Matthew Werner was late. His wife, Annabel, sat alone on the veranda of their Geneva flat, wearing a black cocktail dress and the long sable coat that Matthew bought for her when they first moved to Switzerland. A hairdresser on the Cours de Rive had coaxed her auburn hair into a twist. Her shoes, five-inch pumps that a salesgirl in a boutique on rue du Rhône convinced her to buy against her better judgment, pinched at the balls of her feet. In the dressing room mirror, the shoes had made Annabel’s legs look impossibly long and slim. Two black satin ribbons extended from each heel and laced up around her ankles and lower calves, giving the impression of a ballerina en pointe. Back in New York, she might have lingered by a window display of shoes like these. But she wouldn’t have gone into the store. She wouldn’t have bought them. Too impractical, too expensive. In New York, Annabel wore mostly flats or wedge heels, with rounded toes suited to days spent on her feet. In New York, Annabel had worked. She had taken the subway, not a car with a driver. She didn’t spend her money on shoes that cost a week’s salary. Here in Geneva, she’d sign the receipt before bothering to glance at the price tag.
At home, she found she could hardly walk in them. In the harsh lighting of her closet, the lacing at the ankle looked theatrical. She wasn’t sure if she looked like a banker’s wife or a courtesan. All the other wives shopped at the boutique where she’d bought the shoes. They all looked the same, dressed the same, played tennis together. Sometimes Annabel felt as though she missed a memo when she had arrived in Geneva: How to Be a Banker’s Wife. Most of the others were polite but distant. After an initial spate of lunch invitations, Annabel stopped hearing from them. They were polite enough at firm events, of course, but they seemed to understand, as she did, that she was different from them. Annabel had decided this was fine with her. Most of the other wives just wanted to talk about the Paris fashion shows and their country houses and their latest weekend jaunt to Sardinia. And they dressed up for everything, even a casual brunch on the weekends. Of course, it would be nice to be included some of the time. But most days, Annabel was content to wander a museum by herself, sit in a café with a book, and go to bed early. Charity balls and black-tie dinners held no appeal for her. And she had always hated tennis.
The shoes had been so expensive that she couldn’t bear not to wear them. Once, at least. Annabel hoped they looked as expensive as they were. Matthew loved to see her in expensive things. It was the reason he worked as hard as he did, he said. He liked to show her off.
For now, though, Annabel unlaced the shoes and released her feet from their bondage. She tucked them up against her slender thighs to keep them warm. She was tempted to light a cigarette to take the edge off but stopped herself. Matthew would be angry. For all Matthew knew, Annabel hadn’t touched a cigarette since New York. She kept a pack hidden behind her art books in the living room. Matthew never looked at them, so Annabel was in no risk of being found out. Art had never interested Matthew, unless it was a client’s investment, and then it was just that: an investment. Annabel allowed herself one cigarette—occasionally two—at a time, but only when Matthew was away for the night. Lately, that was often.
From the veranda, Annabel could hear the gentle roll of the trams below and the clop-clop-clop of tourist carriages on the cobblestones. Usually, she found these sounds soothing. Not today. She was too nervous. She glanced up at the steel-gray sky and wondered when it would start to snow. They’d been predicting a storm for days now. She wanted Matthew home. Without him, their flat felt like a hotel instead of a home. A luxury hotel, but a hotel nonetheless. It was still furnished with the same charcoal-colored sofas, ikat-patterned silk pillows, and glass-topped tables that had come with it. Chic but corporate. It was, after all, corporate housing, belonging to Swiss United and rented to them at well below the market price. One of the many perks of Matthew’s job. Annabel had added a few personal touches over the past two years—a painting of hers hung in the living room, an impressionistic cityscape of Florence she’d given to Matthew to remind him of their honeymoon. Her books filled the shelves. Though Matthew told her it was unnecessary, she’d brought their linens from New York: crisp white sheets with dove-gray borders, a W embroidered on each of the pillows, towels to match. They made her feel more at home. At first, she had put out photographs everywhere: on side tables, tucked in the bookshelves, on the mantel. Annabel and Matthew kissing in the back of the old checkered cab they’d hired to whisk them away from their wedding in Tribeca. The two of them cooking lobsters in the rickety Montauk beach house they had rented the summer before they left. Annabel at her first gallery opening, surrounded by friends. She’d put most of them away now. She’d thought, at the beginning, that photographs would make her feel less homesick. The opposite had been true. When she looked at them, she felt horribly lonely. So one night while Matthew was at the office, she’d drunk a bottle of wine and wrapped all the photographs up in bubble wrap and stashed them on a high shelf in her closet.
