CHAPTER 1

I didn't know it at the time, but everything started in late December, that week after Christmas when everybody is just kind of half-working. A regular week for me. This particular morning was memorable only because at 6:05 am, forty minutes before the alarm was set to go off, my wife reached over and gave me the sex tap on my shoulder. Sex is mostly a morning activity for us. At night, we're too tired. Well, I'm not. But my wife is "fucking exhausted" every night.

The sad thing is we used to have sex all the time, even spontaneously. Once the kids were born, the frequency declined but there was still mutual interest. Now I let her decide. It's easier that way. Under our current implied contract, when enough time has elapsed, duty calls and she gives me the tap. Almost always first thing in the morning.

Morning sex, for my wife, is "get it out of the way" sex. She's crossing it off her to-do list, like picking up the dry cleaning or calling the cable guy: Let's knock this out before breakfast and get on with our day. An added bonus for her is at that time of day I haven't had a chance to annoy her yet so her feelings for me are generally positive. Sarah enjoys it once we get started, though sex for her is one of those things that's often more trouble than it's worth. I can relate. That's my attitude about everything except sex.

This particular morning, the normal process was underway. Our dogs had taken up their usual positions of prime viewing, which is disconcerting, but as we were finishing (or I was), I rose far enough off the mattress to look out the window and make eye contact with a guy sitting in a pickup truck not thirty feet from my bedroom.

"Sarah, I think the roofers are here." They apparently arrive early and watch their customers have sex until their work can properly begin at seven.

We dove onto the floor and crawled naked together toward the bathroom. When we were a few feet from safety, our bedroom door opened and there stood nine-year-old Emily with her blanket and favorite stuffed animal, Justin Beaver.

"Hi, Mommy," she said. "What are you guys doing?"

"Daddy lost a contact lens," Sarah said from all fours.

"Didn't Daddy have Lasik surgery a couple of years ago?"

"It's been lost for a long time, honey," I said. "Now go get your brother up for breakfast."

* * *

By the time I'd showered and fixed breakfast, Emily had forgotten the naked contact lens search. Like gunslinging quarterbacks, kids have short memories. They don't worry about that interception they just threw. They take another shot downfield. I dropped the kids at school and then spent a normal day at the office doing whatever it is I do there. It seems impossible that whatever minor tasks I accomplish could add up to a full day, but they always do.

Around two, my cell phone rang. More often than not, it's my wife, and it was.

"Is now a good time?"

Not really. By her standards, I'm not doing anything. By my standards, I'm very busy. "Not really. I've got a —"

My wife thinks "Is now a good time?" is a rhetorical question. "This'll just take a second. You remember we've got Mom and Dad's charity thing tonight?"

Sarah likes to pretend we've already discussed something that she's springing on me out of the blue or mentioned months ago. She's afraid I'll try to get out of it if I have advance warning. Still, this was a command performance. The "charity thing" was a benefit gala for the art gallery or the natural history museum or whatever, a black-tie event her parents were involved with.

"It's not that I don't remember. You haven't said anything about it."

"Well, it's on the board." Every Sunday night, my wife carefully updates the weekly family calendar to keep track of all our events. Apparently she'd buried "Benefit Gala" in the middle of a week of basketball practices, haircuts, and dentist appointments on the calendar. I would argue that an entry as horrifying as "Benefit Gala" should not be simply written in ordinary script in the middle of the calendar but delivered to me verbally.

Sarah interrupted my reverie. "Why aren't you saying anything? Do you have a gun to your head?" Whenever either of us acts weird on the phone, the other asks if there's a gun to our head in case we sound strange because we're trying to send a coded message without alerting our abductors. It hasn't happened yet, but you never know. It's best to be prepared.

"Not this time," I said with a frustrated sigh. "But I wish I had known sooner."

Good god! A benefit gala! A cold trickle of sweat dripped out of my armpit and down my rib cage at the mere thought of it. Mingling for hours with a bunch of do-gooders. I would have to be on my A game, which required just the right mix of various alcohols. I really needed one of those pumps that keeps an ICU patient constantly medicated at the appropriate level. Instead, I would rely on my years of experience with scotch and tequila.

"You're not fooling me. I saw you checking your tux this morning. Anyway, the tickets are still at Dad's office. Can you stop by on your way home and pick them up?"

Sure I could. I looked at the calendar on my computer. Completely blank. "I guess I could move a few things around and make some time."

The truth is, I spend my days pretending to be "a hardworking businessman" and "a pillar of our community." Even though I'm not that smart or successful, everyone thinks I am. My entire life feels like a lie. Not a big, interesting, book-worthy lie, as if I've got a secret family locked in the dungeon under my house. Just a series of small, meaningless deceptions to hide my true self from others. Maybe "lie" is a little strong. Let's say people only know the me I pretend to be.

"Thanks, honey. You're the best. Be home by five so you have time to get ready. We can't be late for this." Sarah worries about whether I'll be on time despite my DiMaggio-esque streak of being ready before her 847 times in a row (all numbers approximate).

"Okay. Love you."

"Love you, too."

Our phone I love you's outnumber our in-person I love you's about a hundred to one. It's easier to say if you can't see the other person.

* * *

Sarah's father, Sam, helped me get set up in business. My little company manages a number of properties owned by his various businesses. I am nominally in charge.

Sarah is the president to her father's chief executive officer of The Bennett Company. Like America, their business is business, which is another way of saying I don't really know what they do. But I do know that Sam built the business up from nothing, and now he was grooming his heir apparent, who also happened to be his actual heir and my lovely wife, to someday take his place. So Sarah is our family's primary breadwinner; I am its soccer mom.

Sarah spends most of her time at the company's newer offices across town. They ran out of space at their original location, but Sam insisted on keeping the office where he started Bennett Capital forty years ago. He told me he didn't need some fancy office to impress people, but I think he wanted to give Sarah the freedom to do her job without his constantly looking over her shoulder.

Sam's executive assistant was sitting at the desk outside his office. Her name is Harriet Buchanan and she had been with Sam from the beginning. Harriet isn't a secretary. She has her own secretary. She is a gatekeeper and a scheduler and Sam's right-hand woman....