It's Always the Husband

by Michele Campbell

  Jenny looked at him in surprise. “What did it say?”

  “It said, ‘See, I showed you, it doesn’t hurt. I’ll be waiting.’”

  Jenny stared at Keniston, too shocked to reply. So Kate had been part of a suicide pact? That seemed impossible. The Kate Eastman Jenny knew was so alive. And so full of herself. She would never choose to die.

  “Was the note for real?” Jenny asked. “Maybe Maggie was making it up.”

  “Oh, no. I confronted Kate. She admitted they were planning to do it together, but Kate got cold feet and backed out at the last minute. It’s the only time I was happy she didn’t keep her word. I sent her to a psychiatrist after that, naturally, but my suspicion is, she’s no longer following the prescribed treatment.” He paused and looked Jenny in the eye. “Is she?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I mean, we’re close, or I thought we were. She’s never mentioned any of this to me. I’m pretty shocked to hear it, actually.”

  “I see.”

  “What treatment is she supposed to follow?”

  “Medication, talk therapy. A structured schedule including regular sleep and exercise. And refraining from the consumption of drugs or alcohol. That’s very important, because Kate is prone to addictive behavior and binge drinking. When she relapses, she gets depressed, and she’s extremely susceptible to … all right, I’ll say it, self-harm.”

  “For what it’s worth, Mr. Eastman, Kate doesn’t seem suicidal to me. Not at all.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, but you’re not a professional.”

  “No, I’m not,” Jenny admitted.

  “I know she’s back to her old habits. Victoria told me Kate came home drunk from the nightclub when you were in New York over Thanksgiving.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  He waved dismissively. “Don’t apologize. I know my daughter. I’m sure she was the ringleader. The point is, we argued about it. I was trying to help her, but I’m afraid I merely succeeded in driving her away.”

  “She made it sound like you argued over money.”

  “Any time I intervene, Kate pretends I’m motivated by something venal, something other than concern for her welfare. That makes it easier to ignore me. You know, she once told Victoria that I’ve hated her ever since my first wife died because I hold Kate responsible for Kitty’s cancer. I can’t figure out if she actually believes these wild accusations or if she’s just trying to manipulate me.”

  Jenny didn’t think it was her place to tell him how sincerely Kate believed that.

  “It sounds like you really need to talk to her,” Jenny said. “Have a heart-to-heart and clear the air.”

  “I wish that were possible, but she won’t speak to me. That’s why I need you.”

  “No problem, Mr. Eastman. I’m happy to help. I can go back to Whipple right now and ask her to come over here and talk to you.”

  “No, no, not that,” he exclaimed. “If she knew I was here in town, if she knew I was meeting with you—don’t you see? She’d never speak to either of us again. She can’t know we talked, ever.”

  “Oh. Then—? I’m confused.”

  “What I need is for you to keep me posted on her situation,” he said.

  “What do you mean, keep you posted? Are you asking me to spy on her?”

  “That’s an unfortunate choice of words. As her father, I need to know, is she doing a lot of drugs, drinking a lot? Is she sleeping around, with a lot of boys? The doctor says that’s bad for her self-esteem.”

  Sleeping around with a lot of boys seemed to be quite good for Kate’s self-esteem, but that wasn’t the point.

  “Mr. Eastman, you’re asking me to inform on your daughter.”

  “I’m asking you to help me help her. Think of it as an act of friendship.”

  “I don’t think she’d see it that way,” she said.

  “Kate doesn’t always know what’s best for her.”

  “I’m sorry, I wish I could do what you’re asking, but I don’t feel right spying on Kate. That’s not what friends do.”

  He sighed, and signaled the waiter for another round of drinks. Only once they’d come, and he’d taken a long pull on his second scotch, did he speak.

  “I admire your integrity, Jenny, really I do,” Keniston said.

  He was probably buttering her up. But she liked the feeling of having this important man admire her, so it was difficult not to fall for it.

