One Little Secret (ARC)

by Cate Holahan

She slid off the bed, searching the shadowed floor for her purse. She’d leave tonight. The quicker, the better. As soon as Louis realized that she intended to separate, he’d try to get to Ally and convince her that Jenny was making up the abuse for leverage in the coming custody hearing. There was no way she could allow Louis to take their daughter from her. Jenny knew the statistics. If she left Ally with Louis, chances were good he’d wind up hitting her, too.

  Jenny grasped the corner of the bed and yanked herself upright. The room flashed dark and light as though the moon was set to strobe, an effect spurred by her brain’s reaction to the prior trauma of having its main artery momentarily shut down. Her stomach lurched, threatening to send her dinner back up her inflamed esophagus. She stumbled to the balcony doors and flung them open. Breeze buffeted her face. She slumped into one of the Adirondack chairs and gulped salty air until her vision cleared.

  Nadal’s voice wafted from the yard below her. “As I said before, Louis, that’s not our business. We’re a technology platform.”

  “You’re a medical group.”

  “A platform. A website open to anybody with a verifiable medical license and a smartphone. We can’t provide insurance for the universe of—”

  Jenny crawled from the chair back into the dark bedroom so that Louis wouldn’t notice her presence. He might return to justify his anger, as he often did. She couldn’t give him the opportunity to explain away his actions, again—to return to the room with a glass of water, a pain reliever, and a list of rationalizations peppered with apologies.

  The voices rose, floating through the open balcony door like hot air. “That’s not fair to doctors.” Louis was near shouting, his blood still up from their fight. “It’s abdicating responsibility.”

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree, then.” Nadal sounded calmer. “There’s nothing left to say. We’re not setting a precedent here.”

  Jenny heard the scrape of a chair across the deck. In a moment, her husband would barge back into the house, a heat-seeking missile looking for a warm target. The dim moonlight caught the pale color of her purse beneath the end table. She grabbed it, slipped out of the dark bedroom, and hurried to the ground floor. Louis and Nadal likely sat at the outdoor dining table. A glance over either man’s shoulder would betray someone fleeing the house.

  Jenny ran on tiptoe into the narrow entryway. Her rushing blood resounded in her ears like the soundtrack to a thriller movie. In those films, the abusive husband always caught the wife once or twice before she finally escaped. She glanced over her shoulder as she grasped the front doorknob. No sign of Louis.

  Shells crunched under Jenny’s feet as she sprinted down the driveway. She would run into town and then call a car service. Waiting outside the house was too risky. Louis could catch her before she had a chance to leave.

  A large male figure stepped from the shadows beside a red car. The drumbeat in Jenny’s head silenced. She froze, prey trapped in a hunter’s scope. Excuses raced through her brain. She’d needed a sweater from the trunk. She’d wanted some air. She’d come out to apologize.

  “Jenny?”

  Her fear vanished. The voice was so different from the one that spiked the hairs on her neck. Ben walked toward her. The full moon cast him in a cobalt hue, the melancholy subject of a young Picasso. “Did he hurt you?”

  The question made Jenny fully aware of her burning throat. She couldn’t force an answer. Instead, she flung her arms around his firm torso and pressed herself to his chest, wanting to dissolve into the safety of his skin. “I can’t take it anymore.” Her words clawed and scratched their way out of her raw esophagus. “I’m leaving him. I’m doing it. I’m finally going to leave.”

  Ben angled his head down, enabling Jenny to meet his lips with her own. The kiss empowered her, just as it had the first time she’d experienced it, six months earlier.

  She held his neck as she returned his caress, communicating her desire. Her approval. Her husband didn’t deserve her fidelity. In the dark, encircled by Ben’s strong arms, she didn’t care what might happen. “I want you,” she whispered. “I want you. I want you.” With each repetition, her voice grew stronger. Louis couldn’t control her. Louis didn’t deserve her. Louis didn’t know what she was capable of.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE DAY OF

  “My husband cheated with the woman staying downstairs.” Susan whispered the words in the silent bedroom, trying to compel her acceptance of the surreal situation by forcing herself to describe it. Nadal—the man who had pledged his enduring love and fidelity to her a dozen years ago, the partner with whom she raised their boys, the person for whom she’d left her job, her parents, her beloved West Coast, and moved clear across the country—he’d slept with Rachel. Rachel. The mother of their son’s best friend. The damn neighbor!

