The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford Page B

reading. His eyes are frozen on the page. His jaw twitches. His ears are red, and a little rash begins to zigzag upward from his throat. Still he doesn’t look at her.
    â€œNothing.” Dana takes several steps backward. “Really,” she mumbles. She trips on the edge of the rug. “God. I was just— Actually . . .” She clears her throat and speaks in what she hopes is a commanding tone, despite Ronald’s sudden and alarming mood shift. “I was wondering if she still had the photos of the two of us. There were several,” she lies, “of us hamming it up for the camera. We were friends, you know. It would be nice to flip through and reminisce.”
    Ronald shrugs. On the other side of the living room, Peter is escorting someone out onto the porch—the clerk, she supposes. Is he screwing her, too? Dana moves forward for a better look, brushing past a snag of neighbors as the door opens. She inches through the crowd as Peter steps outside with his visitor, and Dana studies the back of the departing head as best she can through all the people between her and the doorway—tallish brunette.
    Lon Nguyen touches her sleeve with the tips of his fingers. “We are leave now,” he announces. His wife stands waving and smiling at the front door. Wanda, too, is waving. She’s mouthing Thank you and making an I’ll call you gesture with her thumb and pinkie as her boys spill loudly into the yard.
    â€œThank you all for coming,” Dana says. She taps a crystal glass with the edge of a teaspoon, and a twinkly sound fills the suddenly quiet house. A couple of minutes later Ronald walks briskly toward his car, neighbors crowd the street in their brightly colored summer clothes, and Dana closes the door, heads for the sinkful of soapy water.
    â€œI’m taking a nap!” Peter yells from the living room. “What a freak show that was,” he calls out after a few minutes. How about that Donald character!”
    â€œRonald?”
    â€œRight. Celia’s husband. Did you see the way he was looking at me? Like I ran over his dog!” Peter’s voice lags on the last few words, and when she peers around the counter, she sees he’s already asleep, his shoes lined up toe to toe beside the couch. Dana gives the glasses a cursory rinse and sticks them in the dishwasher. Clearly Peter noticed Ronald’s weird behavior, too, even taking the cell-phone picture out of the equation, which Ronald certainly has. If she intends to see the thing again, she’s obviously on her own, and by the time she starts the dishwasher, she’s decided to take a trip into Manhattan to find the phone herself.

CHAPTER 10
    I t’s nearly two when Dana tosses her apron into the washer along with several place mats and a dish towel. She wanders into the living room, where Peter’s snores ripple loudly through the house, eclipsing the music from the CD player near the foyer. Did anyone even hear it, she wonders—the eclectic mix of seventies and eighties music she’d so carefully chosen, the dribs and drabs of ancient blues and modern jazz? Peter hadn’t picked out anything. In fact, except for his announcement in the kitchen doorway and his presence during the first few minutes, she has no idea where he even was during most of the brunch. For all Dana knows, he was in the backyard, squatted near the picnic table with his phone.
    She yawns. Someone’s left the front door slightly open, and she tugs on the doorknob. She grabs her latest novel from the desk just inside the door in the entryway, and when she opens the book, a piece of paper falls out—a shopping list, she thinks at first, or an old deposit slip, something she’s used as a bookmark. But there’s writing on it, tiny writing she can barely make out. “Fair eats, but your little brunch doesn’t begin to pay the piper. Better watch your back.”
    Fear rips through her,