Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [100]
“We should call Mom,” she said. “Mom should be here.” They huddled together, and none of them noticed when I slipped out the door.
I left my contact information at the desk. If the nurse there seemed surprised to see me go, she kept it off her face. Maybe she was used to all kinds of strange behavior from the recently bereaved; maybe she was just glad that I wasn’t screaming or tearing at my clothes or threatening to sue someone.
Outside, it was still daytime. The sun was still shining; I could hear music coming from a passing car’s open windows and construction workers shouting as they gutted the building across the street. I texted Manuel and sat on a bench until the big black car glided to the curb. He held the door, and I slid into the backseat. “Mr. Croft died.” It was the first time I’d said it. I imagined it would be the first of many.
He gave a small sigh, and crossed himself. “Ma’am, I’m sorry. He was a good man.” I wondered about that. I knew Marcus was generous to all of his employees. He gave raises and holiday bonuses and paid vacations. I also knew he expected his people to work as hard as he did, to be available whenever he needed them, at five in the morning or in the middle of the night, or on Christmas or on weekends. I didn’t know whether Manuel had a family, whether he’d resented Marcus, or liked him, or felt protective toward him, or jealous of him, or absolutely nothing at all.
“Home?” he asked, and I nodded, wondering how much longer it would be my home. The decorator had finished the nursery the week before. Nice, Marcus had said—a single-word assessment of a room that had cost more than thirty thousand dollars to put together, six thousand for the antique rocking horse alone. It’s crazy, I’d said . . . but I’d loved it, and Marcus insisted that I buy it.
As we drove, I felt a bleakness settle through my body. Probably I wouldn’t even be able to stay in the apartment—it would, I guessed, give Bettina and Tommy and Trey a great deal of pleasure to make me leave. Just until the will is probated, they’d say. Just until we get things sorted out. The sorting out would take months, maybe years. There’d be lawyers, hearings, court dates, newspaper stories, unflattering pictures, all my history, my secrets exposed. It was paranoid, I knew—Marcus and I were legally married; this was legally my home . . . but I couldn’t shake the feeling, swelling into certainty with each passing block, that his children had never liked me and that they’d do whatever they could to harm me now that their father was dead.
I hurried past the doorman with my head down, hair obscuring my face, and was grateful to find the elevator empty. Upstairs, I took off my high heels and set them neatly by the door. Then I sat on the couch, cross-legged, my head hanging down, my eyes squeezed shut. I didn’t open them until I heard the front door slam. I raised my head and saw Bettina glaring at me. Anger had reddened her cheeks and darkened her eyes. Her hair stood out around her head in ropy tangles. Her lips curled back from her gleaming teeth. In her fury, she almost looked beautiful.
“Did he find out about you? Is that what happened? He found out the truth and had a heart attack?”
“He was at a business lunch,” I said slowly, repeating what I’d been told, before her words could register. Found out about you. For the second time that day I started to shiver. Bettina pulled a folder out of her purse and threw it in my lap. Papers and photographs spilled out onto the carpet . . . and there was my old face, staring up at me from the floor.
“Did you tell him?” Bettina asked. Every drop of culture, of private schooling and summers in the Hamptons, was gone from her voice. She sounded as common as my own mother as she shrieked. “Did he know you’d been arrested? Did he know that you were