An Unwanted Guest

by Shari Lapena

  Riley looks back at her, her eyes huge. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Gwen studies Riley closely. She’s very pale and there is perspiration on her face, as if she’s running a fever. Maybe she shouldn’t even be talking to her about this. Riley’s brought her wineglass with her; her hands are visibly trembling.

  “Are you all right?” Gwen asks her.

  “No, I’m not fucking all right,” Riley says. “Are you?”

  “No. I’m not all right either,” Gwen says, her voice low. “But you have to pull yourself together, Riley. Ease up on the booze.”

  Riley narrows her eyes at her. “Mind your own business.”

  “Oh, because you mind yours?” Gwen snaps back bitterly. She doesn’t know, suddenly, whether she will remain Riley’s friend after they get out of here. And she’s not even sure she cares.

  Riley softens a little. “I’m sorry. I did what I thought was best. But I think David Paley is exactly who I say he is.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I’m not going to ask him.”

  “Then I will,” Riley says, and turns away.

  “Stop!” Gwen hisses, and reaches out and grabs Riley by the arm. “Wait.”

  Riley turns and looks back at her. “Why? I think we should clear this up, don’t you?”

  “Just—wait,” Gwen pleads.

  Riley hesitates.

  “Don’t say anything about David. You could be wrong.” Gwen watches Riley anxiously as she considers.

  “Fine,” Riley says. “I won’t say anything—for now.” She lifts her wineglass to her lips and takes a long, needy swallow.

  FIFTEEN

  Beverly has changed her seat so that she is no longer sitting beside her husband and so that she doesn’t have to see Dana’s shape beneath the sheet.

  So this is what has become of their weekend away, for which she’d had such hopes. Her marriage facing imminent ruin. Stuck in an isolated hotel in the thrall of a deadly ice storm, without power, sharing the lobby with the corpse of a woman who may have been pushed down the stairs by her wealthy fiancé. If so, what a shock that must have been to her.

  She watches Gwen and Riley return. Gwen sits back down in the chair across from David that she’d abandoned earlier, without looking at him. David glances at her guardedly. Something has happened between the two of them, Beverly is sure of it. She’d noticed the chemistry between them last night; that chemistry is gone, replaced by something else she can’t quite put her finger on. Some kind of awkwardness or wariness.

  Riley says suddenly to David, fidgeting nervously with her ring, “I don’t think you should be jumping to conclusions.”

  “I’m sorry?” David says, turning to her politely.

  “Saying that Dana’s fall wasn’t an accident.”

  “She’s right,” Henry says accusingly, glaring at David. “You don’t know what happened—unless you killed her yourself, which I highly doubt.”

  Beverly watches her husband, cringing at his supercilious tone. She knows Henry can be a bit of an ass. He’s probably feeling too hemmed in, and it’s making him a little aggressive. He’s like a border collie; he needs a job to do.

  The cornered attorney says mildly, “I never intended to imply that I knew what happened. I was asked what I thought, and I gave my opinion. I don’t pretend to be an expert.”

  But he is an expert, Beverly thinks nervously, and the rest of them aren’t.

  * * *

  • • •

  Lauren examines a broken fingernail, trying to recall whether she brought a nail file with her. She glances at all the gloomy faces around her. No one appears to be enjoying themselves—even if they wanted to, it would be in bad taste. Candice going off to the library to work, as if nothing has happened, seems a bit callous. God, she’d love to get out of here! And it’s barely past lunchtime. She wonders how much longer they will be trapped in this hotel.

  David thinks it’s not an accident, but murder. She tries not to let it get to her.

  Lauren thinks of Matthew upstairs. He’s keeping to his room, on the attorney’s advice. Beverly says she heard them arguing. She wonders if that’s true, and if it is, whether that makes Matthew look guilty. She would like to know what the attorney thinks.

  * * *

  • • •

  Bradley, always observant—it’s one of the things that makes him a good server—notes the various undercurrents in the lobby of his father’s hotel. All the guests are behaving very differently from the way they had the night before.

  David seems thoughtful and preoccupied, and Gwen seems distressed. Ian no longer has the relaxed, pleasure-seeking demeanor he had the night before, and his girlfriend, Lauren, seems quiet, observant. And whatever had been bothering Henry and Beverly the night before only seems worse today. Only Riley seems unchanged—she was a nervous wreck when she arrived, and she’s a nervous wreck now.

  When David said he thought Dana had been murdered, every one of the guests looked startled, but Bradley also sensed fear.

  Bradley goes about his work, turning things over restlessly in his mind.

  Saturday, 2:00 p.m.

  They are all still huddled in the lobby. Beverly has been brooding about her situation. She has become fixated on the idea of Henry being involved with someone else. She tells herself that the idea is absurd. Henry is not a particularly exciting man, not the type to have an affair. The idea’s never even crossed her mind until this morning. She tries to push the unwelcome thought away.

  She catches David observing Bradley as he scurries about his tasks. David suggests casually, “Why don’t we pitch in and ease the load on Bradley? Henry, do you mind making a trip to the woodshed with me to bring in more wood for the fireplace? And maybe for the woodstove in the kitchen.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Bradley says, flushing.

