’d never even yelled at me. Things had changed. His career disappointment had spread like a cancer, infecting his brain, altering his personality. I couldn’t trust him, especially not after jabbing his ego in its most sensitive area.

“I bought this house. I paid for the cars, the private nursery school, Sophia’s lessons.” Tom’s voice started at a whisper, but it increased in volume with every word, a kettle whistle as the water neared boiling. “The landscapers, the housekeeper, the swim club membership. All while you sat on your ass for
years
.”

“Are you kidding me?” I nearly screamed, daring his finger to hit my forehead. “I cared for our child and this home. I worked with the contractors to get it built. I furnished it. I cooked the meals. I cleaned. I ran all your errands. And now I’m working and still doing all of that.”

Tom dropped his finger. His hands surrendered at his sides, but his face retained the fight. “You really think any of that—any of what you ever did or do—is worth a million a year?”

“I do as much as you ever did.”

“You’re delusional.”

“You wanted me to stay at home. Now you’re throwing it in my face.”

“I’m too tired for this, Ana.” He headed toward the door. “I’m dead tired.”

*

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and seething. Tom was somewhere in our house, likely passed out in a guest room. I, on the other hand, couldn’t settle down and, unlike Tom, actually had work in the morning.

I wanted to wake him just to vent, let the argument end on my terms. Yes, it was good that he’d taken an active step to land a job. But his sudden initiative wasn’t an excuse for leaving Sophia. He didn’t have to rush into the city without even trying to give me a heads up. My leaving work early looked unprofessional. Didn’t he value my job at all? It was the only income we had.

Well, he’d have to value it. He’d need to watch Sophia until I got home from the meeting Tuesday night. Maybe I’d give him a taste of his own medicine and not even tell him why I’d be late.

The phone on my nightstand showed ten minutes to midnight. My internal clock said six
AM
. Damp hair made my pillow cold and sticky. The bath I’d taken to calm down had only succeeded in further waking me, convincing my body that the moonlight sneaking beneath the shades was an illusion.

I couldn’t continue to examine the cracked plaster above me. I needed a distraction. It would be an hour later in Sao Paulo, but Brazilians didn’t sleep until at least twelve
AM
. My parents had always been night owls. They’d still be awake.

I grabbed my laptop from the bookcase in the corner and then returned to my bed to open the Skype application. A bubbly sound, like a ringtone underwater, emerged from the computer’s speakers. Moments later, my mother’s face came into view: almond-shaped eyes the color of coconut husks. Sand-colored skin, lined around the mouth. Stress had aged her, but not stolen her beauty.

“Oi, Mamãe.”

“Hi, Ana.”

Even my Portuguese hello betrayed that I couldn’t speak the language. She knew that all I remembered of her mother tongue was a bunch of Spanish-accented Portuguese words and Brazilian sayings. Not my fault. No one’s fault, really. My folks just
hadn’t been around enough in the past two decades to reinforce their teachings.

“I miss you,” I said.

Lines deepened on my mother’s brow. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Her mouth twisted with disbelief. She always knew when I was lying. “Is everything okay with Tom?”

My parents had enough problems. I wasn’t about to get into mine. “We’re fine. It’s nothing, just
saudade
.” One of the few Portuguese words I knew. It lacked direct English translation: homesickness mixed with longing and bittersweet memories, content with yearning for family and the past. Some said the word encapsulated the Brazilian temperament.

Though I knew the term, I couldn’t actually relate to the feeling. My past was a blur. Bad events erase good history like fire burning through film. All that remained for me of my childhood were a series of images. The yard behind our two-family house. Bushy lavender plants, purple tips stretching to the sky. My mother bent over them, pruning scissors in her right hand, jean-clad legs spotted with dirt. Black-clad Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers storming through the kitchen to get her, yelling that she held a weapon. Her promising over and over that they’d be back in a little while.
Just a little while
.