  “I would never ask you to go against your principles,” he said. “The problem is, if you don’t help me, Jenny, I’m afraid Kate might do something very foolish. I’m afraid she might harm herself. If you could just see your way clear to helping me out on this one thing, if you could find it in your heart to keep me in the loop, I would be very grateful. I don’t mean money. I would never try to bribe you. I know you’re an honorable person. I recognize that what I ask is a bit of an uncomfortable undertaking. You would be putting yourself out. I would consider it my duty and my privilege to repay you someday, in whatever form is of most use to you. Advice. Introductions. A first job out of college, if that would be of interest.”

  “Of course. I would love to work for you after college.”

  “Very good then. Shall we shake on it?”

  He held out his hand. Jenny hadn’t intended to agree to inform on Kate, but Keniston Eastman’s hand—and his job offer—exerted a magnetic pull.

  “I can’t. I shouldn’t,” she said, with some difficulty.

  “I promise she’ll never find out.”

  “Sir, if there was anything truly wrong, I’d tell you. But I’m not comfortable calling you up and saying, oh, there was just a guy in Kate’s room, or she smoked pot, or—you know, stuff like that.”

  “What if we were to touch base by telephone once a week, and you give me a general picture of how she’s doing?”

  “You mean, give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down? I could do that.”

  “If I have follow-up questions, I’ll ask, but you can decline to answer if the subject is too sensitive. If we do that, I’ll feel reassured, and you don’t need to feel that you’re betraying Kate’s confidence. All right?”

  Keniston’s hand hung there, waiting to be shaken. What he proposed was so much less drastic than reporting on Kate’s every move that Jenny felt obligated to agree. It would seem churlish not to, after his hospitality in New York, and his taking an interest in her career. She wanted to work for him after college, so much. This would put them in regular contact. She could always say no to ratting Kate out over boys or drugs or that sort of thing. He’d just said so, hadn’t he?

  Jenny reached out and shook Keniston Eastman’s hand. The look of relief in his eyes gave her a moment of queasiness. She was working for him now. They had an arrangement. He would have his expectations. Jenny liked to do a good job, to please the people in authority. When Keniston started asking sensitive questions, as he surely would, was she really going to refuse to answer?

  13

  The Eastmans had a house in Jamaica, an old plantation owner’s spread, perched in the lush green hills to the east of Montego Bay with breathtaking views of the sea. Kate thought of it as her house, since the stepmonsters never visited and didn’t give a crap about it. For Kate, it was the place where she’d frolicked with her mother as a child, but Victoria would sell the house in a heartbeat if she could find a buyer. Luckily, she couldn’t, since the snowbirds had long since departed Jamaica in favor of more fashionable isles like Anguilla and St. Bart’s. The house had been in the Eastman family since early in the previous century, ever since Kate’s great-grandfather took an interest in a cane plantation and rum factory at the tail end of Prohibition. Later generations of Eastmans decided the alcohol business was too low-class, and sold the family interest and rolled the money into a beach resort that had been quite chic for a time, back in the heyday of James Bond and martinis and such. Then the socialists came to power in Jamaica and threatened to nationalize everything, and Kate’s grandfather let the resort go
for a song. Somehow through thick and thin they’d held on to the house, and Kate had taken to saying that Keniston should give it to her as a twenty-first-birthday present, that she would go live there and care for the place and start a bed-and-breakfast or something. She would never actually do that—Kate, changing the bedsheets of strangers?—but she hated the thought of losing a house that held precious childhood memories.

  Spring break was coming up and nobody had plans yet. Kate was sick of the wretched, endless winter, and tired of the fishbowl life of Carlisle, where she felt constantly watched and spied on. Keniston always seemed to know what she was doing—how? Getting on a plane to anywhere sounded good right now, but getting on a plane to Jamaica would be paradise. One night, as she sat with her roommates and Griff Rothenberg over the unappetizing remains of tacos in the Commons, she idly mentioned her desire to visit her house. She wasn’t serious, but Griff glommed on to the idea instantly.

  “I’m game. Let’s go,” Griff said.

  “I was just daydreaming,” Kate said. “The house is closed now. The caretakers would have to open it.”

