Page 32 of The Librarians
“My grandfather’s mother was an Atwood. And some branch of the Asquith family and some branch of the Atwood family are related by marriage. The precise details escape me but my grandfather was able to pinpoint my husband’s lineage. He conceded that Kit comes from good stock, but the prenuptial agreement remained inescapable.”
A prenuptial agreement, however, even an ironclad one, will not protect her reputation, once it becomes known that the police want him. And of course it could have never protected her heart from the chill that slowly crept in over the past year.
“So there you have it, Detective. I did not—and do not—have access to the financial records of his ventures. His conduct within our marriage gave me no reason to suspect that he might have been in money trouble.”
“You had no idea at all that anything might be wrong?”
“That is not what I said. I said that I never thought he might be having money trouble. What I suspected was that he no longer loved me—and was perhaps in love with someone else.”
“Because?”
She props up her elbow on the armrest and drops her cheek into her palm—it’s either that or let her head fall back against the padded top of the chair. “Because he was distant and easily distracted. He stayed later and later at work. And sometimes when I went to his gallery in the evenings, he wasn’t there, even though that was where he’d said he would be. You know, all the classic signs, at least according to movies and TV shows, that someone might be having an affair.”
“Did you not ask him?”
“No.”
If I asked him, and he said yes, then that would have been the end of us, we who have no children and no financial entanglement to hold us together.
Every hour or so, it occurs to her that she might never see Kit again: Her grandfather will insist that the dissolution of their marriage be conducted via lawyers, and only via lawyers.
But she wants to hear everything from Kit’s lips. She wants him to tell her why.
It’s respectable enough, I guess, art dealing, he’d said wryly.My parents don’t have to apologize for it, or explain what I do, especially if they label me as a gallery owner. People understand then that I’m a shopkeeper. Actually it might have been better if I became a bookseller, but I’ve always been slightly dyslexic and would not have done a very good job.
She’d laughed.
They’d met on her Singapore–Frankfurt flight and had hit it off right away. From Frankfurt she was headed to Brussels, to meet her board game publisher, he to Basel, to attend Art Basel, of course.
As they readied for disembarkation, he proposed that they meet in Bruges afterward, for a second date.
Oh, we already had a first date?
I don’t know about you, but I’m deeply relieved to have that behind us.
So there they were, in Bruges, ambling along canals lined with cake-colored town houses.
Why would it have been better if you’d been a bookseller?
Booksellers don’t have to travel as much. Or it’s possible that everything I know about bookselling is wrong because everything I know about bookselling comes fromNotting Hilland that rom-com in which Tom Hanks was basically Barnes & Noble in its heyday, right before Amazon came along and ate its lunch.
After that, their conversation had promptly veered off to his mother’s love of romantic comedies—and her mother’s equally strong adoration of celluloid tragedies, romantic or otherwise.
That had established a pattern: his charming deprecation of his profession, a few anecdotes here and there of his days working in museums, and perhaps an analogy or two on what it was like trying to get artists and billionaires to see eye to eye. But no more than that—never more than that.
It was a refreshing change from the men of her family, who talked about work to the exclusion of almost everything else. She never suspected that this modesty, this disinclination to take up all the air in the room, was in service of deception.
“You are sure you’ve had no communication from him for the past five days?”
She nods slowly. “Before he left we agreed that we’d check in with each other once a week—to exchange photos, so that if anyone asked we’d still appear up-to-date on each other’s lives.”
“And you did not try to keep tabs on him through social media, his or his friends’.”
A good guess—or does Detective Chu already know her entire browsing history?
“No,” she replies simply.
“No, indeed. But you spent a great deal of time looking up the island of Madeira. More specifically, clicking through fifty Airbnbs and thirty different real estate listings—in the last three days alone. Thinking of relocating?”
