DECEPTION HOTEL: A Wedding, an Affair, and Murder for Hire

by Barlow, Madison

  My heart raced as I hurried to Andrew, and forced a smile so he wouldn’t ask what was wrong. I didn’t think my nerves would be able to handle more lying right now, I was running on reserves as it was. I definitely needed to concentrate. Damn alcohol and its empty calories! Now was definitely one of those times I could do with a drink. No wonder men were so carefree all the time. They drank enough. They looked disgusting because of it, but maybe they were just too drunk often enough not to care. I shook my head at my ridiculous envy, and scanned the nearby groups for any sign of Gavin. It looked like he had disappeared though, and Andrew was trying to get my attention.

  Chapter Thirteen - Andrew

  The ceremony was over, and we filtered out for drinks in the bar. Claire had disappeared for a while but she rushed to my side now like something was on her heels. I looked down at her and she smiled a weird smile at me, and then looked pointedly at my drink. I wasn’t going to wait for her to say something about my drinking again after the night I’d had.

  “What are they doing in there?” I asked, trying to start up conversation. It felt like I was a stranger escorting her to her sister’s wedding and we didn’t get on particularly well; one of those situations where you’d rather stand in silence next to someone you’re not compatible with than be there without a date.

  “We’re just waiting for them to change the restaurant up again for the reception. It’s all happening in one room so they need to the time to do the décor.”

  “That seems like a lot of effort.”

  “Her wedding coordinator is quite good at it, apparently.”

  “She has a wedding coordinator? Why did we have to come down earlier then?”

  “Andrew, she’s my sister. How many times do I need to point that out to you before you understand the family obligation behind it. I couldn’t just leave her all alone, she wasn’t going to have mom drive up for the arrangements.”

  Her eyes were cold as she stared past me, probably wishing they would hurry up with the room.

  “That’s another thing I don’t get,” I carried on, despite her obvious irritation with me, “why did she invite your mom if neither of you talk to her? And I haven’t seen your father around.”

  She turned her face to me. She had a smooth mask of control, her features straight and delicate, betraying nothing. But her eyes were angry, swirling pools of dark green that warned of storms building.

  “My father has declined, it’s something that’s been a very touchy subject for Olivia, who had to walk down the aisle alone…”

  That was right, there were more things out of place, I hadn’t realized.

  “…and my mother was invited because she’s our mother. You ought to understand that one at least. Whether we talk to her or not is a different story, and it’s not like we ignore her.”

  “No, you only talk to her when she says something first. And then you make an effort to keep it as painfully short as possible.”

  Her lips pursed together and her eyes tightened for a fraction of a second. There was silence, and then she looked at the drink in my hand.

  “Must you drink?”

  “It’s just a vodka tonic, mostly tonic; it’s hardly going to knock me over. I’m not saying no to alcohol if someone else is paying.”

  She didn’t answer. A frustrated sigh escaped her lips, and then a waiter came to inform us the reception was ready. We were seated at a large table with three other couples. There was nothing left to be said, only playful banter ping-ponging across the plates, sometimes a comment at my expense to make the rest of them laugh, and the everlasting charade that we were as happy as any other couple out there.

  I laughed with them, ate, and pretended to listen to the toasts, not catching much besides the go-ahead to drink more champagne. My mind wasn’t lodged in the petty comments and the faces. It was racing around the whole of our marriage, sifting through what I knew of Claire, what I’d known before things got so… dead. I looked for anything I could do to fix us. Knowing she was my wife wasn’t enough if I didn’t feel like she was mine. Not anymore, and I realized with a shock that it hadn’t been for a long time. I was disgusted at myself for taking so long to understand that something needed to be done, that I was the one that had to do it.

  My head started feeling light from the champagne, and it was time to stop. The women were all waiting anxiously for the bouquet toss, even Claire, and it seemed stupid because she was already married. The reception had run dry, sort of, like a water-filled container with a crack in the bottom. It was beautifully filled to the brim, and then as time dragged on and gravity took its toll the contents just drained away.

