Chapter Twenty-Four Tessa #2
I’ve never seen an inkling of violence in him, but it isn’t just this restraining order that’s ominous, world shifting.
It’s everything about Regina and their affair, all the secrets.
I don’t know my husband at all, what he’s capable of.
And in pregnancy, my sleep, when it comes, is heavy.
If I’m in deep sleep, nothing will wake me.
It’s entirely possible that Gabe skulked outside for an hour that night and I didn’t stir.
Was Aram involved? Did Gabe call him after he killed Regina, terrified, and he helped my husband make it look like an accident?
He’d been calling obsessively lately, more so since Regina died.
Was he getting nervous, unpredictable? Did Gabe kill him too?
I leave the restraining order on the desk, shut the second drawer, and open the bottom one, not sure I want to find anything else that tells me my husband is a murderer.
Relief washes over me when it’s just a pile of catalogs for jewelry equipment, stickers on the tumblers and shaft tools I’ve selected over the years.
In the back of the drawer is a small wooden box.
I rest it on the desk, creak the top open.
There are prototypes for pieces I’ve long forgotten.
An art deco eternity band with baguettes—here, cubic zirconia, but in the finished pieces for Linsky’s, diamonds.
Linsky’s. CZs. I dig through the box more furiously, rifling through other earrings and rings, a few pendants.
When I don’t see it, I dump the box on the desk.
The pieces clink and scatter, about forty prototypes.
It isn’t here. The prototype for the earrings Dan bought for Claire.
The one Regina had. One, singular. It wasn’t from a pair of my earrings or anyone else’s design.
It was the prototype that should be in this pile.
I mine my phone from my pocket and text Barb to ask her to find the earring.
Are you okay??? she texts back immediately. I’m coming over.
Please, just find the earring.
She starts to text back, the three dots undulating unbearably slowly, so I call her.
“Tessa, I’ve been so worried.”
“The earring. Barb. I need you to focus.”
“Why do you—”
“I don’t have time to explain right now. Please just find it.” I don’t mean to be short with her. She isn’t even being that slow, but every second feels too long.
“I’ve got it,” she says.
“The back? Is there a little drawing carved into the metal?”
“It’s like a sideways I?”
The phone slips from my hand, bouncing off the Turkish rug beneath my feet. A barbell. My maker’s mark. The drawing I carve into every piece, even my prototypes.
Regina was in my house. She was in this office. She may be dead, but she can still make me feel vulnerable, her obsession, her desire to be like me. And Gabe cultivated it.
“Tessa, what’s going on?” Barb’s voice bleeds from the phone on the floor, crackling and distant. “I’m worried about—”
Downstairs, the alarm beeps. I freeze, waiting for it to blare. It stops before the cautionary dinging intensifies. Gabe’s home.
“T.?” Gabe calls from downstairs.
I bend down, quickly realize my uterus won’t oblige the action, and kick the phone to the left where I can lean sideways, a stitch shooting up my hip, and grab it.
“I gotta go,” I whisper into the phone as Barb continues to ask me to wait, to insist she should come over. “Don’t come. Let me talk to my husband. I’ll call you later. I promise.”
I hang up as his steps grow louder on the stairs. My heart thumps, leaving me gasping for breath, more so with each thud of Gabe’s feet. What can I say to this man I thought I knew, this man I’ve built a life with, this man who might be a murderer?
“Why’s the alarm on?” he asks as he appears in the doorway, leaning his long, lean body against the doorjamb. I hate how attracted I am to him, even in this moment.
Jasper has been rolling that fire truck back and forth, its cloying ring a background noise that I only notice now that it’s stopped.
Jasper throws the truck and runs over to his father.
Gabe’s face softens as Jasper collides with his shin.
He swoops Jasper into his arms and storms toward me.
I swallow my breath as he approaches, momentarily petrified until he plops Jasper into my lap and falls to the floor, hugging my legs as he weeps.
That’s the only word for it. His shoulders convulse, spasming in loss.
