The Good Widow_A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  “Well—” I started to explain myself, but she cut me off, and I felt my confidence disappear into the air around us.

  “And don’t tell me that the next thing out of your mouth is that you have no plans to decorate the house. Because I know that’s your style when you’re not hosting Christmas brunch for the Moraleses.”

  She rolled the r extra hard as she pronounced the Morales name. Her accent always grew stronger when she was angry. It was her tell. I waited for her to speak again.

  “If the preparation that goes into the brunch is too much, I understand if you want to cancel. I can easily take it over. And no one will say a word.”

  Bullshit. We both knew she’d speed-dial her sister the minute I left her sight. There would be words. A lot of them. Mostly in Spanish. And I highly doubted they’d be kind.

  “I do want to host,” I said, but it came out sounding like I was begging for my job back.

  Isabella was right that I usually subscribed to a less-is-more school of thought when it came to decorating for the holidays. She’d once come over the day after Thanksgiving, mortified to discover our tree wasn’t up yet. Isabella treated holiday decor like it was an Olympic sport. She turned her home into a display every holiday, from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Easter, and even for the Fourth of July. Depending on the festivity, her house would be adorned with ghosts or scarecrows, bunnies or American flags. There would be matching dish towels next to the sink, festive serving dishes on the table, and handmade decorations she copied from Pinterest.

  Meanwhile, I’d ask James to drag out our fake tree the weekend before Christmas and would carefully sift through the broken ornaments (How did they break? They were sitting in a box all year!), trying to come up with enough to adequately fill the gaps in our artificial pine. But no matter how much I tried, there was always more emptiness than I was comfortable with.

  This year I had planned to do a little bit more—probably not Isabella Morales more, but more. But I also didn’t want to crowd the small space with unnecessary things like frosted pinecones and fake snow.

  “I think I should just host. Save you the trouble,” she said, ignoring my plea.

  “Isabella—” I said her name, then realized I had no idea what to say after it.

  “Yes?”

  “I appreciate your help. I do,” I said, pushing aside her judgments, already mentally ordering the most ornate Santa Claus I could find on Amazon, desperate to bridge the gap that always seemed to exist between us. Last year Beth had surprised me with a Mind the Gap T-shirt from her trip to the UK, and it always reminded me of Isabella. I wondered if I spent too much time trying not to slip through the cracks in our relationship. “There’s no doubt you know more than me when it comes decorating.” I paused, and she gave me a satisfied smile. “So if you think we should go with that tablecloth, I’ll trust you. Because I know how important the holidays are to you,” I said, reaching over and squeezing her arm, falling easily back into my typical daughter-in-law role. Agree with Isabella. Repeat.

  “Thank you,” she said, putting the tablecloth in the cart. “You probably think I’m overreacting about this . . .”

  I shook my head. Deny. Deny. Deny.

  “And maybe I am,” she continued. “Because what I’m really struggling with is the realization that I may never have a grandchild to enjoy it.”

  My hand flew off her arm. “We don’t know that for sure, Isabella,” I said, my voice faltering slightly. I caught the eye of the woman behind us in the aisle, who quickly focused on a placemat covered in snowmen, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard our exchange.

  “Oh, but you do know, don’t you?” she accused, her eyes steely.

  I realized later, looking back, that she had been waiting for that moment. To let me know that she knew. Had she held her tongue at Pottery Barn? Bitten her lip at Williams-Sonoma? Was she being patient and calculated, making sure we had the perfect tablecloth picked out before she punched me in the gut?

  But the real question was: How long had she known? And why had James told her?

  CHAPTER TEN

  DYLAN—BEFORE

  Dylan rubbed her hands over her bare arms, feeling a chill as soon as she stepped out of the cab.

  James noticed her hugging her arms to her chest. “Let’s get you inside and on the dance floor. That will warm you up. I can’t wait to see you move in that dress.” James looked her over, then offered his hand with so much authority that Dylan didn’t even question him as he tugged her arm to join the crowd of bodies moving to the music. She’d never been much of a dancer, but she felt her hips obliging with ease and swinging to the beat, as if on autopilot.