  “I’m going to head on up,” I said to Claire, and she nodded, glancing at me sideways very quickly before her eyes shot back to the woman across from us who hadn’t stopped talking for the last ten minutes.

  I excused myself, though nobody heard, and moved my chair back.

  “Oh, Andrew,” she said when I turned, and I turned back to her eagerly, “I’m going out with the girls after Olivia and Harry leave for their honeymoon. I’ll be back later tonight.”

  My heart sank, she hadn’t called me back for any reason other than to inform me she was going to be even further away from me, but I nodded, and turned away like it didn’t matter.

  Chapter Fourteen - Claire

  I turned my head when I knew he was already walking away and watched the few steps he took before he disappeared through the double doors that lead to the lobby. He’d looked so defeated, I felt bad for the way I was treating him. He deserved more. But I couldn’t afford to let my walls down now, I couldn’t afford to let any of the rubble that I was fighting hard to hold back, tumble out. Not now that I was in front of all the guests, and Olivia was sitting in front next to Harry, looking more beautiful and happy than any bride I had ever seen.

  Calm, I had to keep calm. Smile, laugh, sip champagne, make a joke. I forced myself to listen to the conversation around me. It was so boring.

  My mind kept skipping back to the night before, to the feeling in my stomach like I’d swallowed a rock, to the hollow feeling in my chest like there was something missing, like I’d sacrificed something. I glanced over at my mother who was sitting two tables away, seated with people she didn’t know.

  Guilt shot through me as I looked at her, sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, subdued, staring into nothing. I wondered if should walk over to her, talk to her. But I shook my head. I wouldn’t. That night had punched me in the face, and I was pulled down into the black memory.

  “What’s this?” my dad came into the den where my mom and I were watching TV. Our favorite show was on, something about families and scandal and gossip. We loved these kinds of things, laughed at how ridiculous they were, how much they betrayed each other all the time when they claimed they loved each other.

  “I don’t know, dear,” my mom said absently, not taking her eyes off the screen.

  “Muriel,” my dad’s voice sounded so different that it made me look up to him. He was standing in the door with an envelope in his hand, and he had a strange look on his face. His skin had turned to a shade of grey and his hand was trembling slightly, I could see the envelope shake as he held it up for my mother to see.

  She turned her face too, eventually, when she realized he wasn’t going to go away. The atmosphere got a little heavier, a little darker, almost. My mother squinted, and then froze when she realized what my dad was holding up. The color drained from her face a little.

  “Oh, that’s nothing dear,” she said, her voice very thin as she tried to keep it light, and she stood up and walked over to my dad. He pulled it away when she wanted to take it from him.

  “I thought you broke it off,” he said softly.

  When she didn’t move, or answer, he shook the envelope.

  “You told me you broke it off!” he shouted, and my mother’s body jolted at the sudden volume. I felt panic surge through my body. I had never seen my dad so angry, never
seen my mother so scared.

  “Cliff, I—“

  “Five years, and I find out that you didn’t get rid of the bastard? You promised me it was just once!”

  “Cliff, I didn’t… it’s nothing. Sweetheart—“

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He was so angry he looked like he was going to explode, and my mother looked like she wished the earth would open up and swallow her. I sat on the couch, frozen in place, unable to take my eyes away from them, unwilling to believe what it was that I was hearing.

  My dad looked at me.

  “You think we’re this happy family?” he asked, his voice thunderous, “you think it's fun to laugh at the cheating bastards on that damn show of yours? Well, it’s ironic. Ask your mother what this is.”

  “Cliff, please. She doesn’t have to be part of this. She’s only sixteen.”

  “Ask her!” my father shouted.

  I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My father was scaring me, and I was worried about my mother somehow, even though I was pretty sure she was the one that had messed up. Really messed up.

