The Secret He Keeps

by Julieann Dove

  Rachel threw down the coat and went in search of something to eat, although she craved a drink to go along with it even more. Something strong to take off the edge of dealing with erasing her husband. And beginning with his wardrobe was doing anything but. She felt herself regressing with thoughts of wearing his suits, rather than packing them away.

  Rachel sat in her robe on the sofa, eating a bowl of cereal. It was the stale portion at the bottom of the bag, which had been in her cabinet for a couple of months. She never threw it away, knowing she’d be in a pinch like this morning and wouldn’t care if it crunched that much in her mouth or not. Even the sugary coating was missing. Like Scott. Gone.

  Gus laid in front of her on the floor, raising his head every now and then to check on her. She even had her poor dog checking her moods. Poor guy. She put her bowl of milk on the coffee table and started to cry. Mourning for her past and mourning for the future she was trying her best not to let happen. Not if it didn’t include her husband. She pulled her notebook from underneath the sofa and threw it against the wall. Gus barked. “I don’t want to live like this anymore,” she yelled.

  The clock’s hands were creeping on the mantel. She laid back and closed her eyes. At one o’clock, she woke up and got dressed. She kicked the black outfit she’d worn on her date across the floor of her room and plopped down on her bed. A few towels fell to the floor. It was painfully quiet in her house. It was so quiet she could hear her dog breathe. She jumped up and realized she needed to get out of there. Hopefully a doctor’s call would eat up at least an hour of her day. She’d figure out what to do with the rest, later.

  Rachel took her bag and headed across the street. She welcomed the distraction of a new patient. Something to take the picture of Scott from her brain—remembering all the good times they had, and missing all the times she knew would never come.

  “Hi, Brittany. Is your mom around?”

  Rachel looked at the lanky girl. At least she had on a long-sleeved shirt. It was big, too big for her. By the judge of the outdated flowers, it was probably her mother’s.

  “Sure, come on in.”

  “Hey, do you have the man with you?” A little boy with sleepy eyes stood in the doorway, looking at her. “He’s really nice.”

  Rachel looked at where Brittany had gone to, craning her neck through the open doorway of the living room. Her bag was getting heavy.

  “Hey.” He pulled on her pants. “Where is your man? He rubbed my tummy. It hurt from the candy bar. And he told me a story. I want to hear it again.”

  “He went home. Is your tummy better?”

  He looked as though she had taken his favorite toy away from him. “It’s okay. Can you bring him back later for a visit?”

  “We’ll see.” She patted his head.

  Debbie came down the stairs. “Rachel, thanks for coming over. Caitlin is in the living room, watching one of those silly cartoons.” She had a laundry basket on her hip. “I swear, cartoons are not like they were in my day.”

  Debbie was older than Rachel. She started having children late in her life. That’s mostly why Jessie, her husband, didn’t understand her need to have more than one. When most of their friends were enjoying their lives with kids now in high school, Debbie was having baby showers for her own babies. Rachel didn’t understand it either. But Debbie seemed to love her children dearly.

  Rachel went in and sat on the edge of the sofa, pulling out her stethoscope. The little girl kept her gaze on the television screen. Raising her shirt with chocolate milk stains, Rachel listened to her lungs. They were looser. The little girl let out a cough. Unlike a toddler, it sounded like it came from an aging smoker. Gravel tumbled in her throat.

  “Give her another teaspoon of the prednisone before she goes to bed. And a breathing treatment wouldn’t hurt either. We have to make sure she doesn’t relapse.”

  Debbie stood, her arm crossed over her small stomach and her other arm resting on it, hand tucked under her chin. A tattoo of worry across her face. Rachel felt sorry for her. She escorted Rachel to the door.

  “Rachel, I’m indebted to you. Really I am. I didn’t mean to interrupt your date.” A smile lit her face. “My, you looked so different last night. There was a kind of familiarity between you two. Like an old married couple. A kind of happiness. What’s his name?”

