by A. J. Banner
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I kneeled to turn over the heavy stone turtle in my mother’s front yard. A cold, steady rain seeped beneath the collar of my raincoat, plastered my hair against my head. My teeth chattered, and my fingers were numb. If only my brain would go numb, too. I didn’t want to imagine Johnny and Monique together. I didn’t want to grieve any more losses.
Where was the damned key? I searched in the wet dirt, my tears mingling with the rain. What if someone had stolen it or my mother had forgotten to leave one out? I would have to stay in a hotel. Or drive all the way back to the cottage after dark.
What if the key had been eaten by a burrowing rodent? Nature seemed to have taken over the property. I’d last been here just before my mother had left for Kenya, but in only a few months, the grass had become overgrown, even with the gardener maintaining the property. Weeds choked out the shrubs. Pine needles and leaves littered the path to the porch.
Finally, I found the key buried in the soil, wrapped inside a Ziploc bag. My mother had always been good at hiding things. Her pain, her grief, her inability to get over my father. She had never remarried. But she traveled.
I was waterlogged now—even my bones felt damp. But the house was warm inside and smelled surprisingly fresh and clean, a hint of lavender in the air. My mother liked to tuck dried herb sachets in drawers. The furniture was functional but comfortable, the décor a museum of mementos from the countries she had visited.
I’d left a message on Johnny’s cell phone, and then had nearly thrown my phone across the room. Why was I perpetually leaving messages for him, never reaching him in person?
I’d also left him a note. I know about Monique. I’m at my mom’s house in Portland in case of emergency. But please don’t come here. I need time. So many questions brewed in my mind. Everything I had believed about my life had been merely a magic trick, a curtain of sparkling fairy dust thrown up before my eyes to hide the truth.
My childhood bedroom, with its slanted roof and dormer window overlooking the ravine, felt familiar yet strange. My dresser and desk were still here. My mother had replaced the single mattress with a guest bed. The childhood things I had loved most—my plush stuffed animals, my favorite pens, old coloring books, dolls, Lite-Brite—had been packed away into storage.
A small collection of books remained on the shelves—Nancy Drew mysteries, Beatrix Potter tales, a few college textbooks. I’d eased my way into the writing profession, first penning articles for campus newspapers, then company profiles for coffee table books, then short stories, then novels. Now I had a career, but no life, no husband, and no home.
I lay on the bed and stared up at the textured ceiling. In high school, I had pasted a mural of redwood trees up there, but when I’d left for college, my mother had peeled off the mural and repainted the ceiling. I closed my eyes and tried to recapture an image of the comforting forest, but nothing came to mind. I could not go back.
My cell phone buzzed again. Johnny had left six messages already. I ached to talk to him, to ask him how long he’d been with Monique. When? Was he in love with her? Why had he split up with her? Was Mia his daughter? So many other moments now took on new meaning: Johnny veering off to Theresa’s house, letting calls go to voice mail, the hang-ups, the hushed conversations, not answering his cell phone the night of the fire. But I could not replay every possible instance of infidelity, or I would drive myself crazy.
For now, for a few hours, I needed to nurse my wounds. I took a long, hot bath, changed into a pair of flannel pajamas, made a cup of chamomile tea. And I cried. I’d been crying on and off on the drive down from the peninsula, in the bath, while I’d wandered around the house, touching familiar objects, framed family photographs lined up on the mantel. My house might’ve burned down, but at least my mother had kept some of my childhood belongings. I still had evidence of my past, even if my entire reality had been turned inside out.
She had also left evidence of her rush for the airport. She hadn’t put the cap on the toothpaste. A mug sat on the kitchen counter with a fossilized ring of coffee inside. An unread, folded newspaper lay on the dining table, dated the day she had left.
In my mother’s study, I found a pile of photo albums. She still preferred to print hard copies. She’d never been much into technology. But she had removed and discarded every photograph of my father. Except for one. I found the picture of him holding me when I was a chubby baby. He wore swimming trunks on the beach, a pipe protruding from his mouth, his hairline already receding. He smiled at me as if he loved me. But he’d been sleeping with another woman for nearly two years before he had left my mother and me. He hadn’t loved us enough to give up his affair.
I closed the album with trembling fingers and pulled out another one labeled WEDDING: SARAH AND JOHNNY. My father had not come to the wedding. But the photographer had captured happiness all the same—my strut down the aisle beneath the tent, since a sprinkling rain had arrived for our June wedding, and we’d hastily set up the shelter at the last minute. Throwing the bouquet. Nearly tripping over my bridal train. The makeup that had made my skin itch. Each of my friends—and Johnny’s—had been captured alone or in small groups, holding glasses of champagne, eating cake, chatting.
Later in the evening, we’d danced. In nearly every picture of Johnny and me together, he held my hand tightly, gazing into my eyes. Had his love been real? Our marriage had always felt authentic to me. Could I trust my intuition? Not with all the gaps, the questions, the proof of his affair.
