Chapter 5
Allison
I finish a meeting at the Prudential Building early and take a detour down Michigan Avenue, the Mag Mile, not far from the investment property we own on Erie.
I turn into the lingerie store, parting the glass doors into a rush of warm, perfumed air, music humming through speakers, sultry and upbeat.
Looking for something new to wear for Finley tonight.
Inside the store, lit soft and pink, I trail my fingers along a rack of silk slips. The tags sway gently as I brush past.
A saleswoman glides over. “Happy New Year,” she sings, though it’s the second week of January. “Can I show you anything?”
I follow her to a table stacked with satin sets, all jewel tones and fragile straps. I weigh the fabrics between my fingers, trying to picture Finley’s face when he sees me in them.
My mother’s voice drifts in, uninvited—sharp, disapproving: Ally, you’re too focused on your books. Men don’t want a brain. They want someone who looks good on their arm. You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t take care of your figure.
I push it aside. I allowed her to seep back into my brain when things were rocky with Fin, but that’s changed.
Yes, Fin and I found each other again. I never thought it possible.
There I was, seven months ago, last summer, standing outside Anna Cortese’s house, plotting all manner of murder and mayhem, telling myself it was just a matter of time, that I just needed to hold out a few months until Gray left for college, then I would file for divorce.
But then the injury a month later. Finley stepped into a sand trap at the Grace Country Club and tore every imaginable tendon in his knee.
Two surgeries, the latter a knee replacement.
Indescribable pain, though Fin refused the prescription painkillers for fear of addiction.
Gut-wrenching physical therapy. He was off his feet, prone on a couch, for a good five months.
Sure, from a practical standpoint, it ended his affair.
No more “Wednesday night poker.” Pretty hard to sneak around with Anna Cortese when you’re laid up like that.
But Fin being stuck in the house, relying on me to care for him, brought us back together.
We started talking again. We started sharing again.
We laughed again. Our sex life, which had been declared officially dead, roared back to life, however carefully we had to manage his knee.
We turned a corner. The insecurity that plagued him after losing his job, leaving me as the sole breadwinner, seemed to evaporate. He finally realized that I never cared about that, I never measured him by the money he made, all I ever wanted was him, his commitment to us.
I never told him I knew about the affair. I decided to give us a chance, to focus not on the worst thing he’d done but on the parts that were real, that had been good. I wasn’t sure we could heal, but I was willing to find out. And every day that passes, I’m happier I did.
In the store, I try a deep wine-red slip, holding it against myself in the mirror. Under the bright lights my face looks pale, older than I’d wish, but the silk softens the edges. I imagine stepping out of our bedroom doorway wearing it, Finley looking up from whatever he’s reading.
At the register, I keep my smile small, private, as if the whole transaction is a secret between me and the cashier. With the bag in my hand, glossy and discreet, I step back out onto Michigan Avenue. The wind is sharp, biting, but I feel a flicker of heat beneath my coat.
At home, the fragrant smell of the chicken and pepperoncinis in the crock pot, which I prepared this morning, reaches me as I hang my coat in the mudroom. I find Finley unshowered, unshaven, his expression sullen, staring lifelessly at a news program from the couch.
“What’s wrong?” I ask with a sinking feeling.
He flips a hand. “Baldwin wants to pull the plug.”
“Pull the plug…on the whole project? He’s out?”
“He’s out.” He glances in my direction, chewing his lip. “Can’t get funding.”
“What about the Corbin Brothers—”
“Corbin pulled out. Several weeks ago. I didn’t wanna wreck the holidays with the shit news.” He leans forward, pinches the bridge of his nose. “We need over a million more, and we can’t scare it up. He wants us to come up with it.”
“Us?” I put my hand on my chest. “Meaning…you and I?”
He nods. “Baldy said, ‘You got that big-time lawyer wife, probably pulls down a million a year.’ I told him it wasn’t that simple.”
“It’s not that simple,” I say. “We don’t have a million dollars lying around. Did you tell Baldwin that he has more money than us? He has family money, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah. He says it’s tied up in trusts, it’s not liquid.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I’m starting to think they only brought me in on this deal because of the money you make.”
“That’s not true.” I sit down next to him on the couch, my hand on his back, feel the rise and fall of his breathing under my palm.
I need to cheer him up, get him back to that old swagger, when he used to brag he could sell honey to a bee.
“You’re the best salesman around,” I tell him. “Your moment’s going to come.”
He finally looks at me, his eyes tired but warm. When he manages a faint smile, it catches me off guard, how much I still want to protect that part of him, the part that believes he can win again. It hurts seeing him like this.
“I don’t deserve you,” he says, touching his forehead to mine.
My heart flutters, as it always has. I’ve wanted Finley Brice from the moment I laid eyes on him, when I was in the first grade, he in the third with Luke.
Fin was larger than life even back then, self-assured and handsome with a sense of humor and a crooked smile that melted the female population from Hilltop Elementary to Grace Consolidated High School.
In his early forties now, he has that lumbering gait of a former athlete, boyish handsomeness, and chestnut hair that curls on the ends when it gets too long.
After nearly twenty years of marriage, and despite what he’s done in the past, he still gives me that spark every time I see him, every time he touches me.
The next day, when I reach my office elevator on the way back from court, my phone buzzes with a text message.
I just about drop the phone as I read it:
The boys are recruiting me to rejoin the Wednesday night poker game. Ok with you?
I sit at my desk and stare at that message for an hour, my chest burning, unable to work. Then I remove the burner phone from my purse, the one I use for Harp when it comes to personal matters.
“Uh-oh,” Harp says when she answers. “Don’t tell me Finley’s up to his old tricks.”
“I hope I’m wrong,” I say, the understatement of the century. “But I need to know.”