She pushed him away, hard, and tried to get up. He grabbed her wrist, yanked her down. Anger boiled inside him. She provoked him every chance she got.
“You know what I’m giving up for you?” he asked. “I have a wife, a daughter. Beth fucking told my mother about us—now I’m going to have to face that. For what? This? Someone who cries every time I open my mouth?”
She was weeping now. Sitting on his shirt, hands over her eyes. He had had enough. She wanted to walk away just now? He’d see how she liked it. He stood up, hurried toward the car. He’d leave her right where she was, let her walk down the road. He’d be waiting there, but just then he wanted to really show her what could happen if she kept this up.
“See you at home,” he said over his shoulder.
“Pete!” she cried.
Pete glanced in the back seat. Tyler was still sleeping.
“I’ll take good care of him,” Pete said, dangling the car keys. “Just think about the way you act, how you’re pushing me away. You’re the one destroying us.”
“Don’t leave,” she cried.
He opened the car door fast, wanting to speed away.
“Don’t you take my son!” she screamed, and he felt her on his back—clawing, biting him as if she were an animal. He yelled, trying to shake her off, but she held on tighter. It was as if every emotion in the universe filled him, turned her into a monster, tore around them like a tornado.
When she finally stopped, and Pete had wheeled to grab her in a tight hug to keep her arms from flailing, it turned into an embrace, and he was the one sobbing, telling her he didn’t know what to do, that he never would have left her alone in the woods. Meanwhile, his back was on fire. It felt as if she had bitten a chunk out of his shoulder.
And Nicola was whispering into his ear, “Forgive me; I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to hurt you.” They had driven back to the house, where she had dressed the nasty wounds, dabbing at them with hydrogen peroxide, covering them with gauze.
Reason it out,he told himself now, sitting in Mathilda’s house.If you can give the police more of the truth, you’re off the hook. Tell Reid about the fight with Nicola.But it would make her look terrible. Pete didn’t want Reid going after her. What if he thought she was violent? He could become suspicious of Nicola, think that she could have been the one to kill Beth, shift the investigation to her.
As a child, his passion had been chess. He had grown up in the part of Providence you wouldn’t want to be seen in, and most Saturdays and Sundays he would take the bus to the East Side, where he would wait for a spot outside the Chess Shop on Thayer Street and with total confidence take on all comers.
He played Brown and RISD students and professors, retired physicists, math prodigies, and a Russian grand master who had coached Boris Spassky, but his greatest teacher was Max Brandt, a homeless man who slept in Prospect Terrace Park and who regularly beat everyone. It just went to show that the educated, the so-called elite, could easily be bested by someone overlooked by society.
Pete had learned that staying one move ahead was pleasant but nowhere close to the rush of letting the opponent think he was winning and blindsiding him with an attack he didn’t see coming. Max had shown him that over and over.
Beth’s death wasn’t a game of chess. It was nothing but sorrow for most of the people in her life—including Pete. But dealing with the police, his friends, her sister, Sam, even Nicola, required careful maneuvering. Pete couldn’t expect anyone to understand his point of view. He was alone in this, as he had been in most things.
Throughout his entire life, he had been told by his mother how brilliant he was. His entire extended family had acknowledged that he was the brain of the family, and many had been resentful. He’d gotten into Saint George’s, one of the best prep schools in the country. If he had wanted, he could have gone to any Ivy, but he hadn’t gone that route.
Pete was modest about his looks, but he couldn’t help being aware that women who’d been buttoned up their whole lives enjoyed the attention of a handsome bad boy who happened to be brilliant. He had dated several possibilities before Beth: another heiress, a principal in a private equity firm, a top-earning sales rep for a major pharmaceutical company. Beth had had the most potential. And surprise: he had actually loved her. In the early days of their relationship, what was not to love? She’d believed in him, almost as much as his mother had. She had handed him the keys to the gallery, the art world, and the quiet blue blood society of shoreline Connecticut.
By the time their marriage was in trouble, he’d found Nicola. As a graduate student at Bard, Nicola would be attracted only to the smartest men, and she had chosen Pete.
Beth had stopped appreciating him the way he deserved. She had at the beginning of their relationship, but it had dwindled away. She had demeaned him and had never let him forget that she owned everything.
He thought back to their early days, when he had been so full of hope and dreams. He was working for the insurance agency that had underwritten the art stolen from the Lathrop Gallery. Pete researched the case thoroughly. Back then it had been called the Harkness-Woodward Gallery. Once Pete understood the dynamics of how Garth Woodward had hired the Andersons to stealMoonlightand tie up the family in the basement, he decided it was time to meet the daughters.
He showed up at the gallery for an opening. They were both there, Kate and Beth, but Kate barely gave him a look. Beth did the opposite—drew him in with her warmth and bubbly personality. When he told her where he worked, no doubt stirring up traumatic memories, she didn’t turn away.
He remembered the sensitivity in her eyes.
“Are you in your field because you love art?” she asked.
“It’s my passion,” he lied.
“Did you know that your company and our gallery have a long-standing connection?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I am so sorry for the reason that you needed us. For what you and your family went through.”
“Thank you,” she’d said, her eyes welling. He gazed at her with all the comfort in the world; it was as if they had known each other forever—an instant bond. He wanted to give her the feeling that no one could understand what she had endured more than he could. She soaked it up—he knew what she needed, and he gave it to her. His instincts were perfect when it came to what women needed.
Greater things had happened to the gallery since he had married Beth and taken over as president. He had acted as press agent, getting articles in several art magazines and major newspapers. Because of Pete, the Lathrop Gallery had a presence on all the major social media platforms. He tweeted once a day, posted photos on Instagram, and had attracted over five thousand followers on Facebook—an impressive number for a small family-owned gallery. But she had not appreciated him.
