by Joy Fielding
I nodded, raised the window, glanced into the rearview mirror in time to see K.C. shaking his head and laughing, as if he understood what I’d tried to do and was amused by my audacity. Or my stupidity.
What had I hoped to accomplish? Under the circumstances, had I really expected the officer to listen to me, let alone take my concerns seriously? And even if he had, what could he have done? Questioned K.C. on the spot, thereby causing further traffic jams and longer delays? Then what? Would he have arrested him? Highly doubtful. At best, he would have hauled both of us off to the station. A lot of good that would have done me.
Excuse me, sir, but this woman claims you were following her.
Following her? Terry, did you tell the officer I was following you?
Do you two know each other?
We’re friends, Officer. She had me over to her house for Thanks-giving dinner.
Is this true, ma’am?
Yes, but . . .
To tell you the truth, Officer, she’s been acting very strangely lately. All her friends are worried about her.
I felt the officer’s judgmental nod. Still, I reminded myself, no matter how strong K.C.’s denials, my complaint would be a matter of record. At the very least, it might buy me some time. Again I lowered my window, waved the officer over. “Please, Officer, can you help me?”
“Is there a problem, ma’am?” He leaned in toward me, removing his dark glasses with an impatient hand.
I saw that he was young, younger than I, maybe even younger than K.C. I also heard by his tone, by the way he said “ma’am,” that he would have a hard time believing a young man like K.C. would waste his time following a middle-aged woman like me. The thought now occurred to me that I would be dismissed as a troublemaker, that by mouthing off prematurely, I would effectively destroy any credibility I might need in the future. No, I decided, I would accomplish nothing by crying wolf. And I would miss seeing Josh, who was my only real hope. “Was anybody hurt?” I asked.
“Fraid so,” the officer said, pushing his sunglasses back across the bridge of his nose, backing away.
“I’m a nurse. If there’s anything I can do . . .”
But the policeman wasn’t interested in my offer of help. “It’s been taken care of” came his curt reply. “Keep moving, please.”
The traffic thinned out after that, and by the time we reached Hollywood Boulevard, it was back to its normal pace. I picked up my speed, zigzagging between lanes whenever possible, trying to escape K.C., but he remained stubbornly on my tail. In an effort to shake him, I almost took the exit at Miami Shores, then decided against it. I didn’t know the area, and if I was going to try to lose K.C., it was probably better to do it somewhere I wouldn’t get lost myself.
He was still behind me when I transferred onto U.S. 1, heading south. Somewhere between Coconut Grove and Coral Gables, where Josh lived, K.C. vanished. This wasn’t due to any clever maneuvering on my part. On the contrary—one minute he was behind me; the next minute he was gone.
I checked my rearview mirror at each stoplight. I saw a woman in a black Accord talking animatedly on her cell phone, a woman in a cream-colored minivan trying to subdue a backseat of unruly children, and a man picking his nose in a green BMW.
K.C. and his maroon-colored Impala were nowhere to be seen. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t lurking about, I realized, repeatedly swiveling around in my seat, scanning my surroundings for anyone remotely suspicious. Both the make and color of K.C.’s car told me it was likely a rental. Again, I wondered how he fit into Alison’s plan.
The sound of a car horn brought me back to the here and now. The light had turned green and I was being urged forward. I continued driving north along U.S. 1, repeatedly checking my rearview mirror, twisting around in my seat at each subsequent red light, but it appeared my efforts had been successful. “I lost him,” I announced triumphantly, turning to the car next to me in time to see a well-dressed, middle-aged man jam his index finger high inside his left nostril. “Wonderful,” I said, entering the town of Coral Gables and continuing past the grand, geometrically designed entertainment and shopping complex known as Paseos, in the heart of the tidy Miami suburb. I deliberately avoided the famous Miracle Mile District, turning left, then right, then right again, looking for Sunset Place. I took several wrong turns, found myself back where I started, and almost had a heart attack when I saw a maroon-colored Impala pull up behind me. But one peek at the wizened, gray-haired man stooped over the steering wheel quickly brought my heart rate back to normal. I laughed at my paranoia and shook my head, continuing on.