  Rachel looked down at all the shoes in front of the door. Small ones, and even smaller ones. “Oh, he’s just my business partner. Trust me, there’s nothing more than that to us.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to infer you were with him. You all just seemed…well, never mind. I’m going to stop chewing on my own shoe.”

  Debbie probably suffered from being with children too long—every day, all day. Adult conversation was scarce, and she might not have realized she was bordering on nosey.

  “That’s all right. I’ve known him forever it seems. I’m really at ease with him. He’s like my brother. I’m totally not dating.”

  “Well, who needs a man anyway, right? To leave you when you need them the most.”

  The conversation had switched to her own situation. “That’s all right. I have my children. They’re all I need.” She squeezed Brittany by the shoulders. She always stayed by her momma’s side. Whether it was because she was nosey, or she was secure in her company, Rachel didn’t know which.

  “Well, I’ll be around. Call if you need anything.”

  Rachel stepped out on the porch. The beaded boards on the ceiling were bulging with water. Probably wouldn’t get fixed anytime soon considering Debbie was no kind of fix-it girl. Rachel had a cement step in her backyard that was crumbling, too. That wouldn’t get fixed either.

  Yeah, who needs a man? But then, she didn’t have three children to fill the other empty hours of the day.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Boat

  Rachel moseyed back to her house. She waved at Ms. Simmons, who was checking her mail. Good ol’ Ms. Simmons, not a care in the world. Just checking her mail, then off to watching a little bit of television, and then probably a call to her grandson who lived in Virginia. Oh, to live in that cocoon of simplicity.

  Rachel let poor Gus out the back door and thought about what she might eat for dinner. Dane hadn’t called her, thank goodness. And she finally texted John. She agreed to having a great time and left it open-ended about her calling him once her life became semi-normal. She was working a few things out. Like functioning. Men only seemed to complicate things at this point. Ones alive and ones who weren’t exactly.

  Her phone rang on the counter. She didn’t have that many people to guess who it was. And if it was Dane, she certainly wasn’t going to answer it. She felt things she shouldn’t have with him, and she needed to impose the distance thing again. Maybe her hormones were running amuck and were looking to attach themselves to someone. He definitely couldn’t be that someone. She would reconnect when she got things sorted in her head. She clicked the button when she saw it was her mother. That’s right; she did still have her mother. Five states away and calling as if she had unlimited minutes.

  “Hey, Mom. What’s up?” She opened her fridge, looking for something to drink.

  “Rachel, did you get your cake yet?” Her mother had no time for pleasantries.

  “No.” Was this a trick? Rachel thought back to yesterday. In fact, she had forgot to check her mailbox. But certainly they wouldn’t leave it in her box. Unless it was that mean substitute mail carrier. Rachel didn’t like her. She never waved back to anyone.

  “I’ll be! I sent that special delivery to get there the next day. You know those apples. They’ll be so soggy they won’t be worth eating. And I put some money into those ingredients, too.”

  There was a pause. She was probably pacing and doing that thing with her mouth. The clicking of despair. Rachel remembered it from when she stayed three weeks after Scott died. Her mother didn’t know what else to do. Rachel wouldn’t get off the bathroom floor. She couldn’t. She was in
a state of shock. Click, click, click.

  “Mom, I’ll go check the post office. Maybe the mail is coming late today. I’ll find it.”

  “Well, all right. And, are you okay? When do you see Dr. Wheeler?”

  Nancy Boyd probably had opened her calendar, adding Rachel’s appointments to it. Still keeping up with her life like she did when she still lived at home. “Mom, I went last week. I go back in two weeks. Now, I’m sorry to get off the phone, but I have to go if I’m going to make it to the post office.”

  “All right, all right. You enjoy that cake, honey. I made it specially for you.”

  “Okay, thanks, Mom. Talk to you later.”

  Rachel went to let her dog back inside. There was another happily ignorant specimen, roaming the planet. Oh, to have a peaceful soul. “Come on in, buddy.”

