My Wife's Husband

by E H Davis

  They sat down to a meal Nola had prepared, of pasta with sauce made from blanched pear tomatoes, topped with aged parmesan. Bruzza, a rare guest at the cabin but not so rare that the pantry wasn’t stocked with his kibbles and favorite canned dog food, snuffed up his dinner from a bowl Nola set out for him.

  Jens complimented Nola on her al dente noodles and her sauce, which she’d learned to make from him. Teddy complimented her by asking for another heaping bowl, with a side of salad. Bruzza came to beg handouts from Nola, but once he realized she was immune to his soulful gaze he plunked down at her feet and went to sleep.

  Jens waited until Teddy had eaten his fill and excused himself — he had a game date on Gameboy Advance on Wi-Fi with a friend from Portsmouth — to break the news to Nola about Vivian coming to stay.

  “She’ll be coming on Saturday and stay through Thanksgiving?”

  Jens nodded.

  “I’m curious.” Nola dried one of Jens’ copper pots and hung it over the stove. “What convinced you to say yes? Is she helpless? Did she try to harm herself?”

  He took her dish towel, dried another pot, and hung it alongside hers.

  “I thought you didn’t have a problem with her coming.”

  “I don’t.”

  “So?”

  She leaned against the butcher block island and faced him.

  “So what heart strings did she pull?”

  Jens told her the story of his ex-wife’s horrible childhood abuse and tragic involvement with Laurent, leading to her betrayal of the life she’d built with Jens and her breakdown.

  When he mentioned Warren Flynn’s role in Vivian’s disappearance, Nola nodded with understanding. “She must have been scared to death.”

  Jens agreed. “She said he was the real killer, not Laurent.”

  Nola looked at him skeptically. “Does she hate herself for what she did to you.”

  “It’s more about facing what she did to Teddy. Neglecting him for Laurent.”

  “Teddy’s all she has left.”

  “Do you still want me to stay?”

  He struggled to think of a snappy comeback, one that would diffuse Nola’s insecurity and reassure her, but none came to mind. He took her in his arms and stared deeply into her eyes.

  “My, my, why so serious?” She laughed. “I was only teasing you.”

  “And?”

  “You passed.”

  ________

  Later in the privacy of their bedroom, Jens talked about Teddy and his anger, filling her in on the reasons for his concern.

  “He’s changed so much I barely know him. He talks about blowing people away.”

  “Have you spent any time with him just doing things he likes, like fathers do? Do you go fishing? Play ball?”

  “What, with my book deadline? Not to mention coming to Vivian’s rescue,” he added heatedly.

  “Shhhh,” she said, with a calming hand on his arm, only to realize that she’d accidentally stroked his cast.

  “When’s this damn thing coming off?”

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  “What did you forget this time?”

  “It’s supposed to come off tomorrow.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Why perfect?”

  “So I don’t have to make love to a one-armed bandit any longer than I have to.”

  She kissed him goodnight and rolled over onto her side of the bed.

  ________

  The next morning, Jens sat at the kitchen table, jotting notes in his journal about how Cassie was going to rescue Emma, after sacrificing herself to Orozco. He could think of a number of possible scenarios. One, using her cell phone to put out a rescue signal, another capsizing the boat on a sandbar in the middle of Punta Bay so the Coast Guard would respond. Another, engaging Orozco in one of his sordid movie adaptations, herself the treat, or a combination, even, of all three.

  But none of them felt quite right because, he realized with mounting anxiety, he had not planted enough credible scenes to justify Cassie putting herself in harm’s way. Now he worried that her dedication to save Emma, while intellectually understandable, did not justify her sacrifice emotionally. Would he have to go all the way back to the beginning of the book and redraft the backstory of her daughter’s murder, making it an abduction instead, her whereabouts unresolved, dead or alive, with Emma her only lead? Yes, he told himself, this makes Cassie’s actions believable and sympathetic, while upping the ante.