I’d spent my teens in a foster home, and though I’d blocked the visuals from my memory, I’d never forget the smell. Burnt hair and old carpet. Ms. Yvette had done weaves in the kitchen to supplement her foster income. I’d split my time between school, a Starbucks job, and babysitting my younger “siblings”—a.k.a. Ms. Yvette’s real kids and smaller foster children. I still think she’d volunteered to take me because it had been cheaper than hiring childcare.

My parents had come back twice, each time just as illegitimately as the first. Immigration was on them within months. As far as ICE knew, they were dangerous identity thieves, not people who’d paid taxes for fifteen years, albeit under false social security numbers.

“
Saudade
?” My mother’s voice showed that she doubted my explanation.

I forced a smile for her benefit. “How are you and Daddy?”

A halo of orange light surrounded her head, coming from an exposed bulb in the kitchen. Veined ceramic glass had shielded the ceiling light before. Had it broken? “Oh, you know. We’re fine. We miss you.”

“Do you need anything?” I couldn’t afford for her to say yes. I’d sent the last check six months before, maybe even earlier. Tom had not been happy.

My mom shook her head. I knew she wouldn’t ask for money outright, even though they had to be hurting. After getting deported, rebuilding their lives in Brazil had been next to impossible. They’d had no money and no documented work experience. My father had done construction for a few years, but it had never paid anywhere close to what he’d made in the States. Now sixty, no one would hire him. My mother still taught English, but she’d lost students to new language schools popping up in the area. There weren’t any savings.

“You just worry about you and my beautiful granddaughter,” she said. “How is Sophia?”

“Good. I’ll call back with her tomorrow.”

A shadowed figure entered the kitchen, just visible behind my mother’s head. The form angled toward her before hurrying from the room. “Is Daddy there?”

“No. He’s sleeping.”

Who was in the house then? “I think I just saw him in the kitchen.”

“Daddy’s tired. He must have just come in for a glass of water.”

Too tired to say hi? My mother’s smile appeared constructed from a single pane of glass. One wrong word and it would shatter. Light shifted behind her head again. A figure lumbered in the kitchen. I recognized the outline this time: broad shoulders, thin build, a triangle atop a pole. “Daddy. Dad?”

My mother moved closer to the screen, blocking the view behind her. Tracks ran beneath her eyes. Had she been sleeping?
She looked older than I remembered. Older than a week ago. “Daddy’s in bed.”

“Mom, I just saw him. Why won’t you let me talk to him?”

“He doesn’t feel well.”

“Dad, I see you. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong with him.”

“Dad!” I shouted through the monitor. “Daddy, are you okay? Dad!”

“It’s fine, Beatriz.”

My mother folded into herself at the sound of her name, and my dad’s torso came into the picture. He pulled a seat from the dining table and dragged it next to my mother. I still couldn’t see his face.

My mom’s eyes welled as he sat beside her, reacting not to my dad but to my expression as I saw him. He’d fought and lost. His cheeks were puffed like mushrooms caps. A deep purple bruise overwhelmed his left eye. Bloody scabs crusted in his eyebrow. A blood blister puckered from his lower lip.

“Oh my God, Daddy.”

“It looks worse than it is.”

“What happened?”

My mother’s face shattered. “Oh, Ana,” she wailed. “It’s the gangs.”

“Not real gangs. Young punks.” My father crossed his arms, revealing scabbed lines. Defensive wounds.

“With bats and knives,” my mom cried. “They demand money from anyone with family in the U.S. They say it’s an import tax on the dollars they know we have coming in. We’d paid for years—”

“How much do they want?”

My dad’s chin fell. “It’s all right, Ana. They know I can’t pay.”

“Then why are they beating you?” I almost shook the computer screen. How had they not told me that they were being blackmailed? For years? I could have helped before. I had to help now.

“It’s okay. They will understand. We don’t have it anymore.”

I’d confessed Tom’s job loss to my parents after he’d been out of work a few months and I’d needed to reduce the amount of money I sent each month. At first, I’d mailed two-thirds the usual amount. A few months later, I was sending half that. They’d never asked when the checks stopped coming. They both knew what it meant.

