The Good Widow_A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  Her mind was spinning. She needed to calm down. He didn’t know anything.

  “Come here,” he said, pulling her down on his lap. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too,” Dylan said, using the back of her hand to wipe away any remaining trace of James’s lips before nuzzling Nick. Another lie. Tonight, she hadn’t missed him. She’d been too intoxicated by James. And once he said he’d take her away for a vacation, she could think of nothing else. That was big. And it had to mean something. The more he risked, the more secure Dylan felt.

  “Hey, Dyl?” Nick said, kissing her neck.

  “Yeah?” Dylan answered, her skin tingling from his touch. She had wanted James so badly tonight, and there hadn’t been anywhere to go. They’d once done it in the back of his car, and she’d felt so cheap afterward that she vowed never to do that again. But now, sitting on Nick’s lap as she felt him get aroused, she was getting aroused too. Would it be the worst thing if she had sex with Nick and imagined James?

  “Let’s invite Katie out to dinner. I’d really love to meet her.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JACKS—AFTER

  I have a new appreciation for people who use public transportation.

  The city bus lurches forward, and I reach for the pole, trying not to think about the millions of tiny germs that speckle the metal. The people those germs came from. What they may have been into. I draw in a deep breath and push the frantic thoughts from my mind. This happens a lot since James died. Being caught up in my own crazy mind. Part of me hates it. But there’s another part that finds comfort in being scared. Like my fear is the only thing that makes sense anymore.

  The bus stops again, and several people make their way on and off. The smell of an egg salad sandwich hits me hard as I push my way toward the back to make room for the new passengers and end up face-to-face with a woman bouncing a baby girl on her lap. The scent seems to weave in and out of my nostrils like a snake. Each time I graduate from a short, shallow breath—which reduces the putrid odor—to a deeper one, the smell wades back, making me wonder if I had imagined its absence.

  I still can’t bring myself to drive. I tried again this morning, feeling overwhelmed after I realized I’d have to take three different buses to get to Irvine. I held my car keys, turning the fob over and over in my palm, trying not to let my anxiety win. But now, as I reach into my purse and squeeze out a large gob of hand sanitizer, rubbing the solution into every crease in my fingers, I understand that for now, the anxiety is victorious.

  It takes me a moment to get my bearings when I step off bus number three. I punch in Nick’s address on my phone and watch as the map opens up on the screen. I begin to follow the squiggly line, the dot moving as I edge forward. If I stare at that dot, I’ll keep moving. Closer to Nick. And Nick will help me find answers.

  Beth’s face replaces the map a second later, her wry smile staring at me. She’s called every hour or so since our fight yesterday. She wants to know if I’m okay. To make sure I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m not sure of either answer, so I hit “Ignore” and fire off a text telling her that I need some space. I don’t mention where I’m going. Or what I’m going to do when I get there. My breath quickens as the blue dot inches closer to the checkered flag.

  My phone call to Nick letting him know I was coming had been short and stilted. It was my fault. I was being cryptic because I wanted to be face-to-face when I told him I was ready to go to Maui. I also wanted to look into his eyes and see what was really there. If fear had begun to rule his life too. If we really were in this together.

  Two blocks later I find myself staring up at the kind of shiny high-rise condo building that’s commonplace in Irvine. I walk through the lobby, passing a dry cleaner and a Peet’s Coffee on my way to the elevator. I try not to think about the fact that she had lived here too. That she still may have unclaimed clothes wrapped in plastic inside Nice n’ Clean.

  Nick answers the door quickly, almost as if he’s been standing on the other side, waiting.

  “Hey,” I offer, not sure what the right emotion is for this moment.

  He smiles, and it puts me at ease. “I’m so glad you came.”

  The condo is immaculate—did he just clean, or does he always keep his home this orderly? I notice it’s decorated in mostly cool grays and whites with a touch of color—a red throw pillow on the couch and yellow pots and pans hanging in the kitchen. I glance back at him as I take in the large space; I didn’t expect such modern, minimalist tastes from the buff-looking firefighter whose calloused hand scratched mine when he shook it. I instantly wonder about Dylan—had the design choices been hers?