  Even as he acknowledged the need to make this fundamental change, which would require considerable rewriting and tweaking throughout the manuscript, he tried to deny it. This is the worst thing that could happen to a writer this late in the game, he moaned, doubting himself, along with his story. It meant weeks of rewriting at the very least, which he no longer had — he’d have to warn Jean Fillmore-Smart immediately. He knew he was right about Cassie’s motivation; what he called his shit-barometer told him that this plot element, of her own daughter’s unresolved fate, was exactly what the story needed to click.

  He struggled with the idea of not telling Jean, to keep the advance and get his money due on submission. True, he needed the money desperately: his legal bills were crushing, not to mention household expenses to feed three, and soon four. The court, meanwhile, was taking its time releasing his marital assets — what was left of them.

  But he knew he could not deceive his agent or his publisher. This was his work, his life; it’s what really mattered. He decided he would go back to the beginning of his manuscript and see what could be done about fixing it. Maybe the changes wouldn’t have to be so drastic. Yet he believed they would be; the thought nearly crushed his resolve.

  ________

  It felt great to have the cast off his arm. Jens celebrated by putting his newly liberated hand on the steering wheel, feeling grand, as he drove to the Presbyterian Hospital to have lunch with Nola to celebrate.

  “From now on, I’ll expect the full use of all your appendages,” she whispered in his ear, as she met him in the lobby.

  “Anyway —” She linked her arm in his — the left, now that it was cast-free — and started him toward the cafe. “What are you going to do about fixing the book?”

  “I already talked to Jean. She told me to wait until the editor’s read it too.”

  “You going to wait?”

  He nodded. “I have no alternative.”

  “Thrice good,” she said, leading him to a table with a view of the garden and pond, in the newly opened upscale café that had replaced the old cafeteria.

  This is where Jens had that fateful meeting with Ferdie, after keeping vigil with Daniel. He marked it as the beginning of his friendship with Ferdie, conflict the precipitating event.

  “Thrice good?” He glanced around for a waiter.

  “First, because now you have no excuse for not driving down the mountain and having lunch with me more often. Second, because you’ll have more time to spend with Teddy, doing fatherly things.”

  “What’s the third reason?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be a writer? Use your imagination.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  When Jens returned from visiting Nola, he found Teddy in the mud room taking off his running shoes and breathing hard. Jens sat down beside him on the bench.

  “Hey, pal, where you been?”

  “Went for a run. Why?”

  “Without the dog?”

  Teddy shrugged. “He holds me back.”

  Jens pulled off his own shoes and slipped on his house-slippers.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d walk the dog now and then.”

  “Okay.”

  “You never walk him. He’s your dog, you know.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. I said I would.”

  “All done with your schoolwork?”

  Teddy got up from the bench and pushed into the house, visibly irritated.

  “Come back here. I’m talking to you.”

  Teddy turned back, br
istling. Jens noted his arms were away from his body, puffed with adrenalin. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes.

  “Hey! What’s this all about?”

  “This is about you not helping out around here.” Jens noted his own breathing was harsh. Teddy’s adrenalin was pushing his own. He felt himself rising to a threat. He checked himself.

  “What are you going to do? Smash me like you did the walls back home?” His voice was pitched low, to soothe the wild beast in his son, now puffed like a comic book hulk.

  Teddy glared at him, his pupils expanded, black. His chest heaved as he labored to bring himself under control. This is the moment of truth, thought Jens. Either he stands down, or I’ve lost him. Gradually the rage seeped from his son’s eyes, from his face, from his body. He seemed to shrink a little as he came back to himself.

  “I would never, ever, lift a finger to hurt you, Dad.”

  Trembling, he put his mitt-sized hands on Jens’ shoulders and looked down into his eyes.

  “You know that, don’t you?” His voice was almost normal again.

  Teddy, the old Teddy, hugged him, and Jens gave him a manly pat on the back.

  “Oooh!” said Jens, recoiling. “You need a shower, pal.”

