by Cate Holahan
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE DAY OF
Jenny opened the front door barely wide enough to slip through sideways. She rushed through the hallway, compensating for the squeak of her sneakers on the concrete floor with speed. When she reached the end of the corridor, she hovered there and squinted at the far wall of windows. If Louis wasn’t outside, she’d have to forgo her medications. She’d couldn’t risk another fight in a locked bedroom.
Susan sat at the outdoor dining table, clearly exposed by the moonlight and glow from the pool. She watched someone swimming. Jenny recognized the arms breaking above the water. Louis was doing laps, releasing his anger with a new exercise given that he’d knocked out his sparring partner.
He wouldn’t see her while facedown in the water. Still, Jenny stuck to the shadowed area under the second-floor loft, emerging into the light only to race up the open staircase. She turned down the hallway to the master suite and rushed to the bedroom. It appeared as she’d left it: lit by moonlight, the bed mussed but made. She could discern the impression of her prone body in the duvet, an inverted chalk outline in the puffy ground. Deep divots flanked the concave center where Louis had placed his knees.
The sight increased her determination to get her medications and get out of there. She ran to the bathroom, her heartbeat throbbing in her inflamed throat. The bottles were visible where she’d left them on the wide rim of the pedestal sink. Their labels, however, were not.
She pressed down one of the bottle’s childproof caps with the heel of her hand and twisted it off. It was too risky to turn on a light, so, like a blind woman, she confirmed the nature of the pill by touch, tracing her finger on the round face to feel the letters OP stamped on the surface. The acronym stood for OxyContin Purdue, the brand manufacturer. She thought of it as an abbreviation for opiate, or a cipher for what it could accomplish in sufficient quantities: Obliterate Pain.
She chewed the pill, grinding up the time-release coating between her back teeth to hasten the effects. The medicine coated her tongue, a bitter paste that might have made her retch if the taste hadn’t been so familiar. Given the tolerance she’d built up over the past five years, one pill wouldn’t do much more than soothe her neck and perhaps file down the edges of her anxiety. If she really wanted to feel nothing, she’d need far more.
Later, she promised herself. Ben still had another hour or so before he could pass a Breathalyzer test, and she wasn’t the best night driver. She needed to remain alert until she could hand over the wheel. After that, she could take another couple of pills to really take the edge off. Once at Ben’s house, she could swallow an Ambien, too, enabling her to get a head-clearing sleep and wake up refreshed for all the daunting tasks ahead: moving her money into a private account, securing an apartment somewhere that Louis wouldn’t immediately suspect, finding a divorce lawyer, and confessing the abuse to Ally.
The thought of her daughter delivered a harsh dose of reality. Jenny couldn’t go to Ben’s house for a good night’s sleep. She needed him to take her to the airport. If Jenny knew her husband—and after fifteen years together, she did—he’d be heading to Ally’s camp within thirty-six hours, as soon as he realized she’d taken off. She couldn’t let him get to their daughter first.
Jenny raced to the stairs, gripping the railing as she sprinted down the steps. Within minutes, she was out the front door, shells crunching beneath her feet. She expected to hear the beep of doors unlocking as she reached the Suburban. When she didn’t, she knocked on the side panel and then rounded the vehicle, pressing her face to the driver’s-side window so that Ben could see she’d arrived.
The doors still didn’t unlock. Through the tinted glass, she saw a vacant driver’s seat and no one in the shotgun position. Her panic swelled like an incoming tide, rising with every second she remained exposed and alone on the driveway. Jenny tried forcing it back with excuses. Ben must have gone to grab some things from his own room. She’d run through the first-floor hallway so quickly that he didn’t realize she was waiting outside. If she took a deep breath, he’d be there.
But her chest felt too constricted to breathe. Jenny slunk to the opposite side of the car, the one that would be less visible should Louis—not Ben—exit the front door looking for her. The moon shone like a searchlight. She pulled her phone from her purse and began checking flights to Maine from the East Hampton airport. The earliest one was at six AM and had a stop, making it take five hours. JFK International was an hour’s drive and a much larger airport.
