Blue Midnight (Blue Mountain Book 1)

by Tess Thompson

  I put my arm around his waist, trying with all my might to put one foot in front of the other without falling. “I should probably say goodbye to Jackson.” Again, the slurring, but Kevan seemed to understand me anyway.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here tomorrow,” said Kevan, opening the door for me.

  “Did I pay?”

  “I took care of it.”

  At that moment, my stomach lurched. I felt my dinner and all that vodka wanting to escape. I broke away from him, searching desperately for a place to be sick. I found it in the nearest bush.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE NEXT MORNING I woke up in my clothes, damp with sweat, holding Belinda Bear to my chest. My teeth wore sweaters. My tongue stuck to the roof of my dry mouth. My head pounded like someone bounced one of those small rubber balls around an empty room. I sat on the side of the bed, burying my face in my hands. My stomach turned. Was I going to vomit? The night before all came rushing back. Kevan. Vomiting in the bush. Holding onto his arm in a death grip as he walked me back to my room.

  My room. Had I let him come up? Oh, God, I had. I’d given him the key, and he’d opened the door for me. He’d taken off my sandals and put me into bed and brought me a glass of water. I remembered his hands as they pulled the cover up and over me. I’d tried to tell him about the pain reliever I kept in my purse but I couldn’t get the words out so I merely pointed with a shaking hand.

  “Aspirin? In your purse?” he asked.

  I nodded, groaning as the room swirled. “I’m so dizzy,” I whispered.

  “Let’s get a little more water in you, okay?” Back by my side, he perched on the side of the bed, holding my purse. He rummaged through, pulling out loose tampons, lipstick, a sugar-free lollipop from the last time I took the girls to the pediatrician, my wallet, my phone, and then finally a bottle of pain reliever. He shook two into his hand and helped me sit up so I could swallow them. “Drink all of this water, okay?”

  I did so. The water tasted better than anything I’d ever tasted in my life. “I think I’m dying,” I said. But the spinning lessened after the water. I focused on his face. I no longer saw double. Apparently vomiting up all that vodka was a good thing.

  He smiled, gently, in a way that reached his eyes—blue pools of kindness. “You’re not dying but you’re going to have one nasty hangover.”

  “I don’t know what happened. One minute I was fine and the next…” I trailed off and moaned again, putting my arm over my eyes. “Martinis are the devil.”

  “Hang on.” I felt rather than saw him get up from the bed. He was back a minute later with a cool, wet washcloth. He placed it over my eyes.

  “That feels good,” I said.

  He took one of my hands and brushed his fingers against my palm and then up the inside of my arm. “Just relax. You’ll fall asleep in a minute.”

  “Your fingers are not the devil,” I whispered. “Oh, I need BB.”

  “BB?”

  “Belinda Bear. She’s on the desk.”

  “Oh, I see.” He chuckled and got up from the bed, then placed her in my arms.

  “I promised Clementine I would keep her close,” I said.

  “Good mommy.”

  I must have fallen asleep shortly thereafter. Or passed out, I suppose would be the better term. I had no idea when Kevan left. Hopefully before I drooled into the pillow.

  Now, in the stark light of the morning, I groaned. My clothes, soaked with sweat, clung to my skin. Even poor Belinda Bear was wet. “Sorry I sweated all over you, honey,” I whispered. What was I thinking last night? Three drinks? Talking with a man I didn’t know? Letting him into my room? I could have been raped or murdered or both. My daughters needed me. I couldn’t get murdered in small town Idaho and leave them to be raised by Michael and his puerile wife.

  My thoughts tumbled about in my hungover, shamed state. This whole trip had been a terrible idea. Finn probably didn’t even live here anymore. No one would know him. Even if he did, he most likely wouldn’t remember me. I turned the anger from myself to my sister. This was all her fault. I should never have let her talk me into something so foolish. I didn’t do foolish things. I was a mother, not some teenager looking for a hot romance. I would go home today. That’s all there was to it. Go home and figure out what in heaven’s name I was going to do with the rest of my life. My sister was right about one thing. I needed a job—a real job with grownups where I could learn to do something useful besides drive carpool in my minivan.

