year of being married, and then he was traveling all the time for work and coming home late, and I just thought, ‘Dammit, I’m one of those women. I’m the idiot wife.’ ”
I could barely hide my shock. Sweet, boring, definitely-not-as-hot-as-her Will? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Oh god, this is embarrassing. I installed a keystroke logger on his computer.”
“A what?”
“A keystroke logger. You can get it at, like, Office Depot. It records everything someone types so you can see it remotely.”
I frowned. “Why not just hack into his computer? Or, like, look at it when he wasn’t around?”
She shook her head. “You can clear your search history. You can delete emails and texts. This shows you everything they’ve ever typed.” She bowed her head. “I can’t even look at you. I know, it’s so bad.”
“No, I get it. You just wanted to know. So what’d you find?”
“That he’d been seeing a therapist. Because he loved me and was afraid he was gonna fuck things up. I felt like such a crazy person.”
“Oh my god. Well, I’m relieved about that ending. And you’re not a crazy person. Love makes people crazy.”
“Fear makes people crazy,” she added, or maybe countered.
I nodded slowly, unsure of what else to say. I’d always thought their relationship was close to perfect, the Platonic ideal. Knowing about this rocky patch, even all those years ago, made me feel sad for Tessa, but also…what was that soft fizz? Relief?
“Sorry, I’m not helping,” she burst in. “I’m just saying shit. But listen, it’s gonna be okay.”
I thought for a moment. “Can you do me a favor and look into the landlord for me?” I asked. “Anthony Stiles. I did a cursory search and found the fire, but maybe—”
“I’m on it.” She nodded emphatically, then finished a scribble in her notepad with a dramatic dot. Stiles, cross the t, dot the i. Stick a needle in my eye.
“But, Tessa, I know you’ve got a lot going on with the baby and work and everything else. So please don’t feel like you need to—”
“You’d do the same for me,” she interrupted.
“Can I at least take you out to dinner this weekend to say thank you?” I pressed my palms together. “Or we can order in some Thai and watch movies that’ll make you really excited about motherhood. Like Rosemary’s Baby!”
She giggled. “I wish, but Will and I are going up to the house on Friday. The city smells are getting to me.”
“Rain check, then,” I told her, careful not to let my face fall. The house in Saugerties. Coincidentally, they’d closed on it the same weekend when, a few years back, a pipe had burst under my kitchen sink. For weeks, I had to sleep in hotels as contractors ripped at the cabinets and floor. Tessa had called to check in from their new pinewood cabin, and the heavy envy I’d felt had been almost too much to bear: Here I was stuck with no partner, no dream job, and no apartment, and Tessa was rounding the bases with home number two. I’d cried often that month, ugly sobs that took me by surprise as I blow-dried my hair or got ready for bed.
* * *
In the morning, I rode the subway clutching a greasy pole and thinking about Alex. A suspect so obvious, it was laughable: the cuckolded ex-boyfriend, spurned and right there that evening. I was standing in the break room, making a cup of coffee, when a circuit connected—a cuckolded ex-boyfriend, recently spurned: We had another one of those in the cast. Why didn’t anyone suspect him?
I’d found Greg’s architecture firm back when I’d first broke into my old email—no contact info, just a physical location and a generic info email address. The address was in DUMBO, a cobblestoned neighborhood in Brooklyn, just one subway stop from my office. I blocked out a fake lunch on my work calendar. Greg, I’m coming for you.
At noon, I emerged at High Street and wandered the wrong way for a while, confused by the area’s angled streets and sudden dead ends from the two bridges plunked there. Eventually I found Greg’s building, a block-long behemoth with bookstores on both ends. No doorman, so I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. No receptionist there, either, so I wandered the hallways, watching the numbers until I came upon suite 418.
It was one of those open offices, sunlit and dissected by four absurdly long tables,