I lingered over a photograph of the two of us at dinner, at the wedding reception. Why hadn’t I noticed Monique in the background, at the next table, in a revealing green sleeveless dress? She seemed to be posing for the camera. She rested her chin in her hand, her head turned slightly to the side. Her hair was done up elaborately, her gold earrings glinting. She laughed at something someone said off-camera, but she stared at the back of Johnny’s head. Had the two of them been sleeping together even then?
It didn’t help to keep imagining the worst. Sleep would help. Numb and exhausted, I retreated to bed and curled up in a fetal position, my arms around my knees. When I had half drifted off, I heard a loud knocking on the front door. I sat up straight, my heartbeat erratic. My head felt fuzzy. The doorbell rang. I knew who it was. I considered not answering, but I couldn’t avoid him forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I couldn’t help the irrational rush of anticipation as I hurried down the stairs and peered through the keyhole, just to be sure.
Johnny’s distorted eye stared back at me, and when I opened the door, he stood on the porch like a large, bedraggled drifter, an impossibly alluring one. His breath condensed into steam in the cold air. I wanted to hug him and pummel him all at once. Love him and kill him.
“What are you doing here?” I said. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I drove as fast as I could. There’s construction on I-5.”
“I told you not to come.”
“You wanted me to come, or you wouldn’t have told me where you were.” He reached out to touch my cheek, gently, as if I were a breakable object. And I let him. “Can I come in?”
I couldn’t slam the door in his face. I stepped back and crossed my arms over my chest. He brushed past me, and I closed and locked the door. He took off his coat and hung it in the closet. He knew where everything was in this house. He’d been here for Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving, rites of passage that repeated themselves every year.
He went into the living room and sat on the couch, dark circles beneath his eyes. “Why did you run away from me?”
“I’m not running away.” I sat in the armchair across from him. “I’m trying to understand how this could happen.”
“How did you find out about Monique? What do you think you know?”
I told him about my visit with Jessie, about the journal. About how I had driven away in shock. “I didn’t tell her why I was so upset. Nobody else would know
about Jules and Jim. But the police will know Monique had an affair.”
“Jessie stole Monique’s journal?”
“Figures you would focus on that.”
Johnny looked as if someone had punched him in the gut. “We were together only a short time.”
He was already launching into explanations. I hadn’t even asked a question. “Did you expect this to remain a secret forever? Oh, I guess it would have, if it weren’t for the fire. If the Kimballs hadn’t come home a few days early and then conveniently died.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Were you in love with her? Are you?”
“No. I was not. I am not.”
“But you slept with her.”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know—”
“Two? Three?” I’d seen movies like this, in which the betrayed wife follows her husband around the house, spearing him with desperate questions. “Ten?”
“It was short and fast . . .”
“It’s clear from her letter that she was deeply in love with you.”
“No, not in love,” Johnny said, getting up and pacing. “Obsessed.”
“You’re blaming your affair on her, making her seem unstable.”
“No, I’m not,” he said, turning to face me. “I was on the rebound, and in a moment of weakness, there she was.”
“Where did you have sex with her? Right there in the house? In our bed?”
He sat again and gripped the arm of the couch. “I knew you would ask me these questions. I’ll answer them all. I told you I would. But it doesn’t matter where.”
“It matters to me.”
“Yes.”
Nausea rose in my throat. “The picture I found in the house, the woman on the dock. That’s Monique, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“When was the picture taken?”
“Before I met you.”
Could I believe him? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“For me, it was temporary. I didn’t realize it would become something more than that for her.”
“Temporary.” I could sense his regret, his sadness. But I didn’t care. “Did you tell her you loved her?”
“I never did. Never. I love you, Sarah.”
“How do I know that?”
“I’ve always told you the truth. I never said I loved Monique. She understood exactly where I was coming from. I told her.”
“You told her she was a temporary fling.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “But I didn’t say ‘fling.’”
“Was she already married?” I tried to keep my voice level and calm, but my words trembled with restrained fury.
“She and Chad were dating. They were serious, yes. Maybe he was serious and she wasn’t. I don’t know.”
“The house was his, too.”
“Chad bought his house about the same time I did.”
“Two single men.”
“He was divorced, I’d been dumped by my ex,” Johnny said in a faraway voice.
“So Monique essentially cheated on him. Did you want to be with her? This beautiful French woman, every man wanted her. And you didn’t? You used her for sex?”
His jaw hardened. “I didn’t use her. I don’t use people.”
“You’ve been using me. Assuming you don’t have to tell me the truth.”
“That’s not the way it is. She and I—it was mutual. We had sex. It didn’t mean anything. It was casual.”
“For you it was. You can just have sex. Casually.” The refrigerator kicked in, a loud hum, and a wood beam creaked in the attic as the house settled.
He ran his fingers through his hair. Of course he could have casual sex. What man couldn’t, in the end? What had I held on to? Assumptions as combustible as every material thing in my home? The touch of his hand at the wedding, the reciting of our vows, the way he’d so tenderly slipped the ring onto my finger, held my hand in such a tight grip. Had it all been a lie?
