Dirt

by Cassia Leo

  As Jack got dressed in yesterday’s clothes, I watched him from the bed, marveling at his beauty. The sleek fluidity in the definition of his muscles as they moved beneath his smooth skin. The way the sunlight poured through the window and bounced off his bulging shoulders, his messy brown hair, his straight nose and full lips.

  I was reminded of the first time we met with our wedding photographer and he asked if he could use our wedding photos to promote his business. I was a bit surprised, considering the photos hadn’t been taken yet. How did he know the photos would be good enough for promotional purposes? His reply: “Because you are the most gorgeous couple I’ve ever worked with, and beauty sells.”

  I slid out of bed as he knelt down to tie the laces of his gym sneaker. “Why don’t you stay a while? It’s Sunday. We can have breakfast, then we can Netflix and chill all day.”

  He stood up and flashed me an uncomfortable smile. “I wish I could, but I have to get home. I have a Q&A in the Facebook group at two p.m.”

  My stomach dropped. I had just asked him to stay here and basically have sex with me all day and he would rather do a Q&A with some internet sleuths in the Justice for Jack Stratton Jr. Facebook group.

  I blinked a few times as I attempted to recover. “Okay. Have fun.”

  He rolled his eyes. “This Q&A has been planned for months.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said, turning to leave the room. “I’m fine. I swear. I have to get started in the garden, anyway.”

  He followed me down the hall toward the stairs. “Are you sure you’re not going to hold this over my head later?”

  I bit my lip to keep from lashing out. I wanted to tell him that I had every right to hold this over his head, because this was one of the reasons I had decided to leave. But I had initiated this separation. He was simply adhering to the rules of living separately.

  As we reached the bottom of the stairs, I headed straight for the front door. “I’m not going to hold this over your head, but I’m also not going to pretend it doesn’t bother me. We can talk about it later, maybe with the marital counselor.”

  He sighed as he reached for the doorknob. “Great. Something to look forward to.”

  I flashed him a fake smile as he pulled the front door open. “I’ll call you when I’ve scheduled our first appointment.”

  He nodded. “Right.” He opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else, then he pressed his lips together to stop himself. “All right, well, I guess we’ll talk later?”

  I nodded, but I remained silent, afraid my words would betray me and we’d end this conversation with an argument.

  “All right,” he said, eyebrows raised. “This is really fucking awkward. Can we at least acknowledge that?”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Okay,” he said, stepping toward me. “I’ll call you later.”

  He planted a quick kiss on my forehead, then stepped out onto the porch. As I watched Jack’s truck drive away, I knew I’d made the right decision. How could two people who knew each other the way we did feel like strangers?

  Standing on the front steps, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. The crisp morning air felt blissful on my fevered skin, which still smelled like Jack. The scent of dusty wood reminded me that I still hadn’t swept the porch, but I’d have plenty of time to do that later. Right now, I had to text John to cancel our appointment.

  But as I opened my eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to go back inside. Guilt gnawed my insides as I stared at the rows of shriveled hydrangea and honeysuckle lining the walkway. Even the laurel hedges along the garden fence and the gardenia tree in the corner were overgrown and neglected. My mother’s heart would break if she knew I’d let her garden die.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered as I spun around to go back inside, turning my back on the graveyard of everything my mother once loved.

  The sound of footsteps made me whip my head around again. A guy in a faded black T-shirt came down the steps of the house next door with the gray siding and American flag hanging from the eaves. Was that the neighbor my mom had mentioned on a few separate occasions before she died? The handsome guy with the green thumb?

  The guy reminded me a bit of Jason Momoa, but with slightly less facial hair. His bulging muscles strained against his shirt. Tattoos covered almost every inch of his bronze skin. His chin-length, light-brown hair and the scruff on his face appeared naturally lightened by hours in the sun.