  “Right after I take out the dog. Here, boy. C’mon, boy,” he called.

  Reclining like a sybarite, Bruzza grudgingly rose from the couch in front of the fireplace, stretched, and trotted over.

  “Does he need the leash?”

  Jens nodded. “This is bear country, remember?”

  “How could I forget?”

  ________

  After lunch, Jens went over Teddy’s online homework with him, finding it surprisingly better than he’d expected. They talked about a new daily routine, going hiking or fishing afternoons, after Teddy had completed his courses for the day.

  “Aren’t you working on your book, Daddio?”

  “It’s on hold until Jean reads what I sent her. In the meantime, I thought maybe you and I could spend some time together.”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you like that?”

  Teddy nodded. “When’s Mom coming?”

  “Saturday.”

  “We’re going to pick up her up, right?”

  “She’s driving up by herself. She wants to prove she can be independent — her doctor agreed.”

  “Wow, that’s great.” Teddy paused. “I know I have a problem ... with my anger. Sometimes, I feel like I have no control over it. Something wells up inside, a poison like, and once it starts, I see red and there’s nothing I can do except ride it out, wherever it takes me.”

  Jens cuffed his neck and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

  “Sometimes ADD will do that. Don’t worry, we’re going to get you help.”

  Teddy looked away.

  “So, want to go for a hike today? We haven’t knocked off any trails lately.” Jens gestured to the trail map of the White Mountains, mounted on the wall beside the fireplace. “You’ll have a hard time keeping up with me.”

  “That’ll be the day, old man.”

  “Don’t forget to wear red — hunting season.”

  ________

  The next day, Jens sat at the kitchen table staring dully out the window onto the patio and the woods beyond. Jean, his agent, still hadn’t gotten back to him about his manuscript, and he had little to occupy his mind aside from planning dinner and the afternoon’s activity with Teddy. He felt a little bereft without his obsessive preoccupation, his story’s characters. He forced himself not to think about them.

  Where was Teddy, anyway, he wondered. Wasn’t he back from school yet?

  Jens went to the mudroom to see if Teddy had left his school bag there, as was his custom — he didn’t need his books inside, at his desk, since he had no homework, only online assignments. There it was, dumped on the bench where he’d tossed it. He must be out for a run, Jens concluded.

  Just then Bruzza, leash in mouth, trotted up, glaring at Jens impatiently.

  “Okay, buddy, I get it. Let’s go!”

  ________

  Bruzza, an urban dog despite his life at the farmhouse in Lee, pulled ahead on his leash, intoxicated by the odors of the woods in November, and ready to pounce on any beast, no matter the size, that might cross his path. Jens pulled back on his leash as he startled a covey of woodcock into flight and tried to give chase.

  “No, boy, no. There are hunters out there who can’t tell the difference between you and a wild turkey. Stay close.”

  As if in answer, a series of booming shots resounded, coming from deeper in the woods. Bruzza lit off in the opposite direction, stripping all the coils of the leash until it was tight as a bow and he was out of sight, around a bend in the trail.

  “Whoa, Bruzza,” cried Jens, running after him, pulling on the leash.

  Again, there was the distant boom. It sounded like a shotgun, decided Jens. Someone hunting pheasant, in season until the end of the year. He had more to worry about from deer hunters and their rifles, this being the height of the season, and the same week Nils had died.

  Better head back home, he told himself, even though he was wearing his bright orange cap and vest. Like most New Hampshire natives, he knew better than to tempt the eyesight and aim of out-of-town hunters, especially those up from Jersey and New York, armed with enough firepower to take down a herd of rhino.

  “Bruzza! Here, boy!”

  He found him sniffing the ground like a hound, racing around a wooded copse that opened onto a field at one end, bordered by a farm wall of fieldstone. Approaching, Jens could see evidence of recent human activity. There was a shallow pit with burnt brush and tree fall, and all around it tamped ground. The glass shards glinting in the sun led him to a place on the wall where bottles had been set for target practice.