She tried to replace them with more current pictures from their life here in Geneva, but she didn’t have many. Matthew traveled so much during the week that by Friday, he’d just as soon stay home, catch up on rest, hit the gym. Occasionally Matthew would visit a client somewhere exciting—Madrid or Berlin or the South of France—and Annabel would tag along. Those were work trips, though, and Annabel never saw much of Matthew during them. They’d gone to Venice for Annabel’s thirtieth birthday, but Matthew had spent most of that trip on the phone with a hysterical client in the middle of a nasty divorce. Annabel had wandered the city alone, and the only pictures she’d taken were of a gelateria her friend Julian told her to visit and a flock of pigeons in Piazza San Marco. They’d gone skiing several times, usually in Zermatt, where Swiss United kept a chalet for the senior bankers to use, but Matthew’s colleagues were always there. Most were expert skiers, who, like Matthew, were eager to hit the black diamonds or try off-piste or heli-skiing. Not wanting to be a stick in the mud, Annabel always waved Matthew off, booking herself a lesson on the bunny slope or just curling up with a book in front of the fire. No point in taking a photograph of that.
When they’d first come to Geneva, they’d planned on two years. Two years to amass some money, and then they’d return to New York, buy an apartment, think about trying again to start a family. Annabel was only twenty-eight when they’d arrived; Matthew, thirty-three. They had time. It would be an adventure, he said. An extended vacation. Venice, Prague, Paris, Bruges: so many romantic places, just a short flight or train ride away. The best art in the world would be at their doorstep. Annabel could brush up on her language skills. Her French was good but rusty. Her German—a useful language in the art business—was middling and in need of improvement. Matthew would teach her how to ski. They could take cooking lessons or a wine class. They’d eat fondue. Because it was for only two years, Annabel hadn’t gotten a job. Getting a work permit could take months. It was a complicated process for someone who didn’t work for a global corporation. Anyway, Matthew would be working hard enough for the both of them. He preferred her not to work. He wanted her to be free when he was free. It wasn’t like he was asking her to quit her job forever. Only temporarily. All of it was temporary.
It hadn’t been all bad, of course. Some of it was lovely. The grand apartment. The beauty of the Swiss countryside. Sometimes, Matthew would come home happy, and Annabel would remember why she’d fallen in love with him so quickly in the first place. He would whisk her away for dinner somewhere special. He’d be attentive and caring. He’d make her laugh. They’d watch the sunset over Lake Geneva and talk about an art show she wanted to see, a book she was reading. They’d reminisce about their friends back in New York. They’d light candles on their terrace and drink wine and play Scrabble. On nights like that, when Matthew was not just present but really there, Annabel thought she could learn to love Geneva. Her homesickness would drift away, replaced by a sense of calm and deep appreciation for the beauty and history of the place.
And there was the money. Annabel hadn’t wanted for anything in New York; Matthew made more there than Annabel ever dreamed she’d have, growing up as she did in a small, blue-collar town in upstate New York. But here, their bank accounts swelled remarkably fast. Every month there was more. The money made Matthew proud, and, in turn, Annabel was proud of him. And she found that she liked having money. Suddenly, things that Annabel never considered buying were available to her. The shoes, for example. A decadent lunch, alone, on a Wednesday. Getting her hair done whenever she wanted. There was an ease to having money that Annabel had never experienced. She no longer studied price tags or cringed over credit card bills. There was more than enough.
