Just Breathe

by Susan Wiggs

  “This is the woman he was unfaithful with,” Birdie prompted.

  “Yes. He started a huge building project about eight months ago—luxury homes in a neighborhood designed for equestrians, and he was incredibly busy all the time.” Sarah couldn’t believe what a dupe she’d been. It had all the sorry hallmarks that had become clichés—late, vaguely described meetings, canceling engagements with her. Begging off sex with her. “I thought he needed more time to come to terms with what happened to him, but I had faith that he’d get over it. And he did, I guess. Just not with me.”

  She took a deep breath and told Birdie the worst part—the events of that cold and rainy day, her last as a happily married woman. She told about her loneliness for her husband after going to the fertility clinic by herself. She told about stopping for pizza on the way to visit him at the work site, because he loved pizza and she wanted to surprise him. She even told about the moment she had walked in on every woman’s nightmare.

  The eerie calm that had enshrouded her since that night was growing threadbare in places as flashes of emotion crept in—anger at Jack, shame and humiliation, a sickening sense that she had lost her dreams. She felt bombarded by thoughts of the babies that would never be, the perfect home that had only been an illusion.

  Until now, dazed shock had insulated her from facing the hard questions about what might have been had she done something differently. Numbness dulled the embarrassment of having to air her dirty laundry to a virtual stranger, muffled the body blow of knowing the life she’d taken such satisfaction in was a sham.

  Forced to describe her husband’s infidelity, she felt her womanly pride bleeding on the floor. She struggled through this, the hardest part of her narrative. “So there you go. The end of happily-ever-after.” Slumping back in the chair, she sensed fatigue sneaking up to conquer her. She had buzzed across the country on an adrenaline rush. Finally, exhaustion spread over her, pressing down.

  “You know,” she concluded, “I do have one big regret.”

  “What’s that?” asked Birdie.

  “I wish I’d ordered black olives on the damn pizza.”

  Six

  Will Bonner walked around the smoldering barn, studying the ruined structure in silence. He took a bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his face. He should be home already, fixing supper with his kid. Unfortunately, people who started fires showed no regard for the captain’s duty schedule. He was counting his blessings, though. The barn had been vacant.

  Vance Samuelson, one of the volunteers, and Gloria Martinez, the engineer, were putting the truck back in order.

  “Well?” asked Gloria, loosening her suspenders, “what’s your assessment?”

  “Deliberate,” Will said, motioning her to the middle of the floor. The roof lay in corrugated metal sheets around them. The surface was still hot beneath his feet. “That’s what the arson investigator will rule. But they can only figure out so much. To find out who’s doing this, we’ll need you and me. Hell, we’ll need the whole county.” He stuck the bandanna in his pocket and led the way out of the wreckage of the barn. “I’m pissed off, Gloria. This reminds me of that incident almost five months ago, the one I haven’t figured out yet.”

  “It’s the arson investigators’ job to figure it out, not yours. You’ve got your own job to do.”

  He nodded and peeled off his protective jacket, which now felt like a sauna. “In theory. We know this community. We know who’s doing what, who’s feuding with his neighbors, who has money troubles, whose kids are out of control. We’ll be the ones to figure out who’s setting these fires.”

  “Sooner rather than later, I hope.” She scuffed her boot in the black cinders around the foundation of the barn. “Same culprit with both fires?”

  “Probably. I think he used different accelerants for number one and number two.”

  “Just what we need. A smart arsonist.”

  “He’s not supposed to be smart,” Will reminded her. “According to profile, he’s got below-average intelligence.”

  “Maybe he’s addicted to crime shows. You don’t have to be smart to copy something they demonstrate step-by-step on TV.”

  “Crime shows provide such a valuable public service,” he said, feeling weariness settle into his bones. “They make our job so much easier.” He rolled back one sleeve, checking his forearm for a burn. The skin was bright red, appearing slightly sunburned. The dragon tattoo, imprinted on a much younger, much stupider Will Bonner, was unscathed. He checked his watch, then put on his dark glasses. “I’m going to be late getting home. Again. You want to have dinner with us?” He often invited her, and not just because he liked and respected her. So did Aurora, and lately, his stepdaughter seemed to prefer discussing shoe shopping with Gloria to hanging out with Will.

  Gloria sent him a weary smile. “Thanks, but I have plans.” She patted him on the sleeve. “See you around, partner.”

  * * *

  The Mini still had that new-car smell even though Sarah was its second owner. Following her meeting with Birdie Shafter, she got behind the wheel, feeling wrung out. She didn’t know what to do next and didn’t really have a road map.

  She told herself there was no shame in being back in Glenmuir. Soon the whole town would know she had returned home in defeat—a woman betrayed—and that her perfect life in Chicago had been a sham. But so what? People started over all the time.

  Her phone was ringing. She checked the screen, tamped down a jolt of panic and took the call. “How did you get this number?”

  “We should talk,” Jack said, ignoring her question. “My folks think so, too. Everybody does.”

  “I don’t. My lawyer doesn’t.” Actually, Birdie hadn’t said so specifically, but she had advised Sarah not to give him any more information than necessary at this point.