  The sliding door stuck, forcing Rachel to pull hard. In the corner of her eye, something caught her attention. It was tucked up against the terra cotta pot that years ago held a mum. Now it only had the skeletal remains of the mum’s branches. Rachel bent over to see what it was. She jumped when she got closer. It was a ring. Scott’s ring. It was lying on a slip of paper.

  She tiptoed across the deck in her socks and picked it up, swallowing hard. Her heart began to race as she rubbed the cold metal between her fingers. She looked around at the desolate backyard. Gray hues and silence filled the space. How did his ring get there? She scrambled her brain to think of a possibility. Nothing came. She knew he didn’t go anywhere without his ring. Could Scott have sensed how desperate she wanted it and somehow left it for her to find? The thought eased her, while she closed her eyes. But the practicality of it snapped her eyes open and she knew better.

  Rachel paced, holding tightly to his ring. She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t put herself through the mental torment of why he was gone. Why his ring was on the back porch. Why she was trapped and couldn’t move forward, no matter how hard she tried. She needed to get away. She scooped up her keys from the counter and took off in the direction of her car.

  Before she knew where she was going, she arrived at the boat dock. It had been before the accident that she was last there. She still sent out the bi-yearly payment for the boat slip, though. It was easier than selling the boat.

  “Hi, Mr. Martin.” She waved to an old guy rubbing the chrome handrails of his boat.

  “Well, hello, Dr. Miller.” He threw up the hand that didn’t have the cloth.

  Mr. Martin was too old to take the boat out by himself anymore. He confided in Rachel, a while ago, during his doctor’s appointment, that he didn’t understand why. He still felt like a twenty-year-old. Rachel explained that now that he was experiencing memory loss, it was better he wait until his sons could go with him. She didn’t want to hear about another episode where the Coast Guard had to search for him.

  “Gonna go for a spin? Mind if I go?”

  “No, Mr. Martin. I’m just going to check it out.” Poor guy. He was always waiting to get back into the open waters.

  Rachel stepped from the pier over onto the Dreamer. She recalled the first time she’d seen it.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Scott kept telling her as he led her down what she felt was a dock. He had blindfolded her after they got in the car. But she could hear the masts hitting against each other, smell the fishy waters, and feel the three-inch boards under her feet as she walked cautiously.

  “Why all the secrecy?” Rachel asked, feeling out in front of her with her outstretched arm.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  He stopped walking and untied the scarf so she could see. A boat? Was he kidding? When she wanted a new house? Like the one Dane moved into in that nice neighborhood, in the good school district. A boat?

  “Well, what do you think?” His smile was so large, she could see every one of his teeth.

  “It’s a boat.” She stated the obvious, without any reaction.

  He stepped across, helping her to join him. “It’s not a boat, Rachel. It’s a schooner. Like the one my dad used to own.” He slipped back to another time. “We’d go out and spend hours on it. My skin hurt so bad from the burns I’d get, but I didn’t care, because I was the captain. He showed me how to do everything.”

  She looked up at the tall mast. Pulleys, ropes, a lot of other things she wasn’t sure of what it was, just lying around. A boat?

  “Come look inside.” He opened a hatch and stepped down into it.

  Rachel held on to the tiny railing and walked cautiously behind him. There was a room inside it. A small couch attached to the side and a table with a built-in bench on the other side. Through an opening, in the front, she saw a bed. But it was much darker in there.

  “Baby, we can go out whenever we want. Every weekend. And when your mom visits, we can take her, too. We’ll pack a lunch and go over to the peninsula. You can lay out on the deck and feel the breeze. But be careful—you won’t know you’re getting burned until it’s too late.”

  He was talking faster than she could keep up. Like a child, talking someone into the greatest thing in life, he was barely taking breaths between sentences.

