Die For You

the ingredients. I ask the questions, hear the answers, extrapolate meaning from the rhythm and nuance of language and tone. In our arguments, it used to come down to words. Marcus, not a native speaker, would throw up his hands, walk away, so angry that I could get hung up on the semantics, the connotations of the words he used, ignoring, he claimed, his true meaning, the argument itself. But words are all we have, their essence the only passage into our centers, the only way we can make people feel what we feel

“You use language like a weapon, like a sword, Isabel,” he said one time. “Am I your opponent? Will you cut me because I can’t wield it as well as you?”

“And you use it like a blunt-force instrument-imprecise, clumsy, banging, banging, banging to get your point across. You’d use a jack-hammer for needlework.”

“WHAT ABOUT THE affair you mentioned?” Detective Crowe charging into my reverie, bringing me back to present tense. I don’t know how much time had passed since he last spoke.

“What about it?”

I heard him sigh, as though I was being obtuse in order to exasperate him. “How did you find out about it? Did you know her name, where she lived?”

“I just knew,” I told him. “I felt it. Then there was a text message. I asked him to end it; he said he would. I never knew anything about her.”

He tugged at the cuff of his shirt, straightening the line that was exposed beyond his jacket, frowning.

“You don’t seem like the type not to ask questions.”

Maybe I was more like my mother than I wanted to admit, about some things, anyway. But it was different. I didn’t want to know anything about Marc’s lover at the time, didn’t want any fodder for my imagination to spin. Without it, I could just cast her as a bit player, someone who glided across the stage barely noticed. Any detail might have started me weaving her into something bigger, more important than I wanted her to be.

“He met her in Philadelphia. That’s all I know.”

“And even that might have been a lie.”

I shrugged, gave an assenting nod.

“That’s what really got me, you know? About my wife? I think I could have gotten over the cheating part. It was all the lying, all the sneaking around that really irked me. You can almost understand infidelity, right? The whole lust thing-it’s there. But it’s the logistics that make it really ugly, unforgivable. You thought she was spending time with her mother, but she was with her boyfriend. It turns your stomach.”

I didn’t answer because I knew what he was doing. He was trying to make me angry, relate to me and get me talking, commiserating. I’d watched enough television to know this. I’d start talking and some “clue” would pop out of my mouth, or I’d say something I hadn’t intended to, give away something that I knew. Maybe even admit that I’d killed my husband, dumped his body in the East River, killed his colleagues and trashed his business and the home we shared.

“But you forgave him, huh? Stayed with him?”

“Yes.” Was it really true? Had I ever forgiven him?

“Why?” He almost spat the question. What he really wanted to ask was “How?”

I regarded him. Another natty outfit-brown wool slacks, with a dark brown leather belt and shoes, cream button-down, dark coat, black hair gelled back, the debut of purposeful stubble. His intelligence, his competence, was a thin veneer over a deep immaturity. He was a boy, a child, though it looked as though forty was right around the corner. He still believed in fairy tales.

“Because I love him, Detective.”

“And love forgives.” He sounded sarcastic, bitter.

“Love accepts, moves forward. Maybe forgiveness comes in time.”

The answer seemed to startle the smugness off his face; the inside points of his eyebrows turned up quickly and then returned to their place in the arch. Sadness.

He recovered quickly. “What do you think they were looking for here, Mrs. Raine? At first glance, what’s missing other than the computers and the files in that cabinet?”

He exhausted me with all his questions, his attitude, and the way he kept saying my name. All the drive and energy I’d had in the cab had drained from me. I felt as if I’d been filled up with sand. “I don’t know.”

I looked at my naked hand. He caught the glance. “Where’s your wedding ring?”

“It’s gone,” I answered. “My brother-in-law said it was gone when they came to the hospital.”

It meant something; we both knew that. Neither of us knew what. He wrote it down in his book. He asked a few questions about the ring, scribbled my answers. There wasn’t much to tell-a two-carat cushion-cut ruby in a platinum setting. It was the only material possession in the world that held any value for me.

The phone in my pocket vibrated and I withdrew it and looked at the screen. I flipped it open to read the text message there, then snapped it shut.

“Who was that?” asked Detective Crowe. A little rude, I thought, and none of his business.

“My sister’s worried,” I told him. He nodded as if he knew all about worried sisters. I felt my chest start to swell, my shoulders tense.

“You’re looking a little pale again,” he said after a beat.

I stood and moved toward the door. “You know what? You were right. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be here. I have to leave.”

He blocked my passage with his body, which I did not like. I took a step back.

“We have a lot to talk about,” he said, mellow but firm. “Since you insisted on being here, we might as well do it now.”

“I know. But I’d rather do it someplace else,” I said. “You said yourself I shouldn’t be here, and you were right. Anyway, you must have enough to keep you busy here for a while-fingerprints, DNA, whatever.”

“That’s for the techs, the forensics teams. They’ve come and gone. While they analyze what they’ve found, all I have to do is ask questions. Hopefully the right ones lead to answers that help me to understand why three people are dead, your home and office have been trashed, and your husband, Marcus Raine, the point at which all of this connects, is missing.”

He leaned on the name heavily, oddly.

“Why did you say his name like that?” I asked.

He raised a finger in the air. “Now, that’s a good question.”

His doppelganger had returned, the shadow my addled brain was creating behind him. I felt some kind of dizzying combination of anger, dread, and dislike for the man who was crowding me in my very small office with his thick body. I took another step back and was against the wall.

“Marcus Raine, born in the Czech Republic in 1968, emigrated to the U.S. in 1990, attended Columbia University on scholarship and obtained a bachelor’s and then a master’s in computer science from that institution. Lived in the U.S. first on a student, then a work visa, before he became a U.S. citizen in 1997.”

“That’s right.” With the exception of the last piece of information, I’d told him as much last night. He wasn’t wowing me with his detective skills.

“Worked for a start-up called Red Gravity, made a small fortune when the company went public in 1998.”

I nodded. It wasn’t enough money to retire forever. But it was more money than Marcus ever thought he’d make in his lifetime-or so it had seemed at the time.

“He did well enough to set up his own company shortly after we were married,” I said.

He offered a mirthless smile. “Well, no. That’s the thing.”

I didn’t appreciate the know-it-all, smarter-than-you swagger to his bearing; it caused me to flush with the shame of a liar or a fool. I tried to push past him again. The room was suddenly too hot. He waited a second before yielding to me. I didn’t go far, just to my bed, where I sat heavily, though the sheets and comforter had been shredded. It looked as though someone very strong had sunk a knife deep into the mattress and then cut ugly swaths through the material. There’s so much rage evidenced here. Was it possible that Marcus and I had made love here just the morning before last?

“Marcus Raine,” he said, following me and pulling a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket, “disappeared in early 1999.”

He handed me the paper, a printout from the Times online. When he did, I noticed that the skin on his knuckles was split, his hand swollen and looking sore. I almost asked about it but figured I had