Thought I Knew You (33 page)

I had the sensation of time closing in on me. In a few weeks, Greg would move back to New Jersey, and Toronto would become a distant memory. The pressure was pushing
her
name up into my throat.
Karen Caughee.
Who was she? What did she look like? What did she have that I didn’t? Those were the standard questions of a jilted wife, but my other questions were more complicated. Why hadn’t she looked for Greg? Did she know what happened to him?
Who was she?

I pulled out my phone and opened the web browser. After a quick search, I found an entry for Caughee, K. with a Toronto phone number, but no address. I had asked Greg a few times since the day I learned her name:
Where does she live? What does she do? How did you meet?

I don’t remember.
His single, standard, infuriating answer. I assumed that was the truth, and that he hadn’t learned to lie again.

I had become a little obsessed with her, a fact I couldn’t reveal to Drew or anyone else. It made no sense, but the desire to answer every question was all-consuming. I’d spent two years trying to accept a life with loose ends, to move on despite uncertainty, and was
almost
there. A small part of me wanted to walk away.
What does it matter now? Just move on.
But the temptation for actual closure was too great.

I found a reverse look-up search engine and typed in the phone number.
Bingo.
725 St. Clair Avenue West.
St. Clair.
I almost laughed. Had Greg noted the irony?

I had a thought and clicked the map application on my phone. I punched in Karen’s address and expanded the screen, searching for something I knew would answer at least one question definitely. The street where Greg had been hit was Arlington Avenue. I didn’t have to look very hard—it was two blocks from Karen’s apartment.

A million scenarios ran through my mind. Had he just gone out for coffee and not come back?
Too many questions.

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.

“I loved him. I think he loved me. Or at least he said he did.”

“Then why did you break up? That night?” I sank to her level, willing to trade barbs.
Settle down. She has information
you need, Claire.

“His company was transferring him to China. Some executive position, a big promotion. He thought it was a great opportunity, and he wanted to go. It was a two-year assignment, but I’m a violinist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. At the time, I was trying for assistant principal, the youngest in the history of the TSO. There was no way I could go. We agreed to… put our relationship on hold.”

I laughed in earnest.
What relationship?
I wanted to yell.
You didn’t even know his name.
Advent had no foothold in China, and if they had, certainly not for a corporate trainer. Greg’s
girlfriend
hadn’t known him any better than I had. Questions swirled in my mind, but half of them I would never give her the satisfaction of asking.

“Karen, there was no China.” I reached across the table and lightly tapped her hand. “Greg was a bored thirty-five-year-old man in a troubled marriage, with a couple of kids, in the suburbs of New Jersey.”

“He said he didn’t have kids, but that he’d always wanted them.”

I sucked in a harsh breath. The depths of her cruelty seemed boundless.
What about Greg’s dishonesty? Did that know no limits?
“Do you still love him?” My questions were primal and unplanned, and perhaps just as callous; I didn’t know. I’d lost perspective in the shrinking kitchen.

She shook her head, appearing rattled for the first time. She held up her left hand, displaying a simple solitaire diamond. “I called his cell over and over until one day, after a month or so, the recording said the phone had been disconnected. It took about a year for me to move on. I knew he was American; he said he was from Syracuse, but it hadn’t ever mattered because he was never home, he’d said. I stopped trying after that and met a very nice trombone player. The wedding’s in May.”

She pushed herself up, crossed the room, and rummaged through a drawer. When she returned, she was holding a long strip of paper. She looked at it a moment before handing it to me. Greg’s face stared back at me, pushed up against Karen’s, four squares, various expressions. A photo booth picture strip. I was taken aback. His face was relaxed, free of the worry lines on his forehead. Her mouth was open in a frozen laugh, wide lipsticked lips stretched across straight white teeth. In the bottom picture, they kissed through laughter, her left eye open, peeking at the camera.

“He looks so… happy.” I fingered the picture. I hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

“Oh, that was Greg. He was always such a goofball.”

Will the real Greg please stand up?

Chapter 41

1 month later

G
reg came home almost three
months after we found him, which was about two months longer than Dr. Goodman had predicted. We found a group home specifically targeted for the brain-injured about twenty-five minutes away from our house. At Dr. Goodman’s recommendation, Greg wouldn’t be living alone for at least a year. His short-term memory was inconsistent, at best. He would undergo the same therapy in New Jersey that he had in Canada, and the group home provided for transportation to and from rehab, as well as staff therapists to aid with social transitioning.

By the time he came back to New Jersey, he functioned as well as any other adult with the exception of some minor differences. He had no filter—what was on his mind came out his mouth, much like Leah. He couldn’t seem to censor himself or recognize what was socially acceptable to say and not say. The group home would help with that. He had to relearn kindness, manners, and other social skills. In other words, he’d make an interesting addition to a dinner party.

The day of his homecoming, we took the minivan and made the eight-hour trip, travelling sixteen hours in one day. Leah and Hannah were impressive, to say the least. Drew came along, and my mouth was dry with nerves because it was the first time the two men would see each other again after the accident. With Greg’s newfound ability to run off at the mouth, I was dreading what he would say.

I warned Drew about that, and he had shrugged. “Anything he’ll say will probably be justified.”

After the weekend Drew had almost left, he seemed to accept our new life with a certain resigned grace. I had been making a real attempt to be open and honest and finally came clean about visiting Karen, the small secret eating away at my conscience.

He reacted with his usual laissez-faire. “It seems natural, I guess. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall, though.”

“Oh, my God, Drew, you should have seen how young she was. What was Greg thinking? She was probably barely in her twenties at the time.” We were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, my feet resting on his lap.

He trailed his hand up and down my shin. “Why do you think he broke up with her?”

I’d been thinking the same thing. Had the lies gotten to be too much? Had he missed me? Or was it something specific about Karen? “Maybe the excitement of it was gone. I mean, eventually, people just become regular folks, you know? At some point, high-powered executive Greg Randolf just became Greg, the guy who slept with his black socks on. Maybe Karen just became a regular woman? With her own demands, just like me?”

“You? Demands?”

I playfully kicked his arm with my foot.

When I told Drew about Greg kissing me, however, he flinched. “Are you sure about us, Claire? I don’t want you to resent me twenty years from now for breaking up your family. You have to be sure of what you want. And be honest with yourself and with me. I want more than anything to stay with you and have you in my life. But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that being dishonest about your own needs never does anyone any good.”

No matter what I said, or how I reassured him, he always seemed to ask the same question a million different ways. “There is no more Claire and Greg. I can’t look at him the same way, not after Karen, not after his lies. If the accident had never happened, I still don’t think we would have made it.”