The Good Widow_A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  But that’s the problem with letting your curiosity overrule your conscience—you can’t change your mind afterward. Nick told me he’d found emails they’d sent each other—did I want to see them? He said he needed to know if they had been serious. If they had loved each other. If they were going to leave us. That last one? It hadn’t crossed my mind. Then it was all I could think about.

  I turn onto Church Street and come to an abrupt stop in front of Beth’s tan two-story home. I press my hands against my throbbing quads, trying to steady my breathing, hating that my ability to drive seems to be another casualty since James went over that cliff. Because getting behind the wheel would have been such an easier way to get here.

  The front door opens. “My God, look at you!” Beth rushes down the steps and bends over me, her mud-brown hair that matches mine hanging around her creamy complexion dotted with light freckles.

  “I know.” I hold out my hand so she can pull me up. “Could use some water, please.”

  She gives me a once-over, her perfectly tweezed eyebrows arching over her light-brown eyes. “You ran here?”

  I nod. “Because I couldn’t . . .” I don’t finish, but we both know what the rest of the sentence would be.

  Get in a car.

  I did attempt to drive, just a couple of days after I found out. I was going to buy wine. Many bottles of it, preparing to drink myself into a dreamless sleep—anything to stop the nightmares. I slid into the seat of my Mini Cooper and started it just like I would have any other day. But as the engine roared to life, I saw a flash of James’s face, grimacing as he tried to steer the Jeep away from the cliff. My heart pounding out of my chest, I started gasping for air, my hands tingling so much I almost couldn’t get the driver’s door open. Then I laid my cheek against the cold, oil-stained garage floor and sobbed into the concrete until I managed to move myself into an upright position and call Beth, who came racing over, again. When she found me, resting against a bag of fertilizer, I looked at her and shook my head.

  As I follow her inside now, I watch her nylon shorts start to slide down her slim hips, and she tugs them upward; I’m amazed that after birthing three children, she’s been able to maintain her high school figure. She’d cheered—literally chanting a Go! Fight! Win!—after she’d found her red-white-and-black cheer uniform in a bin and zipped it up as if she were still sixteen. But then again, she works at it. Without asking, I know she’s already dropped her kids at summer camp, been to a 9:00 a.m. SoulCycle class, and blended a Paleo-approved shake. As a lover of processed foods—anything with that orange stuff they’re trying to ban—I find eating like a caveman feels as unachievable as making the Olympic track team.

  “Shoes,” Beth calls over her shoulder. “I mean, if you don’t mind,” she adds quickly, turning her head and giving me a quick, toothless smile. It’s funny how people hold their tongues when you go through something awful. I caught my neighbor, who spent years knotting her gray eyebrows together when my garbage cans were still sitting by the curb long after trash day, dragging them up our driveway last night, pulling forcefully as one wheel got stuck in a deep crack that appeared after the last earthquake. And Beth. She’s been on her best behavior since James died—replacing her typical blunt opinions with kind and gentle responses that seem foreign coming from her. What she doesn’t understand is that I wish she would go back to her normal personality, because I need her to be her. I need her unfiltered commentary about my life, her know-it-all attitude, her need to be right.

  It’s not just Beth who’s been on first-date behavior. Before James died, my mom, who lives in Solana Beach, a sleepy beach town about an hour south of my neighborhood, would rarely made the trek “all the way up” to Aliso Viejo because northbound traffic is “just the worst on the weekends.” And now she has miraculously gotten over her commuter issues and has been religiously making the “journey” once a week to check on me. She’s never been a big believer in comfortable silences, so as she scrubs my spotless countertops and heats up some casserole we both know I’ll never eat and fluffs pillows and opens windows, she relentlessly throws words my way, telling me stories about her book club or my dad’s refusal to stop eating red meat, tiptoeing around me like I’m a land mine she might trigger.

  What my mom doesn’t get is that I don’t need her to come to my house and rearrange my coffee table books. Just because James is gone, she doesn’t need to change; she doesn’t need to prove anything to me. It never bothered me that she didn’t drive up to see us. James and I liked going down to visit her and my dad, the coastal setting making us feel like we were going on a staycation the minute we arrived. But Mom’s unwillingness to come up north to see Beth and me, and our father’s silent alignment with her, drove Beth insane. “Can’t she do it for her three grandchildren? Doesn’t she realize we have soccer and gymnastics and we are bu-sy? I swear it’s Poochie Poo. She can’t leave that dog for five minutes.” I’d tell her that was crazy talk, that of course it wasn’t about the dog, but she’d spit back that I was too agreeable, that I accepted things too easily. And she’s right; I usually do. Part of me wonders if that’s why I’m standing here now, with questions outnumbering answers.

  I force my sneakers off without untying them.

  Beth hands me a glass of water and sets my shoes neatly by the front door next to three pairs of soccer cleats in varying sizes, waiting for me to tell her why I’m here. She knows better than to ask if I’m okay or how I’m doing or if I slept last night. I’ve banned all questions like that.

  I take a long drink and look at her, my eyes watering. “It’s just a lot.”

