Surface (29 page)

Claire wandered into the study and stared at the partners’ desk she should have crawled under all those months ago. Sitting down in the Herman Miller desk chair, she wondered how long it would take for Berna to appear and start dusting the bookshelves. But she noticed the light on in the garage beyond the patio, and assumed Frau Rommel was now rearranging the soda cans in the garage fridge into alphabetical order. As if on cue, the phone rang, distracting her from an imminent spiral into her mire of “if onlys.” She picked it up without thought.

“Mrs. Montgomery?”

“Yes?”

“I need to speak to your husband, please.”

“You might try him at his office,” she said, annoyed in the role of helpful secretary.

“I’ve been trying him everywhere.” The man’s voice was tense and urgent. “Tell him that if I don’t receive the Janus information from him this week, things could get
very
serious. We’re running out of time. Please.” The caller left a name she didn’t recognize and hung up.

Claire set the phone down and twisted her wedding band up and down her finger. Where once the ring wouldn’t move above her knuckle, now it slid easily back and forth.
Janus? Mac Kessler?
The mysteries of her husband’s pursuits, it seemed, were endless. She hit the space bar on the keyboard, waking the computer. And instead of both of their login and password prompts, Michael’s desktop appeared—unprotected. Surprised and inspired by this uncharacteristic gap in security, Claire tentatively navigated the mouse around various folders on the screen. Hoping for illumination. “Manhattan Beach Fund,” “Rancho Los Amigos,” “Net-Jets.” Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at her. She clicked on the e-mail icon and scanned Michael’s Inbox for “Janus” or the cryptic Mac Kessler, fighting the sense of utter sliminess such snooping would normally elicit in her. But as she scrolled down the long list of messages going into the previous week with no luck, she abruptly changed tracks. “Taylor,” she typed into the search box.

Numerous messages containing that name appeared: from Eric Taylor, a frequent real estate investor; from a Taylor Technologies; from a
Post
story on Steamboat Springs’ Taylor Gold bowing out of the Olympic half-pipe; documents To Eric Taylor; trash with various news outlet stories about various Taylors. The list went on extensively and unremarkably, until an older message from Michael’s drafts box caught her attention. It was to Nicholas, with a subject line that read “I’m sorry,” and dated the day before his accident. Uneasily, she clicked the mouse.

 

 

The draft stopped there, unfinished.

Time stopped, and her feelings of deviousness vanished. Claire reread the message, experiencing the visceral sideswipe of her husband’s deceit. Suddenly, every extended business trip, every late night at the office and early morning text from the previous year came into a new and disturbing focus. As did Michael’s contempt over her transgression with Andrew. Carolyn had been right. He really was having an affair with this Taylor whom he claimed not to know, and Nicholas had found him out. Her gut was telling her this loudly and clearly, there was no denying the message. And she could neither stop herself nor drag herself away from the mess, like the truest of train wrecks. Clearly the marriage was over—evidently for longer than she’d imagined—but to ask their son to keep such a secret
and
to spend the last months punishing her without a hint of remorse? That was beyond hypocritical. Feeling as if she’d just polished off a fifth of vodka, Claire struggled to maintain her focus.
Sara Lee Clinton,
she whispered aloud until she managed to calm down and take a mental step back.
Sara Lee Clinton.
There was so much she didn’t know. And knowledge was power.

She took a deep breath and typed “Janus” into the search box—just before the kitchen door slammed open with a sobering thud. Claire could hear either Berna or Michael in there. She glanced back at the screen and saw at least a dozen e-mails in the trash with the subject “Janus,” many from Mac Kessler, and most marked urgent, but there was no time to read them. Her mind spun with questions as she quit Michael’s e-mail and logged out so he would assume he’d left things inaccessible, as he normally did, the last time he’d sat in that chair. She was on autopilot, her only concern, getting out of there with no one noticing that she’d even been in the study. But as she stood, it hit her that she hadn’t checked to see whether Michael might have sent a different version of his note to Nick, whether Nick had actually received any e-mails from his dad before his overdose. Flouting her nerves and better judgment, she typed Michael’s password into the log-in prompt. The search would only take another second, and then she would bolt. But the prompt didn’t accept Nicky’s initials and lacrosse jersey number. She could hear the faucet turn on in the kitchen. Hastily, she reentered what had been Michael’s password since Nick started at Andover. But again, the prompt just blinked back at her its silent but clear pronouncement that things were definitely not as they had once been.
You guilty, hypocritical bastard!
She grabbed the piece of paper she’d written Mac Kessler’s name on and crumbled it into her pocket.

