Unfaithful

by Natalie Barelli

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Literary Fiction; Noir; Romantic Suspense; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

When I arrive unannounced at my husband's studio in need of a shoulder to cry on after hearing that my best student, Alex, has died, I see a pair of wineglasses drying by the sink, and my deepest fear is confirmed: my husband is having an affair. Most women would fall to their knees in tears and throw him out of the house—but I just can't bring myself to do it. Instead, I go home and cook a healthy dinner for our children, walk the dog, and unload the dishwasher without complaint. I will make him see that I'm still the woman he married; attractive, successful, the glue that holds our perfect family together. I need this marriage to work to protect a terrible secret of my own, something that would destroy everything I've already sacrificed so much for. But when the police arrive at my door asking questions about Alex's death that I can't answer, and threatening text messages start appearing on my phone, I know that someone close has been watching me very carefully.

Release date: November 27, 2020

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 302

Sample

I wake up too early, too hot, my legs entangled in the sheet. I dreamt of something stressful, something to do with missing a flight or losing my passport. Then there was a ladder that didn’t quite get up to a top floor and was swaying dangerously.

It’s the phone ringing that pulls me out of the dream. I reach for it quickly so as not to wake Luis, my pulse still racing.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

I raise myself on one elbow. “Alex? What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Five? Six? I need to see you.”

Beside me Luis stirs.

“I’ll have to call you back.”

“When can you come?”

He has that urgent tone, the way he speaks when he wants my attention, immediately. It’s not even six in the morning and I’m exhausted already. “I don’t know, Alex. I have a meeting this morning. I’ll come after.”

“No! You have to come now!”

“Alex, I can’t. I’ll come later, as soon as I’m free, all right? What’s going on, anyway?”

He sighs into the phone. Or maybe he’s smoking. He says he doesn’t but I’ve smelt it on him often enough. Dope, mostly. “I’ll tell you when you get here. Bring the notebooks with you.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. It’s important, Anna. Bring them, okay?” He hangs up. I turn to look at Luis who is sleeping beside me, one arm flung above his head, calm as smiling Buddha. I bet he’s not dreaming of swaying ladders and missed flights. I kiss his bare shoulder and he doesn’t even stir. Nothing can wake up Luis, except Luis.

“Who was that?” he croaks.

“Sorry, I was hoping you were still asleep. That was Alex.”

“Of course it was. Can you ask your students not to call in the middle of the night, please?”

He turns on his side and I push playfully against his back. “It’s not the middle of the night, it’s six a.m.” I can hear the birds outside, and there’s a sliver of dawn light slipping around the edge of the blinds.

“I was up late,” he mumbles.

“I know.” I rub my face with both hands. I may as well get up. “You want me to bring you a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

Downstairs, Roxy greets me by dropping a chewed-up toy at my feet. We go through our usual routine where I stroke her head and she rolls on her back, exposing her pink belly for me to scratch. She’s a French bulldog and technically she’s Mateo’s dog. I let her out the back door and into the yard, then turn on the coffee machine. While I wait for it to warm up I empty the dishwasher, change the water in Roxy’s bowl, open a bag of dog food and scoop some into her food bowl.

All the time I am thinking about Alex, analyzing how he sounded just now, what it might mean. Alex is my best, brightest PhD student. He’s a genius, really. I’ve never had a student like him before. He’s on the cusp of publishing something extraordinary, and my job with him is to make sure he gets there in one piece.

Sipping my coffee, I open my laptop to go over my notes. First thing this morning is a faculty meeting. We’re facing an uncertain future, and I suggested to Geoff about getting together a fundraising committee weeks ago. I did it to make a good impression, to show that I’m a team player and full of good ideas. Geoff agreed to my suggestion—he almost always does. Geoff is the chair of the mathematics department and what Geoff thinks matters. Especially as any day now I will find out if my full professorship application has been successful. I am pretty confident. Or I’m trying to be, anyway. Part of me feels that if I don’t get it after all the extra work I’ve been doing, I may as well give up. Those of us who applied in the department expected to have heard by now, but this year there’s only one full-time position because of our budget cuts and it’s taken longer than usual. Nail-bitingly longer, you could say, but still, I’m cautiously optimistic.

