Maybe I’m not the only one who thinks my dead husband has returned to me in the body of another man.
24
“Megan? Your face is all funny. You need some water or somethin’?”
Coop is concerned. He should be, because I’m about two seconds away from a full-blown meltdown. The words Theo wrote me appear in my mind like vapor, as if breathed there by a ghost.
What I’d have to say if we talked about the problem wouldn’t be romantic, or funny. It would be scary as hell.
And let’s not forget this award-winning mind fuck: How can you remember someone you’ve never met?
My mental illness supplies a smug answer: Because you knew them in another life.
“I have to go now.” I rise unsteadily to my feet.
Coop stands too, still holding on to my hand. “Go? Where you goin’?”
“I have to…pick up…the pharmacy.”
If Coop was hoping for a more coherent explanation, he won’t get one. My mind is a jumble of fractured thoughts and memories, each more disturbing than the last. I’m tumbling down a rabbit hole, one I’m afraid I’ll never climb out of. I’m Alice, only this isn’t Wonderland.
This is Crazyville, and I’ve just elected myself mayor.
I grab my purse and keys and head to my car, stumbling over my feet in my rush. As soon as I get my prescription from the pharmacy, I’ll call Dr. Anders to make an emergency appointment.
My brain can no longer be trusted at the wheel. It’s driving erratically on a narrow mountain road, taking corners too fast, swerving dangerously close to the edge.
I tear through town like a bat out of hell, screeching to a stop in front of the pharmacy and running inside in a panic. The register is all the way in the back of the store, so I have to hazard aisle after aisle of greeting cards and pain relievers, vitamins and suppositories, little old ladies squinting at dusty bottles on shelves. When I find the prescription pickup window, I throw myself at it like a Titanic passenger going for the last life raft.
“Megan Dunn hello I’m Megan Dunn you should have a prescription ready for me?” I blurt it out in one long, breathless rush, impatiently drumming my fingers on the counter.
The pharmacist is a thin bald man about a hundred years old who moves at the speed of cold molasses. He looks at me, blinks slowly, then pulls his glasses down the bridge of his nose. “You’ll have to get in line, ma’am.”
This is when I realize there’s a row of people standing behind me, staring at me with varying degrees of annoyance.
“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Avoiding eye contact, I slink to the back of the line.
“Megan?”
When I glance up, I’m looking at a pretty brunette with piercing blue eyes.
“Hi. Colleen Elliott. We met at Sunday Anderson’s party, do you remember?”
Dear God. It’s Theo’s ex-fiancée.
I stammer, “Oh—uh—h-hi! How are you! N-nice to see you again!”
My voice is too loud. Colleen quirks an eyebrow, and her smile falters. The woman in line in front of her turns and gives me a snooty once-over, sniffing in disapproval.
I wonder if she saw my performance at church.
Colleen says, “It’s nice to see you too. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you at the party. I think you left pretty quick after you came, right?”
The woman in front of Colleen leans in. “She does that.”
Yep, definitely a churchgoer. Goddamn small towns. I snap, “Mind your business, Nosey Parker!”
She turns around with another sniff, shaking her head.
Colleen now looks as if she’s sorry she said hello, but she’s trapped in line and can’t get away. Her smile goes brittle. “So how are you settling in? I hear Hillrise is working on the Buttercup?”
Boy, are they. I laugh. “Yep, oh yeah, Hillrise is working on the Buttercup, and man are those guys good!” I thunder it, unable to control my volume. I’m smiling so hard, my face might crack.
Eyes widening, Colleen takes a step back. “Yes,” she says faintly, hand at her throat. “Theo always does a wonderful job.”
A crystal-clear mental image of Theo, thrusting and groaning on top of me, forms in my mind. I produce another unstable laugh, because of course I would.
Nosey Parker shoots me a disapproving glare over her shoulder. I need to deflect the conversation away from me before I completely crack. “Anyway, how are you?”
Colleen’s face takes on a dreamy, secret expression. She looks down at the basket in her arms and smiles. “I’m good, thanks.”