  Susan reread the email in front of her multiple times like it was a poem, trying to wedge different meanings into the words. Tears blurred the letters into a mess of black lines. She set the computer to the side, turned into the mattress, and thrust her face into a pillow. The fabric muffled her anguished screams. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t stay in the house with a home wrecker. But she couldn’t simply return to Westchester either. The other woman lived next door.

  She could strangle him! How could he have made such a stupid mistake?

  Susan imagined how the affair would have started. Rachel, miserably married and looking for company, had probably run into Nadal in the city. No doubt she’d suggested a drink in some nearby hotel bar. Nadal would have agreed, finally heeding Susan’s nagging to befriend the neighbors. One cocktail had turned into several. They’d begun flirting, much like Susan had with her ex–“work husband” after having one-too-many glasses of wine at the office Christmas party. Flirting could bloom into feeling so easily. Rachel had ultimately decided that she was attracted to Nadal—because what heterosexual woman wouldn’t be? And Nadal, uninhibitedly drunk, and not needing to rush home to relieve the sitter as she’d always done, had checked into a room with the woman next door.

  Afterward, Susan figured, he’d have returned home to his naïve wife dozing in bed. He’d likely mumbled something about working extra late, knowing she wouldn’t question a longer-than-usual day. She’d most certainly kissed the lips that had been on Rachel’s body minutes before and told him that she loved him. Good-night, honey. Sorry work has been so rough. Poor little trusting idiot.

  Had the guilt sickened him? she wondered. Had he considered confessing but forced himself to keep the secret, believing they’d both be happier if she remained ignorant? Had he persuaded himself he could forget all about that night and move on?

  Her husband didn’t want to leave her for Rachel—at least not yet. The email made clear that he’d been avoiding her, and he’d been unwilling to go into the house with Rachel alone. Probably he felt guilty about what had happened. But Susan couldn’t guarantee that would last—not if Rachel convinced him they could arrive at some arrangement.

  The room suddenly felt like a sauna, its hot air saturated with too much emotion to inhale. She couldn’t spend another moment under the same roof as that backstabbing bitch or her own lying spouse. Her black suitcase lay open beside the bed. Susan fell to her knees beside it and pulled at the zipper. She’d pack up and fly back to Washington for the week, forcing Nadal to consider his future without the wife who had stood by him, working and caring for the kids when he’d left his secure job to start a company in their unfinished basement. She’d give him a sample of solitary life as another middle-aged man pathetically preening for twenty-somethings. See how he’d fare.

  Salty tears tumbled from her eyes into her trembling mouth. Who was she kidding? Nadal would do fine. He was a fit, handsome soon-to-be-multimillionaire. He’d have twenty-year-olds fluttering their eyelashes as soon as he entered a room. And, if he didn’t, there was always Rachel, sitting somewhere on the beach, no doubt hoping Nadal might go out and check on her.

&nbs
p; What if he was doing that right now?

  Susan fled the bed as if the mattress had caught fire. She flung open the door and hurried into the hallway, hoping to hear Nadal and Louis’s voices floating from the kitchen.

  The mezzanine had the waiting air of a coffin. Someone had shut off the overhead lights, leaving the house illuminated solely by the full moon blasting through the wall of windows. The solitary light source transformed the empty great room into a chiaroscuro painting, casting a luminous halo on the white couch that contrasted with the charcoal shadows in every corner.

  Footsteps echoed from the dark hallway that hid Rachel and Ben’s bedroom. Susan shirked from the railing. She couldn’t see Rachel like this, puffy from crying and in her we-don’t-have-sex-anymore pajamas—the consummate sad little housewife. When she ultimately confronted Rachel, she’d be dressed and in full makeup, making clear to that tramp exactly whose husband she’d tried to steal. She’d be dressed to fucking kill.