  “No problem at all,” David assures him. “You must have your hands full.”

  Beverly watches Henry drop his good sweater in his chair by the fire and follow David to grab his jacket from the coat stand. Bradley provides them with a single flashlight, whose rechargeable batteries, he advises them, probably won’t last long. David takes it with them to the woodshed.

  Beverly looks at the others—they all seem lost in their own worlds. She finds herself staring at her husband’s sweater on the chair close to the fire. She’s pretty sure his cell phone is in the pocket. She needs to get his phone out of his pocket without these other people noticing what she’s up to.

  She gets up and walks over and sits down by the fire. The sweater is beneath her. No one is showing any interest in her. She can hear, faintly, James and Bradley rattling around in the kitchen.

  Beverly feels quietly around in the sweater until she finds Henry’s cell phone and closes her hand around it. She slips it into her own pocket. She doesn’t want to look at it here, in front of everyone. And she doesn’t want her husband to come back in from the woodshed and find her in his seat.

  She gets up and moves around restlessly, as if looking for a new magazine among the ones in the lobby. Maybe Henry won’t notice that his cell is missing for a while. They’ve got the flashlight, and he wouldn’t be looking at his phone otherwise, since there’s no coverage. She only wants to see his old messages. If he misses it, he won’t have any particular reason to believe she has it. She has her own phone with the flashlight app.

  She clutches it inside her pocket. She tells herself not to hope for too much; she has no idea what his password is.

  Henry and David come in with their first armloads of wood and drop them by the hearth. David tosses another log onto the fire. Sparks fly up in a shower and then he prods at it with the iron poker to get the fire going again. Then they leave for more wood. Her husband hadn’t even looked at her.

&
nbsp; “I’m going to go back up to my room for a bit,” Beverly says.

  Lauren suggests to Ian, “Maybe we should go up too.” She picks up her book from the little table at the end of the sofa.

  It seems as if no one really wants to stay in the lobby any longer, Beverly thinks. They are already tiring of one another. She walks toward the staircase, eager to slip into the privacy of her room to see if she can access her husband’s phone. As she turns on the landing, she looks down and sees Gwen nudging Riley up too.

  It doesn’t take Beverly long to get to her room on the second floor, lighting her way with her own cell phone. She opens the door with her key and closes it behind her.

  She sits down on the bed in the gloomy room and pulls her husband’s cell out of her pocket and looks at it. She’s seen him use his phone countless times. And he always does the same thing with his index finger—two quick swipes down, one across. Inspired, she tries the obvious, a capital H, for Henry. But it doesn’t work. She thinks hard about the last time she saw him using his phone and realizes he must have changed the password. He wouldn’t do that unless he has something to hide. She stares at the phone, frustrated. She tries different combinations of numbers but gets nowhere. Then she moves her finger in a capital T pattern, for Teddy, her husband’s favorite child, and the phone opens. For a moment, she’s exhilarated. She thinks what a fool her husband can be, and how frequently he underestimates her.

  She quickly goes through his emails but there’s nothing but work emails, long and boring; if he’s hidden a mistress in there, she’ll never find her. Then she looks at the texts. She starts from the top of the list, ignoring names of people she knows, but then she sees a woman’s name she doesn’t recognize. She clicks on it and opens the text; there is a picture of her. Beverly’s heart almost stops. She starts at the bottom, with the most recent text, and works her way backward.

  Idk. I have to go away this weekend with the nag.

  When will I see you again?

  The nag. That is what he calls her to his girlfriend. A wave of hurt swells inside her. She knows she nags him and the kids. She nags them because they don’t listen. If they did what was expected of them the first time she wouldn’t have to nag. But the word nag also makes her think of an old, broken-down mare—whiskered, swaybacked, and ugly. She fights tears and continues reading.

  I miss you terribly!

  Do you miss me?

  Attached to the text is a picture of her, topless, with a shameless grin. Beverly stares at the photo, shocked to her core. She’s young, and gorgeous. A home-wrecker. She knows nothing about life at all.

  She can’t imagine what this girl sees in her husband. If she’s after money she’s going to be disappointed. He’s not going to have any left when she’s done with him, Beverly thinks furiously. And then she stops herself, takes a deep breath.

  She’s not going to divorce him. Surely this is just a temporary infatuation, a midlife fling. He’s made a mistake. A mistake that they can recover from. She doesn’t want to lose him. She needs him.

  She tabs up quickly through the rest of the texts to the beginning of the thread, anxious to see how long this has been going on. Only about a month. He met her at a bar.

  She’s married to a cliché.

  Well, now she knows.

  Her finger itches to send a text of her own to this bitch. But she hesitates. And then she remembers there’s no coverage here anyway. Just as well. Finally she drops the cell back in her pocket. She’s going to hurry back downstairs and slip it back into her husband’s sweater until she decides what to do. She must handle this the right way. She opens the door to the hall.

  SIXTEEN

  Saturday, 2:20 p.m.

  Matthew sits alone in his second-floor room, the lunch tray that Bradley brought on the side table untouched. He desperately needs to talk to his father, but he has no way to reach him. His father would know what to do. He’s always good in a crisis.