  And there was Kevan. Kevan. I didn’t even know his last name. We’d had an extraordinary moment under the sliver of moon. But what exactly it was, I couldn’t name. Attraction? Yes, at least on my part. I sighed. The whole thing felt like a dream.

  Leaving Belinda Bear on the bed, I avoided looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, knowing I would look like a celebrity in their arrest photo: makeup smeared down my face, bloodshot eyes, hair that looked like it had been through a blender. I ran the shower hot and got in, letting water run over my head and down my back until my skin was red. For some reason, my thoughts turned to the day Michael announced he wanted a divorce.

  Yes, he announced it, as was the way with attorneys (they announce instead of talk), on a day like so many others. It was early May and I’d spent the afternoon taking the girls to ballet and soccer and then supervised homework while I made dinner. It was Tuesday—Taco Night. Clementine was six then; she loved Taco Night. The excitement over Taco Night, in capitals on the weekly schedule I hung on the refrigerator, remained undiminished no matter how many times we had it.

  Clementine had little homework but Lola was a fourth grader that year and the schoolwork was challenging for both of us. Her teacher had described it on Curriculum Night as the beginning of preparation for middle school, which seemed ridiculous given that it was two years away. But who was I to question? If the experts told us something, I wasn’t one to argue. Lola and I hunkered down to do the work. There was not an extra credit project she didn’t immediately seize upon, all of which seemed to involve particular talent with a glue gun.

  On the day my world turned sideways, the project was to build an imaginary town using construction materials of your own liking. Lola chose to use nothing but sugar cubes, frozen treat sticks, construction paper, and glue. The entire thing had cost me a trip to the craft store and almost thirty dollars. But that was still in the time I didn’t have to worry about money. I thought nothing of it. We were affluent. The days of scrimping and counting every dollar spent were long in my past. This is the way when one marries an attorney who becomes a partner in a prestigious law firm before the age of thirty-two.

  We ate in the dining room most nights; it was my rule that we all sat down together as a family unless Michael was travelling, which was more and more lately. I realized later that he wasn’t actually travelling, unless you count staying at your girlfriend’s condo in Seattle as a trip.

  But this night Michael was home by six. He went straight to the liquor cabinet and poured a large glass of whiskey, which surprised me. Usually he looked at me cockeyed if I’d had wine before he arrived home. He didn’t speak much at dinner but I didn’t think anything of it. The girls chattered away about their day, especially Lola, who described in detail her imaginary town. Michael appeared to be listening, nodding his head occasionally or making a benevolent remark but I knew he wasn’t really listening. I’d known him for over fourteen years by now; he hadn’t heard a word any of us said. Sadly, it didn’t bother me anymore. I’d accepted my fate years before this. There was no need to fuss and fight with him. He was the way he was. I wanted to keep my family intact. Therefore, compromises had to be made.

  After dinner, I scuttled the girls off to take their showers and told them to get ready for bed. I was bleary-eyed by then, as I was every night at this time, and would have much rather climbed into bed with a good book than finish my motherly tasks. But there were dishes to be done, and Clementine would want me to read to her and snuggle for a
while (I would try not to fall asleep). With a sigh, I got up from the table and began to clear the dishes. Michael stood as well. “I’m going to get the girls to bed for you tonight.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  This was strange—not the talking to me part—he often asked me for advice when he had a problem with one of the partners or if a member of his staff was underperforming. I advised on all things people-related. I suppose I should have felt flattered and included to be seen as a confidant in this way. Most wives complained they never heard anything about their husband’s work life. But, instead, I hated it. He always went into excruciating detail, which gave me the same sensation of a fork scraping against a plate. I often thought, how is it not possible for you to get this? Or, why the hell would you think that’s what they wanted? Or various other incredulous thoughts as the story unfolded. Not that I would ever have said anything. I stuffed. I’m a stuffer of anything unpleasant. Instead, I just poured another glass of wine and nodded my head sympathetically and gave insight where I could.

