“Throw it away,” Richard said, checking his watch again. “We don’t need scrap paper cluttering the counter when we have guests coming next week.”
He walked out of the kitchen, his leather shoes clicking against the hardwood floor of the hallway until the study door clicked shut.
By nine o’clock, the house had grown entirely cold, the autumn wind rattling the loose pane in the dining room window. I stood outside the cracked door of Richard’s study, holding the monthly credit card statement that had arrived in the afternoon mail.
I knocked twice, the sound flat and hollow in the narrow hallway.
“Enter,” Richard said from behind his mahogany desk.
He was surrounded by thick ledger books, his gold watch resting face-up on a stack of bank deposit slips.
“Richard, I was looking over the billing cycle,” I said, stepping inside and placing the paper on his desk.
“I told you I would handle the bills this month, Mary,” he said, his eyes remaining on his ledger.
“There is a charge here for two hundred and eighty-two dollars,” I said, pointing to the line item from the previous Tuesday. “At the Bistro on Main.”
Richard finally looked up, his face flat and unreadable under the green desk lamp.
“It was a dinner with a new client from out of town,” he said.
“You told me you were working late at the office that night,” I said. “You said you only had a sandwich at your desk.”
“The client preferred to meet somewhere private,” Richard said, his fingers tapping against the edge of his desk.
“The Bistro is on Oak Lane, Richard,” I said, looking at the address printed next to the charge. “That is nearly forty minutes from your office.”
“I do not have to explain every receipt to you, Mary,” he said, his voice rising slightly before settling back into its cold, clipped rhythm.
The words hung in the warm air of the study, heavy and hard between us.
