by Steve Richer
“No, Marissa,” he said. “Just no.”
For a split second, she looked as if she might debate the point. Some inner cunning telling her that all she had to do was push a little harder and he would be powerless before her.
Then she slumped, her frame sagged, and she stepped back. She turned away so he couldn’t see her face.
“I’m sorry, Marissa, but there’s a fine line between fooling around and doing something that’s just plain wrong. I’m a married man and you’re sixteen. You’re great. I really like you, and I’m glad to be part of your life, but that’s all it could ever be. You have to know that, okay?”
He wondered if she would try to bluff it out. Claim she didn’t know what he was talking about. He’d take that. He’d take the embarrassment on his part if that was the best way for her to save face.
But no, instead, she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Granger. It’s stupid, I know. You must hate me.”
“I don’t.”
A flicker of a smile, then.
“At school… They’re all just kids. It’s so frustrating. Everyone’s so immature.”
“You’ll get through that soon, Marissa. Believe me, nobody ever truly wants to be sixteen again after they’ve survived it.”
She smiled once more.
“Are we good?” he asked.
“We’re good.”
“Do you have any more ghosts?” The incongruity of the question broke through the tension and, after a brief pause, they both laughed.
When the time came to leave, Marissa put a hand on the door to stop him. “I hope you don’t think badly of me, Mr. Granger. I was stupid. I got carried away. I don’t know what got into me. I think maybe it was the other day when I saw you and Libbie together, and you were kind of flirty. I guess it’s different with someone like her, isn’t it?”
“It’s no different at all,” he said. “There are lines not meant to be crossed.”
And as he backed away down the porch, then turned to walk away, he wondered just how true that was. If even Marissa had detected something between him and Libbie, how dumb was he being?
Yes, Libbie was beautiful and she was strangely exciting to be with, too. Challenging and… stretching.
But he wasn’t alone in thinking that. Just look at how Alice’s whole demeanor changed when she was in Libbie’s company.
As he’d told Marissa, there were lines you just don’t cross. He hadn’t crossed any with Libbie, had he? They hadn’t done anything wrong.
The trouble was, even in his own head, he sounded way too defensive.
How many secrets had he kept from Alice since Libbie had burst into their life?
He hadn’t told her about the photo shoot, although that was only because Libbie had told her first. He’d been planning to mention it at some point. But would he have told her how awkward it had gotten, as Libbie involved him in it more and more?
And the other day, when Alice had quizzed him about how he’d lost that bank form, she’d asked if it might have fallen out of his pocket when he rode his bike into town. He hadn’t told her that Libbie had driven him and he didn’t understand why he’d felt the need to keep that secret. Because Alice would misinterpret it?
All the little conversations he’d had with Libbie. All the shared confidences.
Were these things actual secrets, or simply things that had gone unmentioned for innocent reasons?
He couldn’t answer that honestly. He didn’t know.
But perhaps the simple fact that he was even having this internal debate provided an answer of sorts.
Chapter 24
Alice couldn’t work.
It had been bad enough before. Redoing tasks she knew she’d already done. And always with the nagging feeling that it would be so easy to overlook something this time, because in the back of her mind she’d know she’d done it all already.
She knew she couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes. Michael Tuckett had made that perfectly clear. She already felt as if she was on borrowed time, and there were several people waiting in the wings to take the Mapleview account over.
It was a deal that could make a career.
But equally, it was one that could break a career too.
Hers.
So she’d come home, hoping she could find some kind of focus in the familiar surroundings. And then Libbie had come along. Shown her those photographs, albeit reluctantly.
There was no un-seeing those images.
She knew a photograph was only ever a snapshot of an instant in time. Photographs really could lie, or mislead. An instant that looked suggestive when frozen in time might only have been fleeting, a passing moment in a jokey photo shoot.
Without context, there was no difference between a person’s face when they sneezed and when they orgasmed. But Alice had seen those images. They were ingrained in her mind.
It’s nothing at all.
That’s what she kept telling herself.
She knew how unhealthy jealousy could be. How such thoughts were not so much a vicious circle as a vicious spiral, leading you ever downward into a pit of paranoid suspicion and obsession.
A spiral she’d witnessed in Tom, so she should know better now.
Should know not to let those thoughts swirl around, dragging her down.
But she’d seen the way he looked at that girl. Seen the look in his eye.
And she’d seen Libbie’s photographs.
She stood away from the computer, went across to the kitchen window. The wind was whipping at the trees now and Tom had clearly given up on raking the yard.
She wondered how much he’d enjoyed doing Rusty’s work. Had he been trying to make some kind of point? Showing her that they didn’t need Rusty around the place?
Well, his efforts didn’t seem to have made much difference to the yard. Leaves still layered the grass, debris accumulating in corners. Flowers needed dead-heading. Usually, you could at least tell when Rusty had been working, but there was no sign of Tom’s impact on the garden this afternoon.