  “So, that’s nothing, right? Taking off the dust covers and turning on the air-conditioning? Why does your dad pay them if not to be able to do that on a whim?”

  “I don’t even know if the pool is filled.”

  “Call and ask.”

  “All right.”

  Kate had her qualms. Griff was getting so possessive lately. She had no interest in a vacation where the two of them played house for a week and he became even more convinced that Kate was his girlfriend. She was obsessed with that gorgeous, moody townie boy Lucas, whom she’d barely seen since that night they had sex in his car near the icy river.

  “No need to worry about a plane ticket,” Griff said. “My dad’s flying to the Caymans next week. We can hitch a ride on his plane.”

  “The house is in Jamaica,” Kate said.

  “Jamaica and the Caymans are right next door to each other, babe. I can ask him to add a stop for us,” Griff said, with a puppy-dog eagerness on his handsome face that Kate found cloying.

  “Free vacation?” Aubrey said. “Can I come?”

  “Why not, we can all go,” Kate said sourly, never imagining it would come to pass. She had no intention of following through.

  A few days later, when Griff told her the private jet was a go, Kate reconsidered. She’d had a particularly gruesome couple of days—oversleeping after a night of partying and missing a midterm, realizing she’d used up her March allowance by the twelfth of the month—and the urge for escape was more powerful than ever. She imagined lounging by the pool with views of the ocean, rubbing lotion on Lucas’s back. Lucas’s perfect body in a bathing suit, with a tan, would cure her winter doldrums. She would lie out on the lounger with him at night, talking under the stars, or swim with him in the salty ocean, clinging together as the waves battered them. There was only one problem: Lucas seemed determined to avoid her. Since that time they ran into each other at Shecky’s, Kate had succeeded in spending only the occasional night with her townie, and always in her room. He never invited her to his. The next morning without fail he would slip from her grasp and disappear back into his own life so completely it was like an air lock sealed behind him. His detachment took Kate by surprise. After their first night together, she expected the sort of adulation other guys gave her, but Lucas was elusive. Nobody had ever been so indifferent to her before, and she was caught by it. She loved the head games, loved the chase, loved how he ignored her in the Commons and sat with his boys instead. She developed a sixth sense for his presence. She could recognize him from the corner of her eye from the far side of the Quad based on the color of his jacket or the tilt of his head. The thought of spending time with Lucas in Jamaica was intoxicating. Lucas, not Griff.

  “I don’t think it’ll work,” she said. “I’m not on speaking terms with my father. He’d never approve.”

  “From what you’ve told me, you’re the one who’s refusing to speak to him,” Griff said. “I bet if you asked, he’d say yes, as a gesture of reconciliation. What have you got to lose?”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” Kate said, thinking that if Keniston did say yes, she would figure out some way to get Lucas to come along. But getting Griff not to? That part seemed like a long shot. He was like gum on her shoe.

  Kate e-mailed Keniston, and as Griff had predicted, he wrote back right away. He would allow her to stay at the house in Jamaica provided that responsible people would accompany her. For example, her roommate, Jenny Vega, had impressed him at Thanksgiving as a girl with a good head on her shoulders. If Jenny accompanied Kate, he would approve the trip.

  Keniston had solved Kate’s problem. She had an excuse to turn this into a group trip, with free airfare and a free place to stay. Who would say no to that? Not even Lucas, not once she told him that a lot of people were going. Enough people to make it nonthreatening to Lucas. Enough people so she could create a buffer between her and Griff, and have time to indulge her Lucas fixation.

  She showed Griff the e-mail.

  “I have to bring Jenny,” Kate said, laying the groundwork. “I can’t invite Jenny without inviting Aubrey, too. I’m sorry, but this means it won’t be just you and me.”

  “No problem. The plane seats ten,” Griff said.

  “I wouldn’t want my girls to feel like third wheels, so we’ll need to invite guys for them.”

  “I can ask around at the frat to see who’s available.”

  “Let me take care of the invitations,” Kate said.