  As he grabbed the newspaper out of the plastic yellow Oregonian mailbox at the curb, I couldn’t stop myself from making a snap judgment: he didn’t look like the kind of guy who got his news the old-fashioned way. But then again, he also didn’t look like the kind of guy who possessed a green thumb. This was probably a new neighbor who’d moved in after my mom’s death.

  This realization was disappointing. It would have been nice to meet the young man my mom had seemed to have an innocent crush on in her final days. But as he walked back toward his front steps, I realized his grass was a technicolor green and his garden was extremely neat and healthy.

  He glanced in my direction as he climbed the steps, and something about the dark look in his eyes sent a shiver through me. He turned away quickly and headed inside, but not before taking one final glance at my yard. It was almost as if he were saying, “It’s about damn time someone did something about that mess.”

  I shook my head as I turned around to go inside. My guilt over neglecting my mother’s garden was making me believe that this guy was judging me. He probably couldn’t care less what my garden looked like.

  As I shut the front door behind me and locked it, I suddenly felt very alone and scared. I hadn’t anticipated what it would feel like being alone in this big house without Jack and his weapons arsenal to protect me.

  I would have to keep myself busy with the garden or I would soon be catastrophizing all the horrible things that could happen to me here. Images of that night flashed in my mind, making my skin ache. I leaned against the inside of the door as I was overcome with a familiar sense of impending doom. I slid down to the floor and hugged my knees to my chest.

  Thirty minutes of deep breathing later, I grabbed the door handle and pulled myself to my feet. Maybe I should invite Drea out here to have some lunch.

  I shook my head as I made my way to the kitchen. It was Sunday. Drea would be busy spending the weekend getting in some quality time with Barry and the boys. I’d call her later to chat, but I’d have to tough out the loneliness and fear.

  I should have been more persistent about Jack spending the day with me.

  Entering the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator only to be reminded that I had no food in the house. I didn’t normally eat breakfast, but I would have to eat something before I started working in the garden, or I’d risk getting lightheaded once the summer sun was beating down on me.

  Come to think of it, I also needed to make a run to the garden store. But it suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t know if I was allowed to use Jack’s money while we were separated. Were we really separated?

  Oh, God. Jack and I were separated. And it was mostly my decision. I definitely couldn’t use his money.

  I closed the refrigerator door and fanned myself as I began doing some simple math in my head.

  I still had a little more than two grand in a secret personal checking account that I’d had since before Jack and I merged our finances. I used it when I wanted to buy Jack a gift online, but didn’t want him to know about it. I really didn’t want to use the money, since it was my only emergency stash. And if I had to pay for utilities, food, and gardening supplies for one month, that money would dwindle pretty quickly.

  I really underestimated how dependent I’d been on Jack.

  I would have to use my stash. I would just have to figure out a way to replenish this account. The obvious solution would be to get a job. But did I really stand a chance of finding a job quick enough to get paid within the next few weeks? Especially since I hadn’t
worked a single day since Jack and I graduated from OSU eight years ago.

  I would have to find an inexpensive gardening store or I was going to blow through my cash fast. Maybe I should introduce myself to the neighbor with the nice garden, and ask him if he could recommend a place. But as I remembered the dark look he’d given me, he didn’t seem like the neighborly type.

  I threw up my hands. Fuck it. I needed to get this garden fixed fast and cheap. I was going to have a chat with my neighbor.

  7

  Jack

  I left Laurel at her mother’s house at a few minutes past eight a.m. and went straight to the gym. Despite the possibility of injury, I finished off my ten-mile run with one full hour of power cleans. The satisfaction of lifting more weight than was probably safe and letting it drop was fucking satisfying.

  Every time I squared off my hips, bent my knees and engaged all my chest and upper body strength to lift that bar, I felt as if I was lifting the weight of my world: Laurel, our marriage, the investigation, Laurel’s safety, the business. All of it resting on my shoulders. Then, I’d drop it onto the floor, watch the bar and the weights bounce, imagining all of it, everything I carried on my back, shattering into a million pieces.

