The Silent Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

instructions for Klara, who comes in to clean on Wednesday afternoons. Daily routine is the great balm that keeps her spirits up and holds her life together, warding off the existential fright that can take you by ambush any time you’re dithering or at a loss, reminding you of the magnitude of the void you are sitting on. Keeping busy is the middle-classway—a practical way and a good way. She enjoys the busywork of scheduling clients, running her household, and keeping herself fit and groomed. She likes things orderly and predictable and feels secure when her time is mapped out well in advance. It’s a pleasure to flip through her daybook and see what she has to look forward to: spa visits, hair appointments, medical checkups, Pilates sessions. She attends nearly all the events organized by her professional association and signs up for classes in anything that interests her. Evenings, when she isn’t cooking for Todd, she has dinner with friends. And then there are the two extended vacations—one in summer and one in winter—that she and Todd always enjoy together.
    Driving around in her Audi Coupe, she puts the windows down and soaks up the noise and commotion of the city, taking pleasure in the din and tumult of things going on everywhere: the vendors, street musicians, and outdoor markets—and even the crowds, sirens, and traffic jams. A teenage girl with a bunch of balloons dances across the street. A man in a white apron sits in full lotus on the steps of a restaurant. She stops at the framer’s with the Rajput painting, picks up a travel book, buys a kitchen scale to replace her broken one, and on the way home sits down with a frappuccino at her local Starbucks, leaving herself enough time to walk the dog and broil a chop for dinner before attending her class in flower arranging.

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    HIM
    He likes getting an early start, and over the years he’s pruned his morning routine down to the fundamentals. His shower is cold, which kills the temptation to linger, and his shaving gear consists of canned foam and a safety razor. He dresses in the semidarkness of the bedroom while Jodi and the dog sleep on. Sometimes Jodi will open an eye and say, “Your shirts are back from the laundry” or “Those pants are getting bagged out,” to which he replies, “Go back to sleep.” He swallows a multiple vitamin with a jigger of orange juice, brushes his teeth from side to side, the wrong but fast way, and thirty minutes after getting out of bed he’s in the elevator riding down to the parking garage.
    Well before seven he’s sitting at his desk on the fourth floorof a four-storey building on South Michigan, below Roosevelt. This building—a brick and limestone structure with a flat roof and steel-framed insulated windows that were state of the art when he installed them—was his first large-scale renovation, undertaken after a decade of flipping houses and before the South Loop condominium craze sent property values out of sight. When he first acquired it the building was dead space, and he financed its conversion into office suites with three mortgages and a line of credit, all the while labouring side by side with the workmen he hired. He could have done everything himself, but if his money ran out the banks would foreclose. In this business things like mortgage payments, taxes, and insurance make literal truth of the saying that time is money. The suite he has claimed for himself is a modest one, consisting of two offices, a small reception area, and a washroom. His office is the larger of the two, the one overlooking the street. The decor is modern and spare, with bare surfaces and solar shades—uncluttered with antiques and bric-a-brac as it would be if he’d let Jodi have her way.
    He makes his first call of the day to the deli that delivers his breakfast and orders, as always, two BLTs and two large coffees. While he’s waiting he takes an old