She knew she was judging him harshly. Punishing him in her head at least, for his indiscretions—even if they only existed in her head too.
“Oh, Tom,” she sighed out loud. She didn’t mean to take it out on him. To doubt him.
She then came to a decision not to be so hard on him. It was so easy to lapse into negativity and doubt.
As if on cue, she heard the front door, and moments later Tom appeared in the kitchen.
“Hi, sweetie,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know,” she said with a shrug. She guessed it was pretty obvious from the abandoned laptop and the way she stood at the window tightly hugging herself that her afternoon had not gone well.
“I was surprised you were back so early today.”
She hadn’t explained about the hard time Michael Tuckett had given her, or her fears that she was screwing up big time. She didn’t want to go into that now, either. It was as if saying any of that out loud made it more real.
They had so much at stake!
“Where have you been?” she asked instead.
“Oh, I went round to the Sigleys’ to help with their Halloween decorations.”
“I’m surprised Bob and Carol needed help,” she said carefully. She knew Marissa’s parents worked long hours out of town.
“It was just Marissa,” Tom said. “She asked me to help out.”
“And so you did.”
She saw his whole body stiffen then. His eyes flitting from side to side, not meeting her look. He couldn’t have looked more evasive if he’d tried.
Now, when Alice closed her eyes, she saw those photos again. Marissa leaning forward suggestively as she pouted into the camera. Marissa standing with one leg drawn up across Tom’s front, his arms looped around her waist.
Every guy’s cheerleader fantasy.
And every wife’s nightmare.
“Are you fucking Marissa Sigley?”
He looked a
s if he’d been slapped.
She couldn’t tell if he was more shocked at the cursing or at what she’d asked, or if his mind was simply racing to work out what to tell her. How much to tell her.
“Of course I’m not,” he said. He was keeping his voice steady, trying not to inflame the situation.
“But you’d like to.” She didn’t even know what she was accusing him of. “She’s a teenager, Tom. Sixteen.” As if he didn’t know.
“Don’t do this.”
This. The jealousy thing. The thing he’d done with such style last year.
That’s what he was accusing her of now, in his very restrained way. Over-reacting.
But this was different. She’d seen it. She’d seen the photos. It wasn’t like last year at all.
Last year…
The party at Pierson Newport. Tom had been drinking, but as always Alice had held back. When you’re a diabetic it becomes second nature to watch—and count—everything that goes into your body. The drinks. The food. You don’t lose control.
Walter had been drinking, too, and that’s what had led to the whole thing.
Alice had seen a light in one of the side offices and gone to investigate. Nosy, she knew. Suspecting an office affair, or at least a party fumble the two participants would live to regret. She’d thought it might be Lloyd Cooper and Jilly Tuckett.
She wasn’t proud to be snooping, but hey.
It was Walter, though, sitting at his desk on his own, staring intently at the big screen as his hands raced over the keyboard.
He started guiltily when she appeared, and for a moment she thought he might have been watching porn. Maybe that rapid typing had been him sending instructions to some girl on the other end of a webcam.
It was worse than that, though.
“You’re playing games? And what’s that… SwelterificJones? What does that even mean?”
“I’d had enough to drink. I needed to get away. And anyway, it’s not just a game,” he said awkwardly. “It’s an interactive online community. I have friends in Taiwan, India, Australia. It’s not a game. And… that’s my avatar. My screen name.”
“SwelterificJones?”
“It’s just one of those things. A name I picked up. It’s kind of cool. If you’re into the gaming scene.”
She just looked at him. She was most definitely not into the gaming scene.
How had she known him all this time, even dated him a couple of times, and not known this about him?
She was standing at the corner of his desk, and he’d stood up when she came in, and now they stood there. It was a weird moment. In a movie it might have been a moment when star-crossed lovers finally kissed, they were standing so close.
But in reality, they’d kissed once, a long time ago, and the chemistry had been non-existent, and so now it was a different kind of intimacy. A moment of understanding where Alice realized that they’d each had their own reasons for escaping the hubbub of the party.
And that was when Tom had walked in.
He’d seen Alice slipping away, had been curious, had followed. And now he stood in the doorway staring at them as they stood toe to toe, the moment poised.
~ ~ ~ ~
And now…
Now Alice had every reason to be jealous, whereas back then Tom had merely walked in on two people in an office, doing nothing inappropriate.
Back then he’d let his mind run with it, filling in the gaps, elaborating.
He’d advanced across the office and Alice had stepped in his way, fearful of what he might do.
“It’s nothing, Tom,” she’d hissed at him, and he’d backed down. Poor Walter hadn’t even realized what Tom was so mad about. Later, though, Tom had been unable to let it go. He’d quizzed her repeatedly, demanding to know why she’d been alone with Walter, what they’d been going to do if he hadn’t butted in.
And he’d started checking up on her. Reading her cellphone messages when he thought she wasn’t looking. Reading her emails. Following her, even.
They’d argued repeatedly, but how do you argue with paranoia fueled by irrational jealousy?
