I, Richard - Elizabeth George [59]
“How are you, Charlie?” His face was grave and kind.
Charlie shrugged. “I'm okay. I've been better, but I'll survive.”
“I'm sorry I haven't phoned. I'm a coward, I guess. If I talk about it, she'll cry, I told myself. And I can't avoid talking about it because if I do, it'd be like ignoring an alligator in your bathtub. But I don't want to make her cry. She's cried enough already. She might even be feeling better and there I'd be, making her live through everything again.” He pulled out a chair and sat. “I'm sorry.”
“He was having an affair, wasn't he?”
Terry jerked back against his seat, apparently startled by this frontal attack. “Eric?”
“I'd thought he was at first. Then I'd changed my mind. Well, he convinced me, really. But now… He was having an affair, wasn't he?”
“No. God, no. What makes you think—”
“All the changes, Terry. The Harley and the tattoo for starters.”
“This county's filled with guys in their forties who spend their weekends riding around on Harleys. They've got wives, kids, cats, dogs, car payments, and mortgages and they wake up one morning and say, This is all there is? And they want more. Midlife crisis. They want the edge back. Harleys give it to them. That's it.”
“There were phone calls. Late nights he supposedly spent at work. And a woman came by the house to look through his things. She said she was Sharon Pasternak, a molecular biologist at Biosyn. She said they were working on a report—she and Eric, Terry, why would Eric have been working on a report with a biologist, for God's sake?—and he had some data she said she needed in order to put the report together by herself now he's gone. But when she left, she took nothing with her. What's that supposed to tell me?”
“I don't know.”
“I think it's obvious enough. She was looking for traces.”
“Of what?”
“You know. He was seeing someone. Maybe it was her.”
“That's impossible.”
“Why? Why is it impossible?”
“Because… God, Charlie. He was crazy about you. I mean crazy about you. Had been since the day you two met.”
“Then she was looking for something else. What?”
“Charlie, jeez. Take it easy, okay? You look like shit, pardon my French. Have you been sleeping? Are you eating? Have you thought about getting away for a few days?”
“He lied to me about his family. He had pictures. He used them to pretend… You saw them, Terry. You've been at our house. You saw those pictures and you know his family. You grew up with him. So you must have known…” Charlie clutched the table as a cramp gripped her stomach. Her bowels felt loose. Her palms were wet. She was falling apart and she hated the fact, and the hate made her raise her voice and cry, “I want the information. I have the right to it. Tell me what you know.”
Terry looked puzzled more than anything else. “What pictures?” he asked. “What're you talking about?”
Charlie told him. He listened, but he shook his head, saying, “Sure, I knew Eric's family. But that was just his mom, his dad, and his brother. Brent. And even if I studied those pictures— which I didn't… I mean, who studies family pictures in other people's houses? You just glance at them when you walk by, don't you?—I wouldn't have recognized anyone. Eric's mom died when we were around eight and even before that she was in bed for five years with a stroke. I saw her what? maybe once, so in a picture … No way. I wouldn't even know her. And I haven't set eyes on Brent or Eric's dad for years. At least ten, maybe more. So if there was a picture of either of them or all of them or someone else, I wouldn't have known the difference.”
Charlie listened through a roar in her ears. “Brent?” she said in a whisper. “He died. The accident. And then Eric's mother and his father—”
“What accident?” Terry asked.
“The shotgun. Hunting birds. The desert. Eric tripped and Brent was…” She couldn't finish because Terry's face was telling her more than she wanted to know. She felt her own face crumple. “Oh God. Oh God.”
Terry said,