The weekend before I flew down, Vanessa showed me a penthouse in Palm Beach.
A waterfront unit on the top floor of a building on South Ocean Boulevard. Floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the Atlantic. A private terrace with a hot tub. Twelve million, four hundred thousand dollars.
She walked through those empty rooms describing where she’d put the furniture. How she’d host parties for her friends on the terrace. How wonderful it would feel to finally have a place that was completely, entirely hers.
Then she turned around and looked at me.
“I want something that proves I’m more than somebody you visit when you have time, Nate.”
I should’ve seen how unfair that was. With my pregnant wife sitting at home in Connecticut, counting down the days.
Instead, I asked her if she liked the place enough to live there.
Vanessa smiled.
“If you really mean that,” she said, “put it in my name.”
Within forty-eight hours, my attorneys had it done.
I’d bought another woman a twelve-million-dollar home.
While the woman who spent five years building a family with me couldn’t sleep in ours.
I flew to Palm Beach on a Saturday morning. I kissed Margaret goodbye at the front door. She was standing in the doorway in her big gray cardigan with both hands on her belly.
“Call me tonight?” she said.
“Of course. Before dinner.”
“Nate.” She looked at me. “Dr. Lansing said—”
“I know. I’ll be back Monday morning. Just a quick deal. The Delray Beach property.”
There was no Delray Beach property.
She knew that too, as it turned out. But she didn’t say anything.
She just watched me walk down the front steps to the car.
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