Shells cracked to her left as she typed in the new search. Jenny whirled toward the sound, flinging her heart into her esophagus. Ben, she thought. Please be Ben.
The sight of the massive shadow blurred her vision. She launched herself toward it, throwing her arms around his waist and pressing her lips to the neck level with her face. “I wasn’t sure if you changed your mind.”
He pushed against her shoulders. Her sneakers skidded back over the shells. “Why did you do it?”
Jenny caught the shimmer of Ben’s teeth between his lips. The grin didn’t match the harsh tone of his question. He wasn’t smiling, Jenny realized. He was sneering.
“Do what?” She reached for him a second time, grabbing the side of his shirt before he could wrest himself away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He yanked the fabric from her fist. “Don’t, Jen. I talked to Rachel. I wanted to tell her I was leaving. I owed her that. She told me that she knew I was cheating.”
“Well, you told her to sleep with other people. She probably guessed. I—”
“She knew every excruciating detail of our first time. Except, conveniently, for your name.” Ben backed away, extending his arm from his body like a running back trying to block a tackle. Jenny heard a crack as shells crunched beneath his feet. “It makes sense, now, why she was livid at dinner. You’d told her. You’d emailed or texted that you’d seen me with someone and she got the message when she went inside. Of course, you didn’t say with who—”
“No, Ben, I—”
“Against the window in my office!” Ben’s voice was so loud it seemed to echo in the open air. “I’m trying to understand why you’d be so brutal, Jen. The only reason I can come up with is that you’d had enough of Louis and wanted to make sure that Rachel left me too so that I’d be waiting for you.”
Jenny pressed a finger to her lips, silently begging him to lower his voice before Louis heard. Ben ignored her plea, nearly shouting her name. “But it backfired, Jen. Rachel is on the warpath. She’s going to argue against joint custody. She plans to say that I exposed myself to the kids by having sex in the house while they were home, in full view of the windows. She’s going to paint me as a sexual deviant.” The moonlight transformed Ben’s handsome face into a tragedy mask. “I knew she’d want the house and to fight alimony. I was prepared for that. But not my kids. Not my kids, Jen!”
Ben’s volume added a physical force to his speech, turning every sentence into a blow. Jenny’s legs shook from absorbing the impact, threatening to give way at any moment.
“I didn’t do it.” The denial burned through her inflamed throat, emerging like a soft puff of smoke. “Please believe me. Please.”
Again she flung herself toward him, praying that he’d catch her and remember the love he’d professed less than fifteen minutes earlier, that the feel of her shivering body would convince him she was innocent. Ben jumped back. She stumbled into the empty space he’d occupied.
“I would have given up everything for you, Jen. Everything but my kids. I’m a father first.” He pointed at her chest. “Rachel said the only way she’d consider not fighting joint custody was if I told her who I’d slept with.” He sniffed. “You didn’t leave me any choice.”
Her legs finally buckled. Shards of shells stabbed Jenny’s knees, but the pain was nothing compared to what would come. If Rachel knew, it was only a matter of time before Louis did, too.
“I love you, Ben. Pleas
e.” Jenny’s kneeling position emphasized her begging. She needed Ben’s strength to help her do what was required to escape from Louis. “You have to take us away from here. I have to get to an airport, to Maine. I have to tell Ally before he—”
“I can’t. I can’t lose my kids.” Ben retreated to the Suburban’s driver’s-side door. “I can’t be here right now, Jen.”
Jenny watched him slide into the cab. She heard the engine rumble. The tires crunch against the crushed-shell drive. Her mind didn’t really register any of it, though. Instead it pulsed with a looping logic: If Rachel tells Louis, then Louis will kill me. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me.