Eventually I found myself on the right street, albeit at the wrong end. Sunset Place was typical of many streets in the area, a palm-lined avenue full of small Spanish-style bungalows in all the colors of the rainbow. Josh lived with his children at number 1044, a neat, white house with a sloping brown-tile roof, and a beautiful front garden filled with coral and white impatiens, as well as a variety of other flowers whose blooms I recognized, but whose names always eluded me.
I parked on the street directly across from Josh’s house, then sat for several minutes trying to decide my next move. How had I come this far without a plan? What was I doing, showing up at his door, uninvited and unannounced, at just after one o’clock on a Friday afternoon?
My stomach was rumbling as I opened the car door and climbed out. Black rain clouds hovered ominously overhead, like bruises on an otherwise blue sky, and I debated whether I should go somewhere for lunch before seeing Josh, then decided to wait. Maybe Josh would suggest lunch at his favorite neighborhood café.
Unless he wasn’t alone, I thought, stopping in the middle of the road. School didn’t start till Monday. It was entirely possible his children would be at home. What was I going to say to them? Hi, it’s your aunt Terry, come for an extended stay?
And what if Josh wasn’t there? I asked myself, returning to the sidewalk. His car wasn’t in the driveway, so it was entirely possible that, despite his having just returned from his vacation, he was already off visiting clients. Or maybe he was in Delray seeing his mother, I realized with a start. It was Friday, after all. Didn’t he always visit his mother on Fridays? Of course he was in Delray! What a fool I was, coming all this way when all I’d had to do was go to work as usual. What was the matter with me? What in the world had I been thinking?
And then the wood-paneled front door to Josh’s house opened, and suddenly Josh was standing in the doorway, looking tanned and unbearably handsome in a dark, short-sleeved shirt and faded denim jeans. He looked up and down the street, glanced at the increasingly menacing clouds, and was about to go back inside when his gaze drifted across the street toward me. “Terry?” he mouthed in obvious surprise, crossing the street in several long, quick strides. “It is you!”
“Josh, hello.”
“Has something happened to my mother? Is she all right? What is it?” The questions toppled from his mouth like a line of dominoes.
“Nothing’s happened to your mother. She’s fine.”
“I talked to her less than an hour ago,” he said as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Josh, your mother’s fine.”
His shoulders relaxed, although tension still narrowed his eyes. “Then I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“About my mother?”
What was the matter with him? Hadn’t I already explained my visit had nothing to do with his mother? “No, Josh. Your mother is doing remarkably well for a woman with both cancer and heart disease. She’s been a little depressed lately, yes, but that’s pretty normal during the holiday season. She’ll bounce back. In fact, I’m beginning to think she’ll outlive us all.”
He smiled, the lines on his forehead releasing slowly, like an elastic band. “Well, that’s a relief anyway. I’ve been feeling so guilty these last weeks.”
“Nonsense,” I said in my mother’s voice, before biting down on my tongue, allowing a
softer voice to emerge. “You weren’t gone long enough to feel guilty.” I lay my hand on his arm, trying to reassure him.
He flinched, as if I’d burned him with a match, and pulled away, coughing into his hand. He stared in the direction of his open front door. Was he thinking of inviting me inside or making a run for the house? “Feel like a cup of coffee?” he asked, surprising me with the sudden warmth of his smile.
“Coffee sounds good.”
Actually lunch sounded even better, but he didn’t suggest it, and since he already seemed spooked by my showing up on his doorstep without prior notice, I didn’t want to appear too presumptuous. Maybe we’d go for an early dinner, I thought hopefully, as he led me into the rose marble foyer.