It’s so shocking that I just sit there as he burrows his head in my lap.
It roils my stomach, but I don’t tell him to move.
My husband, broken like I’ve never seen him before.
This man didn’t kill Aram. He isn’t capable of killing anyone.
He did lie, though. He cheated. Somehow, he got two people killed.
“Dada.” Jasper hits Gabe in the head, his uncoordinated attempts at consoling his father.
“I’m okay, Jaspy.” Gabe lifts his head off my leg and reaches for Jasper, scooping him into his long arms. Their connection exists outside me.
Somehow, it included Regina. That’s the worst part.
Maybe for another woman, it would be the cheating.
The part that hurts me the most is that he let another woman have a relationship with my son.
Eventually, Jasper gets bored, eager for a release. Gabe puts him on the floor, and our son searches for something he can tear or break. I’m about to ask Gabe about Rosebud when he spots the restraining order on the desk.
“What’s this?”
“You tell me. I found it in the drawer. Are you being threatened?”
“I didn’t even fill it out.”
“Who was it for?” He has a pleading expression on his face. I’m not wrong to make him tell me. He will not make me feel unreasonable again.
“I didn’t want to worry you.” He pauses for effect, sending my heart to catastrophic levels.
“Judy,” he finally admits. “She’s always watching us, and we’d just gotten Jasper home. I guess I was sleep deprived and a little on edge.”
“Judy?” Judy’s always been too nosy, intrusive even, but she’s never seemed dangerous.
“I just wanted her to go away.”
“So why didn’t you file it?”
“Probably the same reason Dan didn’t. You can’t file a restraining order on your neighbor and expect to continue living beside them.”
This stings. He means for it to sting.
“Sorry—I didn’t mean—I don’t have the mental capacity to think about Judy right now.”
“What about work?” I ask. “Have you ever filed a restraining order there?” I don’t know how to ask him why Regina was on his payroll, what they did in that extra office space across the street. I’m afraid of his answers, their permanency.
“Never. There’ve been moments. A few protestors.
Some angry clients who wanted their money back when IVF didn’t work.
No one that would warrant a restraining order.
” Gabe leans against the wall, runs his hand through his hair.
“I think you’re right. After the baby comes, we should look into moving. We’re too exposed here.”
Gabe stands up and closes the space between us. He kisses my temple, his lips like sandpaper against my skin. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Want to order some dinner? Whatever’s fine.”
I think I nod. I can’t be sure. Whatever my response, it’s enough for Gabe, who wanders down the hall. The shower turns on, a faint static in the distance.
I don’t know how I’m going to sit through dinner with Gabe, much less sleep beside him tonight.
Every inch of me knows it’s over between us, but I’m having a baby in eight days.
You can’t upend your life eight days before a C-section.
Plus, as certain as I am about Regina and Gabe, I don’t have all the facts.
I don’t know who killed her. Or Aram. I just know it wasn’t Gabe.
Could the restraining order really have been for Judy?
As if reading my mind, Jasper starts to shout, “Dede. Dede. Dede.”
The office is the only room in our house without a view to the canal or the alley, just one window that faces a complementary window in Judy’s home.
She keeps all her shades closed. Only, today the window is bare.
She stands there with one eye shut, tongue peeking out the corner of her mouth, eager to entertain my son.
Jasper toddles toward the window, delighted, while I’m paralyzed.
Somehow, she knew exactly where we were in our house.
Jasper presses his lips to the glass and slaps his hand against the pane in glee.
“Jasper, no.” I jump up too quickly, and my uterus thuds against my pelvis.
Judy beams and waves when she sees me. It sends a chill down my spine.
“Come.” I lug him away from the window and smother him in kisses before he can protest. As I carry him downstairs into the living area, where the walkways outside are dark and empty, I can sense her lingering.
Judy, our busybody neighbor. Could she be dangerous?
I’ve always pitied her. Feared her loneliness, her desperation, never her.
Loneliness and desperation, though, can make a person unhinged.