“If you want to know if I dated, the answer is yes. I even had a couple of near misses, relationships that lasted a couple of years.”

 “And yet you didn’t marry? You, such a family man? Why?”

 “I don’t know. It just didn’t feel right. I wasn’t in love enough, I guess.”

 “I wish I’d thought of that,” she said.

 “But you loved him, Emmie,” he said. “From the way you described him, he walked on water.”

 “I loved him,” she admitted, growing serious. She put down her fork. “I was twenty-four when I met him. He proposed almost immediately. I realized much later, I was hand-picked. He was looking for an idiot who could pull off the millionaire-wife image, from haute couture to decorating to entertaining to social grace under pressure. And of course I had to be able to take orders.” She finished her glass of wine. “I’d like to tell you something.” But then she stopped.

 “Another glass of wine?” he prompted.

 “I think I’d like a cup of tea. When the waitress comes back, I’ll ask her. But I wanted to say something. I might’ve misled you. About investigating Richard so I’d know how I ended up in this place. I’ve already read everything, Adam. If there’s anything new, I don’t need to know about it. For over three years I was completely addicted to the news. I was glued to everything that floated across the internet. The books and biographical pieces started turning up long before he even went to trial. I read every court transcript, although I was usually there, in the courtroom. I had my own lawyers. For a long time they were the only people who talked to me.

 “It didn’t take long before all the things I suspected proved logical. Richard had strong sociopathic tendencies. As far as I know he didn’t murder the neighborhood pets, but according to old classmates he lied and cheated his way through school. He used people. He enjoyed getting away with things. He liked deceit and winning by any means and he had no empathy. The state and the feds might’ve been able to prove his fraud and theft, but there was only conjecture about most of the other things, the things having to do with his ethics, his personality disorder. It all became so clear before his trial was over.”

 “Emmie,” he said sympathetically, touching one of her hands.

 “I didn’t know, yet I did know, Adam. I lived under the same roof with the man, after all. Even though we weren’t close, even though I can’t say we had a loving marriage, I lived in his house. I traveled with him. The first time I suspected there was a mistress we’d only been married a year. He smiled indulgently, kissed my forehead and said, ‘Why in the world would I have a mistress? I have you, the most beautiful woman in New York City.’ I bought it, of course. He was so confident and convincing. But there came a time I just knew something was off. I overheard things—he had employees and they were well aware of what he was doing, feeding his business from the bottom, paying out dividends here and there when it would bring in more capital. He referred to it as seeding... Seed money... Satisfied clients brought in more clients. We never discussed it, but after we’d been married a few years, I heard things like that when he was talking to someone who worked for him or when he was on the phone with a client. I heard him moving money around to offshore accounts. He thought I was an idiot, at least about financial matters. I never really knew anything, but I strongly suspected that my slick and sleazy husband would stop at nothing to make big money.

 “And I came to know about the mistress. Andrea Darius. I met her for the first time before we were married. Beautiful woman, so beautiful. Smart, classy, very high-society type. She looked kind of like Katherine Heigl—that stately, confident, above-it-all look. I’d suspected from the first time I met her. There was something in the way she looked at him, it was just there. She was an image consultant, a public relations expert who specialized in the financial sector. Lenders and investors are constantly scrutinized, especially private companies and hedge fund managers. But that was just a front. That was one of the first issues I faced when I looked the other way. I made excuses to make my existence more acceptable in my own eyes.” She laughed hollowly. “While I’m a leper in Manhattan, Andrea is still a prominent figure in New York society. There’s been speculation that she’s a high-priced prostitute or even madam. Who knows? Who cares?”

 The waitress came to their table, picked up some plates and took their beverage orders. Adam really wanted another drink but he asked for a coffee.

 “See, I didn’t have any proof of any kind, but things he said and did made me wonder why I didn’t understand him better. Then one day I realized I was married to a man I didn’t know, a man who had no conscience. But by then it was too late.”

 “Why didn’t you testify against him?” Adam asked.

 She shook her head. When her tea came she added milk and sugar and stirred slowly.

 “I really wanted the whole thing to just go away so I could make my escape, which I fully intended to do. I have no real defense, but it is true that any testimony I might have given wouldn’t do any good for the defense or the prosecution. It was suspicion, hearsay, speculation. Nothing, really.”

 “You were trying to have a baby with him?”

 She winced. It was unmistakable.

 “It was madness. I don’t know what I was thinking. We hadn’t been married that long, a couple of years, and I was still so young, but I knew something wasn’t quite right in our marriage. I thought I could fix it. I thought we could be a family and he would become more..nscious of me.” She shook her head. “How stupid was I? Anyone knows that babies don’t fix things! And God knows nothing was going to cure what he had! It’s a blessing I couldn’t get pregnant. I finally realized what a catastrophic mistake that would be.

 “So you see, Adam—it’s not necessary for me to gather up all the things written about Richard and the case against him. Or me. I’m up to speed on all that. I very rarely watch the news now. And those bios?” She shook her head. “I don’t know if they’re half true. But they sound suspiciously as if they could be.”