  A male figure emerged into the noir light, his body outlined by the moon even as his face remained in shadow. He turned toward the stairs. Susan recognized the shape of her husband. He’d come from the whore’s bedroom.

  Once, when Susan had been breaking down a roast chicken for her boys, she’d sliced near through her left index finger with a boning knife. The cut had been made with such precision, and with such a sharp tool, that she hadn’t felt a thing. She’d watched the blood gush for a full second, staining half of the bird’s breast a cardinal red before her adrenaline had kicked in, spurring her to wrap her wound in a paper towel and head to the hospital. Nadal’s presence outside his lover’s bedroom was that knife.

  “Nadal?” She spoke his name as though it were a question. In some ways, she supposed, it was. The man she’d thought she knew would never have cheated on her, let alone been stupid enough to do it with a woman his wife risked seeing at every school event and sports game. Each time she walked out of their damn house.

  “Hi, honey.” His teeth shone in the darkness. “Sorry, that conversation took longer than I thought.”

  Susan examined his smile, searching for traces of his dishonesty. The moonlight worked like candles, obscuring the wrinkles and acne scars, the marks of poor living that nothing but darkness could mask. Nadal looked sincerely happy to see her, unconcerned that she’d almost caught him in the act.

  “The conversation with Rachel, you mean.”

  “What? No. Louis.” Nadal sounded genuinely confused. How could he lie so easily?

  “You were coming from Rachel’s room.”

  Nadal scratched at his jawline, reminding Susan that he’d shaved. He’d wanted to be nice and smooth for his girlfriend. “Louis had a question that I thought she might be able to answer.”

  “Then why didn’t he ask?”

  Nadal’s head lowered as he stepped toward her. “Babe, are you all right? You sound—”

  “Answer me. If Louis had a question, why didn’t he ask?”

  Nadal stood close enough for her to finally see his pinched brow. “She wasn’t even there.”

  “Lucky me, I guess.”

  “Huh?”

  “She was there the other night though, right?”

  “What are you talking about?” Nadal’s dark eyes betrayed him. Rather than narrowing with confusion, they opened wider. He knew what she was talking about.

  “I saw the email!” Rage flooded her voice like sewer water from a released drain. “I opened your laptop to check for a message from the boys. Your email was on the screen. She sent you a message.”

  Nadal shut his eyes, blocking her from seeing the workings of his brain as he struggled to invent a believable excuse. “That was about work.”

  “Are you kidding me? I read it, Nadal. I don’t usually become involved like this with neighbors. That’s about work?”

  “It was. She has a client that—”

  “Stop.” Susan’s hands flew in the air, signing the disgust and disappointment she felt too deeply to verbally express. “Stop lying. I read it.”

  “What do you think you read?” Nadal lowered his voice to a seething whisper. “I am telling you that her email was about work. She has a malpractice case.”

  He thought her an imbecile! How else could he honestly expect she’d buy that he and Rachel had legitimate business together? Rachel was a glorified ambulance chaser and Nadal ran a tech company. Rachel wouldn’t consult with him and he definitely wouldn’t ask her any legal questions. He had a giant law firm on retainer. He was married to an attorney!

  “You’re unbelievable. You’re standing there, lying straight to my face.” Her hands shot out, as usual, to punctuate her statement. They landed full force on Nadal’s chest.

  Nadal’s lips curled into a line. He shook his head as if she were Jonah in the midst of a fit. “There must have been some weird drug in one of those bottles of wine, because everyone here is going nuts. I told you the truth. Rachel emailed about work. And I’m not going to stand here while you create a scene.”

  She centered herself in the narrow hallway leading to their room. “I’m creating a scene? That’s your tactic? Play the aggrieved spouse married to a crazy lady?”

  Nadal raised an open palm. “It’s been a long, stressful day. I’m going to bed. We’ll talk about this in the morning when you’re more rational.”

  “I’m completely—”

  He grabbed her shoulder and pushed her to the side. The move was barely noticeable, more of a nudge than a blow. Still, she stumbled backward, reeling from his unexpected aggression. In twelve years of marriage and fourteen years together, her husband had never raised a finger to her in anger. Now he was shoving her out of the way.

