Then something small slipped out from between two pages and fell onto the table. A yellow Post-it note. The handwriting wasn’t Daniel’s. It said: “Friday. Elaine can’t know until it’s done. S.” I read it once, then again.
There are times when your mind works very hard to protect your old life. I really thought there might be another Elaine, which would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Daniel had left two days ago. He was coming home Thursday night and, according to that note, something involving his mother’s house, our house, and $185,000 was supposed to happen Friday.
I folded the ticket again at the crease. Then I looked at the empty spot in the room where Daniel’s armchair had been. For 12 years he sat in that chair almost every night. I handed him coffee over there, covered him with a blanket over there, sat next to him while we talked about our children, bills, retirement, his mother, all the things that ordinary married people talk about when they assume they’re both living the same version of their lives. And all this time, something was hidden beneath it. I still didn’t know exactly what I had found, but I knew one thing: whatever was going to happen on Friday, someone made it very clear that I shouldn’t know about it.
I almost called Daniel right then and there. His name was on my phone screen. My thumb hovered over the green button. Twenty-four years of marriage do that to you. Your first instinct is still to turn to the person who has always been on the other side of the problem. So I looked at the sticker again: “Elaine can’t know until it’s done.” And I put the phone down. Not because I had suddenly become smart. I didn’t have it. I was confused and angry, and a small part of me still wanted Daniel to call me “darling” and explain everything in a tedious way that would make me feel silly for being worried. That was the part I didn’t trust.
Daniel had been working in sales for almost 30 years. He could explain anything. A delayed flight, a bad quarter, a charge on the credit card. Why did he need a new set of golf clubs when the old ones seemed perfectly capable of sending a ball into the bushes? Give this man 10 minutes and a cup of coffee, and he could make you feel irrational by asking why the garage was on fire. So, I didn’t call him.
I put each document back in the envelope and took photos of each page first. Not because I knew what I was doing, but because I was afraid of forgetting something. Then I sat down at the kitchen table and tried to understand it all. This lasted about 15 minutes. The forms could very well be written in Greek. There were references to borrower certifications, property value, Hawthorne Property Ventures, and something that looked like a closing checklist. I understood the numbers. That was enough to scare me.