I glance into her basket, see the pregnancy test kit, and want to vomit.
Colleen laughs softly, her cheeks going pink. “This is the fourth one I’ve bought. I have an appointment at the doctor in a few days to confirm what these things are telling me, but I just can’t seem to stop taking them.” She glances at me under her lashes, her blue eyes sparkling. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother.”
Me too. “Congratulations.” My voice has lost all its animation and now sounds dead.
Nosey Parker leans in again. “In my day, if a woman got pregnant without being married, it wasn’t a cause for congratulations.”
Colleen and I both whirl on her and shout, “Mind your business!”
When the woman turns around with her nose in the air, Colleen lets out an exasperated huff that tells me she expects this won’t be the first time she’ll be on the receiving end of narrow-minded judgment from the womenfolk of Seaside. It makes me feel kinder toward her, and a little protective.
I clear my throat and try to sound like anything other than a woman standing out on a narrow ledge. “How bad is your morning sickness?”
“Pretty bad,” she admits, making a face.
“That’s good.”
She blinks at me, surprised. “It is?”
“Yeah. It’s a sign your hormone levels are high. I had it really bad too.” Shocked by my admission, I bite my tongue.
Colleen draws her dark brows together into a quizzical frown. “Oh, I didn’t know you have children.”
I clear my throat again, wanting to die. “I don’t.”
We stare at each other. I see it the instant she makes the connection. She says softly, “I’m so sorry.”
The sympathy in her eyes is excruciating. “Ancient history,” I say, my voice cracking.
“Well, you’re still young. I mean, it’s not too late…”
She trails off, unsure, probably because I look so miserable. I draw a breath and square my shoulders. “Are you having any food cravings yet?”
“Ugh. No. I can barely keep anything down at this point.”
The pharmacist calls the first person in line to the counter, and the rest of us shuffle forward. “Have saltines and seltzer water. Fresh ginger brewed into tea also. And make sure you take prenatal vitamins. That’s really important.”
“Thanks,” says Colleen gently.
Jesus. She looks like she wants to give me a hug.
But the line moves forward again, sparing me. Colleen and I stand in awkward silence for a few moments until she makes an unexpected confession.
“Honestly, it’s not so much the morning sickness I’m worried about. It’s telling my boyfriend.”
Boyfriend? Suzanne said Colleen was still pining after Theo. “I take it this is an unexpected development in your relationship?”
She sighs, twirling a lock of dark hair between her fingers. “Yeah. And it’s a brand-new relationship too, so…”
So we’ve got some major baby-mama drama. “Do you think he’ll be okay with it?”
The twist of her lips is less than confident. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t describe him as a family man. He’s obsessed with his work. This is the first time he’s ever really been in a relationship. Honestly, he’s not what I would have thought of as my type.” Her laugh is quiet. “I guess I’m just attracted to contractors.”
A thunderbolt blasts through the roof and strikes me with
a million volts of supercharged electricity. “Contractors?”
Blushing, she smiles dreamily at me. “Yeah. He owns Capstone Construction out in Portland. His name’s Craig.”
I’m so stunned, I can’t speak. I stare at Colleen in dismay, which she must take as interest because she keeps talking, her voice dropping to a just-between-us-girls tone.
“He took me to a really lovely hotel last Friday. It was the first time he told me he loved me.”
Last Friday was the night he took me to dinner and propositioned me. Since then, he’s tried calling me every day, though I’ve avoided answering.
I’d like to keep my balls, he said when I threatened him with my butter knife. If things go the way I hope they will, we’re going to need them.
I should’ve neutered that strutting rooster when I had the chance.
Anger hardens my voice. “You know, Colleen, I wouldn’t worry about telling him. In fact, I wouldn’t worry about him at all. Concentrate on yourself, on whatever makes you feel good, on whatever’s good for the baby. He should be worried about losing you, not the other way around. And if he acts like a dick when you tell him about the baby”—which he definitely will—“drop him like a hot potato and get on with your life. You’re too good to put up with any bullshit.”
