Wife-in-Law by Smith Haywood

Author:Smith, Haywood [Smith, Haywood]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

March 7, 2004

We’d all been reading about the whole Enron thing, but I was as shocked as anybody when I went to get the morning paper and opened it to see that Arthur Andersen had been indicted for fraud and tax evasion.

I stopped in the middle of the driveway and let out a strangled yelp.

Dear God. The goose that laid our golden egg was under arrest!

What if Greg lost his job? Ohmygod.

He was eligible to retire. If the company bellied up, would he lose his pension?

How would we manage? (I didn’t know about his condo developments in the Caymans till long after that. Or the racehorses. Or the stocks.)

Visions of homelessness and destitution chased me back into the house to call Greg on his cell phone.

He answered with an annoyed, “I really don’t have time to talk right now, Betsy.”

“Greg, the paper—”

“This whole thing is politically motivated,” he recited briskly, like a presidential press secretary facing reporters after the chief of staff got caught having sex with a hooker in the Oval Office. “The company is fine.”

Fine, with its founder indicted for corporate fraud?

Even I didn’t buy that.

My insecurities swelled as big, and as heavy, as Stone Mountain.

Greg had grown increasingly distant in the past few years, but I’d assumed that was normal. Relationships cycle, and he had a lot on his shoulders at work. The higher he went in the company, the closer to his vest he played it. And the longer hours he worked. After getting the top job in the Atlanta branch two years before, he’d begun to sleep over on the sofa in his corner office several times a week, but I hadn’t complained. I’d actually felt sorry for him. And I’d believed him when he told me they had so much business he couldn’t get it all done in a day.

When one gin and tonic turned to two or three whenever he finally did get home, I didn’t comment, or say anything when he came to bed so snockered that sex was nothing but a dim memory. I just had his drink and supper ready when he did come home, massaged his shoulders while he was in his chair, and made sure he always found peace and refuge at our house. But I needed to know if our home was threatened.

“Greg, this is me, your wife, not a reporter,” I pleaded. “Please talk to me. I deserve the truth. What does this mean for us?”

He covered the receiver, and I heard him bark muffled instructions to somebody. When he came back on, he practically shouted, “I told you, I’m too busy to talk now.”

He’d told me before we married that he had a bad temper, but I’d never seen it. Till then, when I finally stuck up for myself. “Don’t you dare hang up on me,” I insisted. “I deserve the truth.”

I looked at the headline again, and my blood ran cold. Indicted.

Could Greg be indicted too? His nickname at work was “the shark.” He’d always been so ambitious, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d cut corners to get ahead.

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