By a Spider's Thread: A Tess Monaghan Novel Read Free Page B

absentia and petition for custody. Only then will I have any rights to assert. And that could take up to a year.”
    “Oh, there has to be some way to expedite a divorce in this case. I can’t imagine the state would hold to the one-year rule in such a case.” Maryland did have odd marital laws, Tess knew. It was all too easy to get married here — it was one of the few states that didn’t require a blood test, which years ago had made Elkton a destination for impatient New Yorkers — but relatively difficult to get divorced. A legacy, she had always assumed, from its Catholic founders. Marry in haste, live in purgatory.
    “You don’t understand. Even if I divorced my wife under Maryland law, it wouldn’t count, not to me.”
    “Why not?”
    “I would need a
get
from a rabbinic court as well. Divorce may be granted easily in the world at large, but my faith insists that a couple make every attempt at mediation and reconciliation before giving up on a marriage.”
    “But I assume your wife’s actions would satisfy even a — what did you call it? — rabbinic court.” Tess had an image of an appeals court, only in slightly different robes and with the bushy beards, side curls, and large-brimmed hats of the Hasidim.
    “Perhaps, but it would not satisfy
me
. How can I give up on my marriage when I don’t know what went wrong? You have to understand she gave no sign, absolutely no sign, that she was unhappy in any way. How could she be on the verge of something so drastic and provide no clue?”
    She probably gave you a million clues,
Tess thought, but kept the observation to herself. In her experience, men were capable of going to great lengths to ignore the evidence of women’s unhappiness. It was how men survived, by not inquiring too closely about the melancholy some women carried with them. If they ignored it, maybe it would go away.
    Sometimes it was the woman who went away instead.
    “Mr. Rubin…” She paused, but he did not invite her to call him Mark, so she forged ahead. “The very nature of my work requires me to ask rude, intrusive questions, not unlike the kind that doctors and lawyers ask, so I’ll beg your forgiveness in advance. Did you have a good marriage?”
    “We had a
wonderful
marriage.”
    “No disagreements, no tensions?”
    “Nothing out of the ordinary. There was a slight age difference….”
    So that’s where the dog was buried, as her Grandma Weinstein might say. “How much?”
    “Twelve years. I married relatively late, at thirty-one.”
    Funny, Tess was thirty-three, and she considered that a damn early age for matrimony.
    “You’re…what?” She checked her notes. “Forty-one. So she was only nineteen when you married?”
    A slight defensiveness crept into his tone. “Yes, but Natalie was an unusual woman, more mature at nineteen than most women are in their thirties.” Was it Tess’s imagination, or did he glance at her neon HUMAN HAIR sign just then? A gift from her boyfriend two Christmases ago, it complemented the “Time for a Haircut” clock nicely.
    “How old are the children?”
    “Isaac is nine, the twins are going on five. We wanted more, but it was not to be. I had hoped to have a houseful of children.”
    “And your wife?”
    “Of course I want my wife in my house. That’s why I’m here.”
    “No, I meant…did your wife want a lot of children, too?”
    “Absolutely. It’s our way. It’s what God wants.”
    Mark Rubin’s very certitude seemed a bad sign to Tess. It was bad enough to claim you knew your wife’s mind, another to assume you knew God’s as well.
    “She had absolutely no reason to leave?”
    “None.”
The reply was too firm, too automatic. He wasn’t allowing anyone to question this fact, beginning with himself.
    “What about addictions? I’m not talking just about drugs or alcohol, but gambling or other compulsive behaviors, such as eating disorders. Even shopping.”
    “No, nothing like that.”
    “Does she spend a