After #2
“Is Richard on his way in? I was just starting to get worried—you know, I never can help myself. He has a two p.m. that I’ve pushed several times. They’ll have my head if I cancel again!”
In her seventies, Deborah was warm and caring, but also firm.
Gretchen loved that there was another woman in Richard’s life who kept tabs on him.
There had been periods when Deborah and Gretchen had spoken nearly every day about Richard’s location or something personal he needed sent by messenger to some distant locale—a specific tie, his reading glasses.
During the decade and a half that Richard had been working around the clock and traveling constantly, Gretchen and Deborah had functioned like sister wives, ensuring he was eating and had clean clothes and was sleeping at least occasionally.
Gretchen had heard of other secretaries who were patronizing to wives.
But Deborah had always made Gretchen feel completely respected.
“He’s, um—”
Was she really going to tell Deborah the truth? The children were one thing, but this…Richard wouldn’t be available until Monday night at the earliest, and what if it came out in the news? Not if—it was going to be in the news. She needed Deborah to do damage control at the office.
“Is everything—everyone okay?” Deborah prompted.
“Not exactly, no,” Gretchen began. She felt like she might choke on the shame.
There was no way she could do this on the phone.
“Could we…could you meet me outside the office and I’ll explain?
” Too many colleagues of Richard’s would love nothing more than to see him unseated from the throne.
“I’m afraid you will need to cancel the rest of Richard’s meetings for today. ”
—
They agreed to meet near the Brookfield Place behind Goldman Sachs, where hordes of people spent their lunch hour dining al fresco along the Hudson River. Gretchen had never liked the area, which felt to her like an upscale suburban mall. Who wanted a mall in New York City?
As Gretchen sat on a concrete bench waiting for Deborah, a huge cargo ship slowly eased past. It was lovely on the water, peaceful, almost. But then her phone rang, and her heart stopped.
Blocked. She didn’t want to risk answering. But how could she not, at this point?
“Hello?”
“We need to meet,” came the voice on the other end. The accent was unmistakable. She gripped the back of her damp neck with her free hand.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she said evenly despite her heart palpitations. “At the moment.”
“Bethesda Fountain. Six p.m.” And then he was gone.
Gretchen stared down at her phone, gripping it tightly. They wanted to be paid, surely. And that was fair. Inconvenient but fair.
She tapped on her text thread with Brooks.
Three unanswered texts to him since she’d gotten home from the police station.
Gretchen had made it clear it was urgent.
She really wished he would call. But Brooks had been crazed lately with the run-up to becoming CEO of Grace Chemical.
They’d talked a little about it at the memorial.
His father was ailing, and though Brooks was the natural successor and deserved it after so many years of working so hard, there was some kind of hostile takeover in the offing.
Gretchen hadn’t been paying enough attention to the details, probably.
In general, she hadn’t been there for Brooks like she should have been.
She’d even ignored his calls last week when he was in the city; she’d been so overwhelmed planning the next Literary Lions gala that she simply forgot to get back to him.
It was possible he was just away now. He’d also hinted at the memorial that he and Melinda were having problems. No surprise, given that she was the most self-involved woman Gretchen had ever met.
Maybe they were together somewhere now trying to work things out.
Still, Gretchen worried that Brooks had heard what had happened and was avoiding her so that he wouldn’t have to tell her what he knew about Richard and Frankie.
He would never lie to her, but he also wouldn’t want to be the one to share hurtful news.
Gretchen was just about to send Brooks another text when she saw Deborah headed her way wearing a stylish, black-flowered dress, large sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and chunky jewelry. Deborah had a thrift-store chic that always made her seem surprisingly mysterious.
“What’s going on?” Deborah was breathing heavily. “You’re white as a sheet.”
Looking at Deborah with her perfectly applied lipstick—neither too dark nor too dry—and her beaming smile, Gretchen felt a little better already.
If anyone could help her sort this out, it was Deborah.
They were still a team. Wordlessly, Gretchen patted the bench next to her.
She needed another minute. Just one more.
Deborah seemed to sense Gretchen’s hesitation as she sat down and took Gretchen’s hand.
“Richard’s been arrested.” Gretchen had already learned that quick and to the point was best in this situation.
“Arrested?” Deborah gasped, hand to her chest. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a mistake, of course. A terrible one. That will come out, eventually. But until then the situation will need to be managed appropriately, including at the office.”
“Is it…Does it have something to do with work? Like those managing directors at Merrill. This new district attorney seems hell-bent on making some kind of point about the financial crisis. Someone should tell him he’s twenty years too late.”
Gretchen suddenly felt so envious of those Merrill wives, when only last week she’d been looking down her nose at them. She’d even told Richard she thought those men should do “real time.” That was before she knew how fragile her own house of glass was.
“It’s not work related.”
“Gretchen, you can tell me,” Deborah said, giving her hand a warm squeeze. “Whatever it is, I’m not going to believe Richard is capable of it.”
That was true. No one was more loyal than Deborah.
“A woman he climbed Kilimanjaro with has been killed. Murdered. I don’t know how they got from there to Richard. Turns out, the police don’t have to explain why you’ve been arrested!” Gretchen laughed a bit too loudly. And for too long. She swallowed hard. “At least not right away.”
Deborah closed her eyes and kept them closed, her lips pressed together. Oh, God, she knew something. Something Gretchen was not sure she wanted to know. “What does she look like? This woman?”
Gretchen shuddered. She couldn’t help it. She pulled her hand away and clasped her palms together. “Why?”
Deborah shook her head gently, frowning.
“There was a woman who showed up here earlier this week. I was just wondering if it could have been the same person.” She seemed disgusted—but at the woman, not Richard.
“Richard wasn’t even here. She made it all the way up to our floor even though she was in a state—makeup smeared, hair falling out all over.