“Tell me how much.”

“A thousand.” Tears gurgled in my mother’s words. “It was a hundred a month, but we haven’t paid in a while and they say there’s interest.”

I’d once taken eighty thousand dollars from Tom’s seven-figure bonus check and bought my parents an apartment. Tom had complained that, in the right investment, the amount could balloon into a healthy retirement savings. But I’d convinced him that the missing money wouldn’t mean anything to us. At the time, it hadn’t. Now I couldn’t imagine how I’d find a spare hundred dollars, let alone a whole thousand.

“I’ll get it. When are they coming again?”

“You don’t have it,” my father said. “And when they want more than a thousand, what do we do? It’s better they realize now.”

“And what, kill you? It was enough before, right? When are they coming?”

“Next month,” my mother mumbled.

My father scowled at her from beneath his swollen eye. “You have to take care of Sophia and Tom right now.” His hands reached out toward the screen, toward me. The gesture made me hurt. It had been so long since I’d felt the touch of either of my parents, so long since I’d hugged them. “You have to take care of
your
family.”

“I am taking care of my family.”

“How will you do it?” My mother couldn’t hide her hope.

I didn’t know, but I’d find a way. I’d always come up with money before, even when I’d only had a Starbucks job. Now I was working for a multibillion-dollar hedge fund.

“I’ll figure something out.”

11

November 24

R
yan stood outside a former furniture warehouse off I-95. A plastic banner hanging above a stairway leading to a basement door read, “Appleday, Where Kids Can Play.” Each letter was colored differently, as if children with perfect handwriting had constructed the sign.

He knocked, crossing his fingers that his GPS had led him to the correct place. Amazing, the number of daycares with
apple
in the title located in the NYC suburbs. AppleView, AppleSeed, AppleTree, Apple Montessori, Appleday. He’d called no fewer than eight places before getting a harried aide on the line that had remembered Sophia. The woman had referred him to her boss, a lady named Ms. Donna, who hadn’t bothered to return his message. Ryan figured showing up would prove more effective than playing phone tag.

He would rather have been confronting Michael about the paternity of Ana’s unborn child than interviewing employees at Sophia’s old daycare, but he didn’t have a choice. Even if he did manage to reach Ana’s old boss in the Bahamas, Michael wasn’t likely to confirm that he’d been sleeping with his secretary while on vacation with the wife and kids.

In the meantime, he would try to get a better handle on the Bacons’ finances by speaking with someone they’d needed to pay regularly, who could also confirm or deny Michael’s story that Ana had picked up Sophia often. With luck, one of the daycare
workers might even have some insight into whether Ana had seemed stressed or depressed. Afterward, he could gauge Tom’s reaction to questions about Ana’s working relationship with her former boss.

A broad woman with screaming red hair opened the door. Children’s shouts drifted into the cold outside. The woman looked down at Ryan’s knees before returning her suspicious gaze to his face. “You’re here to drop off?”

“No. Actually, I was—”

“Picking up?” She pulled her chin into her neck. “I don’t think we have you on the authorized list.”

“No. I called before. I’m here to ask questions about Mrs. Ana Bacon. I understand that her daughter Sophia went here.”

The woman’s red strands didn’t move as she shook her head. Cherry-scented something wafted into the air. Hairspray? “I can’t let unauthorized adults inside. It’s for the safety of the kids.”

Ryan grabbed the door before it could close in his face. “I understand. Could we talk outside? I only need a couple minutes of your time.”

“I’m not supposed to leave the children with just two aides. It’s too high a ratio for this age group. State rules.” The woman’s voice sounded nasal and hoarse. Part South Jersey, part smoker. Ryan wished he had a cigarette to offer. He didn’t smoke, given that 90 percent of lung cancer fatalities in men stemmed from cigarettes. Folks who avoided cancer sticks, lived more than fifteen miles from a major city, and got their home radon tested were statistically immune from lung disease. Ryan had checked all the boxes.