I go back upstairs to shower and get dressed into my usual meeting attire: linen skirt and pearl-colored blouse. Professional but feminine. I clip on a pair of small diamond earrings—not real diamonds, we do all right but we’re not that rich—and fasten a silver necklace with a small heart-shaped pendant around my neck, a gift from the children for Mother’s Day.

In the mirror I catch Luis watching me from the bed, one arm bent behind his head. He’s frowning.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“You look… conservative. Like a school teacher.”

“I am a school teacher.”

“You know what I mean.”

I smile and reach for my lipstick—Desert Rose—and stare back at my reflection. My mother’s voice pops into my head, unbidden. Look your best to do your best!

I close my eyes. Why did I have to think of my mother now? Now she’s going to be like an elephant around my neck all day—or is it an albatross? Whatever. A big cumbersome weight dragging me down, making me feel inadequate, reminding me that I’m not quite living up to my potential. Unless I don’t let her. Easier said than done, I think, as I run a brush through my hair.

“Where are you off to, anyway?” Luis asks.

“Faculty meeting, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” he says, but I know he doesn’t. I pick up the bottle of perfume he bought me for my birthday, Lancôme’s La Vie est Belle, and I spray a cloud at the base of my throat.

Geoff at work commented on the scent once: “Is it you who smells so delish?”

Delish. It seemed so suggestive. Sometimes I think if I were willing—which I’m not, at all—but if I were… I used to think he was kind of handsome for an academic, with his dark gray messy curly hair, swept back and reaching down his neck. He wears glasses, thin-rimmed ones, and has a graying beard that makes him look like Neil Gaiman.

Luis rubs his knuckles over his head and throws off the covers.

“Why don’t you stay in bed?” I say.

“That’s okay.” He yawns. “I’m awake now. I’ll be in the shower.”

On the way downstairs I pass by Mateo’s room. He’s still fast asleep, his Batman-themed comforter thrown onto the floor, his arms and legs spread out like a starfish. I turn on the light, kiss his hair. “Come on, Matti, time to get up, honey.” He stirs, yawns and his eyes pop open. I pick a sweatshirt up off the floor and put it on the back of his chair, then tell him to get ready and make sure to pack his gym bag.

In Carla’s room, I find her at her desk doing some last-minute revision.

“Morning you, did you sleep well?” I ask, kissing the top of her head.

“Yes, thanks.”

She barely moves, one elbow on the desk, her head propped up on her hand. I kiss her again, smell her long soft hair. At thirteen she’s as tall as me already. “Come and have breakfast.” She nods, mumbles that she’ll be down in a minute.

In the kitchen, I’m preparing school lunches for my children when they bounce in arguing, jostling each other at the fridge, for the milk, over the box of cereal. They work around me, all of us anticipating each other’s movements. Cupboard doors fly open and sometimes get closed again. Bowls are dropped on the kitchen table with a clatter and are filled with cereal and milk, fruit and yoghurt. I try to keep up, put things away as needed, scolding them half-heartedly for making a mess but secretly loving how noisy they are, the chaos they create, and the sense that I’m at the center of it, bringing order to their lives.

Luis joins us, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. He grabs a yoghurt from the refrigerator and slowly spoons it into his mouth, leaning against the kitchen counter. Mateo has gone back upstairs and shouts down that he has lost a sneaker and it’s really bad! because he has soccer practice today. I go up to his room and locate the shoe under his bed along with a bevy of dirty socks and underpants. I add them to a load of washing and turn the machine on.

“Will you please fix the tap today?” I ask Luis. Every day I bring up the dripping tap in the kitchen, and every day, Luis says he’ll fix it. Every day I say something like, If you don’t have time, I can get the plumber in, and every day he assures me that’s a waste of money and he’ll do it himself.

Today is no exception.

“And since you’re up early, would you walk Roxy, please?”

He drops the yoghurt container in the trashcan and kisses the top of my head. “Sorry, I have to get back to the gallery. I’m under the gun.”