  James put his arms around Dylan’s waist and pulled her into him so she was grinding on his thigh. He closed his eyes and moved his body in time with the song. Dylan couldn’t believe the drastic change in him since they’d arrived. He’d been quiet on the ride over, but then he’d inched forward in the backseat of their cab when it pulled into the parking lot. And the second he opened the door of the bar for her and heard the music, every muscle in his neck and face seemed to relax.

  He’d brought her to his favorite bar, hidden away in a Hispanic neighborhood in a corner of Santa Ana. She’d never danced to traditional Mexican music or witnessed the enthusiasm, no, the joy that it seemed to bring to the people listening to it. Her only exposure to anything like this was an awkward moment with a mariachi band at a bad chain restaurant, their horns blaring as her father tried to swallow the last of his enchilada combo plate that her mother had chastised him for ordering because it was too expensive. Dylan’s parents had spent a huge chunk of her childhood discussing the cost of things. What a rip-off! It’s two dollars less at Walmart! Did you use the coupon I gave you? It always left her feeling embarrassed and a little bit exhausted.

  But this wasn’t a chain restaurant in Phoenix with stale tortilla chips submerged in bland salsa. This was a hole-in-the-wall in a neighborhood even her roommates, who didn’t have super high standards when it came to places to drink, wouldn’t be caught dead in. But they’re missing out, she thought as James spun her around. She was dizzy, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t understand a word the band was singing, but it was now her favorite song. She had never met the Hispanic couple dancing beside them, but she wanted to be their new best friends. Maybe they’d teach Dylan culture, something she often feared she lacked after growing up in a house that was literally whitewashed—her mother’s decorating style bringing new meaning to the word neutral.

  Dylan had always felt bland—her blonde locks blending into her alabaster skin. A mean girl in middle school had once said Dylan was so plain she faded into the walls. But not when she was with James. He made her feel colorful. And sometimes she could almost pretend that this was their life. That he didn’t belong to someone else. That she hadn’t become the type of person who danced with another woman’s husband in a dark bar so far off the beaten path that no one would ever find her.

  Several songs later, James said he wanted a margarita. Dylan wished she liked alcohol, but she couldn’t stand the taste, having gotten drunk once and only once in high school, her hangover so terrible the next day she vowed to never drink again. And she hadn’t. But she knew the buzz would help blunt the guilt she felt. Because she did feel terrible shame about the affair—she wasn’t a monster! Her conscience kept her up more nights than she’d ever admit. Her tossing and turning would often wake her fiancé, Nick, who would reach his large hand to her bare thigh to calm her, falling back asleep with his grip around her leg tight. Then she’d will her thoughts about James to be quiet, lying so still that it was almost like she wasn’t there.

  She glanced at her phone as the bartender handed a margarita rimmed with salt to James and they said something to each other in Spanish. Dylan thought she caught the words delicious and beautiful, but she couldn’t be sure. She was a long way from the high school Spanish she’d waded through.

  Nick was on a seventy-two-h
our shift, so she was surprised to see one missed call and a text from him. He worked in a busy fire station in Long Beach and would often take several calls a night, usually coming home exhausted. Sometimes he’d tell her stories that made her heart hurt—a child who had been burned, a mother who had suffered a major heart attack and left her family behind, the homeless man who hadn’t bothered to get off the train tracks. He described the situations with such detachment, it was like he was reading the newspaper.

  Yet he had no trouble connecting with his buddies at work, who adored him, insisting he use his athletic prowess to be pitcher on their many slow-pitch softball teams, and use the culinary skills he’d gleaned from his mother to win the chili cook-off for their firehouse each year. Nick was a guy who could be counted on. But Dylan wondered where he stored the anger and sadness—the helplessness he witnessed each day. Because she knew there was only so much one person could handle, and a small part of her often worried he might be close to bursting. But maybe he was like an earthquake—there would be no way of knowing it was coming until it was already there.

