I took off the pink flannel pajamas I was wearing-Linda’s “mommy pajamas”-unflatteringly baggy, ultra soft from a thousand washes, with some kind of indeterminate washed-in stain on the sleeve. I didn’t remember putting them on. I climbed into my clothes from yesterday, which were lying on the chair by the window, and quietly left the room. It was my plan to leave without waking anyone; otherwise, I knew they’d try to stop me and probably succeed. I needed to leave, get back to my own apartment, start trying to understand what was happening. But Erik was already up, drinking coffee at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.
Their home was a spacious loft, with high ceilings and tall windows. The morning sun, bright and warm, entered unabated by blinds. The room, decorated with simple, low furniture in bone and brown tones, large-format oils painted by my sister-a talented painter as well as a gifted photographer-on the walls, eclectic pieces of sculpture from their various travels, was once as clean and elegant as the interior of a museum. But they’d been invaded, their evolved sense of style sacked and pillaged by the smaller members of the family.
Trevor’s T-shirt was draped over the chaise. A tall pile of Emily’s books threatened to topple from the suede couch (which also sported a grape-juice stain that had never been successfully removed). There was a small stuffed chair shaped like a hippo and a video game system attached to the large flat screen, an unfinished game of Monopoly on the cocktail table. Brown’s doggy bed was covered with his hair. The stainless-steel refrigerator, visible from where I stood, was covered with drawings, magnets, pictures, and stickers.
I didn’t say anything to Erik, just moved over to my bag, which slouched by the door, checked to see if my keys and wallet were in there. It was then that I noticed my ring was gone. I stared at my naked hand, the indentation on my finger. How could I not have noticed it before? I looked up at my brother-in-law, who was watching me from the stool where he perched.
“Did you take it off at the hospital?”
He didn’t ask what I meant. “No,” he said gently. “It was gone when we first got to you. I’m sorry, Iz. Your sister realized right away. We just thought-why say anything until you noticed. Insult to injury.”
I saw her face again, the woman at Marc’s office-that pitying, disdainful expression. That bitch took my ring.
Erik had come over to me while he was talking. I let him put his arm around my shoulders and lead me over to the couch. As I sat down heavily, Emily’s pile of books softly tumbled to the floor. We let them lie. In the corner of the room a massive Christmas tree was a riot of ornaments and multicolored lights. Its manic twinkling was too much for my tired eyes.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave,” he said. I noticed purple circles under his eyes, an unfamiliar stiffness to his mouth.
“I have to go home, Erik,” I said. “I have to…” I let the sentence trail.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. I wanted to rage but I managed to keep my voice low. I didn’t want to wake my sister; I didn’t want to look into her worried face. “Search the apartment? Look for clues? Find out what the hell happened to my husband?”
He nodded his understanding. “The police are working on that. You need to take care of yourself right now.” He tapped his temple, reminding me of the wound on my head. “Let us take care of you.”
I stood suddenly and moved back toward the door. He didn’t try to stop me; it wasn’t his style. He was the kind of guy who said his piece and then backed off, let people make their own decisions. He sank into the place where I had sat a moment earlier.
“There’s something, Izzy” he said as I was lifting my bag and reaching for the lock. He rubbed his eyes and released a breath. “I’ve been debating whether or not to tell you.”
I felt a thump of dread in my center. “What?”
He kept his head down for a second and then looked up, not at me but at a point above me. Something about his expression caused me to return to him, to sit kitty-corner from him in the chair. He’d been a brother to me since he fell in love with Linda. I loved him for that, for the father he was, and for the husband he was to my sister.
“I gave Marcus money. A lot of it.”
He was fair like Marcus, but with a boyish sweetness to him, a bright, open look to his face, where Marcus might seem stern. Marcus’s body was hard, no fat, sinewy. Erik’s body, while lean and toned, had a softness to it. His embrace was a comfort in a way that Marcus’s wasn’t. You could sink into Erik; he enfolded you. Marcus’s body held its boundaries, almost pushed you away. I noticed these things about my husband and my sister’s husband. Was I comparing them? Only in the way of the observer, defining things by their differences, seeking the telling details.
“I don’t understand,” I said. But I was starting to, slowly.
He cleared his throat and I noticed that his hands were shaking a little. “About a month ago, he came to me and said he needed investors. He had a new game in development and when it was finished it was going to revolutionize gaming, take things to a whole new level of realism.”
I shook my head slightly. I had no idea what he was talking about. Marcus had never mentioned anything like that to me.
“He showed me,” he said, pointing over to the flat screen mounted on the wall. “The graphics, they were… amazing. There’s no other word for it.” He kept his eyes on the screen as if he was still seeing the images there. “He said people in on the ground floor stood to double their investment, at least. He wanted Linda and me to benefit from that. I had no reason to doubt him, you know? He was family. His business was already a big success.”
“How much did you give him, Erik?” I said, reaching for his hand.
“A half a million,” he said, pulling his hand back and resting his head on it.
He knocked the wind out of me; I released a big rush of air. I thought about a recent conversation I’d had with my sister-about private-school tuition for Emily and Trevor, about building maintenance, taxes, health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, even the parking space for their car-how their cost of living was so high it was painful, even though by most standards they were wealthy people. She said it was crushing her. That was the word she used: crushing.
“You guys don’t have that kind of money do you?” I asked. “Just five hundred K lying around?”
“Uh, no,” he said. “We don’t.” He swept his arm to indicate the space around us. “We do okay, but it’s not like that. I borrowed against the loft.”
My sister was not a financial risk taker. She’d paid off the loft years earlier, after her first major gallery show, and the property had steadily been growing in value ever since. My sister was more successful than most, but an artist’s income was unpredictable year to year. That loft was her security blanket, her “lifeboat,” she called it. It had appreciated wildly over the last decade and was worth a fortune. If everything went to hell financially, they could sell it and live off the money for a good long time. She needed that kind of security to be happy, to feel like a good mom. She needed to know that she’d always be able to provide for Trevor and Emily. I knew all the reasons why this was so critical to her mental well-being-and so did Erik.
“Linda would never agree to that,” I said.
The color had drained from his face and he’d pressed his mouth into a thin line. Then I understood.
“She doesn’t know?” I said.
“You know how Linda is,” he said, hanging his head. “She doesn’t like to talk about money.”
“You did this without talking to her?”
He lifted a hand. “It was supposed to be short term, Izzy” he said. He stood up and walked over to one of the tall windows. I glanced uneasily at the door to their bedroom, imagining that I saw Linda there, her hair tousled, her eyes bleary with sleep. What are you guys talking about? But the door was firmly closed. He went on, talking so softly that I could barely hear him.