With more money came more gifts. Matthew had always been wonderful at gift-giving; it was one of the things that Annabel loved about him. It wasn’t about the extravagance. Matthew was thoughtful. He remembered things. Most mornings, he wrote her notes and tucked them in places she was sure to find them. It had become a little game between them. She’d find them in her purse, next to the coffeemaker, inside her compact mirror, taped to the creamer in the fridge. Once, she’d found a pair of tickets for the Metropolitan Opera tucked inside her wallet. They were for the next night’s performance; Matthew would be out of town. Take Marcus, read the attached Post-it note, referring to Annabel’s favorite coworker at the gallery, who loved opera more than anything. “He’s a keeper,” Marcus had said, when Annabel showed him.
Recently, the gifts had become lavish. A handbag she’d stopped to stare at in a store window. A pair of earrings she’d noticed on a colleague’s wife. Last week, a painting that Annabel had admired at Art Basel. It was a smallish piece by Marshall Cleve, a little-known artist from Maine. Annabel had spent a good ten minutes staring at it in meditative silence. It was a series of looping blue lines that conjured up Brice Marden, one of Annabel’s favorite painters. Brice Marden at the sea. It was the kind of thing she’d tried to paint herself at her small studio in Montauk, with only moderate success.
“You remembered,” she said, when Matthew gave it to her. Her breath caught in her chest.
“You should own this,” Matthew said. “You love it. I could see it in your eyes when you first looked at it.”
“I can’t explain why. I don’t know much about the artist. I was just drawn to it.”
“That’s love, then, isn’t it? A connection. Electricity. You feel it in your gut. I felt it when I first saw you. I still feel it when I see you.”
Annabel pulled Matthew to her. “Yes. That’s love.”
“Do you remember how I used to walk by your gallery every morning, just to look at you through the glass?”
Annabel laughed. “Marcus used to think you were looking at him.”
“It took me weeks to get up the confidence to go in and talk to you. And I studied first. About the artists you represented. I was smooth, right?”
“You knocked over the catalogs at the front desk and spilled coffee on the receptionist. But yes, you were smooth.”
“I keep hoping you’ll forget that part.”
“It’s the part I like best. It’s sweet to see a handsome man get so nervous.”
“You were awfully intimidating back then. With that short hair and the all-black wardrobe and the tattoo on your wrist, right under those bangles you used to wear. God, you were hot.”
“And I’m not now? Watch it, mister.”
“Hotter now. Hotter every day.”
“Do you miss the short hair?”
Matthew cocked his head, appraising her. “Sometimes,” he said with a small smile. “But I like it this way, too. It’s elegant long. It suits you now.”
He kissed her then but pulled away more quickly than she would have liked. “I want you to have this painting,” he said, his voice serious. “I know how much you’ve given up to be with me here. I know you miss being surrounded by beautiful art. Part of the reason I took this job was so that I could buy you art. So you could own the pieces you loved. Your own private gallery.”
Annabel paused. Something about this pronouncement struck her wrong. She loved being a gallerist. Owning art was nice, of course, but it wasn’t a substitute for work.
“That’s very thoughtful, but I don’t need it in our home. Really. I hope this wasn’t terribly expensive.”
“It wasn’t,” he said, though Annabel suspected he was lying. “Honestly, the frame is the most valuable thing about this. I want you to remember that. If ever anything happens to me—”
“Don’t say things like that.”
“I just want you to know. The frame. There’s value in the frame. Okay?”
“It’s stunning,” Annabel said, because it was. She appreciated a good frame. She ran her finger along its edge. It was a thick wood, gilted in silver leaf. Simultaneously modern and rustic, it drew out the bluish-grays of the painting. “Let’s hang it over the bed,” she said, her face softening. “That way, we can go to bed each night and dream about love.”