Peeking her head into Nick’s darkened room, Claire listened to the reassuring cadence of his snoring. Berna—and not Michael—appeared in the hallway, much to her relief. The ironies seemed never-ending. “He’s gone to sleep,” she said protectively, before shutting the bedroom door and slipping past her.

She didn’t remember the drive home or the number of times she washed her face before feeling the water on her skin, or taking off her wedding ring and listening to it drop to the bathroom floor and roll into a corner. And only later, upon waking from a sweat-filled dream and staring dead-eyed into the shadows, did she focus on the fact that she had no shot of getting back into Michael’s new password-protected files.

C
HAPTER
36

“T
his is unbelievable,” Jackie said for the second time, repositioning herself on the couch next to Claire and covering the fringe on the cushion to protect it from the further unraveling her sister’s busy hands were trying to inflict. Claire had gathered her support system to the apartment and, driven by an unhealthy amount of caffeine, relayed the previous night’s events.

“Nothing surprises me anymore,” Carolyn said. “Nuh—thing.”

“This is crazy, right? How did I not know this was going on? And what the hell
else
is going on with this Kessler person?”

“Whatever it is, it’s not kosher,” Gail said, biting into a scone. “What are your instincts saying about all of the financial weirdness?”

Claire fiddled with a Kleenex, tying the tissue into several small knots. “Well, I called Neiman’s accounting this morning. Are you ready for this? The account had been shut down not due to disuse, but for nonpayment of an old balance. They’re sending it to collections.” She looked at the group incredulously. “He leases a jet and we have a charitable trust. And the country club has put us on the shit list and our bills are going to collections? What the
hell?!
”

“Not good,” Carolyn sniffed. “The market’s bad, but this smells worse.”

“All I can guess is that a couple of his deals didn’t perform and he’s distracted.” Claire smirked and stared up at the ceiling, but the dam broke. “Because of his girlfriend, no doubt.” The pain of it all was so surprising, so impressive in its heft that it might as well have been physical. “
Taylor’s
obviously why he’s refused to try to work through our issues, why he was so cut and dried in his decision to separate.” She looked from Jackie’s grim face to the jaded expressions of her two friends. And as her thoughts careered toward illumination, anger displaced the sadness in her eyes. “Oh my God,” she said after a long moment.

“What is it?” Jackie asked.

“What if he’s had one foot out the door for . . . however long, and I provided him with the ‘convenient’ excuse?
I
had the affair.
I
practically killed our son. He’s trying to put the failure of our marriage all on me so he can slither out of whatever mess he’s made, and into the comforting arms of his girlfriend without blame,” Claire said, pulling the tissue knots until they flayed under the pressure and fell like snowflakes into her lap. “Introduce her around as his new companion after the dust settles, and who would possibly blame him?”

“Double fucker,” Gail said. “Seriously.”

“How could I have been so stupid?”

“Claire, what if that e-mail wasn’t referring to an affair?” Jackie intoned in her voice of reason. “Not that I’m trying to protect Michael, because this is monstrous. But what if it was something else?”

“Yeah, well,” Carolyn said, sounding all too familiar with the self-protective naïveté of deflecting uncomfortable realities with vague possibilities. “There’s far too much smoke for there not to be a fire smoldering somewhere.”

“Little white lies, hon,” Gail reminded her.

But Claire didn’t need reminding. Not this time.

Jackie nodded with a sad groan of acceptance.

“My question, sweetie, is what you plan to do with this knowledge?” Carolyn asked, handing her a glass of ice water.