Don’t do this.
And now he was accusing her of doing what he’d done: getting swept by jealous paranoia.
“There’s nothing to be jealous of,” he said, facing her across the kitchen. “Don’t let yourself get carried away. Please, Alice.”
“Just because you did, that doesn’t mean we all think that way.”
“I was wrong. I was the one who did get carried away. I let it tip me over the edge. And when I realized how badly I’d screwed up, the only thing I wanted was to make it right again.”
That was true. Desperate to make amends, he’d focused on material things. The plans they had for the house, their future together. All of that took money and so he’d thrown himself at work, pushing himself so hard he eventually burned and crashed.
He’d said at the time that all he wanted was to make her happy, to make her love him again like she had before.
She told him she’d never stopped, and that was when he’d quit Pierson Newport and finally agreed to go to therapy. The start of his recovery. The start of their recovery.
The whole thing had been an extended psychotic breakdown.
It wasn’t like this at all.
This time she’d seen the looks. Seen the photos.
And now he’d come back from the Sigleys’ place, guilt plastered all over his features.
He turned and walked away.
She hadn’t expected that. She’d expected him to at least stand his ground.
She went after him, through to the den where he stood idly rearranging his friggin’ figurines.
“You’re working too hard,” he said softly. “You’re wearing yourself out. It’s making you more… edgy.”
“Don’t you dare turn that on me too,” she said with a tightly controlled voice.
That was his thing. The irrational jealousy. The overwork to the point of breakdown.
“Don’t you dare say this is all in my head because I’m under too much pressure.”
“I’m scared for you, Alice. For us. You’re working so hard. The strain’s obvious to everyone. It’s all work nowadays.”
“I’m committed,” she said. “I’m taking my opportunities, not running away from them. Not running away from the world.”
Like you did last year. She didn’t say that last bit. She didn’t have to.
She saw him fighting not to speak. That damned restraint he’d learned, that had forced him to walk out of the kitchen just now rather than engage in this petty, damaging argument.
She didn’t hold back though.
“One of us has to be out there, fighting the fight,” she said. “We can’t all hide away with these shitty figurines.”
That seemed to hurt more than anything else she’d said.
“They got me through,” he said softly. “Gave me something to focus on. My escape.”
“Escape!” she snarled. She reached out and picked up one of the small china figures—that strange one Libbie had presented him with as a gift—and hurled it across the room at him.
Surprised by her own action, she stared as the thing struck a doorframe and tumbled to the floor.
Tom stared at her, then turned and walked out again.
Go on, run away. Escape again.
She didn’t say that out loud either. The fact she even thought it was bad enough.
~ ~ ~ ~
He didn’t know where he was going, just that he needed to not be there.
Needed to not see the look in Alice’s eyes.
The distrust. The anger. The frustration.
The disappointment in him. That, more than anything, was something he needed to get away from. Last year he’d let her down. He’d lost his grip on the world and he’d almost lost the love of his life. He’d never wanted her to look at him that way again.
He didn’t even understand what he’d done this time.
 
; Was it a sin to be the nice guy? That pushover who always goes out of his way to help other people?
Maybe.
It was a lack of judgment, he knew. He shouldn’t have dismissed Marissa’s feelings for him as mere fooling around on her part. He certainly shouldn’t have gone to the Sigleys’ place when Marissa was there alone. Particularly when they’d just been through dealing with the over-zealous desires of one teenaged admirer, that foul-tasting business with Rusty.
Stupid.
He knew how close to the edge Alice was. The strain was telling and he’d been doing all he could to support her.
He shouldn’t have let this happen.
He found himself outside on the porch. The wind was still whipping noisily around the house. Somewhere wind chimes clanged loudly, dissonantly, and the trees roared like rushing water.
It wasn’t fair. He was doing his best, but it was still a struggle to hold it all together.
Once you’ve been through one major breakdown, you’re always aware of just how close you might be to the next. Alice couldn’t put all this on him.
She’d messed up with Rusty. Encouraging him when she should have known better. Not deliberately, of course, but still, she should have recognized the signs better.
And Walter. That thing Libbie had told him about the two of them emerging from the Easy Day Hotel. The photo she’d taken. He was sure there was an innocent explanation, just as there had been that time at the Pierson Newport party.
But it tapped into his vulnerabilities. The fears he tried so hard to suppress.
What if he wasn’t enough for Alice? What if she’d never got over that sense of disappointment in him she’d shown last year?
He knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way.
He went out into the darkness of the yard. Felt the coldness of the wind against his face and breathed deep.
He knew the business with Walter was entirely innocent. He understood that the only reason his brain was focusing on it now was some perverse kind of tit for tat: if she can accuse him, then maybe the hat fits both ways.
But also he was very aware that Alice and Walter, even in their innocent, professional friendship, had a particular kind of intimacy Tom felt estranged from. An easy understanding. A familiarity with the inside of each other’s heads.