The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford Page A

bare-bones desk that reminds her of grade school. His name is inscribed on a wooden rectangle.
    â€œYes.” He gets up, leaning over the desk to shake her hand, and she pulls her sweaty fingers quickly over his palm, like a crab scuttling, she thinks.
    â€œThanks for coming in,” he says, and Dana smiles. “This shouldn’t take long. We can stay here if you’d feel more comfortable,” he says, glancing around the empty room, and Dana nods.
    Jack Moss shuffles through some papers and looks up at her over the tops of his glasses. Drugstore glasses, she guesses, and she thinks of Peter spending hundreds of dollars on his, of his prescription sunglasses sitting in an understated, overpriced leather case, of her own large, plaid Foster Grants from Walmart.
    â€œI spoke with your neighbor. Lon Nguyen. He said you were with Mrs. Steinhauser on the day of her—”
    â€œOf her demise. Yes, I was.”
    â€œCould you tell me about that afternoon?”
    â€œIt was—let me think—it was hot. It was really hot. Very foggy, though.”
    The detective leans back in his seat. He holds a pencil between his thumbs, stretching it out like a little log in the air. “I’m not so much interested in the weather as—”
    â€œI know. I’m just trying to bring back the whole—you know—ambience of the afternoon.”
    He presses the pencil more tightly between his thumbs. “So your neighbor? Mrs. Steinhauser?”
    â€œI was just getting home from picking up some books from the library. I’d put a couple on hold, and they’d— Anyway, she called me over. Celia. She was teetering on those stupid wedges out in her yard. ‘It’s a matter of life and death,’ she said. So I went over to see what she wanted. I guess Mr. Nguyen told you.”
    â€œYes.”
    Dana stops talking. She can feel herself speeding up. She looks at Moss across the desk, at the furrow in his forehead, the black down along his arm, his brown eyes, his hair that was probably almost black before it started turning gray. There’s something about him that soothes her in spite of the reason for their meeting. He reminds her in his dark, mysterious way of the Poet. He leans over his desk toward her, and she feels the heat coming off his body in the sweltering office. She wants to reach out and touch him with the tips of her fingers. She crosses her legs, and her foot bobs up and down. She can feel sweat starting under her arms. “It’s so hot,” she says.
    He nods. “Nothing like Jersey in the summertime. So what’d she want?”
    â€œShe wanted to show me something.” For the first time since Celia’s death, Dana feels visible, transparent. She feels that Moss really sees her, her imperfections, her raw and jagged edges, her sharp, incessant thoughts.
    â€œWhat did she want to show you?”
    Dana takes a breath and holds it in. Her heart speeds up, beating so fast it’s like one long beat. Like contractions right before a baby comes. Did Ronald show him the picture? Does he know about Peter and the Tart?
    â€œShe had some pictures of her . . . of her boys,” Dana tells him. “Of herself and her boys. One of them just had a graduation recently. Tommy,” she says, “from junior high, and she . . . um, she took some pictures of that. And then there was one of two people sitting at a table, a man and a woman. The guy looked like Peter—like my husband. ‘Look at this!’ she said.”
    â€œThis was in her phone?”
    â€œHer cell phone. Yes. Did you see it?”
    â€œDid I see what?”
    â€œThe picture. If so, you’d know—well, sort of know—what my husband looks like. He’s very handsome. He’s blond. He has veryexpensive hair. Like John Edwards,” she adds, realizing the irony. It crosses her mind that Peter and the Tart could have a small blond child stashed