Colleen looks startled by my vehement little speech.
Without turning around, Nosey Parker says loudly, “Amen.”
I dig a piece of paper and a pen from my handbag, scribble my number on it, and give it to Colleen. “If you ever need to talk, call me. I’m a really good listener.”
“That’s so sweet. Thank you, Megan.”
She looks surprised, like she can’t believe the girl the whole town is gabbing about could be so nice. The line moves forward again, and soon it’s Colleen’s turn. Before she steps up to the register, she gives me the quick, awkward hug I was dreading, her basket poking into my chest.
“And if you ever need to talk, you can call me too,” she says softly. “Suzanne has my number. I mean it, anytime.”
Then she’s chatting up the pharmacist, and I’m left wondering how long it’ll take before she finds out through the grapevine that Craig and I had dinner. More importantly, how many curse words and threats of bodily dismemberment I can work into the phone call I’m going to make to that worthless, egotistical, polka-loving peacock.
Distracted for the moment from my pending mental breakdown, I get my prescription and get back on the road. It isn’t until I find myself driving past the turnoff to the Buttercup that I realize where I’m headed.
I don’t know the way, so I pull over to the side of the road and punch Theo’s home address into my GPS.
* * *
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a modern masterpiece of glass and steel jutting from a steep rocky cliff, overlooking the ocean and surrounded on the other three sides by dense forest. Masculine, austere, and starkly beautiful, it’s straight out of Architectural Digest.
I swing shut the driver’s-side door, then slowly walk up the driveway toward the house, gravel crunching underfoot. The sea breeze is brisk, snapping my hair around my face. The sun shines glaringly bright. Set back about a hundred yards from the house is an old barn, out of place with its old-fashioned style and state of disrepair. It looks as if it’s been standing neglected in the same spot at the forest’s edge for a hundred years. If it wasn’t for the padlock and chain wound around the handles of the sliding doors—both as shiny as newly minted quarters—I’d think no one had been inside it in decades.
I walk up a white marble pathway flanked on both sides by a water feature built to resemble a burbling brook. It flows away from the front door, disappearing into an almost invisible dip in the marble at the driveway’s edge. The door itself is a massive slab of steel at least ten feet tall, with a slim steel handle of the same height. Windows on either side of the door give a view of the inside, which is decorated all in white and just as modern as the outside. The furniture is sparse but fits the airy, contemporary space perfectly. The interior walls are devoid of artwork or pictures. Windows are the dominating feature.
The entire west-facing wall is made of glass, giving the viewer the impression the house is floating in midair above the ocean.
Feeling strangely scared, I ring the doorbell.
After several minutes go by and it’s evident no one is home, I decide to go around the side of the house. Skirting plantings of bamboo, horsetail, and Zen-like stone gardens, I make my way around the house until I come to a high glass wall. There’s no door. Beyond the wall is a rectangular infinity pool with a view of the sea.
The lack of furniture on the sleek cement deck makes me suspect that this pool never gets used. It’s only for show.
It looks as lonely as I feel.
I retrace my steps absentmindedly. I don’t know what I was hoping to find here. A clue, perhaps, into the mystery of Theo Valentine. But this home gives no hint as to the nature or character of its occupant. It’s unnervingly sterile, as if it were built so the owner could live inside a blank canvas.
Or wanted to be a blank canvas.
Perhaps its austerity is a clue, after all. Perhaps this is the kind of home you buy or build when what you most need is a clean slate. A place to pretend the past doesn’t exist.
A place to be reborn.
“Stop it,” I chastise myself, the harsh sound of my voice jarring in the silence. No other noise can be heard up here except the whisper of the wind through the trees and the murmur of the waves breaking on the rocky coast far down below.
And the dark, familiar voice of my insanity, wondering why Theo would keep a padlock and chain on a decrepit barn door. Who could he be trying to keep out?
Or what might he be trying to keep hidden within?
I stand staring at the barn for a long time, wondering if it’s my imagination or if I really can smell that hint of sweet peas perfuming the cool morning air.