“I want you and you only,” he said. “That is not a lie.”
His words bounced off me. “I have no idea what is a lie and what is not.”
“Sarah, don’t do this.”
“I’m not the one doing anything. You are. You did. Exactly when did it end? Were you still sleeping with her after I met you?”
He looked at his palms. “There was a short . . . overlap.”
The room darkened, shadows lengthening, and suddenly there was too much furniture, too much clutter. “How much overlap?”
“I wasn’t yet sure about you. You were so cautious.”
“How long?”
“Not long. Nothing happened between Monique and me, not after I knew I wanted to be with you. I told you.”
“She lived in the house next door. Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?” But I am. I’m a total idiot. I couldn’t see Jessie’s crush on Chad, Chad’s internal struggles, the fire between Johnny and Monique.
Johnny reached out to me, but I kept my distance. His hands fell back to his sides. “You loved the house—I told you I wanted to move away. Don’t you remember?”
“I do. And you did.” He’d said, Let’s make a new life in a new house. I’d said, Why do we need to move? I love this house. I’ll add my feminine touch. “This was going on right under my nose. Why didn’t I see?”
“I told you. She and I weren’t meant to be together. When I saw you at the polar bear plunge, and you handed me your towel, and we started talking, I was drawn to you. We could talk about anything—literature, movies. We were comfortable together. You had the kind of beauty I couldn’t stop looking at. Inside and out.”
I faltered, my armor dissolving a little. “If you knew right away, why did you keep sleeping with Monique?”
“I don’t know—it wasn’t for long. There was something special about you. Always something new. I never felt the same way about Monique. Ever. It was casual.”
“What about Mia? Is she—?”
“After I broke it off with Monique, I found out she was pregnant. I asked her if the baby was mine. I figured, if Mia was my daughter, I would do whatever Monique wanted. Marry her, even. Help her with the child.”
“What did she say?”
“She said the baby was Chad’s. The timing was off. I couldn’t be the father.”
“Did you ask her to do a paternity test?”
“Why would I? I figured she knew her own body. She knew the truth. Why would I push? Anyway, Monique made me promise to leave Mia alone, to move on. She wanted me to move away. Then the bottom fell out of the housing market. And you wanted to stay in the house.”
The rain started again, pattering on the roof, the skylights. “Maybe it’s in the past for you, but for me, it’s new. Monique wrote about the whole thing only recently.”
“Something must’ve happened.”
“She and Chad were finally planning to move away. In her journal, she was reflecting on her relationship with you.” I went to the window, rested my hand on the sill, the painted wood cool against my fingers.
“Whatever happened between Monique and me—it’s in the past. I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t betray you.”
“You don’t think omission is a betrayal?” How do we ever know about the people we love? The people we want to trust? But if his affair with Monique had truly been in the past, perhaps, then . . . “I babysat Mia! We had drinks with Monique and Chad. We sat in the backyard, chatting about stupid things. Why didn’t she tell me? Did you make her promise not to?”
“She did ask me about you. We did talk about how to handle the situation. She wanted to tell you. But she didn’t want to destroy our marriage or hers.”
“How upstanding of her. I deserved to know.” I was a situation to be handled.
“You’re right. You did, but I thought I could keep my past in the past. Now I know it’s not possible.”
“You should’ve known from the start.”
“I’m sorry. What else can I say?”
“Nothing.” How could I have spent so many blissful nights in our king-sized bed on Sitka Lane, my heart at ease? Certain that our happiness would last forever? “You’ve been getting phone calls, hang-ups. Are you having an affair now?”
He looked affronted. “What? No, of course not.”
“The night of the fire, you weren’t in your room. I couldn’t reach you.”
“I told you why.”
“In light of what I now know, how can I believe you were comforting a colleague?”
“She’d lost a patient.” He opened his mouth to say more, then closed it.
“If I were to talk to her, she would tell me all you did was have a drink in the bar.”
“Yes, basically . . .”
“Basically?”
“That was it, Sarah. I knew her . . . before.”
“Like you knew Theresa?”
“I didn’t know Theresa before we moved into the cottage.”
“You’re not having an affair with her, either?”
“No,” he said. “Her baby is not mine, either.”
“But you knew this . . . colleague, before the conference.”
“I knew her in medical school. She’s married now. She has kids.”
“Marriage isn’t an obstacle for some people, apparently. They continue to do whatever they want.”
“I didn’t sleep with her in San Francisco.”
“Then where?”
He said nothing, clasped his hands together, and looked down at them.
“In medical school?”
He didn’t reply.
“I can’t believe this.”
“It’s not what you think. She lost a patient, we had a drink, she cried into her whiskey. We went our separate ways.”
I felt spent, too exhausted to ask any more questions. Was he still the Johnny I knew? The Johnny who loved me?
“What else do you want from me?” he asked in desperation, but he already knew. He got up slowly and headed for the front door, and I followed.
“Look, you can’t stay here,” he said. “Don’t you have a book signing coming up? I saw your books at the cottage.”