  James planted a wet kiss on Dylan’s thin lips and smiled. “You really held your own out there, for a white girl.”

  Perhaps sensing it bothered her, James liked to tease Dylan about her lack of culture. He was Costa Rican and had rich olive skin and green eyes that looked like a beautiful piece of sea glass. Even though he’d grown up in Irvine, California, and had visited Central America only once, when he was twelve years old, he wore his heritage like a medal of honor and talked about it and his mother constantly. She couldn’t connect with how James felt about his heritage, feeling no real roots of her own. But now she could see his intense pride in the way he danced, in his body language as he talked to the bartender, in the smile that hadn’t left his lips since they’d arrived.

  She smiled. “I’m good like that.” She leaned in and kissed him, relieved she didn’t have to look over her shoulder here. The couple they had been dancing with earlier had assumed they were just like them—out on a date night. “Let’s get out of here—we’re getting a hotel tonight, right?”

  James’s eyes flickered, and Dylan’s heart sank. She knew that look. “I thought we were spending the night together.” She tried to keep the pout out of her voice. He hadn’t spent the night with her the last time either. And it wasn’t like she saw him very often. It was only one, maybe two times a month. They had it down. James would tell his wife he was going to be traveling one night longer than he actually was. Then she’d pick him up at the airport and they’d stay at a hotel James would book—always making sure it coincided with one of Nick’s seventy-two-hour shifts at the station. The next morning, James would go home as if he’d just arrived back in town. Dylan marked her mental calendar each time they planned an overnight date and then counted down like a child to Christmas. And now he was going home again. To his real life. The one where she didn’t belong.

  “Babe, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Dylan stood up. She didn’t know many things for sure, but she knew when a man was becoming bored. So she played the only card she had, the ace she held close. “Good night, James,” she said with a tight smile, and started to fight her way through the crowd to the door.

  “Dylan! Wait!” She ignored his calls and continued swiftly toward the exit. She’d made it outside and was searching her phone for the Uber app when he grabbed her arm. “Stop being childish. You can’t just walk out like that.”

  “Watch me,” she shot back. In general she was a calm person, but James always made her feel out of control.

  “What do you want from me? I’m sorry, but I have to go home. I wish things were different, but they’re not. I thought we were on the same page about all this.”

  All this?

  “Maybe I don’t like that page anymore.” Dylan sighed. She hated feeling like an afterthought. They had to mean something. Because if they didn’t—then what did that say about her? She wanted, no, she needed him to care enough that the risks they were both taking seemed worth it. All this was the fabric of their lives, and if it was stripped away, they might both end up with nothing.

  “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.” She bit her lip. Losing James would crush her. She wasn’t ready to let him go. And she was taking a gamble by threatening it. But she knew there was one thing James could not handle: losing on someone else’s terms.

  His eyes darkened. “Come on. Don’t say that.” He looked at his phone and shook his head. “I really can’t stay, boo.”

  A smile crept to Dylan’s lips. “It’s shameful that a thirty-five-year-old man would use that word.”

  “Okay, then I’ll use my special name for you,” he said, pushing the hair away from her eyes. “I promise you, belleza, I would stay if I could. What if I took you away somewhere? Just the two of us? We’d have to wait a few months, but I could swing maybe four or five days.” James kissed the top of her head softly. And she felt all the anger disappear from her body. She loved when he called her beautiful in Spanish, the one time she truly felt like she was the only woman in his life. And now he was offering to give himself to her for multiple days.

  Dylan nodded into his chest. They’d never been together for more than eighteen hours straight. She was desperate to find out what happened in hour nineteen. A small tear escaped from her eye onto his black shirt, which was hot and slightly damp from sweating inside the bar. She wanted to know more. About him. About herself. About all this that they did together.

