Unstrung

by Laura Spinella

  Unfortunately, hope is not a word I equate with Tate Nash. Sadly, it’s far easier to imagine him turning Sam down than agreeing to help. If this is the case, maybe it’s best he never turn up. I consider this avenue closed. There is the National Marrow Donor Program, but, so far, no match for Sam. Finally, I find the word Sam mentioned in the emergency room—haplo. Or as a Johns Hopkins webpage points out, Haploidentical Transplantation—a treatment by which parents and children—once considered an automatic non-match—can have life-saving potential.

  Of course Sam did not see this as an option.

  Yet I do not contact Theo immediately. My hesitation isn’t about fallout—I am stunningly unconcerned about how this will bode for me. My hesitation is approach. I want to be wiser, steadier about what I do next. Years of rash behavior finally serves as a lesson, but most glaringly these past few months. Impulsive Liv is the last thing anyone needs here. I’ve no one but myself to blame for the loss of a husband, possibly a best friend. I’ve not heard a word from Sasha. As it is, Rob left a curt note about being out of town for a few days. The way it was written, he could have left it for the cleaning lady. He does not say where he’s gone. He doesn’t call.

  Frankly, at the moment, it’s for the best. My crisis mode isn’t that high-functioning. I put “wiser” to work. I don’t waste time cobbling together a plan whereby I only share the truth about Theo on a need-to-know basis. I get it; the jig is up. Telling Sam will be a shock—ultimately a welcome one. Rob may reply with the same answer he did in the hospital corridor—“I don’t know that I give a shit anymore, Liv . . .” As for telling Theo . . . I suspect welcome news won’t be part of his reaction.

  Granted, this would play as a much cleaner scenario if I were no more than a stranger knocking on Theo’s door. As it is, I’ve managed to muck up that option, wholly removing it from the table. I decide to give myself time to mentally craft a plan of action. How do I spring this on Theo and come away with his cooperation? How will I convey, in one conversation, urgency, duplicity, and the necessary result?

  I do not go to Braemore on Monday or Tuesday. I don’t even call. I tick off hours like a death-row prisoner: the solitude of a last meal, which I don’t eat, and what awaits me in the afterlife as a result of the chaos I created in this one. Final tasks, like gathering my nerve and introspection, are interrupted when the brownstone doorbell rings Tuesday night. I open it, finding a stern-faced Sasha on the other side. She does not wait for an invitation but ploughs her tiny frame, dressed in an all-business camel-colored coat, past mine and into the music room. Unlike other brownstone rooms, this is my space. It’s also our communal spot to share secrets, laugh, and just be. It’s the sanctuary into which you invite your friends. Sasha is the only person I have ever asked to be a part of this room.

  “Excellent,” she says, staking a claim in the center. “You’re not dead.” The energy pulsing off of her plays like Pettersson’s Symphony no. 6—nerve-rackingly raw and violent. I stand to the side, near the secretary desk. Sasha tosses the evidentiary hobo bag onto the sofa; she plucks brown leather gloves from her hand, one finger at a time, an authoritative you’ll wait gesture. Focused on the gloves, she avoids eye contact. “Forget my number?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Her steely honey-gold gaze moves to mine. “What was your plan, Liv, to avoid me forever?” I open my mouth; she stabs a finger in my direction. “It was rhetorical. Anything personal can wait. I’m here in an official capacity.”

  “That being?”

  “You’ve now missed two classes at Braemore. When you didn’t bother to call in today, Principal Giroux reported you. That’s not the deal, Liv. Absences from court-ordered community service require a doctor’s note or some other viable excuse—like you’ve been incarcerated on a different charge, robbing a packy or grand theft auto. Did you rob a packy, Liv?” I shake my head. She sniffs. “Not surprising—there’s not enough booze in Boston to drown your sorry ass.” She tilts her head at me. “Nice bruise. Sorry. But drunken clumsiness doesn’t count either. Are you physically ill?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re suffering from what? Acute embarrassment? That’s rich. I can’t imagine a scenario bad enough to keep you from going about your business. Seriously, you bashed your husband’s Porsche in with a baseball bat in the middle of Newbury Street and never blinked. You told a judge to go fuck himself and spent the weekend in jail, still managing not to miss symphony practice. Or has embarrassment evolved out of a deeper faux pas? The one where you vanish and scare the shit out of everyone, then admit to being a stumbling drunk and spending the night with your ex—which, oh by the way, thanks for sharing with me.”