  So that night I poured a large glass of chardonnay before I started cleaning the kitchen. Lola’s sugar cubes were shedding, making the floor sticky. My floors could not be sticky while the household slept. No, this was not how I did things. So I fell to my knees, mopping the sticky spaces with a rag, humming softly to the radio. As I finished, Michael came into the kitchen, startling me so that I bumped my head on the table when I stood.

  With the dirty rag in one hand, I massaged the small of my back with the other and peered at him closely. He held a second glass of whiskey but didn’t appear drunk. In fact, he seemed tense, almost nervous. This was not his way. He was always quite sure of himself.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  He sat at the table, smoothing a bit of sugar away with his hand. It cascaded like snow onto the damp floor I’d just cleaned. “I can’t go on like this any longer. I’m unhappy.” He took a drink of his whiskey, smacking his lips after swallowing in this way he did when he drank alcohol. “I should say it this way. I’m unhappy in this marriage. I want a divorce.”

  I didn’t respond. Thinking back, I’m not sure why. I suppose I was in shock. I just stood there, holding the damp, soiled cloth with two hands now, staring at him.

  “Did you hear what I said?” he asked.

  I tossed the cloth into the pantry and moved toward the sink. Something crunched under my feet. It was a sugar cube, ground into the floor from my tennis shoe. My gaze turned downward, to the crushed sugar cube that looked almost like a splendid snowflake shimmering in sunlight. The facts of the last six months piled onto one another into a logical order: late nights, trips away, lack of pressure to have sex. He was having an affair. It came to me like that, in a rush of hot, sick, sure truth. There was someone else.

  I stared at a dustpan and hand broom in my hands. When had I grabbed them? I couldn’t remember. I leaned over, sweeping the crushed sugar cube into the dustpan before looking up at him. “You met someone.” It was not a question.

  “Absolutely not.” He flushed as if angered. “How can you ask me that? If anyone would stray, it’s you.” He glared at me and in that glare I heard his message loud and clear. How dare I accuse him of any impropriety? He was on his way to a judgeship someday. He was better than other people.

  And yet I knew he was lying. I knew this man. When he lied his eyes darted up and to the right. Every time. I knew because I’d seen him lie to his mother, his partners, his children. They were never big lies and certainly not designed to hurt anyone. Indeed, they were better named fibs, or white lies, maybe only half-truths, all designed to make him appear better than everyone else. His main goal was to impress people. Unfortunately, he never realized that the more one tries to impress, the less one succeeds.

  But this was no white lie. This was betrayal, duplicity, unfaithfulness—the wickedest of untruths.

  “It’s Liza, isn’t it?”

  “What? Of course not.” Again, his eyes darted up and to the right.

  Liza was an environmental paralegal at his firm and wore her dark brown hair cropped short, no makeup, and those awful thick-soled shoes and black tights all the edgy Seattle girls wore. She was thirty years old. Yes, thirty! And Michael was fifty. Yes, fifty! At the Christmas party I’d talked to her for a few minutes while we waited for drinks at the bar. She’d made a condescending remark about the fact that I didn’t work and how it must be rather boring after my exciting career as a photographer. She said the “a” in rather like a short “o.” Was she trying to sound European or like Madonna? “Not that there was any money in that, I suppose. It wouldn’t even pay for childcare,” she added. I looked at her, surprised she knew about my former career. And, why would something like childcare be on a single woman’s radar? I didn’t bother to ask. With a grateful smile for the bartender, I grabbed my martini and politely excused myself.

  Now I understood. She knew everything about me because she was sleeping with my husband.

  “It’s so trite, Michael. You’re old enough to be her father.”

  “I’m forty-nine, not seventy.” He drank the rest of his whiskey. “Anyway, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not the cheating sort.”

  “Jesus, Michael, after fourteen years together, at least you owe me the truth.”

