She had practice, after all. Josie had believed him during those other times when her stomach had clenched like a fist and the rising hairs on the tops of her forearms had tried to warn her that she needed to pay attention. But she hadn’t had any evidence back then. And she was a worrier; everyone knew that. What mother of young children wasn’t? It came with the territory; danger lurked everywhere in the form of uncovered wall sockets and open stairwells and cars that drove too quickly down their street. So Josie had pushed away those unsettling feelings. She had chosen to believe her husband in the past. To believe in their marriage.
Maybe she should do that now. Perhaps he wasn’t lying.
Only kissing, he’d said. Only two times.
His phone waited in the back of her closet.
If she retrieved it and handed it to him, Frank would delete the messages. He’d put a halt to the flirtation; Dana would dissolve away. Josie would pay more attention in the future, perhaps deliberately spot-checking his phone, or popping by his office unexpectedly. He’d be on notice.
Or she could climb the stairs and read through every single email. She could determine when this had started, and how far it had already gone.
Josie still felt preternaturally calm, but her body began to shake, as if it were a separate entity in the throes of its own private, visceral reaction to her discovery.
She wanted to know. But she also didn’t want to know. No, that wasn’t quite it. What she truly wanted was for the truth to be exactly what Frank had said it was. A few kisses, a few flirty messages. Something forgivable after a handful of therapy sessions and a couple of weeks of sleeping apart. After all, hadn’t she, Josie, harbored a huge crush on a stay-at-home dad named Steve whose kid was in Zoe’s class? She’d acted like a schoolgirl, blushing whenever he’d spoken to her and texting her friends a photograph of him when he’d worn black running shorts that revealed his tanned, muscled legs.
Maybe Frank’s flirtation wasn’t much worse than hers had been.
Those nine words in the email: Sighhhh . . . Thought of you this morning in the shower.
The first word had been the giveaway. It was the fingerprint, the failed alibi, the murder weapon. The other eight were merely supporting evidence.
“Mommy!” Zoe yelled from upstairs, her voice slightly muffled. “I’m hungry!”
“Daddy will get you a snack,” Josie shouted back, her eyes pinned on Frank.
“What does she want?” Frank asked. She regarded him silently.
“Ah, crackers, or maybe an apple?” Frank continued.
“Figure it out,” Josie said. Frank was trying to distract her. He wanted to ease the conversation onto safer ground.
There was more on his phone. Of course there was more.
She had known this all along. She’d known it even before Frank had shifted his eyes up and to the right. Even before he’d frozen while getting out of the car. Even before they’d left the house that morning.
“I need to rest for a little while. Stay here,” Josie said. She spoke to Frank in the same tone she used with Huck when the dog tore up the garbage. Frank responded the same way Huck did—with sad eyes and an innocent expression.
Josie turned and began to walk upstairs, her body leaden, as she headed to where the phone awaited.
• • •
I would leave him.
One of Josie’s best friends, Karin, had made that declaration just a few months ago. They were discussing the plight of another mom from the elementary school Zoe and Karin’s twin daughters attended, whom they’d bumped into on the street right after morning drop-off.
Josie had immediately noticed that the woman had lost about fifteen pounds since the school’s Halloween party only a few weeks earlier.
“Wow, you look amazing!” Josie had said a little enviously, wondering: Atkins? Juice cleanse?
The woman had responded by letting loose a torrent of words: Her husband had been having an affair. It had been going on for months and months, but she’d only recently discovered it. It was with a woman who was newly divorced—she was older than he, and she had kids who were already teenagers. The other woman was rich, too; a few years ago, she’d opened a clothing boutique that was doing very well. It specialized in high-end exercise clothes. Her breasts were almost certainly fake. He’d moved out. He was already living with her.
It was far too much information, far too raw and intimate a revelation, for a street-corner conversation with an acquaintance. Josie had reflexively taken a step back, away from what felt like an onslaught.