  “You have a lawyer?” Jack demanded.

  “And you don’t?” She suspected he had called Clive Krenski the moment—the very second—he had thrown on his clothes that day, still sticky with Mimi Lightfoot. His hesitation confirmed it.

  “I already gave her Clive’s number,” Sarah said. From the brick-paved town parking lot, she had a view of the harbor and of Glenmuir’s picturesque square. It looked as quaint and pristine as the set of a nostalgic movie, with striped awnings over the shop fronts, bowls of water set out for any dog that might pass, lush flower baskets suspended from the light poles and businesses that respected the town’s resistance to change. There were no franchise stores or glaring signs, just an air of simpler times past.

  “Don’t do this.” Jack sounded drained and stressed-out.

  Her old habit of worrying about every breath he took threatened to kick in. She stiffened her spine against the seat back. “Her name is Bernadette Shafter—”

  “Oh, perfect—”

  “—and I’m not going to discuss certain things with you.”

  “Then how about you listen?”

  She stared out at Tomales Bay. A flotilla of brown pelicans bobbed on the water under a late afternoon sky of layered blue and cotton candy clouds. Jack hadn’t liked Glenmuir. He considered it a backwater, a place where old hippies might go to die...or become oyster farmers. Though years had passed, she still remembered that jab at her father. It had bothered her then and it bothered her now. The difference was, now she was doing something about that and all the other little hurtful things he’d said and she’d swallowed while making excuses for his lack of consideration.

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  “You can’t just piss away five years of marriage—”

  “No, you did that.” She watched some seagulls rise in a flock, creating a shadow on the water. “How long have you been with her?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about her. I want you to come back.”

  Sarah
was stunned, not just by his words but by the fear in his voice. “You want me to come back. What for? Oh, here’s an idea. We can get tested together. Yes, Jack. As if being cheated on isn’t bad enough, I’m going to have to get tested for STDs. We both are.” She blinked back tears of humiliation.

  “That’s not a factor. Mimi and I are exclusive.”

  Are. Not were. “Really? And you know this...how?”

  “I just know, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay, and you have no idea who she was with before you.”

  “She was—” Jack fell silent for a moment. Then he said, “Sarah, can we not just throw this away? I’m sorry I said I wanted a divorce. That was stupid. I hadn’t thought anything through.”

  Oh, my. Apparently Clive had explained the fiscal pitfalls of running off a perfectly good wife. “So are you saying you’ve changed your mind?”

  “I’m saying I never meant it in the first place. I was scared, Sarah, and embarrassed and guilty. To hurt you that much...it’s the last thing I wanted. I was in panic mode, and I handled it badly.”

  She actually felt torn, she noted with an unpleasant jolt. Although she was clearly the injured party, she was at war with herself. The part of her that was conditioned to love him, the part that had carried her through his cancer treatment and her fertilization attempts melted at the sound of his voice. At the same time, the part that had just endured the overwhelming humiliation of the attorney’s office was still choking on the devastating memory of seeing her husband screwing another woman.

  “I have a headache, Jack. It doesn’t matter to me whether you handled it well or badly.”

  “Forget what I said that morning. I didn’t mean it. We can get through our problems, Sarah,” he told her, “but not this way.”

  The flock of birds disappeared, leaving the bay flat and empty, beautiful in the afternoon light.

  “Well, guess what?” she asked. “I’m doing this my way for a change.”

  He hesitated. “We need to talk about us,” he said. “About you and me.”

  “You have no idea what I need.” Sarah wasn’t angry. She was so far past anger that she had entered a red zone of emotion she had never felt before, didn’t even know existed. It was a tight, ugly place with dark corners where rage festered and gave rise to images she never realized she could conjure. These were not pictures of her doing horrible things to Jack, but to herself. That was what frightened her most of all.

  “Sarah, come home, and we’ll—”

  “We’ll what?”

  “Deal with this like people who care for each other instead of communicating through lawyers. We can’t just call it quits. We can fix this, go back to the way things were.”

  Ah. Initially he’d spoken from an angry, impulsive, honest place. After the lawyer explained what this would cost him, he was filled with remorse.

  She saw a chartreuse-colored pickup truck merge onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and troll slowly northward. The side door bore the seal of the city of Glenmuir, established 1858. There were red conical lights on the top, a big tank with some sort of pump in back. A sun-browned, tattooed arm, with the sleeve rolled back, was propped on the edge of the window. The driver turned a little and she caught a glimpse of a baseball cap and dark glasses.

  “Why would I want that?” she asked Jack. She’d spent most of the cross-country drive thinking about the way things were. The hours and hours of driving alone had forced her to confront the harsh truth about her marriage. She’d been fooling herself for a long time about being happy. She’d been acting like a contented, fulfilled wife, but that wasn’t the same as being one. It was such a lousy thing to realize about yourself. She took a deep, steadying breath. “Jack, why would I want to go back to the way things were?”