  I was going to be sore tomorrow.

  As I left the gym, I texted my best friend Nate, suggesting we get some beers later. At the house, I took a screaming-hot shower, though I didn’t want to wash Laurel’s scent off my skin. But I knew if I was already missing her, she was missing me just as much. Especially since Laurel had never lived alone in her life.

  When I met her our senior year at OSU, she was living with the same roommate she’d moved in with her freshman year; a girl named Priti who had no interest in being Laurel’s friend because, according to her and her parents, partying and school did not mix.

  This was fine with Laurel, who had no problems making friends on campus. According to my pixie, she spent most of her freshman and sophomore year partying, and most of her junior and senior year catching up.

  By the time I met her, her partying days were over, replaced by a 3.7 grade point average and a very serious work ethic. I was more than willing to help her loosen up a little.

  Laurel was a lot different now.

  Nowadays, she never got out of bed before nine a.m. And she jumped at her own shadow and broke into tears randomly.

  But despite her sudden need to run away from our problems, underneath that fragile exterior, Laurel was strong. When she decided on a goal, she saw it through to completion. Where most people would give up, she toughened up. It was one of the things I loved the most about her.

  Like the time she suspected one of her professors of grading her unfairly after she didn’t return his flirtation. Laurel refused to back down when the dean of academics asked her to drop the complaint. In the end, the professor was suspended for one year — with reduced pay — on grounds of “moral turpitude.”

  The phrase “moral turpitude” was one of our many inside jokes now.

  Laurel’s toughness. Her need to fight back. That was why I wasn’t surprised that she left. It was also why I knew I couldn’t convince her to come back by simply promising to go to counseling. She was stubborn and she was going to hold me to my promise.

  I just hoped this separation wouldn’t be our undoing.

  As I came out of the bathroom, I emptied the pockets of my gym shorts onto the dresser in my bedroom so I could throw them in the hamper. I shook my head when I saw Laurel’s ring. I’d forgotten to give it back to her. Maybe that was a sign.

  As I showered, I mentally went over the topics we were preparing to discuss at today’s question and answer session in the Justice for Jack Stratton Jr. Facebook group. We would be discussing a possible break in the case, the same one I’d mentioned to Laurel last night over pizza. Then, I tried to think of ways I could make this separation easier.

  I could offer to spend the weekends with Laurel at her mother’s house. But if the point of the separation was to have some time and space to ourselves, that didn’t seem like the right way to go about it.

  I could offer to take time off work, but it was a bad time for that. I had an important meeting tomorrow morning with Kent to discuss our plans for opening a Tokyo office. Taking into consideration what Laurel had mentioned about Kent in the letter I burned, I couldn’t piss off the partners by taking more time off.

  Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but laugh. Laurel always knew how to get my balls in a death grip. Maybe I would be better off without her.

  I shook my head again. I couldn’t even bring myself to wish that were true. Laurel could probably stab me in the heart and twist the knife, and I’d still never be better off without her. She was both my strength and my biggest fucking weakness.

  My blonde bombshell. She was strong and sensual and had a smile that could warm a thousand planets. It was going to be a cold month without her.

  I loved Laurel so much, sometimes it frightened me. It was the only thing that frightened me anymore, the thought of losing her.

  She was certifiably insane if she thought I was going to give up on our marriage.

  I finished getting dressed in a suit — had to make the right impression with all the armchair sleuths working on Junior’s case — then I slid into the desk chair in my home office.

  I had twenty minutes to kill before the Q&A. Maybe I should call my dad and ask him if he wanted to go out for a late lunch. I could meet up with him before getting a beer with Nate. Maybe he’d have some sound advice for me on how to deal with Laurel.

  Then again, my dad had cheated on my mom multiple times over their forty-year marriage. Even if it had been almost a decade since his last philandering episode — that we knew of — he probably wasn’t the best person to seek marital advice from.