Fear forced her upright. She took off at full speed through the scrub forest, not stopping to swipe at the shell splinters digging into her knees. Sand exploded beneath her feet. Bushes cut into her bare legs. She fought through it all, refusing to let anything in the rough terrain slow her down. Ally needed her mother, and Jenny was running for her life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE MORNING OF
The rising sun shattered Susan’s alcohol-induced coma. Her eyes fluttered open to the unfamiliar sight of a white coffee table. Susan recalled that her last conscious act had been to slump on the great room couch, the firm cushion of which pressed against her cramped thighs.
She shoved her hands into the scratchy woven fabric and pushed herself upright. Sitting swirled the poisons in her stomach. Panting breaths failed to quell her nausea. Why had she drunk so much?
She leaned back into the couch. She knew why she’d drunk so much.
A glance through the glass wall revealed that it was too early to rise on vacation. The sun was merely a suggestion on the horizon, little more than a peach haze evaporating into violet clouds—a pastel promise of a pleasant beach day. Susan cursed the fair weather. She had to confront her husband of twelve years about his affair. A swirling hurricane would have been a better backdrop. The current view simply mocked her.
Her head pounded with the demand for more alcohol to dull her headache. She knew better than to listen to it. Water was the only liquid capable of flushing the toxins from her system.
The whine of her belly begged her to reconsider as she grasped the sofa arm and hoisted herself into a standing position. Vomit lurched into the base of her throat. She slapped her palm over her mouth and sprinted to the sink, holding in the contents long enough to hurl them into the metal basin.
By the time she stopped vomiting, all the liquid seemed wrung out of her system. With the last of her energy, she turned the faucet full blast until every chunk and trace was forced down into the pipes. She tilted her head beneath the spigot, filled her mouth with water, spat, and filled it again. The third time, she swallowed, despite the lingering flavor of last night’s refuse. The liquid hit her stomach like a rock dropped in a full puddle, threatening to splash vomit back into her mouth. She kept everything down by guzzling the water until the nausea was replaced with the uncomfortable pressure of bloat.
After splashing cool water on her face, she turned off the faucet, took a deep breath, and started toward the stairs. Her injured foot throbbed as she walked, reminding her of the physical wound Rachel had inflicted in addition to the psychic ones. She mumbled epithets as she ascended the stairs, compensating for the tenderness in her heel by leaning heavily on the banister.
Nadal’s snore greeted her as she slipped into the room. He lay atop the sheets on one side of the bed, preserving her rightful place beside him. Boxer shorts covered his backside. A latte-colored arm spilled slightly into her space, as though waiting for the body that it usually snuggled in the mornings. Or, perhaps, any warm body. As the email proved, Nadal wasn’t choosy.
Part of Susan wanted to grab her unused pillow and beat him awake. The more vain, if not rational, part of her refused to confront him looking like a dishrag. When they argued, she wanted him to see her as the desirable woman he loved, not an alcoholic wreck who deserved to be walked out on.
She tiptoed past Nadal and into the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack to avoid the click of the lock engaging. She didn’t hear the creak of mattress springs as she began to run a bath, but still she didn’t wait for the tub to fill for fear that he’d soon stumble in. She sat in an inch of cold water and soaped, rinsing off with the handheld attachment.
Susan brushed her teeth and washed her face as the drain slurped down the bathwater. With the same towel around her from the night before, she stole back into the room for her makeup bag. Nadal still snored. He was programmed, she realized, to wake to the sound of her voice or his internal seven AM alarm clock. All other noises could be relegated to the part of his brain titled Things My Wife Will Handle.
That part of his brain was about to get a lot smaller, she decided, stepping back into the bathroom. Nadal would have to earn her forgiveness by playing a much larger role in their family. Susan considered all her demands as she applied the necessary lip gloss, blush, and concealer to mask her hangover. He would have to come home regularly for family dinners. One night per week, perhaps Tuesdays, he would take over teaching Jonah or ferrying Jamal to a late activity, giving her a chance to take a Pilates class or have coffee with Jenny. She wanted a weekly date night, too, to help rebuild their connection. Maybe she’d even sign them up for dance lessons.
