Thought I Knew You(15)

The woman nodded. “I work every day,” she said in stilted English. “Every day not Tuesday. We closed Tuesday.”

“Do you just work the register, or are you a waitress, too?”

She shook her head as if she didn’t quite understand. “I work tables, at register, in kitchen. This my father’s restaurant.”

I reached into my purse and pulled out five of the fifteen pictures of Greg. I shut my eyes for a moment. I needed her to say she had seen him. I fanned the pictures in front of her, as I had done with Joe at the hotel.

“Do you remember seeing this man?” I asked. “Take your time. Think about—”

“Yes. I seat him. He sat in this booth.” She walked out from behind the counter and pointed at the booth right behind the register. “It was early. Only few table with people.”

Excited, I started to thank her.

She added, “He was with woman.”





Chapter 8



“That son of a bitch!”



Drew put his arms around me and moved to shield me from the people on the sidewalk who had turned to look. “Look, you don’t know anything yet. Dinner isn’t an affair. Does he work with a woman? It really could have been innocent.”

“If I believe that, then I’m a complete idiot. I’ve been so adamant that Greg didn’t leave us, but he did, Drew. I really think he did.” I put my hand over my mouth, feeling the bile rise in my throat. I sank to my knees in the middle of the sidewalk, not caring who might be looking.





Drew managed to get me back to the hotel and tuck me into bed. “Take a nap,” he instructed.

I drifted in and out of a sleep interspersed with visions of Greg and spotty dreams, like a stuck filmstrip—Greg tied to a chair, blindfolded, loud and angry men with guns pointed at his head; Greg lying half-dead on the side of Route 96 somewhere; Greg in my hotel room pushing the hair off my face, shushing me, telling me everything would be okay. Greg.



When I woke up, the clock read six thirty. I looked toward the window. The dark gray sky with shafts of slanted light on the horizon gave no indication if it was dusk or dawn. My mind played back the day’s events with the final realization of Greg’s affair thudding in my chest. I thought of my girls, home with my mother while I chased… Who? Invisible kidnappers? I was a fool, gullible and naïve. I knew what everyone else must have seen—a woman too desperate to believe her husband had left her, clinging to the fantasy of a mysterious “disappearance.”



When I flung open the door between our adjoining rooms, Drew was lying on his bed, watching television. He jumped for the second time that day. “You’ve got to learn to knock.” He grinned.

“Is it morning or night?”

“Night.”

I was surprised. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished.”

“Me, too, and I want to get very, very drunk.”

“Claire…” He shrugged.

“Don’t,” I admonished. “Lecturing me about anything right now would be a very bad idea.”

We left the hotel in search of a bar. I needed greasy food and beer. I still wanted to find Greg, but I wanted him to pay for what he had done to me and his kids. He needed to understand the consequences of his actions. Did he really think he could just walk away? If he was so miserable, why not just divorce me? Was it the money? I couldn’t figure it out. Greg was never that selfish. He always put his family first. So why leave this way? What if he had cheated on me, and something horrible had happened to him? Would I care? Of course I would care; he was the father of my kids. My head was swimming with too many questions crashing into each other. I needed to stop thinking, and the fastest way I knew to do that was alcohol.

We found what we were looking for a few blocks away at McGraff’s Pub. The air inside was cool and smelled faintly of stale beer and Pine-Sol. The restaurant was fairly empty, save for a few single patrons who sat at the bar, staring blankly at one of several flat screen televisions playing various football games. We chose a booth, and Drew sat across from me, unusually quiet. When the waitress came over, I ordered a cheeseburger and fries, then without thinking, a Sam Adams, which made me think of Greg. My mood swung wildly between melancholy and anger.



“I still need to find him,” I said after Drew placed his order and the waitress left. I had finally found my words—most of them of the four-letter variety. On our drive down, I had been withdrawn and sad, lost in confusion, thinking of Greg as some kind of victim. With some solid evidence of an affair, I became the angry predator Drew had tried to draw out earlier. “But now, he better be terrified when I do.”