  “So you know Sam Nash is in town.”

  “I know a lot of things, Liv. Like the fact that your ex-husband’s sudden appearance is nothing compared to accusing me—the one person who has always had your back—of having an affair with your husband!”

  “I, um . . . The two of you did—”

  “Don’t even try it,” she spits. “Fucking Rob all those years ago . . . It was about as emotionally moving as your annual pap smear.” I swallow this down. Whether it was moving or not, a mental visual of them together stings—oddly so for a marriage that is supposedly over. “It was one wrong choice before he ever met you, and a long-ago lie devised to protect a budding romance. How the hell was I supposed to know you’d end up marrying the guy? If I recall, you did try to toss him to the curb after three or four dates.”

  “I can see how you couldn’t have predicted the future.”

  “And I did think about telling you—more than once. It just never . . . Well, it never seemed to serve a purpose other than clearing my conscience.”

  “I can relate to that.” But Sasha isn’t listening; she’s on a roll.

  “I can’t speak for Rob—he’s not my business. But me? The fact that you’d think that about me?”

  “Things added up, Sasha. Things that still don’t make sense.”

  She takes a fuming turn around the room, her small fists squeezed tight. “Think of it like any court case, Olivia. It’s not up to me to defend my innocence. It’s up to you to prove my guilt.”

  “Maybe so, but you have to agree . . .”

  “No, Liv. I don’t have to agree. You prove it. Prove that your conclusion is based on anything but circumstantial evidence.” She waits, as if this is a courtroom and the judge has just demanded that the prosecution present its hardcore evidence.

  I point to her hobo bag. “At dinner. You dumped a bunch of stuff on the table. There was a boarding pass, a claim check from The Bed. Out of all the hotels in New York, Rob was staying at The Bed. Same window of time from what I can deduce. You didn’t tell me about your trip. You never said a word.”

  Sasha folds her arms and huffs at me—as if she is the seasoned trial attorney and I am the idiot client who has chosen to defend myself. “It does not prove I was there to sleep with your husband. If that’s all you have to sell to the jury . . .” She folds her arms, her expression humorless.

  “But it certainly appeared—”

  She holds up a hand. “You’re not getting how this works. Let me help you out. I admit it; I was there.”

  I blink, surprised. “Okay, so would you care to explain it, other than the most obvious conclusion? I called your office that day. Carly told me you were in court.”

  “I was. In New York. I was deposing a witness we were having trouble pinning down. I went to the source.”

  “And you just happened to stay at the same romantic hole-in-the-wall hotel as Rob?”

  “Being as I highly recommended the hotel when we recently had lunch here, it’s not that incredible of a coincidence.”

  “Okay, but why wouldn’t you tell me you’d been to New York? The night we had dinner, you were distracted, on edge.”

  “I believe I did tell you it was a long day with a witness—I just didn’t say where.”

  “But why
?” I stride past, flailing a hand in her direction. “Add to that you and Rob. You’ve been oddly chummy lately, whispery phone calls, the picnic lunch in my kitchen.” I motion in that direction. “I don’t know much about the law, Sasha, but in everyday life, those sound like pretty damning facts.”

  The energy around Sasha stops moving, and her lawyerly façade deflates. My eyes widen as her small chin begins to quiver. I back up. Have I made too good of a case? She can’t get out of it. She can’t do anything but confess to circumstantial evidence. “I didn’t tell you because of what I was doing in New York—besides deposing a witness. I was with Zowz.”

  “Zowz? From your office?”

  “No Zowz from Southie. Yes, him.”

  “So?”

  “You’re right about Rob and I having more than a few whispery conversations lately. I ended up confiding something to him that I couldn’t confide to you.”

  “Which is?”

