Page 25 of Where Vows Collapse
"I see," he said.
Vanders inclined his head. "It was a pleasure, Noelle.”
"And you."
Elias watched his wife step back from the window and walk Vanders to the hall.
He remained in the living room. He did not say anything.
Noelle returned from the hall. She crossed to the console table and squared the folder against its edge, then she turned and she faced him.
"You're home early."
"Yes."
"Was your meeting productive?”
"It was."
They looked at each other. The silence extended. He could see her deciding how to read him.
"You didn't mention Vanders would be here," he said.
"It wasn't planned. He called this morning. He asked if he could come by. It seemed reasonable."
He gave her a an abrupt nod and turned away.
In his home office, he sat at his desk for a long time with his hand flat on the blotter.
The file on Vanders was in the top drawer. He had reviewed it the night before. The addendum his team had produced this week was short. Two sheets. One contained a list of the board memberships Vanders had accepted since the wedding; the Corton Foundation was on the list. It had been on the list since well before this afternoon's meeting. The second contained a line item on a charitable initiative the Corton Foundation had, in fact, opened preliminary conversations with the firm's philanthropy office about, some time ago.
He had read both sheets. He had filed them.
A man could come to his wife's home in the middle of the afternoon to discuss a charitable partnership whose existence his team had already confirmed, and this would be unremarkable.
He saw also that unremarkable cover was the cheapest cover a capable man could buy.
A capable man arranged the legitimate meeting. A capable man ensured the legitimate meeting sat on top of every other meeting, legitimate or not. A capable man — and Vanders was, if he was anything, capable — engineered exactly the kind of encounter that would survive exactly the kind of scrutiny a husband would bring.
The Corton Foundation was real. The partnership was real. The conversation between Vanders and his wife might havebeen, from the first word to the last, exactly what she’d said it was. That was not what concerned him.
He did not know. He was not going to know. He was not going to ask her, because asking his wife would require him to listen to her answer, and he saw now that he no longer trusted his own ability to evaluate her answers.
He.d kissed her a few nights before. He’d felt her lean into him. He’d felt something he’d never felt in his life. But he’d pulled back and called it a mistake, because calling it a mistake had been the only way to keep the thing in him from becoming the thing that took him apart.
If he asked her now, and she told him a plausible story, he would believe her.
He would believe her because he wanted to.
Elias closed the drawer. He took out his phone and made a couple of calls. The first was brief, to his senior counsel, requesting a fuller dossier on Vanders's movements in the weeks just past. The second was briefer, to the building concierge, asking for a list of all visitors to the penthouse in the recent past. He did not, as he made either call, feel the ethical discomfort he would have felt earlier in the marriage at authorizing such requests about his own wife. The discomfort had gone somewhere during the week. He was not sure where.
CHAPTER 10
NOELLE
At first,Noelle told herself nothing had changed.
It was an easy lie to keep. On the surface, the days after the Vanders visit unfolded exactly as the days before the kiss had unfolded. Elias left early. He returned late. Their exchanges were brief, courteous, and strictly functional. Maura moved through the rooms with the same quiet attention she had always given them. The lilies on the entry table were replaced on Monday, as they always were. The mail was sorted, the laundry was returned, the coffee was brought at six-fifteen.