  A week later, six of them stepped from the air-conditioned sterility of the terminal in Montego Bay to the hot, humid chaos of the pavement—Kate, Aubrey, and Jenny; and Griff, Lucas, and some dweeb named Drew that Jenny picked up somewhere, whose chief assets were being male (ostensibly; Kate had her doubts) and being available to go on vacation with no notice. Vans and taxis and minibuses jockeyed for position at the curb. People accosted them, holding signs for hotels and cruise lines. Kate led the way to a taxi stand, where she asked around for a van big enough to carry them out to the countryside. Nobody wanted to take them to the Eastmans’ house, which was up in the middle of nowhere in the hills. Taxi drivers preferred going to the big hotels or the port where the cruise ships docked, so they could count on a fare back. Finally Kate agreed to a rip-off price for a ride in a dilapidated old station wagon with the word “taxi” hand-lettered on the side, driven by a guy with no front teeth.

  “C’mon, we’ll sit in the way-back,” she said, taking Lucas’s hand. She wanted him badly enough to be brazen about singling him out. She would throw Griff together with Aubrey, who’d been crushing on him noticeably for months—so much so that Kate might have minded if she’d given a rip about Griff.

  The way-back of the station wagon smelled like a dead animal.

  “Hey, roll the windows down, it stinks back here,” Kate yelled, as the others piled into the car.

  Soon they were speeding along a potholed highway heading east. The azure ocean sparkled beside them, breaking in delicate lacy waves on the white-sand beach. Wind roared through the car, drowning out any attempts at conversation. The first few bumps tossed Kate and Lucas around the rear compartment, rattling their bones and making them grunt at every impact. They hunched down together, using each other’s bodies to brace themselves against the floor. Kate turned toward Lucas with her lips parted, hungry for his kiss, and found his hand against her chest, holding her off.

  “What?” she whisper-shouted into his ear.

  “I need to ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you with me or with him, the frat guy?”

  “You mean Griff?”

  “Yeah, what gives?”

  “Are you asking whose bed I’m sleeping in on this trip?”

  “Uh, well…”

  “Yours,” she said, her heart thrilling as she looked into his golden-brown eyes. She couldn’t remember being this excited about
a guy—well, ever.

  “Does he know that?” Lucas asked.

  “He’ll figure it out.”

  “No. I don’t put moves on another dude’s girl.”

  “Look, Griff’s a big boy. And this isn’t high school. I don’t belong to anybody. I just do what feels right.”

  He looked at her disapprovingly. “I think you mean, do what feels good.”

  “Huh?”

  He shook his head and sat upright, disengaging his limbs from hers. The sense of desolation she felt as he removed himself was so intense, and such a new sensation for her, that she almost enjoyed it.

  They turned off the highway onto a smaller road. Goats foraged by the roadside. The hills in the distance were impossibly green. Coconut palms swayed in the front yards of half-finished concrete bungalows. The villages were collections of a few buildings at a crossroads. They drove through one, then another and another. Groups of men stood or sat in knots in front of tin-roofed shacks with wares displayed inside, the signs advertising fresh fish and bananas. The trees were heavy with strange fruit, and the air smelled like burning. Kate looked at Lucas, who gazed out the window with wide eyes. She wondered how often he’d been outside the state of New Hampshire, or even out of Belle River. Surely he would fall into her arms tonight. How could he not, in a place as lush as this? She would show him how sweet life could be.

  Finally, they turned onto a steep gravel road and headed uphill. At the top of the rise, wrought-iron gates stood ajar. They drove through them into the cobbled courtyard of a large, graceful white house. A covered veranda faced a wide lawn that sloped down to the palm-fringed swimming pool, and beyond it, the sparkling sea. Hearing the sound of the vehicle, a middle-aged Jamaican couple came down off the veranda and waved. As her friends spilled stiffly out of the taxi after their uncomfortable ride, Kate introduced them to Ethelene and Samuel, the caretakers who ran the place. Samuel wanted to know where to put the luggage—which bags in which rooms? Kate told him not to worry about it for now—pile everything in the living room and they’d work it out later—because the first order of business was jumping in the pool.