She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
I have no idea how she got past security.
But she was quite pretty, I suppose. If you like that sort of thing.
I was just wondering if it could be the same person. ”
“No, no,” Gretchen said, though already she had doubts. “I can’t imagine she’d have that kind of audacity…They barely knew each other.”
* * *
The first time Richard had called from Africa, the connection had sputtered and stalled, but then there he was, finally, standing in an emerald-green clearing, a stunning mountain in the distance ringed with white, puffy clouds.
Richard was grinning like a much younger man.
Utterly elated—Gretchen hadn’t seen him so happy in years.
Maybe not ever. It had been right to let him go, no matter how worried she was. And she was still worried.
“Look at this place!” Richard had beamed, turning in a circle so Gretchen could see his surroundings, rays of light exploding behind him as the sun set. “It’s stunning! Completely unreal.”
It was incredibly magnificent even through the phone.
In the distance, Gretchen could see cocktails arranged on a table set at the edge of the hill—linens, stemware, a reasonable-size bar.
A sundowner. A small group, ten or so people, stood around the table.
It was hard to make them out at that distance, especially in their hats and other gear.
But Gretchen thought she spotted Van. A former NFL player, he was always hard to miss.
“Is that Kilimanjaro behind you?” Gretchen asked.
“No, that one is Meru,” Richard said. “It’s shorter, but much steeper, apparently.” He turned and pointed. “Kilimanjaro is that one.”
The mountain towered in the distance. A behemoth. “Oh, my,” Gretchen said, even more concerned now, but vowing to keep it to herself. “That’s stunning, and, oh, my, very tall! How are you feeling?”
“I feel fantastic! Really good,” Richard said. “Is everyone at home okay—you, the kids?”
“We’re all absolutely fine,” Gretchen said. “You just focus on taking care of yourself and coming home safe.”
“I will,” Richard said, his face turning serious in the way it did when he wanted Gretchen to know that he was really listening.
They were quiet for a long moment. Just staring at each other.
Even with thousands of miles between them, Gretchen felt the years, in a good way.
The best way. “Let me introduce you to everybody!”
The camera jumped around then, pointed briefly at the sky and then the grass, until finally it was on Richard’s face again.
He’d walked over to the group at the table.
He’d also fixed his hair. “These are our guides, Kito and Bakari.” Sticking his face into the frame, Richard pointed the camera toward two smiling men, one older and stockier, the other young and thin.
“You guys are going to keep us safe, right?”
“Absolutely!” Bakari called out, lifting his bottle of Coke toward the camera. “You have nothing to worry about—Richard and his friends will all be fine!”
Richard then shouted toward Van, Brooks, and Scotty in the distance.
They were standing with some other people, one of whom could have been a woman; it was hard to tell with all the gear.
Gretchen hadn’t considered that others might join the expedition, much less that one might be female.
Maybe she was part of a couple. The other figures were either guides or climbers—they were too far away to be sure.
“And the guys—hey, guys, wave to Gretchen!”
As Richard turned back to the camera, something about the light in his eyes made Gretchen uneasy. His face was filled with pure hope. With excitement and possibility. It was a look she had seen on her husband’s face only once before. The day he first looked at her.
* * *
“Let me show you a picture, see if you recognize her,” Gretchen said. She needed Deborah to confirm the woman she’d seen was not Frankie. Gretchen tapped her way to Frankie’s website and handed the phone to Deborah.
“Oh, no, that’s not her,” Deborah said, squinting at Gretchen’s phone, a relieved hand to her chest. It seemed they’d both been worried about the same thing. “I’m sure it was nothing. Like I said—Richard wasn’t even here, and I never mentioned it to him. The woman never came back, either.”
“And she didn’t say who she was?”
“No. And I didn’t ask.” Deborah made a face.
“I just escorted her downstairs and out of the building. Goodness, she prattled on the whole time in the elevator about how sorry she was to be a bother. Except, of course, she looked like a person who made it her business to bother. You know the type. The kind of woman who looks to a man to solve all her problems. And if that man happens to be someone else’s husband?
” Deborah shrugged and raised her hands in the air theatrically.
Then her expression softened as she reached over and again squeezed Gretchen’s hand reassuringly.
“Don’t you worry about Richard’s responsibilities at the office.
I will take care of things here. People don’t need to know everything about everything.
You just focus on taking care of the family. ”
“Thank you,” Gretchen said.
“I wonder, though…Should I let Shawna know? Maybe she could be helpful?”
Gretchen was drawing an absolute blank, and it made her feel addled. “I’m sorry, I don’t…”
“Oh, she’s the corporate coach Richard was seeing.”
Richard hadn’t mentioned anything about a coach to Gretchen. “Why would he need a coach? Was he having some sort of issue?”
“No, no, it’s not— Shawna is available to everyone on the executive team, I think.
” Deborah shook her head. She looked mortified.
“Anyway, I guess there were some things—I don’t know the details.
Goldman sends Shawna in at the first hint of…
The company wants it to seem like they are on top of every little problem these days, even the invented ones.
And not just Goldman. She told me she works with hundreds of companies. Shawna sees lots of senior people.”
“Is she like a therapist?” Gretchen asked, still not understanding exactly what it was that Deborah was saying, only that it was clear that she was trying to claw it back.
“Well, yes, I guess in a way.” Deborah was considering her words very carefully. “But not— I guess, yes. Richard and I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t feel like it was my place to ask.”
Gretchen looked back out to the river, searching for the cargo ship. But it was long gone now. She felt like she might cry.
“I’m sorry, Gretchen,” Deborah said. “I feel like I just complicated matters. I was trying to be helpful. There really is nothing to worry about.”
“I know,” Gretchen said, rising to her feet. “Everything will be fine. Of course it will.”