  “Zowz.” She sighs softly. “We’ve been . . . sleep—” She stops, looking sheepishly between my music stand and me. “You’re right about the affair, Liv. You’ve just got the wrong guy. Zowz. I’ve been having an affair with Nick Zowzer. There. Are you happy?”

  “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.” I shake my head. “It’s impossible. You’ve never said one pleasant word about Nick Zowzer, let alone expressed a desire to sleep with him.” My head shakes harder. “And forget him. You’d never have an affair with anybody!”

  She splays her hands wide into the space in front of her.

  My hands thrust to my hips. Fabulous. I’ve just proven her case. I take a conciliatory step back. I suppose it is fabulous. “Oh,” I murmur. The larger ramification hits home. “Then I guess that would explain how I . . . Or that you and Rob aren’t . . .”

  “Yeah. We’re not, and now you know.”

  “I don’t get it. You confided this to Rob, but not to me. You live with Jeremy. You hate Nick Zowzer. He’s your biggest rival.” I stand dumbfounded, the facts still sinking in. “You’re having an affair with Zowz? Oh my God . . .” My stark gaze is glued to the brownstone’s front window. Life moves along Commonwealth Ave. There isn’t a passerby who could trump this tawdry tidbit. I look back at Sasha. “Geez. You’re going to have to give me a few minutes . . . maybe days to absorb that one.”

  “Okay, so based on that statement, would you have jumped to tell you?” She sinks onto the sofa, her hands knotting. “Rob was an easier dumping ground. Maybe because we already shared one dirty little secret.” We trade a dubious glance. “And I admit . . .” Her voice shakes. “Part of the reason I didn’t tell you was because I didn’t want you to see me in that light.”

  A snicker seeps out of me. “Because I’m a total screwup and you’re beyond reproach.”

  “No!” Sasha glances from her clasped hands to my face. “Maybe. On some days.” She looks at me. “I’m sorry, Liv. I shouldn’t have told Rob over you. But a person can only keep a secret like that for so long before they have to confess it. He was in the right place at the right time. And it wasn’t even on purpose.”

  “Lunch in my kitchen.”

  “Between the pastrami on rye and a mini carrot cake.” I sink onto the sofa next to her. “I know you love carrot cake, so I brought you one.”

  “So I guess Rob got my carrot cake and the earful,” I say. “Can you back up, fill in some Zowz blanks? You claim to all but loathe the ‘slick, smooth-talking bastard.’ The butt of Viagra jokes. How did you and Zowz ever . . .”

  Sasha’s hand thumps dejectedly into her lap. “No matter how I explain it, it’ll sound like nothing but a seedy office romance—pull the blinds, after-hours sex on the leather Steelcase sofa . . .” A swallow bobs through her delicate throat. She doesn’t look at me. “Jesus, Liv, we’ve all but had sex on the copy machine. I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “And for how long has this been . . . Have the two of you . . .”

  “About two months.”

  “Two . . . ?” My mouth gapes—at the timeframe, the visuals. The fact that almost-infallible Sasha is having an affair—with Nick Zowzer.

  “Nick, we . . .”

  My attention turns to Sasha as she employs Nick’s first name. When Sasha introduced us a couple of years ago, I had to ask his first name—she’d never said.

  “Nick lost a case. Interestingly, his client was a kid who used to go to Braemore. Zowz said the system totally screwed the kid over—serious grown-up jail time. And not because of his crime, but because the kid had turned eighteen between the alleged crime and initial court proceedings,” she says. “For once, instead of feeling rivalry, I felt bad for him. He had a bottle of Glenlivet. I helped him drown his sorrows for a while, then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “The first time we had sex, it was in his office.” She finally looks at me. “After that I went home to my fragile, forever-needy significant other. Someone who is only ever affected by his personal wins and losses. Everything about Zowz, including sex, was the polar opposite. So how’s that for timing?”

  “Sounds like maybe I’ve been rubbing off on you after all.”

  “I swore it wouldn’t happen again—ever. But it did. I liked it . . .” Sasha says this as if Zowz could be purchased in dime bags. “I liked being with someone who I didn’t have to constantly reassure. I mean, yes, he’d lost a case. All it managed to do was humanize him. Suddenly, the crasser, louder parts of Zowz felt more like a champion for the cause, not a loudmouth, brash attorney.”

