Page 4 of Ten Beach Road

Two

Steve didn’t get home until six P.M. Madeline was in the kitchen adding strips of grilled chicken to a large Caesar salad and had already opened and sampled a bottle of red Zinfandel when she heard the automatic garage door open. She’d decided not to blurt out what she knew, had vowed to act normal and work her way calmly up to the subject. But now that Steve was here, Madeline could actually feel drops of sweat popping out on her forehead and an unwelcome burst of heat flushing her skin. For once this was not a result of her whacked-out hormones. How in the world had Steve managed to do this for a half a year?

“How did Edna’s house look?” she asked carefully.

Steve sighed and took a long swallow of his wine. “The kitchen’s a nightmare. Between the fire and the water from the fire hoses, the inside is practically gutted.” He looked up at her. “It’s a miracle she came out as unscathed as she did. You don’t mind if she moves in with us?”

“No, of course not.” For once, Edna’s antipathy felt insignificant. “She can stay as long as she needs to or until we can get her kitchen put back together.” After all these years, Madeline could wait another month or so to start her “new life.” Steve had worked construction summers through high school and college and would know what had to be done at his mother’s. Madeline could help supervise the renovation of the kitchen herself if necessary, and maybe Steve would have a new job by the time Edna moved back into her own home.

“I don’t mean temporarily,” Steve said, though he kind of mumbled it into his wineglass. “She can’t live on her own anymore. I’ve been putting off the inevitable, but now that you don’t have the kids to deal with I thought . . .”

“You want your mother to move in with us . . . forever?” The cheese grater slipped out of her hand and clattered on the granite countertop. The square of Parmesan landed at her feet, but she made no move to pick it up.

“She’s eighty-seven, Madeline. Unfortunately, I don’t think forever is going to be all that long.”

But it would feel like it. “Your mother doesn’t like me, Steve. She never has.”

“That’s not true.”

“We’ve been married for twenty-five years, I see her at least twice a week, we eat dinner with her most Sundays, and she still calls me Melinda half the time.” This was no slip of the tongue or mental gaffe. Melinda had been Steve’s high school girlfriend.

“She just likes to yank your chain a little bit. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“Do you know what she gave me for Christmas this year?”

Steve pinched a crouton from the salad. “It was a book, wasn’t it?”

“It was calledExtreme Makeover, Personal Edition: How to Reface Your ‘Cabinets’ and Shore Up Your Sagging Structure.”

“It was not.”

“Yes,” Madeline said. “It was.”

Steve frowned as always, unable to accept that the mother who loved him so fiercely had so little affection for his wife. But how could she worry about this now when Steve’s lies and lack of job loomed over them? She bent to retrieve the Parmesan, which had been left there far too long to invoke the three-second rule. She carried it to the trash while she struggled to tamp down her emotions so that she could broach the subject of his unemployment with some semblance of calm.

Steve was refilling their glasses when she returned to the counter with her shoulders squared. It was clear he wasn’t planning to let her in on his not-so-little secret. She wondered if he’d told his mother.

“I spoke to Adrienne today,” Madeline said.

He went still much like an animal scenting danger might.

“I called your office trying to reach you after I heard from the hospital. She told me you don’t work there anymore. That you haven’t worked there for six months.” She swallowed and tears pricked her eyelids even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. “Is that true?” she asked. “Could that possibly be true?”

The air went out of him. Not slowly like a punctured tire, but fast like a balloon spurting out its helium. His shoulders stooped as he shrank in front of her, practically folding in on himself. Any hope that he might deny it or laugh at Adrienne’s poor attempt at humor disappeared.

“Yes.”

She waited for the explanation, but he just sat on the barstool with all the air knocked out of him, staring helplessly at her.

“But what happened? Why were you let go? Why didn’t you tell me?” The pain and hurt thickened her voice and it was hard to see through the blur of tears. Steve actually looked like he might cry himself, which did nothing to reduce the soft swell of panic. Why was he just looking at her like that; why didn’t he just tell her? “I need to know, Steve. I don’t understand how you could keep a secret like this from me. It’s my life, too.”

He took a deep breath, let it out. “The institutional accounts I was handling were actually being funneled to Synergy Investments. Malcolm Dyer’s firm.”

It was Madeline’s turn to go still. She was not a financial person, but even she had heard of the now-notorious Malcolm Dyer, whom the press had labeled a “mini-Madoff.”

“I should have known there was something off,” Steve said. “But the fund was performing so well. The returns were so . . . high, and they stayed that way for over five years.” He swallowed. “It’s hard to walk away from that kind of profit. I missed all the signs.” His voice was etched with a grim disbelief. “It was a classic Ponzi scheme. And I had no idea.”

He swallowed again. She watched his Adam’s apple move up and down.

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