A smile wriggled from her mouth as she remembered the rumba classes they’d taken before their wedding. Nadal had possessed admirable rhythm in his hips. More than she’d had, according to the sixty-year-old former flamenco dancer who had taught the lessons. Susan recalled teasing that she might lose her thirty-one-year-old fiancé to a flexible sexagenarian—emphasis on the sex. Nadal had in turn joked about his pelvic prowess, rotating his hips like he was twirling a Hula-Hoop and claiming that the blood of famous Egyptian belly dancers ran through his veins.
Her smile faded. They’d kidded about infidelity once, as though it were a genetic disease from which they’d been spared instead of a wild virus. She still couldn’t believe that the man slumbering in the neighboring room had been infected.
A stinging behind her eyes warned her against applying mascara. She examined her dour expression in the mirror, emphasized by the damp, dark hair hanging to her shoulders. It’s not going to get any better than this, she told herself.
She steeled herself with a minty breath as she reentered the bedroom. “Nadal, wake up.”
At the sound of her voice, he murmured something and reached further into her space on the bed.
“We have to talk.”
He pawed the air beside him and then, feeling nothing, finally rotated toward the sound of her voice. His eyes opened like blinds, pulling back in segments until she could see his dark pupils expanding in the dim light. “Good morning.” He yawned and stretched as he sat up on the mattress. “I didn’t sleep well. What time is it?”
“Time to talk about that email.”
Nadal dragged his fingers down his nightly beard. He let his hands fall to his thighs and slowly got to his feet. “It’s work, honey.” He lumbered toward her. As he passed, he patted her on the shoulder. “I’d rather not ruin the vacation over it.”
She watched him clomp over to the sink and splash some water on his face.
“You already ruined it when you slept with Rachel!”
Nadal turned around like he’d been backhanded. “What?”
“She wrote about how she doesn’t get involved with neighbors. She thinks you both can come to an arrangement as long as you don’t tell your spouses. You’ve been avoiding her since it happened.”
Nadal blinked at her. “It’s about a lawsuit.”
How could he continue to lie? Her empty stomach churned with emotion and the prior night’s poisons. She could be sick again.
“I’ll show you,” he said. He hustled into the bedroom, adjusting his boxer shorts with one hand as he flipped back the laptop screen with the other. The screen flashed its demand for a password.
“I already read the ema
il, Nadal.”
Typing responded. He carried the device over to her, supporting it with his left palm while tracing his right index finger over the track pad. She leaned back against the wall, needing support to continue standing in her dehydrated state.
“She’s suing me. Look.” He rotated the laptop screen to face her. Instead of an email, she saw a PDF of a formal legal document. Centered at the top of the letter was THE LAW OFFICES OF RACHEL KLEIN along with her business address, email, and phone. Beneath the header was a list of the other parties that had received the mailing, along with their respective contact numbers. Susan recognized the style of the form before even reading the bolded REGARDING line. It was a notice of intent to sue.
“But … but that email,” Susan stammered, her mind too busy reconciling Rachel’s words with the new information to properly articulate. Could Rachel have meant that she typically didn’t sue her neighbors and that she wanted to keep the case from their spouses so as not to ruin the trip? Or had Nadal met her to discuss the issue and one thing had led to another?
“But you’ve been acting cagey around her.”
Nadal snorted. “Yeah. She’s targeting my company—that’s not something friends do, as far as I’m concerned. And she’s been trying to corner me to discuss a settlement this whole trip.”
He released the laptop into Susan’s waiting hands. “Read it. You’ll see.”
The relieved tears clouding her vision wouldn’t let her make sense of the screen. Susan looked above it to see her husband’s sheepish smile. He was embarrassed for her. She’d gone crazy over a questionably worded email, shouting at Nadal and making him shut down rather than explain the whole story. She was all the bad words that she’d thought about Rachel and worse.
Susan winced at the memory of her drunken email. She owed Rachel an apology, though not as big a mea culpa as she owed her husband. “I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot.” She stared at the wavy letters on the screen instead of facing Nadal. If he’d accused her of cheating, she’d have been full of righteous anger and indignation. But he stood in front of her, looking sad for both of them.