  “Come here.” Beth wraps her arms around me, and I stand there stiffly like a child being cuddled by a great-aunt she barely knows. I’m afraid if I hug her back, I’ll dissolve into tears. That I won’t be able to stop.

  I pull out of her embrace. “I had a visitor.”

  Beth frowns, waiting for me to continue.

  “A man; apparently he’s Dylan’s fiancé. Or was . . .”

  “Wait, what?”

  I tell her about Nick. How he felt so familiar to me even though I was sure I’d never met him. How he’d held out Dylan’s driver’s license, which the police had mailed back to him, to prove his connection to her. How I found myself staring into James’s mistress’s bright-blue eyes, her white-blonde hair resting on top of her shoulders in a simple blunt cut, her bangs swept to the side.

  I had read over her description as Nick watched me: five foot two, 103 pounds, contact lenses, organ donor, lived in Irvine, birthdate July 7, 1992. I felt my stomach twisting into hard knots as my brain computed the differences between us.

  Nine years younger.

  Twenty-two pounds lighter.

  Four inches shorter.

  Blonder.

  We sit and I explain to Beth what Nick said when he came to see me. That he hadn’t been able to sleep since he found out his fiancée died, because he needed answers. He needed to understand more. About Dylan. About James. About the bond they had formed together, seemingly right under our noses. He wanted to travel to Hawaii to retrace their steps. It might sound crazy, but would I go with him?

  “He asked you to do what?” Beth interrupts me.

  “To go to Maui with him.”

  “A perfect stranger.”

  “Yes.” But what I don’t say is that we are connected by this event in a way that no longer makes us people who don’t know each other. “He said I’m the only person who can understand what he’s going through. That the simple police report, deeming the crash an accident, won’t tell him the things he really needs to know: why his fiancée was cheating on him with another man and why she was in Maui with him. He thinks going there could help fill in the blanks.”

  “Honey.” Beth puts her hand on my knee. “I don’t mean this to sound harsh, because I love you and I’m so sorry you’re going through this. But what good can come from taking their vacation?”

  It’s worth noting once mo
re that preaccident Beth would have never prefaced anything with I don’t mean this to sound harsh. She would have just said it, along with an eye roll and an impatient tone. So I know she’ll bite her tongue rather than chastise me if I confess the rest—that he suggested retracing their exact steps: Had they eaten coconut shrimp? Sipped piña coladas as the sun set? Did they kick their shoes off and stroll down the beach? But still. I don’t tell Beth this. Because I know she won’t understand why there’s a part of me that shares Nick’s morbid curiosity. And that I would strongly consider running my hand across the bed they slept in, leaning over the railing of their lanai and taking in the same view, looking in the mirror over their bathroom sink to try to make sense of what he saw in her. Maybe that’s exactly it. Going to Maui could help me understand why he was willing to risk the comfortable life we’d built. Because I can’t ever ask him.

  Beth’s concern is obvious, and I get it, because I’m thinking it too—whatever answers I find might make it all worse. “Don’t worry, I kicked him off my front steps,” I say as I watch her face soften. She thinks this means I’m not going. But the problem is, I can’t stop picturing his hunched shoulders as he walked to his bike; how he’d slowly slung his leg over the seat, then pulled his helmet on; how the sound of his motorcycle firing to life had startled me; how I’d watched him until he disappeared down the street.

  “But?” Beth asks, sensing my thoughts. Only eleven months apart, we’ve always shared a bond, an intuition as strong as if we’d shared a uterus.

  “But . . .” I pause, remembering his eyes filling with tears when I’d told him to go away, not recognizing the sound of my own voice. How do I explain to her that I both want and don’t want to know more? I’m curious about the shrimp and the sunset strolls, but frightened to find out about the real emotions they might have shared. “But . . . what if he’s right? What if going could help? I know it may sound crazy to you, but there’s a part of me that understands exactly why he needs to go to Maui.” I pull my long hair out of its ponytail, the elastic ripping several strands.

  “Okay . . .” Beth pauses, and I watch her try to compose herself. She wants to be the old Beth so badly. To tell me what an idiot I’m being. Instead, she clears her throat and says, “So a part of you wonders. But what about the other parts?”

  “Do you really think that I should just accept that he was having an affair and leave it at that?”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  “And you’re not answering mine.” I fold my arms across my chest.

  “Fine,” she says. “Yes, I really think that. I just worry that going will create even more questions. And then you’ll always be wondering what the answers are.”

  “I hear you. But Nick did make a good point—he said he didn’t want to be in denial anymore. That he wants to face it—all of it. And the only way to do that is to be in Maui.”

  “Wouldn’t that be torture? Why would he do that to himself? To you?”

  “So we can try to move on.” I realize that I’ve said we rather than he. I reach into the pocket of the sweatshirt I’m wearing—an old one from James’s fraternity days. “He told me to hold on to this.” I hand Dylan’s driver’s license to her. “He said he lived one floor up from her in the same condominium complex. That I could find him there, if I changed my mind.”

  She studies the ID for a moment, frowning slightly, then flipping it over so we’re both staring at the magnetic stripe on the back.

  “Okay. So maybe I can understand why he wants to go. But why does he need to take you? And how can you trust him? What if he’s not who he says he is?”