  He pulled Bruzza back as he examined the broken remains, green and translucent, forming a trail along the wall. Someone’s firing range, he concluded.

  Warily, he backed away, taking Bruzza with him until he reached the fire pit. Here he found the shell casings scattered about, concluding that this is where he took aim and shot at the bottles on the wall.

  “Bruzza, leave those, boy. No good to eat,” he said, chasing him off.

  He counted the shell casings as he picked them up: nineteen in all. They were small brass jackets, smelling of Cordite, freshly fired. Just like the ones Ferdie had shown him — the ones from Daniel’s missing gun.

  Jens rolled them in the palm of his hand. He knew where they were from.

  If he came to blows with Teddy — then so be it. He intended to take that gun away before it was too late.

  What bothered him most — aside from his antipathy for guns — was Teddy’s lying to him, denying he had it. Jens rankled with anger at his son’s bald-faced deceit — all the times he’d asked him about it.

  That’s your story and you’re sticking with it, eh?

  “We’ll see about that.”

  He stomped off in the direction of home, dragging Bruzza by the leash.

  ________

  As he walked back with Bruzza, a funny thought occurred to him. As a Hollywood screenwriter, he’d come across one of the primary principles of dramatic unity: Chekhov’s gun. It postulated that every element in a narrative must be purposeful, relevant, and necessary.

  In the classic case, if you show a rifle in the first chapter of your book, then it must go off in the second, or at the very latest, the third. In Hollywood, the great leveler, it was reduced to this maxim: if you show a gun in the first act, it must be used to kill someone.

  Jens did not relish the foreshadowing of Chekhov’s gun in his personal life. In his writing, it was okay. Suddenly, he had a glimpse of the ankle biter perched high up on Cassie’s sexy thigh, waiting, like Chekhov’s gun, to deliver or damn her.

  ________

  Teddy did not want to admit to having the gun all this time, nor did he want to surrender it, along with a box of cartridges he’d brought fro
m Portsmouth. But in the end, he could not stand up to his father’s fierce anger and righteous indignation. He handed it over without apology, suggesting that Jens might want to keep it in case that asshole Laurent, or his buddy Warren, showed up.

  “Does it make you feel like a man?” Jens fumed.

  “No, maybe back then when I first found it, but not now,” he shot back.

  “Then why keep it? You knew Ferdie was looking for it. You knew it might help identify Daniel.”

  “How?” He shrugged. “Daniel was no hold-up artist or stone-cold killer. He was a romantic, like most suicides. He probably bought it on the street. Anyway, it was cool — knowing I possessed the power of life and death.”

  Teddy, raised on Xbox games like Assassin’s Creed, was a true believer in the elegance of violence, taking CGI for the real thing. Little did he suspect the true ugliness and pain of death. Jens hoped it was not too late to teach him before he found out for himself.

  Jens needed to hide the gun in a safe place before he could turn it over to Ferdie. Temporarily, he stuck it under his mattress. When Teddy went out for a walk, he decided to find a place less obvious. He took it down to the basement and slipped it into the compartment behind the water heater, forgetting that he’d once suspected Teddy of utilizing it for the same purpose.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  On Saturday morning, Jens puttered around the cabin, cleaning, organizing, and preparing for Vivian’s arrival. Teddy, sullen and unrepentant, helped him convert the futon couch in the loft into a queen-sized bed, and make it up with sheets, covers, and pillows.

  They hauled a dresser from the basement up the two flights to the loft. Then Jens scrubbed the shower in the bathroom, located behind a curtain in a corner of the loft, while Teddy took care of the toilet, sink, and mirror. Lastly, they drew the screen across the front of the loft overlooking the main room below, making it private.

  Jens had received a call on Friday from the psychiatrist at the women’s shelter, explaining how Vivian’s medication was to be administered, in doses of one 300 mg tablets twice a day with meals, morning and night. Vivian would be responsible for taking her own meds, she added, but it was important that he monitor her discreetly.