But Karin—calm, steady Karin, who never seemed to get flustered—had handled it beautifully. She’d put a hand on the woman’s arm. “I am so sorry,” she’d said. “You’re going to be okay. I know it’s hard, but you are better off without him.”
The woman hadn’t appeared to hear Karin. She’d just nodded robotically and had ricocheted off. Josie had the sense she needed to find someone else as soon as possible and tell her story again. It was as if she were a survivor of a natural disaster, trying to make sense of the tsunami that had swept through her life.
“I would leave him. I would kick that son of a bitch out of my house so fast,” Karin had said as they’d watched the woman stride down the street.
“It sounds like he’s the one who left, though,” Josie had responded.
“Then I would take him for everything he had,” Karin had declared, giving a little snort. Josie had no doubt that Karin would really do it.
Josie had thought of Karin’s husband, Marcus, a busy partner in an accounting firm who managed to be the most hands-on father she’d ever seen. He took their six-year-old twins out for long hikes every Saturday morning, no matter what the weather, giving Karin some alone time while also tiring out the girls. At school functions, he kept an eye on the twins, saying he wanted to give Karin a break. Sometimes Josie wondered when Marcus got a break.
“As if Marcus would ever have an affair,” Josie had said.
“Yeah, he knows I’d chop off his wiener,” Karin had said, and they’d both laughed.
Josie hadn’t considered it odd that they didn’t discuss whether Frank might have an affair, or what Josie would do if she discovered it. To be honest, she hadn’t even noticed the omission of that hypothetical dilemma from their conversation.
Now she wondered: Did Karin suspect what Frank was capable of?
And if Karin suspected, did other people? They lived just outside of Chicago, but their suburban neighborhood had a small-town feel. You couldn’t go to the Kids Cuts barbershop or the local Irish pub without running into someone you knew. Maybe other people had seen Frank and Dana together.
Josie paused, her hand on the bedroom doorknob, until her wave of nausea passed.
“Sweetie?” Josie moved in front of the television, blocking Izzy’s view to get her attention. “Daddy needs you downstairs!”
“Why?” Izzy asked.
“I think he has a surprise. Something fun he wants to do with you. Maybe go to the grocery store for marshmallows,” Josie said. “Hurry!”
Frank was much better with electronics than she; Josie needed to keep him occupied in case he was capable of remotely erasing the messages from his phone. She didn’t think he’d dare do that, even if it was possible, because it would be such an admission of guilt. But she was reevaluating what she thought she’d known about her husband.
The thought propelled her to move a little faster. Josie went into the closet, pushed aside the bag of Goodwill clothing, and retrieved her purse. She brought it to the center of the bed and took out Frank’s phone.
She felt her chest grow tight. She wondered whether he’d changed the code since meeting Dana. Frank was good with names—he was a people person—but he had a terrible memory for numbers. His pass codes were always simple, and he rarely changed them. He’d asked her to keep a record of the last one, which was 2244.
“I think I can remember that,” she’d said, laughing.
She
tapped it in. The iPhone opened itself to her.
* * *
Chapter Three
* * *
JOSIE BEGAN TO SCROLL down through the messages, going backward in time. She’d already seen the first one, dated a week ago. There was another email exchange with Dana ten days ago.
Frank had written: Birthday girl! See you at seven!
Dana had replied: Can’t wait!
Josie stared at the words until they blurred.
He’d taken Dana out on her birthday?
Josie thought back to her own forty-first birthday the previous month, just ten days before Dana’s. Josie had bought herself a Fitbit, along with some running shoes, and had told Frank it was his gift to her, to get her motivated to run a 5K. He’d helped the girls make cards, which they decorated with stickers and filled with coupons for things like a hug and a promise to unload the dishwasher. They’d all gone to a Tex-Mex restaurant and she’d had a couple of frozen margaritas and pretended to be surprised when she’d reached into the gift bag. The girls had behaved beautifully. It had been a nice night.
Wait—had Frank been seeing Dana even then?