The interior of the house was surprisingly spacious, consisting of one large common area that encompassed living, dining, and family rooms. The kitchen was at the back, as were two small bedrooms. I caught only a brief glimpse of the master bedroom suite at the front, noticed the bed was unmade, and felt a slight weakening of my knees. “Your home is lovely,” I remarked, leaning against the tan ultrasuede of the living room sofa for support, eyeing the clean lines of the modern, minimalist furniture throughout the house.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Black,” I reminded him, a smile masking my disappointment that he hadn’t remembered.
“Be right back. Make yourself at home.” He disappeared into the kitchen.
I crossed the white-tiled floor, punctuated at irregular intervals by a series of muted needlepoint rugs. The room surprised me. It didn’t seem to reflect the Josh Wylie I knew at all. Not that I knew him that well, but I’d always assumed that Josh’s tastes would be closer my own, that they leaned more toward comfort than style, more toward tradition than trends. I reminded myself that this was the house Josh had shared with his former wife, decided that the decor was probably more to her taste than his. He just hadn’t gotten around to changing it, I concluded. Perhaps out of respect for his children’s feelings.
The walls were white and largely bare. A few unimpressive lithographs hung at either side of the dining room table, and a large abstract painting of what looked to be a bowl of fruit occupied the far wall of the family room. I thought how nicely my own paintings would go in these rooms, the lush flowers replacing the anemic bowl of fruit, the unimaginative mirror by the front door usurped by the girl with the large hat on the beach.
Why had Alison given me such an expensive gift? I wondered suddenly, feeling my stomach cramp, as if I’d been sucker punched. I’d let my guard down for only a fraction of a second, and Alison had used it to sneak inside my head. Go away, I warned her. You’re not welcome in this house. I’m safe here.
Still, experience had shown me that once Alison had her foot in the door, she was remarkably difficult to dislodge. Thoughts of her now swirled about my head: the first image of her in my doorway; the magic way she’d twirled about the cottage; her wondrous hair on my pillow as she slept; Erica’s necklace around her neck; the necklace I’d given her at Christmas to replace it. And all the gifts she’d given me—the earrings, the head vase, the painting. So extravagant! Had she paid for it at all, or had Denise simply removed it from her aunt’s inventory? And what exactly was Denise’s part in all this? Was it possible the women had known each other all along, that Denise Nickson and Erica Hollander were two pieces of the puzzle that was Alison Simms?
You’re a stupid, stupid girl, I heard my mother say.
“I hope the coffee’s still good. It’s been brewing all morning,” Josh announced, returning to the room with two steaming mugs, coming to an abrupt stop when he saw me. “Terry, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
I raised my hands in the air, felt them shake. I opened my mouth, but no words came. Tears filled my eyes. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how scared I really was, how long I’d been denying my anxieties, suppressing my fears, and how desperately lonely I’d been and for how long. I was tired of being brave, rational, and independent. I was none of those things, and I couldn’t survive this on my own. I needed someone to stand beside me, someone to protect me from harm. I needed Josh.
It took all my resolve to keep from throwing myself into his arms, to refrain from telling him what was in my heart—how much I needed him, wanted him, loved him. Yes, loved him, I realized, catching my breath in my lungs, holding the words tight against my chest, like smoke from a marijuana cigarette. “Hold me,” I whispered, my voice a plea.
Immediately, I felt Josh’s arms around me, his lips in my hair. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you,” he was saying.
“You’ve been away.” I wiped the tears from my eyes, raised my lips to his. “You’re here now.”
“I’m here now,” he repeated, pressing his lips to mine, lifting me into his arms and into the air, carrying me toward the master bedroom, like Clark Gable carrying Vivien Leigh, grappling with my clothes as he fell on top of me across the unmade bed.
Except he did none of those things, said nothing of the sort.
While my imagination was busy sweeping me into his arms and into his bed, he was already pulling out of my arms and out of my reach.
“Please,” I heard myself say in a desperate bid to hold on to him.
“Terry, listen . . .”
“I’m so glad you’re back. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Oh, God. Terry, I owe you an apology.”
“An apology? No. There’s nothing to apologize for.” Please tell me there’s nothing to apologize for.