“I’m going over to the house tonight and I’m going to confront him,” she said, the water swishing over the rim of the glass as she gestured with mounting intensity. “I’m going to see what the bastard has to say about all this. And then I’m going to—”

“Whoa, time out, hon. I was hurt, clueless and divorced at twenty-four, and I’m not going to let you make the same mistakes I did during my first rodeo. Have you called Jack yet?”

Claire nodded, composing herself. “I’d almost forgotten. I have an appointment this afternoon. But now I’m not sure of the best way to handle all of this, given these new developments. Do I file for divorce immediately and get the lawyers to sort out whatever is going on with this potentially
serious
Janus issue and all the unpaid bills?” She stood and began pacing, pinching the ache between her eyebrows. “I totally blew it by not printing out those files. I just got so sidetracked and—”

“No,” Gail responded, looking as if she were about to dine out on Michael’s insides. “Have your preliminary meeting with Jack. Give him his retainer and get him up to speed. And then you’re going to do a little Sherlocking before you confront Michael with anything.”

Claire’s expression was drained of everything except skepticism and misery.

“Hold on,” Carolyn said. “She needs to digest this first, take a little breather and get her head screwed back into place. It’s going to take more than a new scarf and a competent lawyer to clear things up.” Carolyn walked Claire back to the couch and sat her down. “A little away time will keep you from a drape-drawn retreat into bed for a week.
Believe
me.”

“She’s right,” Jackie said. “Go away for a day and channel your energy. You need to come to grips with your own emotions before unleashing them on Michael.”

Gail seemed to weigh the options. “Fair enough. Go marinate in some fabulous spa for twenty-four hours. That boutique hotel near Beaver Creek would be perfect. And then when you get back to Denver, you’re going to get back into that computer. Something’s up, and you need to know what’s going on in order to plan your next move.”

Claire shook her head. “I can’t. I had that one shot when Michael apparently forgot to log out—which he
never
does. It was like there was an angel on my shoulder guiding me to the computer. But unless she comes back and whispers his new password to me, I’m screwed. And isn’t that illegal, by the way?”

“Illegal? This is your house and your computer, too, Claire. And if you just happen to stumble onto some information there, then I’m sure Michael will be more than happy to negotiate fairly with you.” Gail raised her eyebrows in a mother-knows-best ending to the conversation.

“But I’m still locked out of his desktop without the password.”

 

Claire walked down the portrait-lined corridor to Jack Kaufman’s office, willing herself to maintain her fight, and not turn around and head straight for the spa.

“Please, come in,” Jack said, stepping into the hallway and reaching a welcoming hand to her just as she had stopped to gather her wits.

“I nearly ran away,” she said as he ushered her into his sleek office and offered her a chair. “But Gail thinks the world of you.” Claire scanned the well-appointed space, focusing a trained eye on the handwritten lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” which were beautifully framed and hanging above Jack’s desk. Her nerves relaxed slightly. The manuscript had probably cost him in the neighborhood of a quarter million at auction. And she wondered how much of that her pal had helped fund. “So here I am. And I thank you for getting me in on such short notice.”

“I’m always happy to meet any friend of Gail Harrold,” he said, sitting below Dylan’s poetic rallying cry and pulling a Mont-blanc pen from his pocket. “So, how can I help you?” he asked with a kind smile.

Her mind reverted to Michael’s computer screen, to Andrew, and once again her ability to speak in coherent sentences all went
pftt.
She tried to start at the beginning, or what she thought was the beginning, but the story kept going farther back in time than the night at The Palm. And the more she strove to organize the story of her marriage and its disintegration, the more disorganized everything sounded. It was like trying to paint a scene from memory, struggling with recreating the exact hues and expressions, only to find that it had never really existed, at least not as she had remembered it. So Jack asked her pointed questions, and slowly she was able to piece it back to life. When finally it was out there in all its blackness and devoid of any stardust, Claire numbly asked what needed to happen next.