  Her heart rose and fell as she waited for him to speak.

  “I’m going to take you to Maui.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DYLAN—BEFORE

  Dylan pushed her front door open and flipped on the lights as she walked inside.

  “Where have you been?”

  Dylan jumped at the sound of Nick’s voice. “You scared the shit out of me! What are you doing here?” She put her purse on the kitchen counter and poured herself a glass of water. She needed to buy some time, calm down. She’d worried about this moment for so long, him finding out about the affair. That had to be why he was here. He knew.

  “I texted you and called. I was worried. Briana let me in and said I could wait.” He pointed to her roommate’s closed bedroom door.

  Thanks a lot, Briana. That girl had never liked her.

  Dylan’s heart was beating so fast she was sure Nick could see it. He was supposed to be at the station. She had gotten his calls and texts, but she knew if she responded, he’d have questions. He always had so many questions: Where was she? Who was she with? What was she wearing?

  “I’m sorry, my battery died.” She said the first thing that came to mind, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to prove it.

  “You look pretty.”

  She relaxed slightly. Maybe he wasn’t suspicious. Maybe he simply got off his shift early and came over to surprise her. She had been listening to a talk radio show a while back—the host had asserted that cheaters often read things into their partner’s behavior because they felt guilty. Maybe that was all this was.

  “Thanks.” Dylan walked over and perched on the edge of the couch, hoping the perfume she sprayed in the cab was masking the smell of stale cigarettes from the bar. It had become a habit to carry a tiny bottle of Ralph Lauren Romance and a toothbrush and toothpaste with her so she could clean herself up before she went back to her real life. Just in case.

  Nick reached out and fingered her dress made from cotton so soft that James couldn’t stop touching it earlier. She’d found it on the 75-percent-off rack at Macy’s. And when she’d surveyed herself in the dressing room mirror, she’d thought of James, not Nick. She knew his wife could afford much nicer clothes. And she hoped she looked sexy, not cheap. She had turned so she could see the way the fabric grabbed her curves. Would James like it? Would this little black dress be enough to keep him interested?

  “Why don’t you get all dolled up like that for me?” Nick asked.

  So he wa
sn’t going to let it go.

  “I do, babe,” Dylan said sweetly. “But I thought you liked it better when I didn’t have anything on at all.” She stroked his arm and smiled. Maybe they could take this to her bedroom and he’d forget. She tugged on his arm to get him to stand up, but he didn’t move.

  Silently, he gave her a once-over. He started with her face, taking in her minimal makeup, just mascara; her nails (she was in desperate need of a manicure, but couldn’t afford one this week); and her slightly scuffed strappy wedges that he’d seen dozens of times before. She knew she looked good, but not too good. She was always careful not to try too hard with James. She didn’t want to reek of desperation. She waited for Nick to speak. She wasn’t going to say more until he did.

  “So where were you?”

  Keep it simple, Dylan. Stick to the plan.

  “I went out with my old friend Katie.” Lie number two. But it was the alibi she’d come up with in case she ever needed to explain herself. For the first few months, she’d been careless. But then she’d heard that radio show. Someone had called in and said cheaters don’t get caught if they’re smart. And one of the examples was to have a cover story. So Dylan had asked her childhood friend, Katie, who had recently moved from Phoenix to Orange County, if she’d cover for her if it ever came to it. “But it won’t,” Dylan had said, laughing. “Don’t worry.”

  Even though Katie had said she was fine with it, Dylan had thought she could hear hesitation in her friend’s voice. She was married with two young children. Dylan wondered if she was silently judging her or if Dylan was projecting because she constantly judged herself. She hated to put Katie in this position. But she didn’t have any other options. Nick knew the few friends she had—most of them from the restaurant—and her other roommates, Grace and Natalie. She knew Nick was resourceful and could follow up with any of them if he were suspicious. But he’d never met Katie and had no way to contact her. Not that he would. She’d given him no reason not to trust her. That he knew of.