“So much has happened,” Josh said, retreating to the other side of the glass table that held our coffee. The steam from the mugs wafted into the still air, like delicate streamers, creating a scrim between us.
“What do you mean? What’s happened?”
“I’m so sorry if I’ve misled you in any way.”
“I don’t understand. How have you misled me?”
“I should have told you earlier. Actually, I assumed my mother already had.”
“Told me what?”
He lowered his head as if he were ashamed. “Jan and I are back together.”
His words slammed against my ears. “What?”
“Jan and I,” he began, as if he actually thought I hadn’t heard him the first time.
“When?” I interrupted, feeling sick to my stomach.
“Just before Christmas.”
“Before Christmas?” I echoed, as if only the repetition of the words would make them sink in.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I’m a coward. It was easier to just keep canceling our dates. And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if things would work out with Jan.”
“So, what are you saying? That you were using me as backup, in case your reconciliation didn’t take?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“How exactly did you mean it?”
“The kids are so happy,” he said after a pause, as if this explained everything.
A numbness was creeping steadily into my arms and legs, buzzing about my head, like a pesky mosquito. “So, Thanksgiving meant nothing to you.”
“That’s not true. Thanksgiving was wonderful.”
“The kiss . . . kisses . . . they were meaningless.”
“They were beautiful.”
“But meaningless.”
Another pause, longer than the first. “Terry, let’s not do this.”
“Let’s not do what?”
“I’d like us to stay friends.”
“Friends don’t lie to each other.” Hadn’t I just said the same thing to Alison?
“It was never my intention to lie.” Then: “Listen, I have a little something for you.” He walked quickly to the bedroom at the front of the house, returned seconds later with a package wrapped in bright blue foil. “I meant to give it to you earlier.” He dropped the package into my hands.
“What’s t
his?”
“I wanted to thank you again for taking such good care of my mother.”
“Your mother.” I felt a stab of humiliation so deep I almost doubled over. “I take it she knew you and Jan were back together?”
“Why do you think she’s been so depressed?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“She’s not too happy about it.”
“She’s your mother. She’ll come around.”
“Aren’t you going to open your present?”
I tore at the paper without enthusiasm. “A journal,” I said, turning it over in my hands, thinking of Alison.
“I wasn’t sure if you kept one or not.”
“Guess I’ll have to start.”
“I’m really sorry, Terry. I never meant to hurt you.” He broke off, looked toward the front door.
“Expecting company?” I asked coldly.
“Jan and the kids are at the mall. They should be home pretty soon.” He looked anxiously at his watch.
“I guess your wife wouldn’t be too happy to find me here.”
“It would probably just confuse things.”
“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want anyone to be confused,” I said, walking to the door. Had I really expected him to protect me from anyone?
“Terry,” he called after me.
I stopped, turned around.
Don’t go. I need you. I’ll find a way out of this mess. I love you.
“Do you think you might talk to my mother, try to get her to understand? She loves you like a daughter. I know she’d listen to you.”
Again I nodded, thinking this whole scene might be funny if it weren’t so mind-numbingly awful. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.”
“Good-bye, Josh.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“I’ll try,” I said, closing the door behind me.
TWENTY-FOUR
Goddamn you, you stupid, stupid girl!” I railed at myself in my mother’s voice. “How could you be so dumb? Have you no pride? No self-respect? You’re forty years old, for God’s sake. Have you learned nothing in all that time? Do you know so little about men? Ha!” I laughed, ignoring the not-so-furtive glances of other drivers as I banged down on the steering wheel, inadvertently blasting the horn. “Why stop with men? You know nothing about anyone. There isn’t a worse judge of character in the entire world. All someone has to do is show you a little kindness, the tiniest bit of interest, and you can’t do enough for them. You open your house, you open your heart.” You open your legs, I continued silently, too ashamed to say the words out loud, even in the closed confines of my car. “A man takes you out for one measly little lunch and already you have him marching down the aisle. You’re a stupid, stupid girl! You deserve to be taken advantage of. You deserve to lose everything. You’re too damn stupid to live!”