  “I know you said things with Jeremy weren’t good. But I thought maybe you’d show him the door before you . . .”

  “So that’s part of my guilt. Jeremy doesn’t know. I can’t tell him. The state he’s in. It’d crush him.” Sasha clamps a hand over her mouth. She jerks up off the sofa and takes a wide turn around the small room. “And I’m an awful person.”

  “Sasha,” I say firmly. “You are not an awful person. Just stop. Yes. Sex on the sly with Zowz . . . Nick isn’t exactly commendable or typical Sasha behavior, but if he’s what you want . . .” I stop, still trying to get my head around Sasha and the man she most commonly refers to as the office pit bull—rabid office pit bull. “Is he? I mean, do . . . are you in love with him?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Add that to my motivation for secrecy. I’m not sure what it is. The trip to New York, it was the first time we spent the night together.” She glances at me. “Rob never saw us at The Bed . . . But I saw him in the lobby. I ducked out of sight; facing him would have been too surreal. I mean, what would he have said, ‘So how’s the affair going, Sash?’ But when you accused Rob of having an affair with me . . .”

  “Oh my God, he was confused beyond belief. And probably doubly pissed off. But why didn’t he just tell me about you and Nick?”

  “Because I all but begged him not to. I wanted to tell you when I was ready. Says something about Rob’s trustworthiness, doesn’t it?”

  “Underneath my fast-talking, high-stakes husband . . . Well, that appears to be a lot of loyalty. I, um . . . Seems I owe him, both of you, an apology.”

  “To be honest, when Rob told me about the evidence from The Bed, the shoe shine cloth, the claim check . . . After rolling it to your interpretation of something I definitely was keeping from you . . . I can see how you got there.” She sighs. “It’s not that far off from how people end up doing life for a murder they didn’t commit. On the other hand, knowing the truth, Rob was angry and hurt . . . So was I.” Sasha’s eyes are teary, as are mine. I believe the only thing we’ve never done in this room together is cry. “So aside from all that shitty stuff between you, me, and Rob—an ongoing affair with Nick Zowzer is my current problem.”

  I don’t speak. I don’t know what to say. Sasha doesn’t require sage advice, she gives it. Her delicate hand wipes at a bead of sweat that has formed on her upper lip. The only time I’ve seen Sasha sweat is during her cycling class. “Sasha, you’ll work it out. Whether Nick Zowze
r turns out to be the love of your life, or just the exit door you needed to prove Jeremy isn’t.”

  “Even so . . . It’s an affair. I’m lying to the man I live with. What does that say about me?”

  “Sash.” She looks at me. “You have no idea what a real lie sounds like. The unforgivable kind that can really cost you . . . a friend, a husband . . . a son.”

  “A . . . ?” Her face perplexes. “What do sons have to do with this?”

  “You came here to ask why I haven’t been to Braemore for the past two days, right?”

  Sasha wipes a hand across the tears on her face, nodding. “Partly,” she says. “Mostly I think I wanted to tell you everything I just did. I couldn’t put that on Rob anymore. But yes. I need an answer for your absence. I wasn’t kidding, Liv. Judge Nicholson isn’t going to give you much of a leash.”

  “Okay. I’ll explain—everything.” A breath shudders out of me. “But prepare yourself. What I’m about to tell you will make sex with Zowz seem like a swan boat ride in the Public Garden.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Olivia

  Which thread to pull first? While I mull it over, Sasha digs into the culprit hobo bag and comes up with a package of tissues. Jumping inside, vanishing amid the eyeliner and lipsticks, is an appealing option. “Like I said, this will clear things up, including why I didn’t tell you Sam Nash was in town. It will explain why I hate New Year’s Eve, and what seems like a sudden fascination with a young music teacher from Braemore.”

  “All of those things in one explanation?”

  I’ve piqued Sasha’s interest. “Really, they’re just one thing.”

  “Go on, I’m listening.” She is listening, though it’s Rob’s voice that enters the music room.

  “I think I’d like to hear this too.”