“I would not have advised you to move out of the house,” he said, running a hand through his wavy hair. A silver wedding band disappeared into the gray at his temples and reappeared against the darker patches at the top. “But what’s done is done and we’ll work around that. Do you anticipate a custody fight?”

The question threw her. She couldn’t imagine Michael going that route. He hadn’t been unfair about her time with Nicholas so far. “No, I don’t think he would do that. He understands the importance of consistency from both of us for Nicky.”

“Well, divorce brings out surprising sides to people, Claire. You need to be prepared for the unexpected.”

“Can he fight for sole custody?”

“Judges strive to put the best interests of the minor first, which is typically time with both parents. Assuming there aren’t any drug or alcohol issues?”

“No.” But a more frightening possibility suddenly hit her. “Could he say that I’m unfit because I, um, allowed Andrew into the house with the cocaine?”

“We’d have a pretty good argument against that, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What I do advise for now is that we file the divorce petition. I want you to get copies of your financial documents, including bank and brokerage account statements, credit card bills, home loan papers, etc. ...”

“We don’t have a mortgage,” Claire said as she fiercely took notes, shoving aside any thought that Michael would try to take custody. She knew he couldn’t manage caring for Nicholas without her, nor could she fathom him being that cruel. With one glaring exception, she had always been an excellent parent.

“My paralegal will give you a list. You can take some time to digest everything we’ve discussed and to gather this information, along with the other information you said you needed to get from your home. But we need to get this done soon in order to establish a clear mark in time of the marital breakdown. The longer we delay, the more time Michael will have to potentially hide or transfer assets, or even run up debt. Did you have a prenup?”

“Yes, but it just covered Michael’s trust from his family and future inheritances, which he gets exclusively. He also gets to keep all of his premarriage assets, and I keep mine. I have no problem with the document.”

“I’ll need a copy of that as well. And I definitely don’t like what I’m hearing about unpaid bills and mysterious calls for information. It may be nothing, but I don’t think that’s what you believe, and in my experience, your first instincts are generally right. We’ll get to the bottom of it in discovery, but the more information you can gather in the next three or four days before he knows we’re filing, the better.”

“I can’t believe it’s come down to this,” she said, looking up from her notepad and feeling parched and lightheaded. “I just never imagined I’d be serving him papers.”

“No one ever does when they’re saying ‘I do,’ Claire. But by us filing first, and not Michael, you’re going to be demonstrating to him and his team your resourcefulness and determination to get this resolved. On our terms.”

She nodded weakly.

Jack finished with the finer points of the divorce process, along with his retainer and other fees, and told Claire that the petition would be prepared and ready to be served to Michael just as soon as she gave him the go-ahead. He took her shoulders in his hands and gave her a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “You’re in good hands, Claire.”

“Thank you.”

“And I’ll hold your check for the retainer until after we serve him, so as not to raise any red flags.”

“It’s from my own account, so no worries.”

 

Claire emerged from Jack’s office building and into the bustling parking lot. The glare from the afternoon sun reflected off the eighteen stories of mirrored facade, causing her to wince. She groped for her sunglasses in her quilted leather bag, and hid behind their comforting shelter. In her rattled state she had forgotten where she’d parked her car; she scanned the shiny rows of four-wheel drives and Lexuses, searching for a sign of something familiar. A bicycle courier jumped the curb in front of her and the whoosh of cool air danced over her cheeks. A blond man in an expensive pinstriped suit set the remote alarm to his Mercedes as he moved toward the building entrance. His hair was slicked back with gel in the same fashion Michael wore his. The high-pitched beep of another alarm turned Claire’s attention to a younger man. He, too, bore a striking resemblance to Michael, and walked alongside a woman with gorgeous auburn curls. Then another look-alike. The terrible Fellini-esque fantasy closed in on her and she felt her stomach swirl up into her skull.

She hurried up and down rows, searching for the Jeep. When it appeared just a few cars away, she scrambled inside and turned on the ignition. The chill inside was bracing, and she exhaled a cloud of breath as she reached for her cell phone and dialed information. She couldn’t escape this town, the proximity of Michael, soon enough.