  “Don’t tell the guys at the station, but I have a serious love for decor,” he jokes, as if reading my mind. “The cheap kind, that is—it’s almost all from Ikea.” He knocks his knuckles on a white bookshelf. “Looks good now, but what a bitch to put together. I’m not sure the hours of sweat and frustration were worth the money I saved.”

  “Did Dylan help?” I ask, her name sounding strange when I say it.

  “No,” he says. “Decorating wasn’t her thing.”

  “What was her thing, then?” Stealing other people’s husbands?

  I don’t say the last part, but it’s clear I’m not really asking what her hobbies were. That I don’t really care. I didn’t mean for things to start out like this. I planned to have a civilized conversation with Nick. But I didn’t think through what being here was going to do to me. How, standing in front of a sleek black couch and a simple coffee table, I can only picture her—here, alive, lying back against the pillows and laughing. Rage swells up inside me.

  Nick’s eyes are gentle. “Jacqueline.”

  “Jacks. It’s Jacks,” I stutter. My mom’s steely eyes flash to mind, the sharp shrill of her voice when she’d call me by my full name as a child—only when she was as angry as I felt right now. But I shouldn’t take it out on him, even if he is the closest to Dylan I’ll ever get.

  “Fine. Tell me. Was it knitting? Pilates? Scrapbooking? Is there an album somewhere with pictures of her and James with polka-dot borders and cute stickers that say things like against all odds and more than a feeling?” My voice cracks.

  “Jacks. I get that you’re mad and confused and sad. I’m all of those things too.” He motions toward the couch, but I shake my head, instead taking a seat on a barstool in the kitchen. Dylan’s little pixie ass seems much less likely to have perched up there.

  “I hadn’t thought about what being here was going to feel like. Stupid, right?”

  “No, not at all. I should have suggested Peet’s.”

  “She’d have been there too. She’s everywhere.”

  Nick chews on his lower lip, no doubt having his own memories. And suddenly I feel terrible about my bratty outburst. “I’m sorry for being a jerk,” I say, and smile sincerely.

  He returns my smile. “It’s okay. This is all really hard.”

  Nick pours me a glass of water and sets it in front of me. “If it helps, remember she didn’t live here. She rented a room in the condo downstairs with a couple of roommates.”

  I can see the deep circles under his eyes. “You aren’t sleeping,” I say.

  “And you are?” He raises his eyebrow.

  I shake my head. “No, not well. Even when I take a pill, which most nights I have to.”

  “Every time I lay my head down on my pillow, I think of the crash. I see horrific car accidents every day in my line of work. To think that Dylan went through that . . .” He trails off.

  “I know. Me too.” It’s the worst part, the movie I’ve made in my head of what I think the Jeep looked like when it exploded. “I go back and forth between being pissed off at James and worried that he suffered. I hate it.”

  “That’s something I’ve thought a lot about. That going to Maui could help us not be so damn pissed off anymore. Because there’s nothing worse, right, than trying to grieve a death when you are so mad at the person.
You know I smashed a picture she bought for me? Flung it against the wall and watched as shards of glass sprayed everywhere. It took me forever to clean up. I’m still cutting myself on the pieces I missed.” He looks over to the corner of the living room where it must have happened.

  “I got irrationally mad at the creators of sympathy cards,” I offer, shaking my head at the memory. “I didn’t even tell my sister, Beth, this, but I actually burned some of them on the flame from the gas stove. I set off the smoke detector.”

  We laugh quietly.

  I take a drink of my water, trying to imagine a day when I’m not pissed off at James. For dying. For dying with a woman other than me. For fighting with me before he left. For taking the board shorts from our honeymoon on their clandestine vacation. For not knowing how to drive better on a dangerous road. For driving on a dangerous road in the first place. For marrying me. For cheating on me. So many things. And sure, there’s a possibility that if I go to Maui with Nick, I could stand on a beach and close my eyes and meditate and try to let go of that anger. But there’s one thing I worry about: that I’ll never stop being mad at myself.

