After #4
Richard had been miserable on that trip.
“Succeeding” didn’t feel the way he thought it would—that was all he could say, which Gretchen found baffling.
They were in Paris, for heaven’s sake, surrounded by fresh croissants and newly blooming tulips!
Though perhaps a certain amount of ennui was to be expected from Richard, given that he didn’t really care all that much about material things, and he lived—or, rather, they lived—in a world centered on acquisition.
Not that Gretchen could relate to his disappointment.
She’d never thought she’d be just a wife and mother.
But once she’d decided to pivot away from law school, she’d been fully satisfied by her one and only purpose in life—to take care of Richard and the children.
To love her family. Everyone made choices.
The key was to choose to see them as the right ones.
And so she’d decided just to let Richard be while in Paris.
Talking on and on about his “feelings” would have just made them worse.
Instead, they’d spent hours and hours in the museums—Rodin, Picasso, the Musée d’Orsay, and, of course, the Louvre.
Richard’s mood had brightened considerably.
Though when he had whispered, “This is what my life should have been about,” while standing in front of The Raft of the Medusa, Gretchen had to fight back the urge to scream.
Richard could barely draw a stick figure.
She wasn’t even sure his taste in art was all that good.
But she’d refrained from saying a thing, letting his malaise bounce right off her as they stopped for macarons at the place all her friends talked about.
Besides, what was marriage if not giving each other the space to be a little lost?
That afternoon they’d bought the small collage that hung on the wall opposite their bed.
Richard had prided himself on being drawn to the specific one that the gallery owner proclaimed afterward was his favorite, a stupid abstract square by a young Ukrainian painter with “exceptional promise.” It seemed not to have occurred to Richard—master negotiator—that the man probably said that about every painting, and so he had spent fifty-three thousand dollars for something Becks could have painted.
These days Richard had several dealers he worked with, and their walls were filled with acclaimed artwork, which was all well and good. But now it seemed Richard had apparently moved on to collecting the artists themselves.
Gretchen stood up, plucked the ugly square off the wall, and looked around the room for a place to stow the enraging painting.
Finally, she sat back down on the bed and slid it between her feet, slinging it so hard that the painting shot across the hardwood and cracked against the wall up by the headboard like a bowling ball.
“Good,” Gretchen said aloud with venom that made her own skin prickle. She didn’t want to be this angry, not at Richard, not right now.
It wasn’t until Gretchen turned back that she noticed a strange outline in the wall where the painting had hung. The safe. She’d forgotten about it entirely.
Gretchen stood again and moved closer, tracing her finger around the edges of the square, then pressed down firmly in the center.
Sure enough, a small door in the wall popped open on a spring.
Behind it was the safe itself, closed and locked.
Whoever had searched the room had evidently overlooked it.
The pandemic had been the first time she and Richard ever used the safe. With all the talk of the banks shutting down, he’d put some cash in there just in case. But Gretchen hadn’t wanted to worry about things becoming that dire. She’d even refused to let Richard give her the combination.
But now she was worried, wasn’t she? Worried that Richard had put something else in there, knowing she’d never see it.
Gretchen took a deep breath and rubbed her damp palms together.
It had to be 27-02-14, the days of the three children’s birthdays in age order—the same code they used for the garage in East Hampton, the front door of the Vail house, and their bike room in the basement.
Richard didn’t use the sequence for important accounts, of course.
For those, he had some app that set carefully randomized passwords.
Richard was so cautious, so good at taking care of them. There was no way he’d have risked everything over this woman. But who could really say? In the past week or so, Gretchen had done things she would have sworn she never could have. Recklessness born of heartache was the most dangerous kind.
Gretchen tried the numbers, slowly and smoothly.
Combination locks were so fidgety. Right 27.
If the code didn’t work, it didn’t mean he had something to hide.
Except she had the dreadful feeling that maybe he did.
Once past left and then 02. Even if he had used a different code, that didn’t mean—it didn’t mean anything.
Right 14.
And then the whir of the bolt sliding back inside. Thank God.
Sure enough, inside was a stack of cash.
Gretchen pulled it out. Counted quickly.
Ten thousand dollars in such a surprisingly small bundle of one-hundred-dollar bills.
Gretchen reached in again to be sure she hadn’t missed anything else farther back.
The safe was deep. Her fingers hit on something, larger and harder than money.
A Moleskine journal, Richard’s handwriting filling nearly the whole book when she flipped it open. When on earth had Richard started journaling? The first page began with the trip he had taken with “the boys” to Bolivia five or six years ago.
Oh, wait, now Gretchen remembered—the whole group had decided to start keeping travel journals on that trip.
It had been Van’s idea, or his wife’s, actually.
She’d sent Van off with a journal and a fancy pen as a gift for each of them, and shockingly, they’d all embraced it.
Gretchen had always found the whole thing a bit odd for that particular group of manly men.
To whom were they writing, exactly? To whom were they going on and on about their feelings—themselves?
But apparently, they’d become quite religious about it on their trips.
Even Brooks, which was the hardest to believe.
Standing there now with her incarcerated husband’s travel journal in her hands, none of it felt silly anymore. She flipped to the last entry. August 17, Africa: I’m not ready to go home. I’m not ready to say goodbye. I’m not sure I ever will be.
Gretchen snapped the book closed. Heart racing. With a flick of her wrist, she sent the journal sailing under the bed, where it cracked against the wall with even more force than the painting had.