  “What is it?” I asked, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

  Cliff, can’t we—“

  “I’ll tell you, if she won’t. It’s a plane ticket. To Texas. Do you know what’s in Texas, Claire?”

  “I shook my head.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what’s not in Texas. There’s no convention in Texas. There’s no business conferences in Texas. There’s nothing in Texas but him!”

  My mother had started crying. I was confused. My mother was supposed to go to Washington for work, she often did. Or at least I thought she did until my dad started shouting about it.

  “Five years, and your mother has been flying to Texas, the opposite direction, twice a month to sleep with a man that she had an affair with.”

  My ears started ringing, and there was very little I heard after that. I remember watching it all like a movie without sound, my father pacing back and forth, my mother frantically prancing after him, pleading in mute words that fell on a stone heart.

  She’d been having an affair for five years. My father found out that day. Everything shattered around me. Every picture in my mind of our happy family together fell apart in front of me.

  They fixed it somehow after that. Or not really. My dad didn’t leave her, like we all thought he would. He just told her to get rid of him, and forget about it. And she did. She stopped travelling. Everything went back to normal. Sort of. We all forgot about what she’d done, we all pretended everything was fine again. They were civil with each other, polite. Until finally, they weren’t civil anymore. They weren’t anything at all.

  I shook my head, hating that the wedding, last night, everything about this weekend had reminded about that. I didn’t want to remember that. I had worked successfully my whole life to forget that. My parents’ relationship had been killed, it didn’t die. And it lived forth in a shell, a mock version of what once was for years after that. Ten years. And now, here I was, staring at my mother, thinking I would talk to her? Never.

  Chapter Fifteen - Andrew

  I trudged up the steps, the heaviness of my heart pulling violently against the lightness of my head. I sat down on the bed, pulling the tie around my neck down a bit so I wouldn’t feel so choked. I had to do something, anything, that would change this all around. The further she slipped away from me, the more it drove me mad. I looked around the room.

  Her phone was lying on the dressing table.She must have forgotten to put it in her bag when she’d gotten ready. I picked it up, sitting down on the stool in front of the mirror, and flipped it open. A message she had been typing was open on the screen.

  I don’t know how to start, after all, things haven’t been exactly the way they should between us. But I just want you to hold me, and tell me it will be alright. That’s all I ever want, and no one seems to understand that, no one seems to see that behind this act I’m still just scared

  When had she typed this? Was it before I’d come in? When was she planning on sending it to me? I flipped the phone shut.

  There was a spark in my chest, something warm ignited, and slowly it spread through my body. There was still hope. Why hadn’t she said anything before, why couldn’t she just talk to me? She’d become so closed off, so impossibly collected that the only way to get through would have to come from her. I wished she were better at expressing herself. She used to be so comfortable around me, so quick so say what she really meant, so quick to throw herself into my arms. Where had it changed?

  I tried to think back, tried to find the place where her light had faded, where she’d closed down on me. Her parents had gotten divorced shortly after our marriage. It was one of the worst things for her, I could tell, but she wouldn’t show it to me, not in the way I saw sometimes when I caught her looking at me, her eyes full of question, full of fear that it would all just crumble beneath our feet. She wouldn’t show it to anyone. She just became more and more professional, more collected, more in control of her life, and everything around her. Her mother called often, and it would be long talks. Sometimes Claire cried when she hung up the phone, and at first she told me the things her parents laid on her. It made me so angry, sometimes I yelled at her, frustrated that she let them do that to her, that they dragged her down when it wasn’t her life to live, it was theirs. But she pushed everything around her into a straight line, made something neat of the chaos, and after a while she stopped telling me what they said, stopped giving me a reason to explode, directing it at her because her parents weren’t there for me to yell at. She started looking like was alright again, and had given me less reason to worry, less reason to console, no reason to feel like I was helpless, and couldn’t protect her. It had to be since then, I couldn’t remember her being anything but sunshine before that. That was when the weather changed, the storms started brewing, and it’d been raining ever since.