  Rachel pulled her coat closed and unlocked the hatch. Hopefully there weren’t any surprises down there now, waiting for her. She held onto the railing and bent down to make sure it was safe. The sun filtered through the small windows, making it light in the area. She could see the brown couch was still there. A stain from when she spilled wine still remained. The table had dust on it. She swiped her finger across it.

  A boat. She was now sole owner of a boat she had nothing to do with buying. It made Scott happy and that’s what made it worth it. Now it was just a boat again. She stared at the cabinet under the built-in table. Was there anything of value in it? She opened it to find an inventory of bottles. Her friends: Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, and Jack Daniels. She pulled out one, unscrewed the top and took a swig like a sophisticated wino—her pinky flared, holding the bottle.

  It was an acquired taste. Something she would have never believed in her professional career as a doctor she would ever get used to. She used to equate booze with brown paper bags and the homeless. Maybe even her dad, if she chose to go that far back to her life of regrets. But now, it was a way to get through the rough patches. Taking Scott’s clothing from the closet and finding his ring was the patch of the day.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Remembering and Not Remembering

  It was dark when she came to. She thought about where she was. Her eyes strained to make out something in the pitch black of the room. Yes, now she knew. It was the boat. She’d gone to the boat. She remembered Mr. Martin and the chrome polishing. She probably fell asleep or something. Just how much did she drink from that bottle? But wait, this wasn’t the boat. Her hands felt around her. It was a comforter. Her eyes searched again. Darting left to right. It was making her head ache fiercely.

  Then she heard the clanking. Glass hitting on glass. But the noise came from far away. When her eyes had time to adjust, she recognized she was in her bedroom. A tiny lip of light shone from the bottom crack of her door. The shadow of her television, her high chest of drawers, her ceiling fan. How in the world did she get there? What was going on?

  She felt for the wall to go to the bathroom. Her stomach was sick. She made it to the toilet in time to spew out Jack all over it. He was good going down, but hell coming back up. She wiped her mouth on the towel from the vanity. It smelled disgusting. Her head pounded. She needed Advil, and lots of bottles of them. She stood and took her coat off. The lights were too bright, making her squint and making her head hurt more. She rested her head on the cold vanity and pulled herself together before going out and finding who was in her house.

  She turned the corner to her kitchen and saw Dane behind the counter. He had lined up all her liquor bottles by the sink. It was quite a collection. Half the time when she went to the liquor store, she didn’t know what she had at home. So she bought duplicates. Which was okay. She ne
ver knew when she would be in a pinch. They usually only came out of the cabinet when it was late at night and all the memories began chasing her down. Or sometimes in the day, when she’d find one of Scott’s shirts in the laundry, forgetting she was the one who wore them.

  “Umm, what are you doing?” she asked him pointedly. She shielded her eyes from the fluorescent overhead lights.

  “Well, look who’s up. It’s Sleeping Beauty.” He twisted his head in a holier-than-thou kind of way.

  “Yeah, how did I get here? And what are you doing in my kitchen? Put those back under the cabinet where you found them.” This was exactly why she didn’t invite him in last night. She held onto her head. It was splitting open.

  “Rachel, have you lost your damn mind? Look at this.” He pointed to the display of bottles. “Look at this!” His voice grew to a shout.

  “I see it! Now put it back.” She went around the counter and opened the fridge. She could deal with him better when she had better wits about her and that was going to come from heavy medication.

  “Do you? Do you see it?” He held her by the arms. His grip startled her semi-conscious state. “Are you going down the same road that killed Scott? The same fucking road that kept you up nights crazy with worry. That got me punched out when I’d drive over here to stop him from going out for more, because you had poured it all down the drain.” He shook her again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The cold air from the refrigerator was escaping. “What killed Scott? Who punched you? My head is killing me, Dane. And you’re hurting my arms.”

  She pulled away from him, unable to grasp why he was acting like a deranged psychopath. He was so different last night. Albeit, she’d only sipped on two glasses of wine during that evening. Maybe her hangover was putting him in a different light. He certainly seemed more preachy without his wine goblet in hand.