Page 10 of The Expat Affair

Tuesday blooms bright and sunny, a blessing after what feels like months of rain. Thomas left this morning before the sun came up for Antwerp, where he’s tonight’s keynote speaker at the World Diamond Centre’s annual conference. Sem and I have the house to ourselves. The whole entire giant house with all its walls and its rooms and my phone that still hasn’t buzzed with a follow-up threat. I told Martina we’d be eating out tonight and sent her home early.

At just before three, I leash Ollie, heave him into the front of my cargo bike, and pedal through the lingering puddles to school. Sem spots us and skids to a stop, frowning across the pavers.

The park I sign.

His face breaks into a grin.

For days now, Sem has been a bear, whining about the tag on his sweater that was scratching his neck, about the milk that tasted funny so I’d squirt in some extra chocolate, about Ollie knocking over the Lego tower he’d spent all of five seconds building. He’s a sensitive kid, and not just because he’s overly attuned to nonverbal cues, facial expressions and body language and eye contact. Ever since Xander, his radar has been going full tilt. This park outing is as much for him as it is for me, to allow both of us to blow off some steam.

“What do you want for dinner, my love?”

I say once he’s close enough, pulling his beanie down over his ears. It may be sunny but it’s bitterly cold, and the icy wind isn’t helping any.

Sem throws up both arms, two little fists punching the air. “Pannenkoeken!”

There’s not a kid in this country who doesn’t beg for pancakes for supper, and in Holland it’s a real thing, though the Dutch version is more crêpe than fluffy pancake. Sem likes his with ham and cheese and topped with powdered sugar and stroop, a syrup made from sugar beets.

And why the hell not? Thomas is in Antwerp, and Sem and I are on our own for dinner more often than not these days.

I get him settled with Ollie in the front of the bike and pedal the short distance to the park. It’s only a few blocks from the school, and both Sem and Ollie know the drill. Through the gates of the Emmastraat entrance, dodge the chaotic flow of people and dogs coming from town, slow at the wide stretch of grass across from the fountain. That’s our spot. Ollie sees it up ahead and lets loose one excited bark. Like Sem, he’s eager to stretch his legs.

I park at the edge of the grass, then help them both out and unclip Ollie from his leash. For Sem, I produce a grubby tennis ball from my coat pocket. “You want to practice your throws?”

With a squeal, Sem snatches the ball from my fingers and takes off across the grass, Ollie sticking close to his heels. The ground is still drenched from the week’s rain, scarring the field with a mix of muddy grass and half-frozen puddles. We’ve been here all of five seconds and already Sem and Ollie are filthy, but again: Who cares? It’s not like Thomas is home to complain.

I buy a cup of coffee from the vendor’s cart on the path, sink onto a bench at the edge of the field, and keep an eye on my son while I watch the path. The park is packed, the Dutch as a whole well used to braving the cold. Runners and walkers and commuters whizzing by on bikes, mothers like me getting dragged by kids and dogs, the occasional stoner sucking a fat joint on a park bench. I clock every face that passes by.

Fifteen minutes later, I spot her up ahead, a runner with a red ponytail swaying in time with her stride. Rayna on her first of two loops around the park—a runner’s paradise that, considering she lives only a few blocks from here, might as well be her backyard. And unfortunately for her, she was far too easy to find.

For months now, Rayna has been cataloguing her life on Instagram and TikTok, and though since Xander she’s set her pages to private, there are still plenty of pictures floating around online, most of the images easy to place. There were the typical touristy shots of canals or other picturesque spots, flower markets and famous buildings in the city center, must-see spots listed on every tourist’s guide. I concentrated instead on the ones in the museum quarter, the shopping streets and cafés clustered around a few square blocks. And tons of the P.C. Hooftstraat—thanks to all the designer boutiques, one of the most recognizable streets in all of Holland.

And all those snapshots of her working or lounging or drinking tea in a sad beige room? Enough of them were geotagged on a building smack in the middle, a block of rent-controlled apartments above the Mont Blanc store.

Rayna shops at the Albert Heijn under the museums. She spends the mornings with her laptop at Joe & the Juice the next block over. She buys flowers at the stall across from the tram stop, and for the past three afternoons at around this time, she’s made two clockwise loops through the Vondelpark.

And if I can do it—find her, watch her, learn her habits and patterns—then so could anyone else.

I watch her head bobbing in the crowd on the path, and I’m not quite sure how to play this. It’s not like I can just walk up to her and introduce myself. What would I say? Hey girl, I know you don’t know me, but you’re in danger. She’d think I’m insane. She’d think she was in danger from me.

Maybe I could toss Ollie’s ball her way, let my overly enthusiastic dog make the introductions. If I can manage to chuck the ball close enough for her to stumble over or even bend down and pick up, Ollie will be impossible to ignore. Or maybe I should go get another coffee. If I time my trip across the path just right, I could accidentally on purpose bump into her.