  It was like someone opened the curtains, and the sunlight streamed in. I could suddenly see what it had been all about. She had to be so strong, the youngest of them all, carrying them through the mistakes they’d made like she had none of her own problems to deal with. And she’d stopped turning to anyone who could ruin her happiness, who could control how her heart felt. She’d locked it away, so that nothing could tear her apart in any way, nothing could ever resemble the pain and regret she was forced to bear for someone else. And that meant me, because I was the closest to her heart, the biggest danger.

  I jumped up. I had to find her. I had to tell her I love her, and that I would be there for her, that somehow I understood. I grabbed the car keys and hurried out the door, down the stairs, two at a time, nearly slipping halfway down the second flight, and chuckling at myself for being such an idiot. I had been so blind, such a fool.

  “Where have the ladies gone, do you know?” I asked a man standing at the bar with a drink in his hand.

  “They’re in the bridal suite, helping Olivia pack the last of her things, the whole dramatic farewell, you know.”

  I sped down the corridor. The room door was open, and an excited babbling gushed through it, filled with the tingling sensation of excitement. They were cooing and yelping and laughing. I knocked on the door, but no one heard, so I stepped in.

  “Claire?” I asked, and Olivia looked up.

  “She’s not here, she said she’s headed out to Cole’s.”

  “Oh? I thought you were all going out?”

  There was a strained silence in the room.

  “No,” Olivia answered, her voice tight.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling out of place in the middle of so many women, all thinking so many things I was sure I wouldn’t understand. I backed out of the room and made my way back to the lobby.

  The drive to Cole’s was almost a waste of gas, but it was quicker than to run all the way. I parked in the parking lot, and sat in the car, trying to calm myself. I’d suddenly gotten very nervous, my stomach churning,
my breath coming quickly. How was it that I felt this nervous after five years of marriage as I had before I asked her out on our very first date? My palms were sweaty on the steering wheel, and the shirt that I had on suddenly felt like too much. I turned in the seat, and looked toward the door of the bar, my fate lying inside, the woman that could still, after so many years of promise, choose to accept or reject me.

  A young couple were standing against the wall, a few steps away. They were entangled in each other, her back against the wall and the bulk of his body blocking her from sight. Her hands were knotted in his hair, and her silver heels didn’t touch the floor. I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t people go somewhere private for these things anymore? It was like they had to do it out in public now, so people could see that they got some.

  Then he shifted his body, and a flash of mint green fluttered in the breeze.It was bright against the old stone wall, and it tugged at a memory, something dreadful that I needed to know. My breathing stalled in my chest, and I sat in the driver’s seat, twisted toward the back, frozen. I could hear the thumping of my heart grow louder and louder, as if it was rising up inside of me until it wasn’t in my chest anymore but hammering somewhere between my ears. I couldn’t breathe, it felt as if someone had pulled plastic over my mouth, and the hand that was holding the headrest on the passenger side gripped so tightly my knuckles turned white.

  It wasn’t her. She wasn’t standing there, this man all over her, her body pushing up against his. My body, my Claire pushing up against him. It was someone else with the same dress. It had to be.

  He pulled away, and looked into her eyes, smiling. She smiled back, and tipped her head to the side a little.

  It went quiet in my head.

  Chapter Sixteen - Claire

  I stopped outside the front door and pulled off my shoes. I didn’t want them clacking on the wooden floor. It wasn’t late, and I wouldn’t be bothering anyone, but somehow I felt like an intruder. It was ridiculous, I was paying for a space in this hotel. Well, Andrew was. And I was sneaking around like a criminal. I felt like one, too. But I shook that off. It had gone too far for me to be able to feel sorry for myself. I had done it. I had cheated. Was it an affair? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if I wanted all of this to come home with me. Maybe it was something I just needed to get out of my system, so that I wasn’t so damn vulnerable anymore. Something to push along our relationship, mine and Andrew’s, to something that would actually feel real again.