Page 116 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“Peter Hindsberg,” Mr. Lynch said.

“Peter Hindsberg,” I repeated, racking my mind for any recollection his name might stir, and finding none. I had never heard of him.

For weeks now, Grace had been acting odd. Cold. Withdrawn. Unaffectionate. One night after dinner as she was washing the dishes in the sink, I came up behind her and put my hands in her back pockets, kissed her neck, and she flinched. She actually flinched. She turned her neck, drew away, like my touch had offended her.

“Not now, Alistair,” she had said. “I’m not in the mood.”

She was never in the mood anymore. We hadn’t made love in weeks. And she was spending all of her time at the lake house with the girls—she never brought them to the city anymore. She was just out there, every night, alone.

I thumbed through the rest of the photographs on my desk. Pictures of Grace at the lake house with the girls; pictures of Grace and the girls in town; pictures of Grace and the girls at Grace’s parents’ house. And then Grace, in a sleazy diner in a dark booth with him.

“Do you have any pictures of . . .” I trailed off, not knowing how to ask for pictures of my wife in bed with another man. “Where are the rest of the pictures?” I asked instead.

“I only caught them together once,” Mr. Lynch said. “They were at the diner for an hour. They left separately. Grace went home alone. He never came to the house, at least not during the time that I was tailing her.”

At least Grace had the decency to keep her transgressions out of our home, away from our girls. Well, at least as far as we knew.

Mr. Lynch set a thin folder in front of me. “I pulled Grace’s phone records,” he said. “This is a log of her calls to him.”

I took out the piece of paper and skimmed the entries. The first call was from Grace to Peter’s private cell phone a couple of weeks ago. After that, they traded calls several times a week. Some of the calls were just a few minutes long; some were as long as an hour. Most of the calls were made in the evening. I pictured Grace sitting on our bed at night, a glass of white wine on the nightstand next to her. Her hair wet from the shower, her bare, freshly shaved legs on the sheets. Her phone cradled to her ear as she spoke in low, sultry whispers to him, so as not to wake our girls, who were fast asleep down the hall.

“After their meeting at the diner, nothing,” Mr. Lynch said. “The calls stopped.”

I picked up the pictures, flipped to the next one in the deck. Grace was visibly upset in this one. She was crying.

“What do we know about him?” I asked. “This Peter Hindsberg?”

“He’s an insurance fraud investigator at Hartco Insurance,” Mr. Lynch said. “He was the one assigned to that workers’ comp claim one of your landscapers filed a few months back at the lake house. Looks like he came out to the house to meet with Grace. Only, they didn’t cut ties when the claim was settled.

“I did some digging, and it turns out Grace and Peter went to high school together. He was a couple years younger than her but they knew each other.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” I said. “Grace has never mentioned him.”

Mr. Lynch shrugged. “You run into an old acquaintance you knew back when you were kids, you strike up a conversation. There’s a flicker of attraction. One thing leads to another. It’s more common than you might think. But the good news is, whatever was going on between them appears to be over. I haven’t seen any signs of contact between Grace and Peter since they met at the diner. Turns out, Peter’s also married. His wife just had their first baby. I’m guessing his conscience caught up with him.”

“You’re sure it’s over?” I asked.

“Looks that way,” Mr. Lynch said. “But I can keep an eye on things, if you want, Mr. Calloway.”

“No,” I said. “No, I’ll handle it. Thanks, Sean.”

I reached for my intercom and held down the button to buzz Rosie. She appeared at my door a second later.

“Yes, Mr. Calloway?” she asked.

“Take care of Sean here, will you?” I asked.

“Right away,” Rosie said.

I stood to shake Mr. Lynch’s hand. When they were both gone, I sank back into the seat behind my desk. I looked at the photographs and rubbed my chin.

Grace. What to do about Grace? I wanted to hurt her the way she had hurt me. And I wanted her to find out that I knew in the same way I had found out about her affair. It would be cold. Impersonal.

I tore out a piece of paper from a yellow legal pad on my desk. In block capital letters I wrote, I KNOW. I folded it and put it into an envelope. Then I picked up the stack of photographs. I contemplated just putting the one from the diner in there. The picture of Grace and Peter Hindsberg holding hands. But then my eye caught on another photograph on my desk. It was a picture of my oldest daughter, Charlotte, playing in the backyard at Grace’s parents’ house. It wasn’t just me that Grace had betrayed. It was our family. I turned the picture of Charlotte over and on the back, I wrote, STOP. Then I slid the photographs into the envelope and sealed it. I imagined her getting the envelope with no return address in the mail in a few days. Opening it. The sickening trickle down her spine as she saw the photographs and the note and realized that I knew. I knew everything.

Thirty-Three

Charlie Calloway