  As I opened up my Facebook profile on the computer — the profile I used for investigative purposes — I thought of Laurel’s insistence I see a therapist. She knew I’d seen a shrink in high school, after a friend of mine committed suicide, and how much of a shit-show that turned out to be.

  I’d probably feel less reluctant to attend therapy if I’d told my parents about how the school psychologist had misinterpreted my allowing her to hug me as permission to unbutton my jeans. But it was too late to get closure for that. Nevertheless, I would never trust a stranger with my darkest secrets again. Not even my “friends” in the Facebook group knew the real me.

  As I contemplated checking my forty-two unread Facebook messages, I had a sudden, panicked thought. What if Laurel had started seeing a therapist on her own, spilling my secrets to a complete stranger without my consent? For all I knew, she had been screaming it from the mountaintops, how much I wanted to find Junior’s killer and repay him with a slow, torturous death. No, Laurel would tell me if she was seeing someone.

  Then again, she hadn’t confided in me her plans to leave our marriage in the dust.

  I slid my phone out of my pocket and dialed Kent. He picked up on the third ring.

  “It’s Sunday, Jack. This better be good.”

  I hesitated, uncertain if this was really what I wanted to do right now. Laurel always said I was impulsive, but being impulsive was probably the one quality that had worked out the best for me. It brought me to Laurel. It got me into a partnership that resulted in the kind of money I’d never be able to spend in a lifetime. Sometimes, being impulsive was the only thing that made sense.

  “Kent, I need your brother’s number.”

  Kent was silent for a moment. “What do you need Rob’s number for?”

  I sighed. “I’m having some problems with Laurel. I just want to know my options.”

  The silence on the other end of the call was disturbingly long and tense. “Jack, this is a bad idea. Whatever you and Laurel are going through, you need to work it out. Trust me on this one, bro. This is not the way to go.”

  Anger rumbled inside me like a furious thunderstorm.

  First of all, I hated that this fif
ty-some-year-old man always called me bro. Secondly, he had to be insane if he thought I wanted to be contacting a divorce lawyer. Did he really think, for one fucking second, that I wouldn’t prefer to never make this phone call?

  I was eons away from giving up on my marriage, but that didn’t change the fact that I had to be prepared for anything. Once my net worth crossed into the hundreds of millions of dollars, I learned very quickly how important it was to always have insurance.

  “I don’t have time to get into this right now,” I replied, clenching my fist to keep from throwing the fucking phone. “Are you going to give me the number or not?”

  He let out a heavy sigh that hissed through the phone speaker. “I’ll text it to you.”

  I felt an intense need to clarify that I wasn’t giving up on Laurel yet, but I pushed down the urge and said my goodbyes. I knew Kent would probably take this information to the other partners, and they would more than likely discuss the possibility of buying me out.

  Despite the fact that there was no one who could do my job the way I did, they’d probably start considering replacing me if I divorced Laurel. They’d witnessed firsthand my rapid descent when I lost Junior. They’d probably assume that losing Laurel would push me over the edge.

  They would be right.

  8

  Laurel

  I decided I would spend the day doing groceries and unpacking some of the things I’d put away when I thought I was going to sell the house. Just a few of my mother’s favorite ornate teapots and one picture of my mom, sunlight illuminating her smile as she sat in a hospital chair with Junior in her arms. I put the picture on top of the low bookshelf in the downstairs office. I didn’t expect to spend a lot of time in there.

  But as I left the office, and the picture, and made my way to the living room, the loneliness began to set in again. It was just noon when I called Drea. I was elated when she agreed to meet me in Portland for a late Sunday brunch.

  Despite the fact that she lived fifty-five minutes from the restaurant, Drea must have sped there in her BMW i3 electric SUV. When I arrived, she was seated at a table near the window at Screen Door, our favorite Portland breakfast spot. Well, it was our favorite before Junior’s death. We hadn’t been to Portland together in quite a while, opting instead for low-key coffee houses and the occasional yoga class in Hood River.