  She braced herself for a door slam as Nadal disappeared into the bedroom. But it didn’t come. He passed through the jamb and flipped on a light inside, transforming the entrance into an invitation. Part of her—the part that still desperately loved her husband—urged her to accept. It begged her to follow him inside, close the door behind her, and keep posing questions until he broke down and apologized, enabling her to start forgiving him. A stronger part, however, kept her from moving, made her obey the hissing voice in her lizard brain warning her against trapping her husband in that room. She was too angry. Too capable of violence.

  Susan turned away from the bedroom, toward the wall of windows. The moon dangled in the center of the top pane, an air freshener hung over a rearview mirror, driving out the dark and damp. Susan guessed the time was shortly before midnight. She’d have to find something to do with herself for the next hour until Nadal fell asleep. She couldn’t trust herself to behave rationally around him—or Rachel.

  Motion caught her eye. Louis sat at the outdoor table, pouring something from a glittering bottle. Scotch, probably. Maybe wine. Hopefully wine. She wiped her fingers beneath her eyes and nose, fixing herself as best she could without a mirror. Never before had she so badly needed a drink.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE DAY AFTER

  Gabby’s office door bounced against the wall, unable to absorb the fury with which she’d thrown it open. Her husband sat behind her desk, hands folded beside the placard with her new title. Kayla sat across from him. As Gabby stormed in, her daughter looked over her shoulder and pursed her painted lips as though watching someone behaving badly.

  Their reserved demeanors poured salt on Gabby’s raw anger. How could Derrick act so calm and collected when their daughter had sneaked into a party thrown by sexual predators to drink illegally, and he’d committed third-degree assault? Did he not realize what could have happened to them? Instead of investigating Mariel’s date rape, she could be in a hospital, squeezing her teenager’s hand as a forensic examiner roughly swabbed for a stranger’s sperm, or perhaps wiping off vomit induced by some sickening cocktail of antiviral and anticonception drugs. Derrick, meanwhile, would be in jail for sucker-punching a wealthy white tourist, praying that some prosecutor wouldn’t look at his six-foot-three boxer body and d
ark Black skin and see a threat that needed to be locked up for the maximum year-long sentence. Worse, he could be in the hospital himself.

  The thought of the alternative universe she’d come so close to entering made her vibrate like a high note. She stood in the doorjamb, shaking and staring at the irreplaceable pieces of her heart in the room, unable to release the scream in her chest. Tears blurred her vision of Kayla into another version, without the kohl emphasizing the upturned eyes and gloss slicking the pouty lips. She was her beach baby with golden-brown skin and braided pigtails, each tied with bright resin beads that clacked like castanets as she ran along the water’s edge.

  “I want the makeup off.” The words exploded from Gabby’s tight throat. She pointed to her husband. “There are tissues in the top drawer. Hand them to her. I want it off. All of it. Off.”

  Derrick opened the drawer, rolling his eyes toward their child as if to say you did it now. He passed the plastic tissue pack across the desk. Kayla peeled back the tab and withdrew a Kleenex. “I’m sorry, Mom.” She wiped the napkin across her mouth, smearing the strawberry color rather than removing it. “I’d only heard it was a pool party. Alice—she’s the au pair that watches Katie’s little brother—was invited. She told her about it, and Katie said she was going. I thought the crowd would be younger.”

  Gabby swatted a tear and strode over to Derrick, passing a bookcase stacked with law manuals and mayoral commendations. She stood beside him and tried to glare through her tears at her kid. “You lied and you drank.”

  Kayla worried the tissue between her fingers. “I had a plastic cup with some rosé. It barely tasted like alcohol.”

  Gabby slammed her hand on the wooden desk, leaning over it so that her face was directly in front of her daughter’s. “First off, Kayla, you shouldn’t be familiar enough with alcohol to make that assessment. You will be spending the remainder of your summer either at work, studying, or on supervised outings with me and your father. No more going to the beach with your friends. No more sleepovers. No more, Kayla.”