The painting marked the beginning of their second year in Geneva. Annabel let the anniversary slide without comment. In the past few weeks, she’d wondered more than once if the painting was a bribe, a payment of some kind. Because they were staying. Matthew had started saying that he needed more time. For what, she wasn’t sure. There was so much money. Not enough to retire on, or to buy that beach house in Montauk they always talked about, the one with the wraparound porches and the barn out back that had been turned into an art studio. But there was more than either of them ever dreamed possible. So more time for what, then? How much would be enough?
Annabel told herself that a little more time in Geneva didn’t matter; home was wherever Matthew was. But the truth was, it was beginning to matter. It had always mattered. Geneva would never be home. Annabel was bored, listless. She missed work. She wanted children. She wanted her life back. She couldn’t exist in this state of suspended reality forever. At least, not without going mad.
TO BIDE THE TIME until Matthew came home, Annabel pretended to read a novel in the waning afternoon light, but her eyes kept dancing over the words and straying toward her phone. It was a domestic thriller, about a wife who disappears on her commute home from work. It felt like the kind of book she’d read a million times before, a book with “Girl” in the title and an unreliable narrator, and she kept forgetting all the characters’ names. Why hadn’t Matthew called? It wasn’t like him. If it got too much later, she would have to leave for the Klauser party alone. Annabel never felt comfortable at the Klausers’, with their uniformed staff and stiff friends, most of whom were decades older than Annabel. Matthew knew that. Matthew was mindful when it came to things like that. He wouldn’t ask her to walk into that party alone. “If Jonas wasn’t my boss . . . ,” he always said with an apologetic smile. He never finished that sentence. Jonas Klauser wasn’t just Matthew’s boss. He was the head of Swiss United, the biggest bank in Switzerland. He was Matthew’s godfather. He was the reason they were in Geneva to begin with. As long as they were there, the Werners had to make nice with the Klausers. “It’s just business,” Matthew said. But everything with Matthew had become business.
The church bells rang. Annabel put down her novel. The wife had been missing for ten days, but Annabel didn’t care what happened to her. She didn’t bother to mark her page. She hadn’t finished a book in ages. The verandas off the neighboring apartments were empty; it was too cold now for most people to sit outside the way Annabel did, even with heat lamps. She liked the cold. It made her feel awake, alive. A brisk wind picked up, causing her eyes to water. Snow began to drift down from the darkening sky. The party was beginning. If there was a miscommunication and Annabel was meant to meet Matthew at the Klausers, she would embarrass him if she were late. Annabel hated embarrassing Matthew. Her lateness was something he found charming back in the States, part of the bohemian allure of dating a downtown gallerist instead of one of those Upper East Side socialites Matthew dated before Annabel. Bonfire Blondes, Annabel called them, after the X-ray-thin women in Bonfire of the Vanities. Matthew, having grown up on the Upper East Side, seemed to know them all. The Lindseys and Bitsies and Kicks. The ones with fancy last names for first names: Lennox and Merrill and Kennedy. Girls who had been raised to write thank-you notes on engraved stationery and arrive fashionably late, but not forgetfully late, as Annabel often did. Here in Geneva, her lateness bothered Matthew, especially when it happened in front of someone from the bank. It wasn’t as though she had a reason to be late. She had no job. No children. No friends, except for Julian. She couldn’t chance it. Back on went the heels.
The Klausers lived in Cologny, a suburb northeast of the city with winding roads and open fields. They kept a flat in town, too, for the nights that Jonas worked late (or, Annabel suspected, for holing himself up with his mistress, a B-list French actress Jonas had met in Cannes, and whom he squired about openly while his wife was off riding horses or shopping the Paris fashion shows), but they never entertained there. Why would they, when their chalet—château, really—had a nine-hole golf course, a tennis court, a pool, a ten-car garage for Jonas’s car collection? The art was not Annabel’s style—it was all flashy, recognizable stuff, the sort of collection that an art advisor would foist onto a client with no taste and no budget to speak of—but it was outrageously, jaw-droppingly expensive. More impressive than the best galleries in New York on a good day, Annabel thought. Most of the rooms in the Klauser house had at least one major piece: a Damien Hirst, a Jasper Johns. A hideous Botero sculpture of an obese woman on a chaise, dead-smack in the middle of the living room. “They might as well wallpaper the house in money,” Annabel had said to Matthew, the first time they went there. “They must be richer than God, to have a collection like that.”