I put my hands on his chest. “I know, I remember.” Luis’s upcoming exhibition is a very big deal. He’s been stressed about it for months and my job is to support him when he’s like that. It’s my favorite job, actually, looking after my family. I run my hand through his dark hair, still as thick as ever and always falling over his forehead. Whenever I picture Luis in my mind’s eye, it’s with one hand pushing back a lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger.

“You’ll be fine. Do what you have to,” I say.

Carla reappears, dressed and ready for school.

“Will you put the washing out on the line when you get home?” I ask her.

“Why can’t Matti do it?”

“Because he’s got soccer practice and you’ll be home way before him.”

“Okay.”

Luis hugs the kids, kisses me goodbye. I remind him to pick up Matti from soccer practice this afternoon. “And please don’t be late,” I plead. Mateo gets very anxious when people are late. One time Luis and I had a misunderstanding about who was where when and no one picked up Matti. He sat on a bench at a bus stop and waited for twenty-six minutes—that’s what he said, twenty-six minutes, repeatedly—and by the time I got there he had wet himself. It took over an hour to console him. Luis and I had a huge fight afterwards about who was supposed to pick him up, and we never agreed on it, although to this day I know it was supposed to be Luis.

“And don’t forget tonight.”

“What about tonight?” he says.

“Ha ha, you’re so funny you should have been on the stage.”

“I tried. They wouldn’t even let me audition.”

I laugh. It’s an accidental joke because tonight the kids are putting on a show. Carla has written a play for the Young Playwrights Competition and she is staging a special preview performance for us, having roped in her little brother to play various roles, all in our very own living room. I think I’m as excited as they are.

“Do I need to get anything for dinner?” Luis asks.

“No, all done.”

It’s pizza night tonight. One day, when my children are old enough to go to restaurants by themselves, they will realize that real pizza tastes like heaven, drips with oily, melted cheese, has very few vegetables on it and miles of pepperoni. Pizza, here, chez Sanchez, consists of homemade wholegrain sourdough spread with homemade low-salt tomato passata, truckloads of seasonal vegetables and low-fat cottage cheese. Sometimes I wonder how much of what I do to look after my family will end up as a discussion on a therapist’s couch.

Luis gives me that lovely smile of his that still makes my heart flutter, then with another kiss he’s gone.

I hug my children goodbye, tell them I love them to bits, accidentally mess up Carla’s hair—“Mom!”—and, after they’re gone, I grab the leash and the roll of dog poop bags from the hook behind the door of the laundry and let Roxy out for a quick walk around the block.

“Good morning, everyone.”

Geoff is standing at the white board. We don’t use screens or projectors for small meetings like this, just good old-fashioned magnetic boards. He shoots me an annoyed look over his shoulder.

“Hey, there you are,” he says.

“Yeah, sorry. Dog walking. Lost track of time.”

There are five of us in this committee. Geoff of course, as the department chair, and the other two mathematics professors: Rohan and John. Then there’s Mila, the youngest in the faculty—as she likes to remind everyone on a regular basis—and me.

We’re here because our future funding is tenuous at best. Our generous endowment has been frittered away by our so-called investment advisors who managed to get a return at about a third the rate of everyone else, and now we have to come up with new sources of income. That, in a nutshell, is the meeting.

I nod at each of them and set my laptop on the table.

“So, where are we up to?” I wake up the laptop and open a new document while surreptitiously checking out Mila. She’s wearing a loose top that droops over her bare shoulder in a can’t keep it up, it’s too big sort of way, revealing a thin silver bra strap—at least she’s wearing a bra—over a fine collarbone. I look down at her skinny jeans, fashionably torn at the knees and cut off above her delicate ankles.

I don’t know. She’s obviously smart—after all, she’s an associate professor at twenty-six—but she’s also very pretty, with shiny black hair and olive skin, and eyelashes so long I suspect they’re false. Being sexy shouldn’t be a disadvantage in this job, but I think it is. I’d never dress like that for a business meeting. What was it Luis said this morning? You look conservative. I catch Mila looking at me looking at her and I quickly return to my laptop, my finger poised over the keyboard.

