Belle looked over at her husband, Don, who was suddenly chewing the inside of his mouth, something he did only when something bothered him that he needed to think about.
Then she looked at Peter Heusen, Rosemary’s brother. According to Rosemary, he’d been on the verge of bankruptcy before her death but would benefit handsomely from her estate. Why was he looking as if he’d just bitten into a lemon? Belle wondered.
Stan Ballard, Rosemary’s lawyer and estate manager, had the face of a man who might not make it to the bathroom in time. He kept switching his weight from one leg to another, tugging his ear, dragging a hand through his hair, adjusting his tie.
Haile Patchett and Justine Olegard had taken up positions on opposite sides of the room. Olegard had her arms folded across her chest, face stern, a mask hiding any and all emotion. But Patchett’s face seemed to have crumbled a bit, a weariness overtaking her features, mouth droopy, eyes sad, as if something inside her had let go and given up.
Belle looked from one person to another. It was like a painting, she thought, a group portrait.
Now she realized she was going to enjoy this. She felt a sudden surge of confidence. With a nod and a nervous smile she opened the diary to the pages Rosemary had written on the last night of her life.
23 Tess Gerritsen
Belle could feel her heart thumping hard. What secrets lay inside? What Pandora’s box was she about to open? “The last entry is from August twenty-second, 2000.” She paused, looked up. “The day before she was executed.”
“Read it,” Olsen said.
Belle swallowed hard. And began to read.
I have become the invisible woman.
I don’t know the precise moment when it happened, when I began to fade from view like the Cheshire cat, my face dimming until only the ghost of my smile remains. I think it must have started soon after Leila was born. That’s when I first noticed that Christopher no longer seemed to look at me, but instead looked through me, as if I had turned transparent. Once your husband stops looking at you, you begin to feel that the rest of the world has stopped looking as well.
There was a time when I could catch a man’s eye just by wearing a short skirt and high heels. I could walk into a gathering of staid historians and see the startled looks on their faces when they realized that the Arms and Armor curator was an attractive young woman. And I was attractive. The Rosemary who once was: confident and serene. Ready to love and be loved.
That woman is gone now. In her place is a woman whom no one seems to see, a woman who walks into rooms unnoticed and unacknowledged. In this, I am not alone. This is what the passage of time does to all women. It thickens our waists, streaks our hair with gray, crinkles the skin around our eyes.
But invisibility also has its uses.
I certainly found it useful that summer.
On this, my final evening on earth, I don’t know why I should be focused on that particular memory. Over the past weeks I have been reviewing my life, remembering all my bad choices, all the points in time when a wiser decision could have sent me on a path toward a different and happier fate. But this is the fate I am now locked into. And I can’t help thinking about one of those crucial points in time-that day in June when I walked into the lobby of the Coronado Hotel.
That was the day my future was sealed.
It was not my first visit to that grand old hotel. Years before, as a newlywed, I had strolled through the lobby in a sundress and had seen a bellman stare admiringly at my legs. But this time, when I walked in, no one looked at me. I was just a mousy, brown-haired matron in a shapeless shirt and slacks, scarcely worth a glance when there were other females to stare at, young females who still had the glow of youth. They hadn’t lost their figures to motherhood. Their shoulders weren’t bowed from the humiliations of marriage to Christopher Thomas.
It’s as if I am there now. I watch one of those magnificent specimens walk past me in the lobby. She has shiny hair and perfect skin and the stride of a woman who knows she is beautiful. Enjoy it while you can, honey, I think. Because someday you’ll be where I am. Exactly where I am. I hunch deep in a chair and the woman doesn’t see me as she walks past, into the cocktail lounge. But I can see her perfectly. I see her glide across to the bar counter. I see her tap the shoulder of a man seated there. He turns, smiles at her, and reaches an arm around her waist to pat her ass. It is a gesture of easy familiarity, the way a man might greet his wife.
The problem is that man’s wife is me.
I watch as the shiny-haired woman and Christopher leave the cocktail lounge and stroll hand in hand to the grand stairway. They are too wrapped up in their lust; they don’t notice me follow them up the two flights of stairs into the historic section of the hotel. They head down a charming but creaky hallway and disappear into a guest room. The door closes, and I hear the privacy lock click shut.
I cannot help myself. I stand outside the room and imagine what is going on behind the closed door. I picture the clothes strewn on the floor, the naked bodies on the bed. I picture my husband’s hands on that woman’s silky young body, a body that has not given him two children and a decade of devotion.
Why did I torment myself that way? Why did I follow him when I already knew the purpose of his trip? Not business, as he’d claimed. No, it’s never about business. After all the women I’ve had to suffer through, I knew exactly what he was up to whenever he’d disappear for a few days, or even for just a few hours.
Suddenly, standing outside the room, I can bear it no longer. I leave that closed door and walk out of the building, to the garden courtyard. There I call the only person I can call about this. I have little regard for him, but at least, in this case, his interests are aligned with mine.
“I have to find a way to divorce him, Peter. I can’t deal with it any longer.”
My brother, never one for sympathy, gives an impatient sigh. “This again? You always say it, and you never follow through.”
“Because of the children.”
“They’ll get over a breakup. Kids always manage.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s Chris. He’ll fight me for them.”
“Why? He doesn’t give a damn about them.”
“But he does give a damn about the money. He’ll use them as a bargaining chip to squeeze every penny he can out of me.”
Only then does my brother take me seriously. Money has that effect on him. “He can’t do that,” says Peter. “The money is from our family.”
“But the children are his too. And if he gets custody of them-”
“He could get his hands on their trust fund,” Peter says, finishing for me. Peter is clever when he wants to be.
“This could complicate your life too. It’s all tied together, all our investments.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what to do! I want to be rid of him. But at the same time…”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think straight. I just want the pain to be over with. I want to stop hurting”