  “Whatever you’ve come up with in your crazy little artistic head, you couldn’t be more wrong.” He made quotes in the air when he said “artistic.”

  I sat down, hard, on one of the chairs at the table. The imaginary village covered a large portion of the surface. The sugar cubes glinted in the overhead light, like their fallen sister turned into a snowflake on my hardwood floor. “What’s the plan, then?”

  “Plan?”

  “About the kids?”

  “Well, you should have primary custody. What with my travel schedule and all.”

  “No, I mean, how do we tell them?”

  He blinked, looking befuddled until his face arranged into comprehension: the kids must be told. “Right, yeah. I suppose we need to take care of that right away.”

  The thought of my little girls’ faces undid me. I began to cry.

  Michael was beside me now, patting my hand, his voice gentler than a moment before. “Blythe, can you honestly say you’ve been happy?”

  “I’ve been dedicated. To you. To the kids. You’re all my life.”

  “The kids. Not me.” He turned his gaze toward the window, his face shadowed in the fading light. I’d forgotten to turn lights on and dusk was upon us.

  “I’ve loved you,” I said.

  “You know, Blythe, the thing with you is that you fade in and out, mostly out. That isn’t loving someone.”

  I stared at him, giving into my mute state. I could not fathom an answer, knowing he was right. What I hadn’t known was that he knew this.

  His voice raised several decibels. “You’ve never talked to me. You don’t talk to anyone except your sister about anything real. Do you know how many times I hear you on the phone with her, telling her things I had no idea about? I’ve suspected for years you have an inner life no one ever knows. I want a relationship with a woman who is here all the time, who wants to stay up all night telling me about her inner world, who wants to be seen.”

  I sobbed into my hands in that way we do when we’re so broken open it seems there will never be a time when we’ll feel whole again. The table shifted as he got up from his chair. He paced back and forth, causing a slight movement in the air when he passed each time that shifted the fine hairs on my forearms. After eight or so of these passings, he sat again. I stopped crying and looked up at him; with a Popsicle stick, he pushed a sugar cube around the table in the motion of a figure eight.

  “I don’t want her around my kids.” Even as I said it, I knew it was inevitable. They would meet the new woman in Michael’s life. She might be the first of many.

  “There’s no one else.” He cocked his head to the side, a
s if I were Clementine asking for a second cookie. “I’m sorry, Blythe.”

  It was the first and only time he ever said those words to me.

  ***

  After I was clean, I scrubbed my teeth, rinsed my mouth out with Listerine, and carefully applied makeup. I fixed my hair, dressed in fresh shorts and a T-shirt, and went downstairs to see about the breakfast part of the Bed and Breakfast offerings. The lobby and sitting room were empty. A tray with two dry-looking scones and a pot of coffee remained from breakfast. I grabbed one of the scones and poured some coffee, which actually looked dark and smelled delicious, and went back up to my room.

  My sister had called while I was downstairs. I listened to her message, munching on the scone, which seemed to be staying down, at least for the moment. “Hey Sister Sue, I’m in India. Hope you made it to Peregrine, Idaho safe and sound. Are you enjoying the new car? Anyway, I love you. Talk soon.”

  I deleted the message and tossed the phone on the unmade bed. With my cup of coffee, I sat on the one chair situated near the window and opened the shade. Outside the sky was bright blue above Blue Mountain. What crayon in the box was the color today? I would ask Clementine if she were here and she would pull the shades of blue from the box and hold them up against the sky. “Pacific Blue, Mommy.” I could almost hear her saying it.

  My gaze traveled to the desk where my new camera waited. The lens was pointed toward me, like a giant eye on a robot face. I turned away. From the bed, I heard my phone buzz with a text. Hoping it was one of my girls, I left the coffee on the table and moved, too quickly, given my aching head, and grabbed the phone. A text from my sister popped up. What a pest. Probably giving me unasked for advice. I was supposed to be the older sister. I needed to stop letting her push me around.