More impressive to Annabel than the Klausers’ art collection were their unobstructed views of the Alps and the peak of Mont Blanc. She’d been to their home a dozen times, but those snow-capped mountains in the background never ceased to strike her into awed silence. It looked like a postcard, a fairy tale. She just couldn’t believe a view like that was real. The sky was so blue and the snow was so crystalline and the lines of the mountains were so precisely drawn, it looked as though it had all been digitally enhanced somehow. Everything about the Klausers felt that way. Elsa Klauser, for example. She claimed to be the daughter of a minor Austrian royal, a viscount maybe, or something similarly ridiculous. Annabel suspected this was made up, part of a carefully curated pedigree that Elsa had adopted once she’d landed Jonas Klauser as a husband. It didn’t jibe with her slightly too-large breasts, her shock of white-blond hair, or her accent, which was muddled and unplaceable. She wore all the right clothes—Loro Piana and Chanel and Brunello Cucinelli—but her leather pants were ever so slightly too tight, her hemlines too short, her necklines alluringly low, for a woman of supposedly noble birth. She draped herself in fur all year long, even in the summer. “Like a character from Game of Thrones,” Matthew had joked one night after too much wine. It didn’t matter now, anyway. The Klausers were royalty of a different kind. In this world of hidden bank accounts and secret money, Jonas Klauser was king.
Unlike his wife, Jonas carried himself like a true aristocrat. He remembered the names of everyone’s children and parents and spouses and mistresses, even if he’d met them only once, years ago, during a cocktail party at which they were the least important person in the room. He could chatter on about art or wine or parasailing or stamp collecting—anything, really—and he could do it in five languages. He was a true gentleman’s banker, Matthew said about him. Whenever he talked about Jonas, his voice was steeped in reverence. During their first week in Geneva, the Klausers arranged a welcome party for Matthew and Annabel at Skopia, a gallery known for promoting Swiss artists. Jonas took Annabel by the arm and introduced her to a mix of local curators, gallerists, and artists. He wanted her to feel welcome, he said. Matthew was family to him, and now so was she. If there was anything he could do to make Geneva feel more like home, all she had to do was ask.
ANNABEL CALLED ARMAND, the driver. She jotted a note on a napkin and left it on the foyer table, where Matthew was sure to find it. Matthew kept all their notes in a box in his closet. Even the throwaway ones, written on receipts or napkins or old movie ticket stubs that Annabel had dug up from the bottom of her purse. Annabel discovered this after they were married and still found it terribly romantic. She was more careful with her handwriting now that she knew the notes would be preserved. Sometimes she drew little sketches for him, knowing it would make him smile. She had, over the past few years, cultivated a talent for naughty drawings.
Today there would be no sketch. She signed it, x, A. Less affectionate than Love you, A., which she wrote sometimes, but warmer than simply A. He’d better have a good excuse, Annabel thought. He’d better not be with Zoe.
When she opened her front door, Annabel inhaled sharply. Two men stood in the vestibule outside her apartment. One held a briefcase. Both wore suits, overcoats, somber expressions. Their cheeks were red from the cold. Their hair was damp from the snow.
“Annabel Werner?” the one with the briefcase said. He pronounced her name Verner, with a hint of a Germanic lilt. His dark eyes blinked at her from behind clear-rimmed glasses.
“Yes?”
“Sorry to have startled you.”
He reached into the breast pocket of his overcoat and withdrew a badge, which he held up for her. His partner did the same.
“My name is Konrad Bloch, I’m with the Fedpol. This is my colleague, Phillip Vogel. May we come in? We have a personal matter to discuss with you.”
Before she could reply, Annabel’s phone buzzed.
“I need to get this,” she said. “Could you excuse me for a moment?”
Bloch nodded but didn’t move aside. Instead, she could feel his eyes on her as she fished about in her purse, searching for the phone.