“Mama, kijk!”

I turn back to Sem, holding both hands high in the air, his palms and fingers dark with dirt. He might be half American, but he’s a Dutch kid on Dutch soil, which means my attempts to make English his preferred language are a lost battle. He’s telling me to look at his filthy hands.

I wrinkle my nose. “Is that dirt or poop?”

His adorable face splits in a wide grin. “It’s dirt! Ollie gave it to me.”

By the time I turn back to the path, she’s gone. I push off the bench and hurry into the stream of people, searching for a streak of red hair in the crowd of runners and walkers. I look one way, then the other, then back again. Shit. I’ve lost her.

And then I spot a flash of red ponytail at the edge of the grass field, my grass field. Rayna leans against the back of a bench, stretching out her calves.

“Hey, did you happen to see a tennis ball?”

Rayna looks over, and she’s as pretty in person as she is online. Prettier, even. Big eyes, cheeks flushed from exertion and cold, skin so porcelain it’s almost see-through.

She shakes her head, looks about on the grass. “No, I don’t think so. Sorry.”

I point my face at Sem, chasing Ollie along the bushes at the back end. “It’s not here. Keep looking.”

I shout the words even though I know they won’t reach Sem’s ears. My son is running the other way, and the only way to get his attention short of running after him, is by whistling for Ollie. Where the dog goes, Sem follows.

“Cute kid.”

Rayna straightens, her gaze going to Ollie, streaking like a demon across the grass, a blur of fur and mud splatters. “Is that your dog?”

I nod. “Ollie. He’s a rescue.”

“He’s cute, too,”

she says, but with a lot less enthusiasm than the first time. Ollie’s fur is patchy. His ears are too small and his legs are too short and his underbite gives him a hilarious snaggletooth. Even when Ollie is clean, nobody would ever describe him as cute.

“Liar.”

I laugh. “Ollie won’t be winning any ribbons anytime soon, but he’s the sweetest.”

“Rescues always are.”

She smiles.

“You have a dog?”

Rayna doesn’t have a dog, at least not one in any of the pictures I’ve found of her online. She’s the type, though, prim and deeply Southern, though hers would be a hunting Labrador, or maybe one of those bulldogs with the squished snouts. Not a mutt like Ollie. This woman is too pretty for a mutt.

She shakes her head, shiny ponytail swinging against her shoulder. “I used to. My ex has him now.”

Just this morning, deep in one of the comment sections on X, I landed on a post from a woman claiming to be from Rayna’s hometown. She spilled all sorts of dirt—about Rayna’s ex, a real-estate developer named Barry Broderick, about their talk-of-the-town divorce and the way it shot Rayna so far off the deep end that she drove Barry and his fiancée off the road. Apparently, she caught him in bed with her best friend.

Sorry—former best friend.

“He sounds like a real snake.”

She barks a laugh. “Taking my dog isn’t the worst thing he’s done, not by a long shot.”

She bounces on her toes, either because she’s cold or eager to get back to her run. Maybe both. “Anyway, good luck finding your ball.”

She takes off with a little wave, and that’s that. Conversation over. No, she didn’t confess where she stashed the necklace or give me a description of Xander’s killer, but my gut says she’s an innocent bystander in all this. An accidental victim who got swept up in a spectacular string of wrong-place, wrong-time bad luck.

I also learned that this girl is too easy to find, too trusting of strangers who chat her up in the park. I watch her body get swept into the throng of tourists and runners on the path, and worry pings me in the chest. I need to find a way to warn her.

“Mama, I’m starving.”

I whirl around to find Sem, standing at the edge of the grass, covered from head to toe in mud. He wipes his hands down his clothes, leaving twin streaks of mud on his coat, his pants, across one grubby cheek. There’s not a restaurant in the city that would let us inside.

“Change of plans, big guy: I’m cooking.”

I whistle for Ollie, and he gives a great shake, spraying some poor girl with grass and mud and water. “Looks like you two worked up an appetite.”

He gives me a solemn nod. “I’m gonna eat four pannenkoeken. No, twenty-four.”

I smile. Sem, my sweet, fragile, skinny Sem. I’ll be lucky if he eats just one.

I fish around my pocket for the bike key, then help them into the bike. On the other side of the pond, the wind is picking up, and dark, bloated clouds are gathering just above the tree line. Those are rain clouds rolling in. If I hurry, we can beat them home.

“Let’s go. I’m starving, too.”

Once everyone is settled and Sem buckled in, I pedal for the exit on the north end of the park, a little longer in terms of kilometers but an easier route to navigate at this time of day—rush hour. The path spits me out onto the busy Van Baerlestraat, and I merge into the thick stream of bikes and follow the horde south.