  Matthew rises from his chair and goes restlessly to the window. He looks out at the icy landscape below. He can’t drive in that. He couldn’t possibly get back to New York City. And even if he could, how would it look—if he fled before the police arrived?

  No, he’s stuck here. Waiting for the police.

  * * *

  • • •

  Henry, drowsing by the fire, starts at a sound and opens his sleepy eyes. His wife is coming down the stairs, holding the rail until about halfway down, when she starts to make a wide detour to avoid Dana’s body at the bottom of the stairs. There’s a look on her face that makes him uneasy.

  He knows his cell phone isn’t in his sweater pocket. He doesn’t think he’s dropped it, and besides, he’s retraced his steps. It’s nowhere to be found. But when he sees the expression on his wife’s face, the realization hits him. She has it.

  That can only mean that she suspects the truth about him and Jilly. He wonders if she was able to get past his password.

  Christ, he thinks wearily, watching his wife approach. Maybe it will be better to have it out in the open. Now she’ll understand that she has to let him go. She’ll be bitter, at first, but he’s in love with someone else. Beverly has a good job. She’ll manage. It will be difficult for both of them—harder for her, of course—but he will get back on his feet, and life will be good again.

  His kids might hate him for a while, but they’ll get over it. Both Ted and Kate have friends whose parents are divorced. It’s totally normal these days. Kids don’t even blame their parents for it anymore—they practically expect it. They even work it, playing the guilt card, to get more stuff they want. He prepares himself as she sits down across from him, her serious face on.

  * * *

  • • •

  Beverly’s heart sinks when she sees Henry sitting there, as if he’s expecting her. There’s no way she’ll be able to put his phone back. Very well. They have to talk about it sometime—it might as well be now. There’s no avoiding it. Maybe it’s for the best.

  “There’s something I need to say,” Beverly begins, taking the chair across from him and pulling it a little closer.

  Her husband gives her a particularly hard stare. “Did you take my phone?”

  She looks down for a minute at her lap, gathering her courage, and then looks up again. “Yes.”

  “I knew it,” he says coldly.

  “I wanted to find out if you’ve been unfaithful to me.” She waits a beat and then continues. “I managed to figure out your password.” She looks at Henry, who seems surprised. “I bet you didn’t think I’d be able to do that, did you?” She tries a smile but stumbles, unnerved by the expression on his face. But she has to keep going; she has to do this. Maybe Henry will see how ridiculous his affair is. She also wants to hurt him just a little—if only to show him how terribly hurt she is. Maybe she wants to shame him into dropping this girl. “I found the texts between you and your . . . girlfriend.” When he doesn’t respond, she can’t help it, her annoyance shows. “It was very illuminating! I saw pictures of her. I even know what she looks like naked.” She says this quietly, her eyes on her husband, while he sits frozen. “She’s considerably younger than you, isn’t she?” She tries to keep a lid on her disgust. “I can’t believe what you call me, you two lovebirds.” The outrage has crept into her voice, even though she has done her best to keep it under control. “The nag. You call me the nag.” She tries to look into his eyes, but he shifts his gaze away. The coward. “How do you think it makes me feel to know that the two of you are having sex behind my back, and calling me the nag? I have to go away for the weekend with the nag.” He still won’t look at her.

  “Do we have to do this, here?” Henry asks her now, his voice tight. “Can’t it wait till we get home?”

  “Actually, yes. We do. Why wait? Why pretend? It feels good to get this off my chest.” She’s getting carried away now. “Do you kno
w what I call you? I call you the man-child. Because you’re a grown man, facing the sad fact of aging and mortality and disappointment just like the rest of us, but you’re having the childish, selfish reaction that so many men in midlife get and it’s—sad. Sad and unnecessary.” She pauses for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “You don’t love her, Henry—it’s just a phase.” She lets that sink in. At least she hopes it sinks in. “You think you can run off with this young woman and it’s going to be fabulous. You’ll move into her apartment, maybe buy yourself a convertible. No more van for you, schlepping the kids to soccer three nights a week! You’ll see the kids on weekends—when you feel like it—and renege on your support payments, like most men do. It’ll be all sex and dinners out and vacations and no obligations. Well, think again, because that’s not how it’s going to be.” She waits a moment to let that sink in, too, and then pauses for a long moment and says in a more conciliatory tone, “It won’t last. You’ll get tired of her. She’ll get tired of you. You’ll miss me and the kids. There won’t be enough money. You’ll regret it—I’m sure of it.” Her husband lifts his eyes and looks at her at last. “Henry, don’t destroy what we have. Forget her.”

  This is his chance to choose her, Beverly thinks. She waits, holding her breath. But—he doesn’t say anything at all. Her heart plummets, a body going over the falls in a barrel.

  Suddenly she remembers how she felt the evening before, when they arrived here at the inn—it seems so long ago now. How foolish, how wrong she’d been to think that they’d merely drifted apart and needed only to spend time together to recall what they liked about each other. She remembers how he didn’t even come up to the room with her with the luggage, how he’d stayed down here, in the lobby, looking at excursions to keep them busy so they wouldn’t have time to think, to talk.