  “I read a lot about grieving when I’m up in the middle of the night,” he says, and I tell him I’ve done the same thing. That I’m an obsessive Googler—particularly between the hours of one and three in the morning.

  “There was an article about a man who lost his wife when she was traveling abroad with her friend. Their hotel had a terrible fire . . .” He shakes his head. “And this guy, he went there. To Spain, I think it was. To the place where the hotel had burned down. And it helped him say good-bye.”

  “What are you saying? That you want to go to where they crashed?”

  Nick walks over to the window, turning his back to me. “No, I’m not sure I could do that—it would be so hard.” His voice breaks. “I think I would go to Maui and follow my instincts. See where my heart takes me. Where she takes me.”

  I try to imagine myself standing at the place where the accident happened, looking over the edge. I found Google images of the road to Hana. I saw the winding roads, the sharp edges of the cliffs, the lava rocks jutting out from the ocean. But I could click the little x in the upper-right corner of my computer screen whenever I’d seen enough. Could I go there in person? I’m not sure.

  Nick continues. “I think that man being able to go to the location of the hotel takes a strength I’m not sure I have. Going to the crash site would be something I’d want to decide once I was there. If it doesn’t feel right, I won’t go.”

  “Is this something people actually get over?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure. But don’t you think we should at least try?”

  “I don’t know.” Forget the accident scene; I’m suddenly not sure I have the strength to step foot on Maui soil.

  Nick walks around me, grabbing a stack of papers out of a drawer. “I think these will help.” He turns them toward me, and I can make out James’s email address at the top.

  “Are those the emails they wrote to each other?”

  He nods.

  “You think reading emails between my husband and his lover is going to help me?”

  “No. I think you’ll feel worse at first. I think they could crush you all over again. But I think that’s a good thing.”

  I start to interrupt him.

  “Please, Jacks, just hear me out.”

  I close my mouth.

  “I think you’ll have the same reaction I did. You’ll read these, and it will be like opening Pandora’s box. Because they’re like a teaser. They seem to be from the beginning of whatever it was they were doing. And then they just stop. And you’re left wanting more. And also hopeful.”

  “Hopeful?”

  “This is going to sound pathetic. But based on these, it could have just been a fling. They never say love. They never get deep. So maybe it wasn’t serious at all. And maybe that’s what I’ll find out if I go. If we go.”

  “But what if the opposite happens—if you find out they were in love?”

  “That’s exactly why I need you there with me, Jacks. Because I’m not sure I could go through that realization alone.” He stops and holds my gaze. “I was hoping that was why you came here today. Because you’d decided to go.”

  I pick at my fingernail. Because that is why I came here. But now, sitting here on his stark white barstool, drinking out of a beveled glass she might have once pressed to her lips too, I’m not so sure.

  “But I’ll also understand if you came here to tell me no. I would never want you to do something you’re not ready for. If you would rather not know, I’ll respect your decision.”

  But the thing is, despite my fears, I do want to know more. Nick is saying all the things I’d been thinking long before he showed up on my doorstep. I’ll take the emails, and I’ll read them. I’ll probably be up all night going through them. But there’s something I’m not sure I can discover unless I go to Hawaii. Had it been the old James, the one I’d fallen in love with, who’d taken her there?

  I look out the kitchen window at the Irvine skyline and watch a plane descend, slow and steady, into John Wayne Airport. “Give me twenty-four hours to take care of a few things,” I say.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DYLAN—BEFORE

  Dylan, Dylly, Dyl, D,

  What will my secret nickname be for you? I think it should be belleza, which means beautiful in Spanish. Because everything about you is—especially those eyes. God, I can’t stop thinking about those vibrant blue gems. They belong in a painting, or on a doll; they’re almost ethereal. I know how I must sound, but there’s something about you that makes me into a guy who would describe a woman like that. A girl who consumes me, who makes me throw caution to the wind. Who makes me not care what happens next as long as it’s happening beside you.