I’m passing a couple of slow-moving tourists when something catches my eye across the street. I see the elegant set of a man’s shoulders as he comes out the door of the Conservatorium Hotel, the dark smudge of his glasses and the swing of his arms as he jogs down the steps. As the crow flies, no more than thirty feet away.

Not eighty kilometers away at a conference in Antwerp. Thomas is here, at a hotel in Amsterdam, wearing the sweater I gave him for Christmas, his favorite camel coat, and a smile I haven’t seen in ages.

My skin goes hot, my body practically sizzling in the frigid wind as I pedal by in the sea of bikes, and I can’t stop staring. Leaning back in my seat so I don’t lose him in the crowd, craning my neck to scan the rest of the faces on the sidewalk. Is he with someone?

“Kijk uit!”

someone yells—watch out!

I slam the brakes just in time, screeching to a stop behind a cluster of bikes waiting at the light. Sem’s body strains against the belt, but Ollie tumbles and rolls, yelping as his body hits the front of the carrier. He scrambles upright and shakes it off with what looks suspiciously like a side-eye.

I lean forward to run a shaking hand over Sem’s head. “You okay?”

As usual, he bats my hand away.

By the time I turn back, Thomas is gone, almost like he was a mirage.

Except I saw him. I saw him. At a hotel in Amsterdam when he’s supposed to be in Antwerp.

All those late-night “meetings”

and “business dinners,”

all the mysterious phone calls in his study, the door tightly closed. All those times he’s come to bed late and left early, so he doesn’t have to make excuses for why he hasn’t touched me in ages, when I ask him what’s wrong and he can’t quite look me in the eye when he assures me that it’s nothing.

And the Conservatorium is not just any hotel. It’s one of the busiest in this part of town, located on one of the busiest corners. Where hundreds of possible witnesses could be biking or driving or tramming by at any given moment. What if someone besides me saw him? What if Sem had seen?

The light flips to green and the mass of bikes take off. I lean into the wind and pedal like a fiend, a new sense of urgency beating in my chest. All this time, I thought my betrayal would be the end of me and Thomas. I thought it would be my sins that unraveled the bonds between us, not his. It never occurred to me that I should be watching out for his. But I was wrong.

My eyes are open now.

November 17th, 10:39 p.m.

I step into Xander’s foyer, a muted expanse of sand-colored marble that smells of lemons and something darker, something spicier. Patchouli and cloves, maybe. The speakers above my head flip on, too, Amy Winehouse crooning about love being a losing game. Appropriate, considering tonight is my fifth anniversary and I’m here, staring down the hallway of Xander’s penthouse at almost eleven at night, while Thomas is at work.

“Swanky,”

I say, peeling off my coat.

Xander takes it from me and drapes it over a corner chair. “Come. I’ll give you a tour.”

He leads me from room to fabulous room, and I nod and hum as he points out all the amenities. Oversized Italian furniture sitting atop shaggy wool carpets. Solar shades that filter light and offer privacy without obscuring the spectacular views. Floor cooling—a real luxury here in Holland—for those three weeks in the summer when the sun heats up his penthouse like one of the many greenhouses jutting up from Dutch fields. Pads on the wall of every room that control every tiny thing, from the electronics to the lighting to the music and temperature, all of which can also be controlled from his phone. The blackout shades in his bedroom that work on the same timer as a sleek contraption high upon a wall, a white noise machine and air conditioner in one.

“I sleep like a baby with that thing,”

he says. “From midnight until 8:00 a.m. on the dot. I don’t hear or see a thing.”

“Must be nice. Last night I was up four times checking on Sem. Bronchitis.”

I leave off the again, or the fact that Sem’s viruses are often coupled with a scary fever that spikes in the middle of the night. Xander is not the fatherly type, though he once told me it’s not the physical well-being of a potential child he’s so worried about, but the mental. He doesn’t want to mess up his kid like his own father did with him.

“Wait’ll you see the master bath,”

he says, motioning for me to follow.

My heels tangle in the terry loops of his bath mat as he points out the Italian marble, the porcelain tub big enough for two, the floating double vanities, the tower of towel warmers, and the giant glass-enclosed shower. It feels intimate to be standing here, in the place where a naked Xander showers and shaves, alone with him this late at night. It feels illicit.

“Do you do this with all your female guests?”

I say, interrupting him mid sales spiel on the health benefits of a steam shower.

“Do what?”

“Brag. Tick off your home’s luxuries like you’re trying to sell them the place. Girls don’t like that, you know.”

“Some girls do.”

“Yeah, well, stay away from those ones. They’re here for all the wrong reasons.”

He gives me a smile that tells me that as far as he’s concerned, they’re here for all the right reasons.

I laugh and slap him on the chest. “Come on, fuckboy. Let’s get this over with. I want to get home before Thomas does.”