“Since you’re here, will you take minutes, Anna?”

“Sure, happy to.” I always take minutes. I may as well have it tattooed on my forehead. Team player, no job too small or too menial. Then Geoff adds, “I know I always ask you, but you’re the only one I can trust to do it right.”

I smile. Then I think I’m blushing. Am I blushing? I sure hope not. “It’s no problem,” I stress. Of course, it’s not really my job to take minutes. He could have asked June, the department secretary, to sit in, but the truth is, I am the only one who can be trusted to do it right. That’s one thing everyone always says about me: I am dependable. I will always step in and help, and often make things right. Which is probably why I’m always in meetings. When I’m not teaching, I mean. I seem to always put my hand up for things: committees, student support, fundraising, grant applications, acquittals. Sometimes I end up on committees I don’t remember signing up for. But, if the work needs to be done, I am ready. I rally when the going gets tough. I’m a rallier.

“Ideas,” Geoff says now. “Let’s hear them. Anyone?”

At the top of my document, I type: “New Funding Opportunities—Staff Suggestions” and bold it.

Mila takes the pencil she’s chewing out of her mouth. “We could contact our alumni? Organize a fundraising dinner?”

“Good. Thank you, Mila.”

Geoff writes down Mila’s suggestion on the board, like it’s a very valid one and I’m thinking, Really? Is that the best you can do? Then he says, “Anna, will you organize it?”

I blink. I’m about to say, Why doesn’t Mila organize it? It’s her idea. But being a team player, a rallier, I just nod. Although I do ask: “Don’t we do that already?”

“No, we don’t. So let’s.”

“Okay.” Anyway, as a member of the teaching staff, I don’t think he actually means for me to organize it. I make a note to mention it to June.

“Let’s not beat around the bush here, people,” Geoff continues. “This faculty will not get bailed out again by the executive. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we make it to the end of next year. We are in early talks with a number of philanthropic institutions—June and I are handling that—but I’ll be blunt, it doesn’t look good. So if you have any bright ideas… What’s going on, Anna?”

I look up.

“Nothing, why?”

“You’re smiling.”

I plaster on my most innocent face. Puzzled, sincere. If I could, I wouldn’t just say it out loud, I would scream it from the top of my lungs. Because when I suggested this committee, I didn’t know that Alex—my Alex, my PhD student—was about to prove one of mathematics’ most important conjectures. And once Alex and I publish our paper, donors will be falling over themselves to throw money at us. That’s how important this paper is. It’s groundbreaking, and marvelous, and it’s the best thing to come out of Locke Weidman University, ever. And while it’s absolutely Alex’s work, as Alex’s advisor, I can say I am responsible, in my own small way, for that achievement. I imagine Geoff’s face when he finds out that I am co-author of a groundbreaking paper that is going to bring googolplexes of dollars to our university. I mean, let’s face it, the last time I published anything was a comment on a working moms’ Facebook group about a one-pot recipe: My whole family loved it! 5 stars!

I shake my head. “Nope, all good, as you were.”

He winks at me and turns back to the board. “Okay then.”

Alex had come to study at this little university because of me, he said. He had stumbled upon a paper I had published a million years ago, back when I was a grad student myself, and had walked into my office brandishing a copy of a now-defunct mathematics journal. He wanted me to supervise his thesis which, at the time, was on theta and zeta functions. He’d had offers from other universities, some certainly more prestigious than ours, but: “I must do it here, with you,” he’d argued.

My first impression, from the way he looked and the way he spoke, was that he would have been more at home at Princeton than at our humble institution. He’s athletic, very handsome, with fair hair and when he smiles, which isn’t that often anymore, I always find myself staring at his teeth, so perfect, so white.

Was I flattered that very first day? Absolutely. Did I want the extra work? No. But he wore me down, with his big, pleading blue eyes and his earnest face.

“Please, Dr. Sanchez! You’re the only one that I want!”

I’d laughed, and he smiled in that seductive way of his, all teeth and charm, like he already knew he’d won. And he had, I guess, because I said yes, because he did spike my interest, and because it is nice to be wanted.