  “Because it’s our life,” he said. “Jesus—”

  “Tell me about the bank accounts. All four of them.” A strange feeling came over her. Deep inside, she discovered a core of calmness that radiated outward like a general anesthetic. “How soon did you put a freeze on them? Did you remember to zip your pants first?” Actually, she knew the answer. He had made his move within hours of the pizza delivery. In Omaha, she had stopped at an ATM to make a withdrawal from their joint checking account, only to find that the card was declined. The same was true of the other three accounts. Fortunately for her sanity, she had a credit card she used for syndication business. And, though she had never seen it that way before, she had an ace in the hole. There was a large sum of money in an account she held in her own name. On the advice of their CPA and Clive—who, up until now, she had considered a friend—she had opened the account when Jack’s cancer had been discovered. If the worst happened, there might be some decisions she would have to make on her own.

  The decision to divorce her husband had not occurred to her back then.

  “I did that to protect both of us,” Jack said.

  “Both of us? Oh, I see. You and your lawyer, you mean.”

  “It’s clear you’re not thinking straight. I got a call from the bank about a transaction with State Line Auto Sales—”

  “Ah, so that’s what’s got you worried,” she said, suddenly realizing the true reason for his call. “And here I thought you called about me.”

  “Now you’re trying to avoid the subject.”

  “Oh, sorry. I traded the GTO for a car I actually want.”

  “I can’t believe you did that. Of all the childish, immature things... You had no right to trade in my car.”

  “Sure I did, Jack. I bought the thing, remember? The title’s in my name.”

  “It was a gift, dammit. You gave it to me.”

  “Boy, you sure know how to scold a girl about a car,” she said. “I’d like to hear what you have to say about something really bad, like...oh...infidelity?”

  He didn’t bother responding to that. How could he? “I wish I could take back what I did, but I can’t. We have to move on, Sarah—together. We can heal from this. I need a chance to make it up to you. Please come home, sugarbean,” he said, using his pet name for her in a voice that used to beguile her.

  Now it just made her queasy. With a curious feeling of detachment, she stared at the scene in front of her—a sleepy seaside town. Two women chatting on the sidewalk. A shy-looking mongrel flashed around a corner, furtively looking for scraps.

  “I am home,” she said. Birdie had explained that there was an advantage to initiating the divorce from California, a community property state. She had warned Sarah that Jack’s lawyer would probably fight it tooth and nail.

  “What about everything I gave you?” Jack reminded her. “A beautiful home, anything you wanted or needed. Sarah, there are women who would kill to have those things...”

  Jack was still talking when she turned off the phone. He just didn’t get it and probably never would. “Those things were worthless.” Her hand shook a little as she fitted the key into the ignition. Nerves, she thought. Rage. She knew enough about divorce to realize she was in for the entire painful spectrum of emotions. She wondered how and when they would strike. Would she be smacked down as though hit by a truck, or would the pain creep up on her and lodge like a virus under her heart? Now, for the first time, she fully understood how Jack had felt before undergoing his first treatment. The absolute terror of what she was about to do was excruciating.

  She sat and watched the only traffic signal in town turn from yellow to red. At the main intersection, a school bus lumbered to a halt and its stop signs cranked open like a pair of large ears. Sarah suspected it was one of the same buses she had ridden all her life. The sides were stenciled West Marin Unified School District. Judging by the ages of the kids who emerged from the bus, this was from the junior high. She watched a group of schoolkids with backpacks walking down the streets, pausing in front of the candy store to dig through their
pockets for change. Some of the boys were smooth-cheeked while others sported a five o’clock shadow. The girls, too, came in a variety of shapes and sizes, their manner ranging from awkward to cool.

  One of the cool ones—Sarah could spot them a mile off—was a self-possessed blond demigoddess who made a big production of lighting a cigarette. Sarah flinched, wondering where this girl’s mother was and if she knew what her daughter was up to.

  Once again, Sarah told herself it was a good thing her quest to get pregnant was over. Kids were a constant challenge. Sometimes they were downright scary.

  The last to emerge from the bus was a remarkable-looking girl. Small of stature, she had shining jet-black hair, pale skin and the perfect features of a Disney princess. There was a flawless, other-worldly quality about her that made Sarah want to stare. The girl was Pocahontas, Mulan, Jasmine. Sarah half expected her to burst into song at any moment.

  She didn’t burst into anything, of course, but walked over to the fire department pickup truck. The driver was talking on the phone or a radio. The girl got in, slammed the door and they drove off.

  Sarah was a watcher, not a doer. She’d always been that way, watching others live their lives while she lived inside her own head. And it struck her—hard and against her will—that even though she was the wronged party in her marriage, she wasn’t blameless for its demise. Ouch.

  The black-and-white dog feinted away from a group of boys horsing around, and darted out into the street. Sarah jumped out of the car and dashed toward the mongrel. She shooed it back onto the sidewalk. At the same moment, she heard the thump of brakes locking up. She froze in the middle of the roadway, a few feet from the chartreuse pickup.

  “Idiot,” the driver called. “I almost hit you.”

  Embarrassment crept over her, quickly followed by resentment. These days, she was bitter about all men and in no mood to be yelled at by some tattooed redneck in a baseball cap. “There was a dog...” She gestured at the sidewalk, but the mongrel was nowhere in sight. “Sorry,” she muttered, and headed back to her car.