25
One of the side effects of the drug that Dr. Singer prescribed me is nausea. Severe nausea, the rolling, violent kind like seasickness, only worse because it never goes away. Paired with ringing in my ears and a disturbing sensation of dizziness, the medication renders me useless.
After six days of puking my guts out and stumbling around in a fog, I flush the rest of the pills down the toilet. I call Dr. Singer to get a different prescription and am told by his secretary that he’s gone on vacation and won’t be back for two weeks.
So much for him being available for me to talk to anytime.
Dr. Anders doesn’t have a spot open for another few days, so in the interim, my leaking mental dinghy is adrift in shark-infested waters.
I know I’m unwell. I’m dangerously obsessed with Theo, and his continued absence only makes it worse. I drive by his house at all hours, hoping he’ll be there, but he never is. I take a trip out to Melville and find the facility he checked himself into, then sit in the car and stare at the building until a security guard approaches warily, wanting to know what I’m doing.
I tell him I don’t know, because I honestly don’t.
I write email after email to Theo, none of them sent. I save them in the drafts folder, unwilling to delete them, as if somehow that might make things worse.
All the while, Coop and his workers are busy transforming the Buttercup from ugly duckling into beautiful swan, using Theo’s plans as their guide.
The master bedroom—a spectacular suite that makes me swoon, it’s so gorgeous—is finished in record-setting time. The roof and plaster repair work are coming along at a remarkable clip. Every day, I’m amazed by the progress, and if I hear a familiar footstep downstairs in the middle of the night, I know it’s only my mind playing tricks on me, because Theo never appears.
Then, on Halloween, he finally does.
* * *
“It’s a Halloween party, Megan. That means you’re supposed to wear a costume, not the clothes you wear every other day of the week!
”
Suzanne has her hands propped on her hips. She’s looking me up and down with an expression of disgust. It’s Tuesday night, I’ve just arrived at her house, and we’re supposed to be on our way to Booger’s for their annual Spooktacular event, but I’m not sure Suzanne is going to let me out of her house without donning some ridiculous getup like the one she’s wearing.
“I refuse to be seen in public looking like a roll of toilet paper, Suzanne.”
Aghast, she looks down at herself. “I’m a mystical mummy!”
“Mystical? That explains all the glitter in your cleavage.”
“Seriously, I can’t let you out like that.” She waves a hand at my jeans and Bowie T-shirt, grimacing like I’m the one with the tragic fashion sense.
“Let’s tell people I’m a roadie. If you have a portable amp handy, I could carry that as a prop.”
Her eye roll is exaggerated. “Oh, right. Let me go grab my portable amp, I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.”
“It could be underneath that wig.”
The blonde bouffant wig perched on her head is as big as a ten-gallon cowboy hat and decorated with shredded bits of the same white gauze she’s wrapped around her body. The gauze is supposed to resemble the linen bandages used to dress mummies, but the overall effect is that Suzanne recently suffered an unfortunate accident at a toilet paper factory.
“Don’t you diss my wig. This thing cost a fortune!” She pats the towering wall of synthetic fiber, making it jiggle. Then her eyes go round, and she shouts, “Oh!”
With that, she runs down the hallway toward her bedroom, trailing bits of gauze in her wake.
I look at De Niro, Pacino, and Stallone, lounging on the sofa and regarding me with catlike disdain. “Don’t worry, boys. Mommy’s the normal one here.”
In moments, Suzanne reappears from her bedroom holding a wig so purple, it glows. She tosses it at me, forcing me to catch it. “Put that on.”
I curl my lip. “This color doesn’t occur in nature.”
“I’ll tell you what else doesn’t occur in nature—these shoes!” She sticks out a leg, clad in a six-inch spike-heel sandal with leather straps that crisscross the length of her calf from ankle to knee. The shoes are meant to look Egyptian, but they bear a striking resemblance to dominatrix wear. Mistress Charmin the mystical mummy.
Midnight Valentine Page 22