  “Who else would he be?”

  “He might have read James’s obituary and be some kind of stalker weirdo looking to prey on you because you’re grieving.”

  “You’ve been watching too much CSI.”

  “Please. You know I’m a True Detective girl.”

  “Whatever. My point is—”

  “You think I’m overreacting.”

  I give her a look.

  “Don’t you realize it’s my job to protect you? Especially now.” Her bottom lip quivers, and I put my hand on top of hers.

  “Well, if it helps you feel better about him, he’s a fireman. He showed me a business card with the station he works at. And he showed me several pictures on his phone, including one of the two of them at a firemen’s ball from only a few months ago.” I think of the crushed-silk fabric of Dylan’s floor-length cobalt dress, her hair swept back from her face, her hand placed across the front of his starched uniform, the sparkling ring on her finger.

  “Jacks, I’m sorry; none of that proves she was his fiancée. He could have Photoshopped her in.”

  “He didn’t strike me as a techie—more like a beefcake whose only hacking is done in a jujitsu class,” I joke. When Beth doesn’t respond, I add, “Listen, I hear you, but he seemed sincere.” I think of his hand shaking as he gave me her driver’s license. I had resisted my impulse to console him, because what was there to say? How could I convince him there would be a time when his insides didn’t feel like they’d been hollowed like a jack-o’-lantern when I didn’t believe it myself? I’d wondered how he could stand to look at a photo of her, of them. I had asked Beth to remove all pictures of James from our house for now—it was like a knife slicing into my abdomen every time I looked into his deep-set eyes, always my favorite part of him. Instead of remembering the good times we’d had, all I could see were the years we wouldn’t have, the dreams we wouldn’t build, the family we wouldn’t create.

  “You never answered me about the other parts of you, the parts that don’t want the details.”

  “There’s a part of me that wants to ball up on the couch. The part that wants to pretend this never happened.”

  Beth points to her couch. “Go right ahead. I’ll get the wine.”

  I shake my head. “Beth, if I lie down, I’m afraid I’ll never get up—that I won’t recover from this. If I go to Maui and face whatever it is they were doing there and why they were doing it, as awful as it may be, then maybe I’ll be able to move forward. To have a normal life again someday.”

  “Okay, but do you really think you can trust this guy?”

  “Yes. I saw his hurt. It was real.” And that was what it came down to for me. When I searched Nick’s eyes, I saw the grief that mirrored my own.

  Beth looks up at me and takes a deep breath before speaking. “Even if he is who he says he is, I don’t think it’s a good idea, Jacks. Some things are better left alone.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DYLAN—BEFORE

  Dylan swiped the credit card receipt off the table, her fingers narrowly missing the puddle of ketchup a four-year-old had squirted there earlier. She had ground her teeth from the service bar while she watched the little boy squeal as the red liquid cascaded from the plastic bottle. She’d exchanged an eye roll with Ted, her favorite bartender, as he whipped up mimosas for the wonderfully childless couple in the booth next to the ketchup terrorist. It was their third round in an hour, and Dylan hoped their impending inebriation would lead to a large tip.

  Working Sunday brunch at Splashes Restaurant in Laguna Beach was always a bit of a clusterfuck, but it was also filled with possibilities. You could end up with condiment stains all over your favorite white T-shirt, the one that was so soft you hugged it before throwing it over your head. Or you might meet the love of your life, even though you thought you already had.

  Dylan cringed as she calculated the tip from the ketchup terrorist’s parents. Ten percent! What the hell? Dylan had smiled and said all the right things. She’d been patient as the child had stuttered his way through ordering blueberry pancakes, while his mother played with her expensive blonde extensions and his father pecked away on his iPhone. They were seemingly oblivious that she might have other tables, that she might not find their son’s intentionally shaggy surfer haircut as adorable as they did. But she knew that the overpriced brunch cam
e with strings. The patrons pretended it was okay to pay twenty-one dollars for three waffles and a side of fruit, and Dylan pretended she didn’t resent them.

  “You were a saint to put up with that little devil.” A voice wound its way into her ears. She looked to her left and saw that it belonged to the male half of the mimosa couple. He was now alone in the booth—Mrs. Mimosa must be in the bathroom, the champagne finally hitting her. She’d downed the third glass immediately, as Dylan had known she would. It had become an occupational hazard to notice details about the people she served. And she could tell Mrs. Mimosa was looking to get drunk by how fast she’d drunk the first one—even before she’d consumed a single bite of her crab cake Benedict. By how she’d looked expectantly toward Dylan when she’d drained her second flute, as if she’d barely wanted to take a breath before having a third. By the way her plump lips eased out of their frown with each sip. There was something sad in her eyes, and Dylan sensed the alcohol was helping her forget.

  Dylan could feel a tense energy between Mr. and Mrs. Mimosa. They’d barely spoken two words to each other since they’d sat down, and whenever Dylan came to the table, it was only Mr. Mimosa’s voice she heard, ordering for both of them, asking for more salt, or now, talking to her about that unruly kid. She wondered if they were in the middle of an argument, or worse, if they were just at that point in their marriage where they didn’t enjoy each other’s company at all.