It wasn’t Matthew.
“Hello? Yes, Armand. I’m on my way down. Could you wait just a moment . . .” She cupped her hand over the phone. “It’s the driver. I’m on my way out. Perhaps you could come back at a different time—”
“Mrs. Werner, it’s urgent that we speak to you. I suggest you let the car go.”
IN THE APARTMENT, Annabel gestured for the men to sit. She thought to offer them water or coffee but didn’t; she wanted them to leave as soon as possible. Outside, the sky was dark. Snow collected on the window ledges. The roads to Cologny would be slow. The men removed their coats. Annabel left hers on as she perched at the edge of the sofa. It was too hot to be inside in a fur coat, and she felt herself growing light-headed.
“Mrs. Werner,” Bloch started. “Your husband’s plane from London did not land as scheduled. We believe it crashed in the Alps.”
Annabel stared at him, blank.
“A search has commenced in the Bauges Mountains, just east of Chambéry. There is a storm there, which is making the search difficult. But wreckage from what we believe was the plane was spotted atop Mont Trélod.”
Annabel frowned, processing this.
“No,” she said, after a long moment. She shook her head. “That’s not right. My husband has been in Zürich, on business. There’s been a mistake.”
“Your husband is Matthew Steven Werner?”
“Yes.”
“An employee of Swiss United Bank.”
A siren shrieked by, piercing the air. Annabel waited until it passed before answering. She was unnerved by the sound of sirens here. They weren’t like the ones in New York. Here, they were eerie instead of merely loud, like a howling dog, a cry for help.
“Yes, that’s where he works.”
“He was listed as the second passenger aboard a private plane that departed from Northolt Airport in London this morning. It was scheduled to land at Genève Aéroport at 8:20 a.m. The other passenger was a woman named Fatima Amir. The plane belonged to her.”
Annabel shook her head. She had never heard of Fatima Amir.
“It’s not possible,” she said. “Matthew was in Zürich. For a bank off site. They hold them once a quarter. I spoke to him last night.”
After saying this, she realized it was not true. It was two nights ago that she had spoken to Matthew. He was at the office. He was scheduled to take a train to Zürich after a meeting, he had said. He’d be home in time for the Klausers’ party. He sounded rushed, brusque, even. She could hear voices in the background and she knew she did not have his full attention. He had been reticent to set up a time later that evening when they could talk and say good night, and this had upset her. She had grown snappish, said something about how it felt as though he was never home anymore. He said that he hated being apart, more than she knew. That he’d be home soon, that he’d always come home to her. He’d made her repeat that back: You know I always come back, don’t you? As soon as I possibly can? Tell me you know.
Yes, of course, she’d said. I know you always will. This had lessened the sting, though only slightly. She had not heard from Matthew since.
Annabel said none of this to Bloch. She was not wrong about the essential point, which was that Matthew was in Zürich, not London. Annabel was certain of this. Matthew had flaws, but dishonesty was not among them. She felt suddenly protective of her husband. She did not want these men to think Matthew was the sort of person who didn’t call his wife when he was away on business. A typical American banker who cared only about making money and not a lick about his family. Matthew was not that.
“Perhaps there was a miscommunication. Or a last-minute change of plans. I am very sorry, Mrs. Werner.” Agent Bloch spoke with finality, as though there was no possibility for error on his part. Annabel looked at his partner, Vogel. He, too, looked at her with sympathy. For the first time, she understood what was happening. These men were here to tell her that Matthew was dead.
“There’s been a mistake,” Annabel repeated. She had to force the words out of her mouth. Her throat was tightening, making it hard to talk or breathe. “Isn’t that right? You’ve made a mistake?”
“Mrs. Werner, the likelihood that anyone might survive a crash such as this is extremely low. We do not expect it in this case. We understand this is a very difficult thing to hear. Is there someone we can call for you? A family member, perhaps?”
“Matthew’s my family. I have no one else.”
Later, Annabel would not remember what happened next. Only that she began to scream as she fell to her knees on the floor.