“What?” Mavis says. “What about your house?”

Irene shrugs. Three weeks ago, leaving behind the house would have been unthinkable. That house took six years of her life to complete; it’s a work of art. Now, of course, Irene sees how blindly devoted she was to the project, how she sweated over the details and completely ignored her marriage. It’s entirely possible that Irene had been standing at her workspace in the kitchen poring over four choices of wallpaper for the third upstairs bath and Russ had come to her and said, Honey, I have a lover in the Virgin Islands and I’ve fathered a daughter, and Irene had said, That’s great, honey.

What Russ did was wrong. But Irene is not blameless.

“You know, I’ve been to St. John,” Mavis says. “I stayed at the Westin with my parents. It’s beautiful.”

“I’d like you to pass my resignation on to Joseph,” Irene says. “I’ll call him myself eventually, but right now…”

Mavis waves a hand. “I got it. Consider it handled.”

“And would you smooth things over with the rest of the staff?”

“I certainly will,” Mavis says. “They’ll all miss you, of course. And they’ll assume it’s my fault you’re leaving. The good news is I don’t think they can hate me any more than they already do.”

“They’re midwesterners,” Irene says. “A bit resistant to change.”

“You think?” Mavis says. “I tried to win them over with team building—lunches at Formosa, happy hour at the Clinton Street Social Club—but I’m pretty sure they talk about me behind my back the second I pick up the check.”

“At least they see you,” Irene says.

Mavis cocks her head. She’s not pretty, exactly, but she’s young, strong, and vibrant. She has presence. But someday, Mavis Key, too, will find herself leaving less of an impression. She’ll be overlooked, shuffled aside, forgotten.

Or maybe Irene is just bitter. She tries to regain the feeling she had as she stood on the bow of Huck’s boat, but it’s gone. She wants to go back down to the islands, she realizes then, if only so she can feel seen again.

“I’ll come back for my things another time,” Irene says. “On a Saturday. Or after hours.”

Mavis says, “Whatever you need, Irene. Please ask me.” She opens her arms and Irene allows herself to be hugged. “I hope you figure this out.”

“Me too,” Irene says.

 

Back at home, Irene sits at the kitchen table with her list in front of her. Death certificates—being pursued. Resignation—tendered.

Obituary. Irene flips to the next page of her notebook and writes, Russell Steele died Tuesday, January 1. He is survived by his wife of thirty-five years, Irene Hagen Steele, and his sons, Baker and Cashman Steele.

Is that all? Irene can’t mention his job at Ascension. She could maybe say that he worked for the Corn Refiners Association for two decades. She could mention Rotary Club and his years of service to the Iowa City school board.

She drops her pen, picks up her phone. She sends a text to her best friend, Dr. Lydia Christensen.

Lydia, the first text says.

Irene feels like she’s falling backward in one of those Outward Bound games where you’re supposed to trust your comrades to catch you.

Russ is dead. He died on New Year’s Day but I didn’t find out until I got home from our dinner. The circumstances were so extraordinary and, honestly, so baffling that I didn’t know how to tell you or anyone else. I’ll call you later, I promise.

Irene presses Send.

Okay, she thinks. It’s officially out in the world. Unlike Mavis, Lydia is not a vault.

A little while later, the doorbell rings. The doorbell is an antique, salvaged from a convent in Vicenza, Italy, and it makes quite a formal sound, somewhere between a gong and cathedral bells. Irene hurries down the hallway, hoping and praying it’s FedEx with the death certificates but knowing that, unless Paulette read Irene’s mind before she left the voicemail, that’s logistically impossible. It might be Lydia, though Lydia normally flings open the door and walks right in. Maybe Lydia called the Dunns and the Kinseys and this is the start of the onslaught. Bobbi Kinsey will have pulled a casserole from her freezer or stopped by the Hy-Vee for a deli tray.

Irene pauses before opening the door and takes a sustaining breath. She’ll tell people the truth—helicopter crash, Virgin Islands, work, but leave out the villa, the mistress, and Maia.

Strong, beautiful Maia.

Irene opens the door. It’s not Lydia, and it’s not Bobbi. It’s four men in dark suits, trench coats, and impractical shoes for the weather. The man in front—African-American, tall and broad, with a grim facial expression—flashes a badge.

“Irene Steele?” he says.

Irene is so stunned, she can’t speak. Is she being arrested?

“Are you Irene Steele?” the man says. “Is this the Steele residence?” He glances above the door frame, then down toward the corner of Linn. “Thirty Church Street?”

Irene nods. “Yes, it is. I am.”

“Agent Kenneth Beckett, FBI, white-collar crime division. We have a search warrant for this address. If you’ll kindly step aside.”

White-collar crime. Irene steps aside.

Three of the agents start searching the house. Irene’s instinct is to follow them—not to hide anything but to make sure they’re careful with her things. However, Agent Beckett wants to talk to Irene in private. She leads him to the amethyst parlor. It’s chilly and she offers to lay a fire.

“Just please sit down, Mrs. Steele,” Agent Beckett says. He’s stern and serious, like an FBI agent on television. Irene notices a black and gold knit cap sticking out of his briefcase.

“Iowa grad?” she asks. “I’m the class of ’84.”

“Class of ’91,” Beckett says. For a second, his eyes smile. “Go Hawks.”

“They aren’t going to break anything, are they?” Irene asks. “This house…well, it took me six years to renovate and the antiques are real. There’s a mural in the dining room; the moldings and trim have all been restored to period. The carpets…” She stares down at Beckett’s wet and icy wingtips on the Queen Victoria jewel-box carpet. “They’ll be careful, right? Respectful?”

Quick nod. “We’re professionals.”

“Of course.”

“Your husband was Russell Steele?” Beckett says. “Died January first in a helicopter crash off the coast of Virgin Gorda?”

“Yes.”

“And what did your husband do for a living, Mrs. Steele?”

Irene briefly wonders if she needs a lawyer present. She tries to imagine Ed Sorley in his sweater-vest dealing with these gentlemen. The idea is nearly laughable.

The fact is, Irene has done nothing wrong. Irene has nothing to hide.

“He worked for a hedge fund called Ascension,” Irene says.

“What was his position there?”

“My understanding was that he was in customer relations.”

Beckett looks up. “Customer relations.”

“Not like he answered the phone and took complaints,” Irene says. “He wined and dined the clients, played golf, a lot of golf, made them comfortable. Russ was a very…nice guy. Nonthreatening, friendly, engaging. He told a lot of corny jokes, asked to see pictures of your kids, remembered their names.” Irene had been jealous, at times, of how good with people Russ was, how generous with his attention. All of their friends and acquaintances liked Russ better than her. And that was fine, Irene understood; they had their roles. Irene let Russ do the talking because he liked it and she didn’t. She enjoyed quieter things—reading novels, cooking, nurturing one-on-one friendships, achieving goals in a timely and organized fashion, whether it was renovating a room in this house or putting an issue of the magazine to bed. She enjoyed fishing, the peace of being out on the water with a single simple mission.