  James,

  You’re the one with the eyes. So green. I’m not a master of words like you. I could never describe how they jump out at me when I see them (in a good way), but they are gorgeous. Just like you.

  Belleza,

  I miss you. It’s killing me that I had to cancel on you this week. I’m sorry. I will try again soon. I know it’s been a long time. But I promise to make it up to you.

  Belleza,

  Did you get my texts today? I’m sorry. You don’t deserve to be kept waiting. It’s just hard to get away after I’m already gone so much. You know?

  James,

  I did get your texts, but wanted to think. Maybe it’s just too much. Too hard. Maybe we should stop.

  Belleza,

  Don’t say that. Let me take you out tomorrow night. I’ll figure it out. But I promise you I’ll make it happen. It’s this Mexican place that’s way out of the way and has the best margaritas you’ve ever had. Please say yes.

  James,

  God, why is it always so hard to say no to you? Of course I’ll go—and I’ll wear that dress . . .

  Belleza,

  I thought about you all night. How much I can’t wait for our trip to Maui. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before—going away on vacation together! I’ve decided I’ll tell her I’m going on a work trip. Kansas or somewhere lame like that. LOL. Not that she cares where I’m going anyway. And don’t stress—I’ll take care of everything. Just bring your skimpiest suit and those eyes as payment. xo

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JACKS—AFTER

  I glance sideways at Nick as he stares out the window, the Pacific Ocean and coastline disappearing behind the fluffy white clouds as we ascend. When he arrived in a cab to take us to LAX this morning, he looked different—less I’m a biker dude and more I’m a biker dude going on a job interview. He’d shaved, a small cut on his chin showing where he’d nicked himself. His dark wavy hair was neatly combed and still wet from the shower. Gone was his leather jacket, replaced with a chocolate-brown blazer. Only his worn leather cowboy boots seemed to have made the cut. I shift awkwardly in my pale-green sundress, wishing I’d worn
something less I’m going on a tropical vacation! and more I’m a grieving widow looking for answers.

  “You okay?” He turns toward me, opening and closing the safety instruction card while never bothering to look at it.

  For a moment, the timing of his question makes me wonder if I’ve said my thoughts out loud. “Yes, are you?” I counter, glancing at the card in his lap, the word Emergency in bold red letters, a picture of a woman with a yellow oxygen mask over her face below it.

  “Just nervous, I guess,” he says, running his hand through his thick hair.

  “Hate to fly?”

  He gives me a confused look, then realizes I’m looking at the safety instructions he’s holding and returns them to the seat pocket in front of him. “No. About the trip.”

  “You seemed so confident yesterday,” I say, then backpedal after I see the hurt look in his eyes. “Sorry. I know this is a roller coaster. And now it’s about to get very real.”

  He turns toward me, his face so close I can smell the coffee on his breath. “I’m just scared.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “She was going to be my future,” he says quietly. “I don’t know who I am without her.” He pauses when the flight attendant stops next to us with a drink cart. We both shake our heads no when she asks if we’d like a beverage. “I bought these matching T-shirts for us once. Mine said I’m hers with one of those arrows so if she stood next to me . . .” He doesn’t finish his thought, and I say that I’ve seen them. He finally continues. “And hers said—”

  “I’m his,” I offer.

  “Yeah.” He gives me a heartbreaking smile. Like one of those smiles that makes the person look so sad you wish there were another word for that facial expression. “And we wore them to run errands. I think we went to Home Depot and got the car washed. Things like that. And we’d laugh to ourselves when people would raise their eyebrows like, ‘Who are those people?’ And I just remember thinking that it doesn’t get better than this. To be with someone who got me. Who would wear those ridiculous T-shirts.”