She scrolled down, trying to find the first message in their correspondence.
It had come in seven weeks ago. Seven weeks!
Josie checked the dates again and did the math twice, because the numbers felt slippery in her mind. Mid-November until now, early January. Yes. Seven weeks. It had been going on for seven weeks. Over her birthday, over Christmas!
Her pulse quickened, but the wall held.
She put down the phone and stared into space. She thought of how possessive Frank had been about his phone recently, how he’d seemed so attached to it. She’d opened the bathroom door last week, assuming he was in the shower because the water was running, and had seen him sitting on the toilet, staring at the screen. He’d given a surprised yell—a high-pitched, almost theatrically shocked shriek, which was ridiculous considering how many times she’d walked in on him in the bathroom through the years—and she’d rolled her eyes. “I need my hairbrush,” she’d said, grabbing it off the edge of the sink and walking back out.
Maybe the odd shriek wasn’t because she’d surprised him. Maybe it was because she’d surprised him while he’d been messaging with Dana.
She looked around her bedroom again, taking in the framed photographs of the girls on the walls, the clothes draped over the cheap elliptical machine she and Frank had bought two years earlier as a Christmas gift to each other, the basketball shoes he’d left a few inches away from the closet, rather than tucking them inside as she’d asked. (“In a sec, hon.”) The room felt at once deeply familiar and utterly alien. She’d slept in this bed, next to Frank, on the soft jersey sheets she’d bought at Target. She’d performed her usual rituals, like rubbing coconut oil into her feet before covering them with socks, while chatting with Frank about his day. She’d flipped through TV channels while he’d stood a few feet away, slipping the silky tie from around his neck and unbuttoning his blue oxford shirt, revealing the dark, coarse hair covering his pale chest. She’d awoken at around three o’clock one morning last week to find Izzy sprawled across her chest and Huck snoring in the middle of the bed. While all of those things happened, Frank had been having an affair.
It seemed impossible.
She tried to think of what to do next. Confront Frank? But he’d been lying to her for so long. She couldn’t trust anything he might say.
What she needed was the family calendar, the one hanging on a hook in the kitchen. She needed to see when he’d been out of town, when he’d supposedly been working late, when he’d said he was going to meet friends for a drink or to watch a game.
She needed facts.
She thought of the frantic woman she’d run into with Karin near the school, and she suddenly understood the woman’s compulsion to recite the narrative surrounding the implosion of her life, to include strange details like the name of the boutique owned by the other woman. When nothing made sense—when you found yourself abruptly transported into a new world because your old one was constructed on a crumbling foundation—you clung to what little truth you knew.
Her name was Dana. It had been going on for at least seven weeks. He’d taken her out for her birthday.
These were the only truths Josie knew.
She picked up Frank’s phone and dialed Karin, who answered quickly.
“Hello? Frank?” Karin asked, sounding surprised.
“No, it’s me,” Josie said. “I’m using his phone.”
“Oh, hey, how— No, we’re not going to McDonald’s. Stop asking.”
“You’re with the kids?” Josie asked.
“Yeah, in the car, but we’re about to— Hang on, we’re pulling into the mall. Can I call you later?”
“Sure,” Josie said.
Karin paused. “Are you okay?”
Josie’s throat closed up. She couldn’t answer.
“Jos?”
“I’m okay,” Josie managed to say, but it came out as a squeak, like the noise a baby mouse would make.
“Marcus, take the kids inside,” Karin said instantly. “I’ll meet you at the food court.”
Josie could hear Marcus’s deep voice responding, but she couldn’t make out the words. Then Karin: “I don’t know. Go, girls, go. What? Hang on, Josie.”
Then the background noise faded away and the only thing Josie could hear was Karin taking a deep breath. “What is it?” she asked. “The children?”
“No, God, no,” Josie said. Her voice was suddenly working again. “The girls are fine, I’m fine, everyone is fine. Frank is having an affair.”
“Frank is having an affair,” Karin repeated, her tone low.
