“Barbara.” My voice was an intruder. Her fingers worked harder, as if persistence alone could make me want the absolution she thought was in her power to offer.

“Just let me do this,” she said.

I did not want to hurt her. I wanted nothing to do with her at all. “Barbara,” I said again, more insistently this time. I reached for her fingers. She pulled me around to face her.

“I can do this, Work.”

The front of her hair was wet, the back still dry, and her face was so serious that I almost laughed; yet there was desperation in her eyes, as if this was all she had left to offer and she knew it. For a moment, I did not know what to say, and in that moment she lowered herself to her knees.

“For God’s sake, Barbara.” I could not keep the disgust out of my voice, and I pushed roughly past her; I opened the door and grabbed my towel. Steam followed me out, along with a dread silence. The water stopped. I did not look back. When Barbara stepped out next to me, she didn’t bother to cover herself. She ignored the water that ran into her eyes and pooled on the floor; and I ignored her until I knew she would not simply walk away. So I turned and faced her, my towel heavy with cooling damp, my heart just heavy.

“My life’s falling apart, too,” she said. But it wasn’t sadness I saw in her eyes. It was anger.

CHAPTER 32

In my closet I found a row of empty hangers, which was fine. I would never wear a suit again; I was pretty sure of that. I pulled on a pair of jeans, an old button-down shirt, and running shoes that I’d worn out years ago. On the top shelf was a battered, disreputable baseball cap, and I put that on, too.

I found Barbara in the kitchen. She was making a pot of coffee; her robe was cinched tight.

“What can I do to make it right?” she asked. “I want it to be right with us, Work. So just tell me.”

A week before, I would have wavered and broken. I’d have told her that I loved her and that everything would be all right. Part of me would have believed it, but the rest of me would have screamed its thin scream.

“I don’t love you, Barbara. I don’t think I ever did.” She opened her mouth, but I continued before she could speak. “You don’t love me, either. Maybe you think you do, but you don’t. Let’s not pretend anymore. It’s over.”

“Just like that,” she said. “You say so and it’s over.” Her anger was obvious, but it may have been ego.

“We’ve been on a downward spiral for years.”

“I’m not giving you a divorce. We’ve been through too much. You owe me.”

“‘Owe you’?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t need your agreement, Barbara; I don’t even need cause. All it takes is a year’s separation.”

“You need me. You won’t make it in this town without me.”

I shook my head. “You might be surprised at how little I need.” But she ignored me and moved across the kitchen floor on feet that were invisible beneath the hem of her robe.

“We have our problems, Work, but we’re a team. We can deal with anything.”

She reached for me.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

She allowed her hands to drop, but they did so slowly. She looked up at me, and already she seemed to be retreating.

“Okay, Work. If that’s what you want. I won’t fight you. I’ll even act civilized. That’s what you want, isn’t it, a dry, emotionless parting? A clean break. So that you can get on with your new life and I can try to figure what mine will be. Right?”

“My new life might well be prison, Barbara. This may be the biggest favor I’ve ever done for you.”

“You won’t go to prison,” she said, but I merely shrugged.

“I’ll do the best I can for you, moneywise; you won’t have to fight me.”

Barbara laughed, and I saw some of the old bitterness steal into her eyes. “You don’t make enough money now, Work. You never have, not even when Ezra was alive, and nobody made money the way he did.”

Her words rang in my head, and something clicked. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me.” She turned away, picked up a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. I didn’t know when she had started smoking again. She was in college the last time I saw a cigarette between her lips, but this one danced in her mouth as she spoke. “You could barely make it with Ezra looking out for you. As it is, I don’t know a single lawyer in town who makes less money than you do.” She blew smoke at the ceiling. “So keep your empty promises. I know what they’re worth.”

But that wasn’t what struck me.

Making money’s not the same as having it. Hank’s words.

“Would you say that Ezra liked making money?” I asked. “Or did he like having it?”

“What are you talking about, Work? What does any of that matter? He’s dead. Our marriage is dead.”

But I was onto something. The pieces weren’t in place, but something was there and I couldn’t let go of it. “Money, Barbara. The achievement of it or the possession of it? Which was more important?”

She blew out more smoke and shrugged, as if nothing mattered anymore. “Having it,” she said. “He didn’t care about working for it. It was a tool.”

She was right. He depended on it. He could use it, and suddenly I knew. Not the exact combination to his safe, but I knew where to find it. And just like that, opening the old man’s safe became the most important thing in my world. It was something I had to do, and I knew how to do it.

I’ve got to go,” I said. I put my hand on her arm and she did not flinch away. “I’m sorry, Barbara.”

She nodded and looked at the floor, more smoke writhing from her lips.

“We’ll talk more later,” I said, and picked up the keys. I stopped at the garage door and looked back. I expected her to appear different somehow, but she didn’t. She looked as she always had. My hand was on the door when her voice stopped me a final time.

“One question,” she said.

“What?”

“What about your alibi?” she asked. “Aren’t you worried about losing your alibi?”

For an instant, our eyes locked. She let her shutters drop, and I saw into the depths of her. That’s when I knew that she knew. She’d known all along; so I said the words, and with their passing, a weight seemed to fall away, and in that instant even Barbara was untainted.

“You were never my alibi, Barbara. We both know that.”

She nodded slightly, and this time the tears came.

“There was a time I would have killed for you,” she said, and looked back up. “What was one little lie?”

The tears came faster, and her shoulders trembled as if finally exhausted by some invisible load. “Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“We do what we need to do, right? That’s what survival is all about.”

“It’s just a question of getting to the point where it has to be done. That’s why we’ll both be okay. Maybe we can part as friends.”

She sniffed loudly, and laughed. She wiped at her eyes. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

“It would,” I agreed. “Listen, I’ll be at the office. I won’t be long. When I get back, we’ll talk some more.”

“What are you going to the office for?” she asked.

“Nothing, really. I just figured something out.”

She gestured at the pain-filled space around us: the room, the house, maybe the entirety of our lives together. “More important than this?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, lying. “Of course not.”

“Then don’t leave,” she said.

“It’s just life, Barbara, and it gets messy. Not everything works out the way you want.”

“It does if you want it badly enough.”

“Only sometimes,” I said. Then I left, closing the door on the life behind me. I started the car and turned around. The children were still in the park, tiny flashes of color as they ran and screamed. I turned off the radio, put the car in drive, and then I saw Barbara in the garage. She watched me in utter stillness, and for an instant she did look different. But then she waved at me to wait and ran light-footed to the window.