Page 89 of Wrong Mail

"Why are you calling me?" My voice isn't level and I don't try to make it. "Really."

"Because nobody called me." For the first time, the dryness cracks and something old comes through it. Four years old, still bleeding at the edge. "When it was my turn, nobody picked up a phone and said, you should know what you married. I found out by accident, years too late, with my daughter in the next room. That's how it always came with David. Sideways, and too late. He cheated on me, Mallory. But he probably didn't say that, right? No doubt he said we drifted apart."

Drifted apart. Those words land.

"Yeah, it happened in Oregon. With somebody from the hospital, somebody younger. And from what I've been able to decipher, he used his position to make it all go away. He never said her name to me. No one did, not in the divorce, not in the four years since. Why? Because he's careful. Because of his career. Because of how it would have hurt his reputation." Her voice steadies again, and the steadiness is the frightening part. "Whatever he's shown you, whatever he's confessed to make himself look honest, understand what he keeps. He keeps the real truth buried where no one digs."

The kitchen has gone very quiet around me. Out on the lake the rain is stitching the surface.

I have a name. That's the thing Elaine doesn't know, the thing turning over cold in my chest while she talks. I've had it for a week. It’s the name I read off my husband's phone at seven in the evening and told myself was nothing. A name I heard him say through a study door.

Lena Holloway.

But I don't know if she's the woman from Oregon she’s talking about, or someone from now. I've been carrying the name like it might still be innocent. And Elaine, who never got a name at all, has just made it harder to believe this one is innocent.

"I have a name," I say. "I don't know if it's hers."

Silence follows. Then she says, carefully, "If you have a name, you have more than I ever did. I don't want it. I've spent four years not wanting it." I hear her exhale. "But if you're going to pull on it, don't do it through him. He'll manage you the way he manages everyone. He'll cry. He'll be honest about the small thing to keep you off the big one. Go around him."

Ice shifts softly in her glass. She goes quiet for longer this time.

When she speaks again, her voice is lower.

"There was a man he worked with in Portland. Richard Thomas. A surgeon at OHSU. When I finally went looking, Richard was the one I went to. He was closest to David, and he was decent enough to hate what he knew. He confirmed enough for me to know it was real, but he wouldn't give me her name. He had a career to protect, and back then David outranked him. I understood that then. That's over now. They don't work together anymore, and Richard owes David nothing."

I write it on the back of an envelope. Richard Thomas. OHSU. My hand doesn't feel like mine.

"Elaine," I say. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me." The tiredness is all the way back now, carrying the years and everything this has already cost her. "I didn't do it for you. I did it because my daughter called me crying and I couldn't help her, and this is the only thing I had to give anybody." There’s a pause, and when she speaks again it's almost gentle, which is how I know to be afraid of it. "I'll tell you what nobody told me. If you're smart, you'll get out now. Before there's a version of this where you're the one on the news explaining what you knew and when. Get out while it's still just his mess and not yours."

Then she hangs up without saying goodbye.

The line goes dead in my ear. Rain taps against the windows, and I stand there with the phone in my hand, staring at the name on the back of the envelope.

I remain at the island for a long time.

Then I do the thing Elaine put in my head.

David's out, seeing whoever he's seeing about the board. The house is mine. I go down the hall to the study, the one room I've never had a reason to be alone in. I tell myself I'm only going to look. I've told myself a lot of things today.

The door isn't locked. It's never locked, which should comfort me but doesn't. It leaves the choice to me. I stand on the threshold with my heart going. Then I step inside. That is the part I won't be able to take back.

His desk is tidy in a way the rest of him isn't anymore. I start with the shallow drawer, then the others, my hands careful, ashamed of themselves. Household things. Old warranties. A checkbook for the account we share. A stack of Sophie's school paperwork he's kept. Nothing. I almost let myself feel the relief of it, almost turn around and leave the room as I found it.

Then the bottom drawer on the right won't open.

It’s locked. The only locked thing in a house where nothing is ever locked. I sit back and look at it. That is the moment I stop pretending I came in here to tidy.

If David keeps a key, he’d keep it close. Not on him. He wouldn't risk leaving it in a pocket, where I might find it doing laundry and ask what it opened.

My hand moves over the desk.

I check the drawers again, feeling along the backs and sides this time. Nothing. Then I slide my fingers beneath the drawer above the locked one.

Something catches against my fingertips.

The key is taped to the underside. It's barely hidden at all, just put somewhere a wife who never goes through his things would never think to check. The fact that it takes me less than a minute to find is the part that hurts.