“I think it started seven weeks ago,” Josie said. “Her name is Dana. Do you know anyone named Dana?”
“It started seven weeks ago,” Karin repeated again. “Her name is Dana. No, I don’t know anyone named Dana.”
Why do you keep repeating everything I say? Josie nearly asked. Then she realized Marcus must be nearby, and that Karin was echoing for him, letting him know the details of the crisis.
The fizz of irritation she felt at this realization disappeared at Karin’s next words: “Do you want me to come over?”
“No, he’s downstairs with Izzy,” Josie said.
“Frank is still in the house?” Karin’s tone was incredulous.
“I found out about an hour ago, okay?” Josie’s voice broke. “Don’t yell at me!”
“Oh, sweetie, no—I’m sorry,” Karin said. “Should I come get you? Do you want me to pick you up? Do you want to come stay with us?”
Josie looked around the bedroom again. Zoe’s pink princess pajamas were splayed limply on the floor, a stack of Angelina the Ballerina books and a sippy cup sat on the nightstand, and Izzy’s soccer trophy decorated the dresser. Some of the gold was flaking off the little player.
How could she leave her children, her home? If anyone left, it should be Frank.
Oh my God. Had he brought Dana here?
No, he couldn’t have. Josie worked out of her home, selling a line of educational children’s toys at trade shows and directly to preschools and organizations. She traveled to a few shows and festivals a year, but most of those only lasted a day or so, and the entire family always came along since the festivals were kid-friendly. And though Josie was out and about all the time, running errands and shepherding the girls to activities, her schedule was too erratic to be predictable. Frank could not have conducted his affair in their home.
“How did you find out?” Karin was asking. “Did he tell you?”
“I found emails from her,” Josie said.
“That stupid—” Karin stopped herself.
“Do you think he loves her?” Josie’s lips trembled and she pressed them tightly together. Maybe Frank wanted to leave.
“No, he doesn’t, it’s just a midlife-crisis fling,” Karin said. Karin had very definite opinions about eve
rything. She was almost always right.
“What am I going to do?” Josie asked.
“I’m coming to get you,” Karin said. “I’ll bring you to my house. Marcus will take the kids somewhere. We’ll have wine and talk.”
“Okay.”
“Thirty minutes. Sit tight. Just hang on, sweetie. Pack a toothbrush and a nightgown just in case. Actually, forget that. Don’t pack anything, I have extra. See you soon.”
“But what if he loves her?” Josie tried to say, but her mouse voice was back, and besides, Karin had already hung up.
• • •
Despite Karin’s instructions, Josie did end up packing a few things. But not a toothbrush or a nightgown. She went into the kitchen and took out a folded cloth grocery bag from under the sink. In it she put the hanging wall calendar they kept by the breakfast table, her laptop with its electronic calendar, her phone, and Frank’s phone. She held on to the bag while she went into the playroom, where Frank and Izzy were seated on the couch, watching SpongeBob.
“I’m going out for a while,” Josie said.
“Are you okay?” Frank asked. She must have conveyed with her eyes that the question made her want to slap him, because he flinched.
“You stay here with Izzy,” she said. “Pick up Zoe at four. Get them pizza or something for dinner. No, Zoe had pizza at the party—whatever. Get it again. I don’t care. Put a pull-up on Izzy if I’m not home by bedtime.”
“Can I ask where you’re going?” Frank asked meekly.
“No.” She couldn’t bear to look at him, with his arm around Izzy, acting like the devoted family man. She hated him.
“Look,” Frank said. He started to rise but she held up her palm.
“Don’t.”
Izzy looked up and began to suck her thumb, a habit she’d mostly given up. “Mama?”
Josie couldn’t bear the fact that Izzy was picking up on the ugly new charge in the air. She wanted to go to Izzy, to pick her up and nuzzle her neck and feel her warm, sturdy body, but that would require moving closer to Frank.
Frank had caused this. He needed to deal with it.
The Ever After Page 2
