Page 5 of The Expat Affair

“Busy,” he says. “The factory is in complete chaos.”

“But no disasters?”

Thomas laughs. “Not yet, but the day is still early, so let’s not jinx it. Just the normal, end-of-the-week pandemonium.”

“Oh. That’s good, then, I guess. Want me to swing by with lunch?”

It’s what I used to do when Sem was a tiny baby, strap him tomy chest and let the tram carry us across town to the Prins factory, a beautifully restored building his family has owned for five generations. This was back when Thomas and I still felt fragile and new, when both of us were still trying very hard to make it work. Maybe he thinks five years is long enough.

“Lunch?”

I laugh. “Yeah, you know, that thing people do where they eat food in the middle of the day? I could pick up sandwiches from that Italian place on the way. Or sushi if you’d prefer.”

I’ll need to make arrangements though; Sem’s school breaks for lunch, which means I’ll need to ask our housekeeper, Martina, to handle pickup.

Another quiet follows, an awkward silence that stretches a couple of beats too long. “I’d love that, Willow, but today’s... not great. I have a meeting with the architect at the new store in a few minutes, followed by back-to-back interviews all afternoon. My father keeps trying to corner me to ask about the agenda for next week’s board meeting, but I haven’t had a second to think about it yet. And my inbox is a jungle.”

It’s such a stark difference from when we first met, when he walked into the Atlanta restaurant where I was waiting tables. Abusiness dinner, though he told me later they got close to nothing done. Thomas was too busy coming up with excuses to call me over, chat me up, sweet-talk me into meeting him after I got off work. He was so not my type—too thin, far too bookish in those horn-rimmed glasses—but he was sweet and persistent enough that I relented. Thomas ended the meeting right then and there.

That’s what I remember most about our beginnings, a blur of ditched appointments and called-in sick days, blowing off friends and work and other commitments whenever he was in town, so we could hole up in his suite at the St. Regis. Even now, the smell of freshly starched sheets will take me back there, to the sun slantingthrough the plate glass window onto a carpet littered with room service plates, our bare legs intertwined under seven-hundred-count Egyptian cotton while his cellphone buzzed away on the nightstand. We burned so hot and heavy in the beginning, and I know long-distance relationships come with a particular ache that dulls when you see each other every day, but still. When I think back to those early days, the gulf between then and now makes me sad.

“I hear it,” I say, trying not to let the hurt seep into my tone. “You’re a busy man.”

“Crazy busy. Can we catch up tonight?”

“Sure. Of course. No worries.”

I keep my voice breezy and bright, something that’s getting harder and harder by the day. I try not to think about how long it’s been since we’ve had one of those lunches, or even shared a quiet dinner at home. Last night, it was almost midnight before he slipped in bed, and this morning, I woke to the sound of the front door clicking shut a full two hours before my alarm. Thomas has always been a hard worker, but this doesn’t feel like the schedule of a man busy with work. This feels like the schedule of a man trying very hard to avoid his wife.

In the background, a phone rings, and fingers click on a keyboard. “See you tonight,” he says, and I hear in his voice that he’s already moved on. His mind is already somewhere else.

“See you tonight. At dinner.”

We hang up, and for a second or two, I consider a drive-by of Xander’s building before I think better of it. The last thing I need is for someone to see me there, staring up at the penthouse with a horrified look on my face. I could probably explain it away to the other rubberneckers, but I know how people in this town talk. Better to monitor the news sites from the privacy of my living room.

I take a left for home, steering my cargo bike down the familiar curves of the Koningslaan, bumping over the pavers along the pond.For well-to-do mothers in Amsterdam Zuid, bikes like mine aren’t just a way to ferry kids to and from school, they’re a status symbol. Sleek, electric, and stupidly expensive, but they’re a hell of a lot easier to navigate the city’s winding streets on than a car.

At the fork, I veer left, heading down a pretty street lined on both sides with hundred-year-old villas. Big imposing buildings of burgundy brick and bright white trim, with deep balconies and flag-topped turrets and rooftops of black slate or terracotta tile. This is the neighborhood where Amsterdam’s moneyed live, including a few members of the monarchy, which is fitting, since the streets here are named after their ancestors. Sofia, Hendrik, Emma—the royal gang’s all here.

And the nicest house at the far end of the street, the three-story freestanding villa with big bay windows and a deep backyard that overlooks the water—that one belongs to Thomas. The house he bought for himself long before he and I met. Thomas’s home, and one day Sem’s. I just happen to live there.

One of the trade-offs of marrying into old money is that all this luxury is only on loan. None of it actually belongs to me. Not the house with all the artwork and expensive furniture, not the German cars in the driveway or the walk-in closet filled with designer clothes. Definitely not the diamonds. More diamonds than I could ever wear, both a perk and a hazard of marrying a Prins. None of them are mine, not according to the air-tight prenup I signed. The second Thomas and I separate, back they go into the Prins family vault.

“Isn’t it a bit... big?” I said after Thomas slid a six-carat flawless Prins-cut solitaire up my finger. The Rolex bandits I could handle, but what about everyone else? His overbearing father and younger sister, his mother who tolerates me but just barely. I knew how a stone this big would mark a person like me: as a social climber, as one of those people themoedermafiawas talking about—apatser.

For the most part, Thomas knows about my past—my absent father, my estranged mother, my childhood marked by neglect and freebie hand-me-downs. He knows that the day after my sixteenth birthday I took off, and that it took my mom three weeks to realize I’d skipped town. He knows that while I’ve worked hard to reinvent myself into someone who might belong in his life, I wear the clothes and diamonds like flashy, fancy masks, covering up the parts of me I don’t want others to see. My husband knows a lot about me, but he doesn’t know everything.

That day, though, he brushed off my worries with a smile. “You’re a Prins now, Willow. Soon you’ll be telling me your diamond is too small.”

But Thomas lives in Prinsland, and the too-small complaint is never going to happen.

That’s what all those mothers at school don’t get. The women speaking languages I don’t understand, the Americans with their expensive athletic gear, themoedermafiawho think I don’t notice the way they catalogue my carats, totaling the numbers up in their head with a look of barely disguised venom. They don’t get that I would trade it all, every ring and bracelet and necklace hanging from me like tinsel on a Christmas tree, pretty but temporary. They can’t imagine that I’d happily give them every diamond in the vault for a husband who wants to have lunch with me.

Rayna

I’m seated on a bar stool at the far end of a juice shop in Amsterdam Zuid, a freebie bottle of foamy green liquid clutched in a fist, waiting for the cops to arrive. The place isn’t very busy, but it’s the same handful of people filling the tables and lingering near the register as when I ran inside, screaming for someone to call the police. Between sips from their bottles and paper cups, they toss me noticeable, curious glances. Looks like they’re waiting for the cops, too.

At the front of the shop, a man pushes through the door. He’s in plain clothes, dark jeans, and a fitted gray shirt over battered Nike sneakers, but I know a cop when I see one. This one looks like the TV version of a cop, tall and a gritty kind of handsome, with a swagger and square jaw the camera loves.

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