It was immediately obvious that he was bright. I mean, really bright. But, like a lot of geniuses, he’s also obsessive. He can spend days poring over a minute and insignificant detail. It’s as if he can’t differentiate what’s important from the trivial. He also gets distracted easily.

After he’d been working on his chosen topic for a few weeks, he came to my office, closed the door, sat down and said, “I have to tell you something.”

We didn’t have a meeting scheduled but that never bothered Alex. He just comes in whenever he likes and if I’m sitting with another student, he’ll wait outside, tap his foot against the door jamb loud enough for us to hear, cough, make a nuisance of himself until we’re done, or until we give up.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You have to promise to keep it secret.”

I rubbed my forehead. “I can’t promise that. What have you done?”

He looked sideways and sighed.

“Did you get drunk? Do something you regret? Did anyone get hurt? Do we need to speak to student services?”

“Anna! Are you for real? Is that the first thing that comes into your mind?”

“Just tell me, Alex.”

He handed me an ordinary spiral notebook—Alex does all his preliminary work on paper, which is not that unusual.

I opened it. The writing was messy, full of crossed-out equations and shorthand notes, but I knew how to read it, and it made my stomach twist. I stared at it for a long time, and for a moment I wondered if he was playing a joke on me.

“Can you tell what this is?” he said.

I couldn’t even look at him and I couldn’t speak either. The Pentti-Stone conjecture. A famous problem, unsolved, first proposed in 1905 by mother and daughter mathematicians Claudia Pentti and Noemi Stone. Then the world forgot about them until an American billionaire and futurist called Leo Forrester resurrected them. His foundation awards prizes to innovative discoveries and he’d stumbled upon the Pentti-Stone and realized that if it were solved, it would revolutionize too many things to list, from computing power to aircraft design.

The reason I knew so much about the Pentti-Stone was because of my mother. She was a scientist and I was an only child who turned out to be a bit of a math prodigy, an aptitude I nurtured and generally worked very hard at because it felt like it was the only thing she liked about me. If I had to describe my mother, I would say she was cool, strict to the point of austere, and not very motherly.

When I was fourteen years old, my mother assigned the Pentti-Stone problem to me as some kind of punishment for sneaking out one night and going to a party I hadn’t been allowed to go to. That summer, when my friends were hanging out by the river, going to the mall, having sleepovers, I was at my little desk trying to solve a math problem that had grown men punching the wall in frustration. But that was the deal, she’d said. If I could solve it, I could go out and play. I didn’t know it was some kind of trick and I spent the entire summer on it, poring over equations just like the ones I was staring at in Alex’s notebook, until my eyes felt like I’d rubbed salt into them.

I didn’t solve it—that should go without saying—and to this day the very name Pentti-Stone makes me want to bite someone.

I flicked through Alex’s notebook, numbers blurring as I swiped the pages quickly back and forth, unable to fully absorb what I was looking at, feeling confused by the familiar, the aberrant, knowing I should feel excited by the possibility but feeling devastated instead. Finally, I looked up. He was grinning, and I wanted him to go away. I wanted to say I had work to do, that I had no time for this.

Then he said it.

“The Pentti-Stone conjecture. I think I have an angle.”

He looked nervous, almost frightened.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

There’s a prize too: $500,000 to the first person to prove or disprove the Pentti-Stone. Not as much as mathematics’ Millennium Prize—that’s the big one, at $1,000,000—but not small change, either.

I stood up to close the door, even though the room felt airless. “You want to talk me through it?”

He did, animatedly, chaotically and yet beautifully. He hadn’t come up with a complete solution yet, but the work he’d done on his thesis to date had accidentally nudged him in the right direction.

“I think I can do it,” he said, breathless.

I paused, willing my heart to slow down. “It’s harder than you think.”

“I know. I need your help, Anna. Will you help me?”

Would I help him? My first thought was no. Absolutely not. But how could I say no? What if he found another supervisor? Someone at MIT maybe? Could I bear it? And if I said yes, I could think. . .