Page 21 of The Wife

“The technology itself is worth nothing if it’s not implemented where it’s needed most,” he said. “Getting clean water to Arizona is great, but getting it into farms and villages in remote parts of the world is the game changer. Needless to say, the potential for corruption in that process is huge.”

“And you found corruption?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not sure. But yeah, I think so. The books don’t look right. Inconsistent payments to local vendors that don’t line up to actual work or equipment. It reeks of massive kickbacks—basically bribing the power brokers to get into the territory.”

“Is that really all that bad, if it means the locals get water?”

“Except my entire life’s work is about not making those kinds of compromises. We don’t pollute the planet to create jobs, or use slave labor to bring the Internet to developing nations. Sorry, I’m ranting. In this particular case, it’s not only the usual tradeoffs. Given the region I’m talking about, that money might have gone to terrorists and warlords.”

Jason was more animated than I’d seen him in days.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. I can’t prove my suspicions, but I also can’t turn a blind eye. Basically, I’ve got a conflict of interest. Oasis is my client, but so are the investors I paired them with. Plus, there’s my own reputation.”

“Your ‘brand,’” I added with air quotes, because I knew how much the word irked him.

“Precisely. And most importantly, at the end of the day, I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror and believe I’ve done the right thing. So, yeah, if anything’s been weighing on me, it’s been this clusterfuck, not the nonsense with what’s-her-name.”

Rachel Sutton, I said to myself. She had a name.

“I’m hoping the lunch meeting I’m having today might help. I’ve been trying for a month and a half to get one of my contacts at Oasis to come clean and do the right thing.”

I told him that I was sorry he had so much on his plate at one time.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m the one who decided to take all this on. You of all people warned me.” He kissed me on the head. “You smell sogood.” He kissed me one more time on the cheek and stood up. “I’ll try to be back home by the time Spencer gets out of school. Maybe we can pick him up together, stop at Agata on the way home for lamb chops?”

“Sounds great.” I pictured the two of us standing outside Spencer’s school, holding hands in front of all the gossipy moms. He had a point about going face-to-face with the circling wolves. He had his pack, I had mine.

When I heard the front door close, I tapped the top of my iPad screen and typed in “Oasis Water Kerry.”

Within a few clicks, I confirmed that the vice president of marketing for Oasis Inc. was a woman named Kerry Lynch. That was my husband’s lunch meeting, exactly as he had told me.

I felt silly for checking.

14

Spencer was already scrambling eggs in the kitchen when I walked downstairs. He had two small plates on the counter, plus a jar of salsa.

I remember the first time I realized that my son was a stronger person than I’d ever been. He was in half-day kindergarten. I’d mistimed the baking of a batch of mini quiches for a client’s cocktail party and couldn’t leave. Mom was cleaning a house. As I had way too many times, I asked Dad if he could pick Spencer up from school. His legs were killing him by then, and he moved so slow. He showed up probably seven minutes after I would have.

When the two of them returned, Spencer tossed his backpack on the kitchen table, declared that he was ready for “taste-testing duty,” and then rated my latest creations “five-star nosh.” He disappeared to our room—the one we still shared at my parents’ house, the one I’d grown up in—as if everything were normal.

Dad broke the news. When he pulled up in front of the school, he saw Spencer on the ground, two boys standing over him. He managed to get out of his car in time to hear the gist of the boys’ comments. Why did he have the same last name as the one his mom grew up with? Why didn’t he have a dad?Everyone knows your mom ran away and came back with a bastard baby.

The boys took off when they saw my father headed their way. “I thought you should know,” Dad told me. “I still think we made the right decision, but it’s always up to you. Oh, and for what it’s worth, I recognized the biggest kid as Tony Faulkner’s boy. I’m half tempted to drive to that hellhole of a house and have a word with him.”

“That’s a bad idea, Dad.”

Dad shook his head, but said nothing else. The hellhole in question was a multi-acre lot off Three Mile Harbor where multiple generations of Faulkners resided. The Faulkner family was despised throughout the East End, but the topic of their family was especially touchy in our house. Mom and Dad still believe that my entire life might have been different if it hadn’t been for my association with “that girl,” as they referred to Trisha.

Tony Faulkner was Trisha’s youngest uncle, which would make the kid bullying Spencer her cousin. Based on what I knew about the things Faulkner men did to children, it did not surprise me at all that his son would already be screwed up.

When I asked Spencer about it that night, he shrugged and insisted it was no big deal.

“If you want to tell other kids where you were born, and why your last name is Mullen, you can.”

Against my mother’s wishes, I told Spencer the truth about the circumstances of his birth the first time he asked me, on his fifth birthday. I also told him that my parents had made the decision for me at the time not to share the details with anyone. All they said to those brave enough to ask was that I was back home, and they were overjoyed to have their baby grandson, Spencer, at the house, too. Filling in the blanks, most people assumed I had run away, gotten pregnant, and then come home again. It was a way to protect my privacy—to let me start over without people asking me about “what happened” for the rest of my life—but none of us had stopped to think how it would eventually affect Spencer. At the time, I was the child who needed protecting. Spencer was just an extension of me.

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