George Morton was sitting in the family room, watching Judge Judy on the forty-two-inch plasma. “Honey, come in here and watch this,” he said. “Judy’s really going to town on this woman.”
Tonight, it was some mother who was making a million excuses for her dumbass son, who’d taken the family car without permission to a party where lots of underage kids were drinking. One of the son’s drunk friends had taken the car for a spin and totaled it, and now this mother wanted the parents of the other kid to pay for the damages, ignoring the fact that if her own son hadn’t taken the car and let a drunk friend drive off with it, none of this would have happened.
“Are you coming in here or not? You’re not still mad, are you? Listen, honey, I want to talk to you about something.”
Belinda was in the kitchen, standing at the counter, looking over various real estate documents, unable to concentrate at all. Mad? He thought she was mad? More like homicidal. Sommer was expecting his money and that asshole husband of hers was still stubbornly holding on to it, keeping it locked up in his study safe, refusing to hand it over until Belinda told him what it was for. Totally improper, George kept saying, these large cash transactions. After all, he said, you’re not in business with criminals.
When he was in the bathroom, she’d tried to open the safe using numbers from his Social Security card, his license plate, his birthday, even his mother’s birthday, which he never failed to remember, even in years when he forgot Belinda’s. But she hadn’t stumbled upon the right sequence yet.
So now she was back in the kitchen, working on a new strategy. Something more dramatic. She would go down to the basement, get a hammer from her husband’s toolbox, then invite him into his study. There he’d find her standing next to that model galleon he’d spent about two hundred hours building several years ago, threatening to smash it into a million pieces if he didn’t open that goddamn safe right this second and give her the envelope stuffed with cash. There was no way he’d allow her to destroy that model. And she’d do it, there was no doubt in her mind. She’d smash it until it was nothing more than a pile of toothpicks.
George called out, “Did you hear me, hon? I want to talk to you about something.”
She came into the room. George picked up the remote, extended his arm and muted the judge. This must be something really important, she thought. She also wondered, What did George do to his wrist? It was the first she’d noticed it. He’d been so modest the last few days, not letting her see him naked, wearing long-sleeved shirts.
“I’ve been thinking about this lawsuit that Wilkinson woman has launched against Glen,” he said.
Belinda waited. It was her experience that George was never that interested in what she had to say, so she might as well see where this was going.
“It’s a terrible thing,” he said. “It could wipe Glen out. And there he is, trying to raise a child alone. He’ll never be able to send her to college. It’ll set him back for years and years if the Wilkinson woman wins.”
“You’re the one who was all high and mighty about doing what was right.”
“I’m a little less sure now what, exactly, is right. I mean, just because Sheila might have experimented with marijuana, it doesn’t mean she was smoking it the night of her accident. And from what I hear, it wasn’t drugs they found in her bloodstream but alcohol.”
“What’s going on, George? You never change your mind about anything.”
“All I’m saying is, next time you meet with the lawyers, you should say that maybe you were wrong about these things. That since you first spoke, you remember these events more clearly, that Sheila really didn’t do anything that wrong.”
“Where’s this coming from?”
“I just want to do what’s right.”
“You want to do what’s right? Open that goddamn safe.”
“Well now, Belinda, that’s really a separate matter. I still want you to explain to me what that’s all about, and I want you to know I’m willing to be flexible about this. I’m wondering if maybe, just this once, I overstepped my bounds where-”
“What the hell happened to your wrist?”
“What? Nothing.”
But she had grabbed hold of his arm and tugged the sleeve back. “What did you do to yourself? This didn’t just happen. It looks like it’s already healing. When’d this happen? You’ve been covering this up for days. Is this why you’ve been so weird lately? Not letting me see you naked, not sleeping with me, not-it’s both wrists?”
“It’s a rash,” he said. “Don’t touch it or you’ll catch it. It’s very contagious.”
“What, is it poison ivy?”
“Something like that. I was just trying to protect-”
The doorbell rang. That stopped both of them.
“Well, there’s someone here,” George said. “You want to go see?”
