If the Fates Allow

by Zoe Kane

  * * *

  These are the things Marcus Rey knew that Annie Walter didn't.

  He knew a story told to him in bits and pieces over the years, many many times, about the night Danny rallied the neighborhood dads to go pack up his sister-in-law's belongings and put the fear of God into the man who had hurt her.

  He knew that there was a curious intensity to the way Danny told this story, to the way he hated this doctor he had only met once and about whom he knew practically nothing, that had pinged a soft alarm bell in the back of his mind the first time he heard it - a bell that had begun to ring again when he saw the way Annie had looked down at the label on that bottle of wine.

  He knew that in the bedroom Annie had responded to his every touch with something that felt, heartbreakingly, like astonishment - as though the sensation of pleasure itself were foreign to her - but in the kitchen she had closed her eyes and there had been something in her silent, furious urgency that told him she was only half there with him and half of her was somewhere else.

  He knew many things about forgetting, about losing yourself in bed, about running from the person you once were, even just for the night. He knew it always looked different in the morning. In the morning she would hate him, and maybe even herself, and it was too late for him to do anything to stop it.

  He knew there were many, many ways to betray someone, and the most dangerous of them never felt like betrayals at all. They slipped inside you, soft and light and quick, burrowing down into the dark places and whispering seductively into your ear that it wasn't a sin for two consenting adults in need of stress relief to seek it out by falling into bed together, you're both single, no one has been unfaithful, what's the worst that could happen, who are you hurting?

  The worst kind of betrayals slither over your skin with alluring, wine-scented caresses and murmur, hush, it's all right, darling, you haven't done anything wrong.

  Chapter Ten: Morning After

  These are the things Annie Walter knew that Marcus Rey didn’t.

  He did not know she had awoken at 8 a.m., hours earlier than he had, drifting very slowly and very grudgingly back into consciousness, feeling blinding white sunlight hammering at her aching eyelids, a dull throbbing in her eardrums, and a wall of heat at her back that took her a second to place.

  He did not know that as she felt her heart begin to pound in horror as the events of last night came slowly back to her, he had shifted in his sleep and made it suddenly very apparent how naked they both were.

  He did not know that she had pulled away from the arm he had draped across her belly, bolted from the room, raced down the hall to the bathroom, and tried very hard to vomit as quietly as possible so he would not wake up and ask if she was all right.

  He did not know about how she had crawled into the bathtub and sat there, knees drawn up underneath her chin like a little girl, letting the shower rain steaming hot water down on her hair and back, and finally, finally, for the very first time since that phone rang in her office what felt like a lifetime ago, she let herself cry. She sobbed and sobbed and the scalding water turned her white skin pink and she felt the steam rise up around her and she buried her face in her arms and let the hot tears and the hot water run together down her face as the Dark Thing broke triumphantly free and snaked around her trembling body.

  He did not know that while he was snoring peacefully in the bed they’d shared all night, she was hating herself more than she had ever hated anyone in all of her life. Hating herself for showing weakness in front of a near-stranger. Hating herself for how good it had felt, for how pathetically grateful she had been, for how desperately she had wanted it. Hating herself for hating herself, crushed by guilt for something she knew she had no right to think of as an infidelity, but did anyway.

  She hadn’t just fucked Danny’s brother. She’d fucked Danny’s brother on the day of Danny’s funeral.

  The number of people she had betrayed the moment she drunkenly climbed on top of Marcus in that kitchen chair seemed nearly infinite, and it was all made incalculably worse by the fact that she would now have to look at that kitchen chair every single day because, of course, she lived here now.

  And so did he.

  Which meant she’d have to look at him every single day now, too.

  For Christ’s sake, Annie, what’s happened to you?

  They had tiptoed around each other so carefully, since that first disastrous meeting at the lawyer’s office, and Annie had been so prudent and so meticulous about making sure they both knew where the lines were drawn. And then she had blown it all to hell. But the children would be home from Aunt Vera’s house in three hours and her new life with them was about to begin, which meant somehow she had to get the old Annie back – the controlled, mechanical Annie who knew how to put her emotions away. The Annie she’d been before she’d known what it was like to sit through your sister’s funeral, before she’d known what it was like to be kissed the way Marcus had kissed her.

  The Annie she'd been before she decided to take a day off from being Annie Walter and make nothing but horrible decisions.

  “You buried your sister and brother-in-law today,” he had said to her, “you can do anything you want.”

  “I’m not sure he meant that,” she could hear Grace laugh, so clear in her mind that it gutted her completely. This was the kind of situation Grace excelled at. This was where she shone. Messy emotions, boy drama, fights with friends, relationship crises - anytime a person needed sensible, compassionate advice delivered with just the right amount of humor to remind you that a slightly dented and banged-up heart wasn't going to kill you. When they were young, whenever Annie was upset Grace would climb into Annie's tiny twin bed and pull the covers over their heads and whisper, "Tell me everything," and Annie would. And Grace would always know what to say to make it better.

  And then they'd grown up, and Danny had come along, and something between Annie and Grace had shifted ever so slightly - not a coldness, not exactly, they loved each other as much as they ever had. But a guardedness on Annie's part - a fear perhaps of inadvertently revealing too much - turned her inward, made her her own best counsel, and kept her from seeking advice as often as she used to. If Grace noticed, she didn't say. Things hadn't been bad, not at all; but they'd been different.

  The irony of all this, of course, was not lost on her - that she longed desperately to hear Grace's advice on a situation that only existed because Grace was dead.

  She closed her eyes against the stinging water and she missed her sister so desperately that she felt it like a cold iron fist clenching her heart, actually felt it - a physical, palpable ache. It hurt too badly to think about Danny – not now, not with his brother's touch all over her body – no, she could not miss Danny right now. But Grace . . .

  We expect, in some way, to lose our parents. It pains us, but its cold steely logic is clear. It’s the necessary cost of life spinning forward. It’s simply the way the world has always worked. But it was too unfair, thought Annie, it was too cruel and merciless, not to be allowed to keep our siblings all the way up to the end. She had buried her parents, both of them, too young, and it had only been survivable because Grace and Michael were right there holding her hands.

  Annie did not know how to do any of this without Grace.

  She leaned her head back against the wall of the shower and closed her eyes and let the hot water baptize her. As the tears began to slowly recede, they left a great echoing hollowness behind them. She was not sad anymore, not really, she was just . . . empty. She had nothing left.

  Take a deep breath, Annabel. Get it together, she told herself firmly. You need to get dressed and go be an adult.

  Annie did not have time to lie in bed all day drinking coffee and reading the paper and having lazy afternoon sex, or to sit sobbing in the shower of the guest bathroom (the only room in the house that felt reasonably free of ghosts), because today she had to take three traumatized orphans to their very first appointment w
ith their therapist.

  So many people were depending on her not to lose it. And she’d gotten off to a terrible start.

  * * *

  When Marcus finally roused himself out of a heavy, sated slumber two hours later – he’d always been the kind of person who had a hard time getting up without an alarm clock (or, to be honest, even with one) – he was not surprised to find the bed empty. He got dressed and followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen, where he saw Annie, showered and dressed, scraping out the pan of macaroni and cheese into the garbage disposal. He started to ask what she was doing, then remembered that they’d left it out all night after they got distracted by . . . other things. And the determined, stony look on her face as she chiseled dried burnt cheese out of the corners of the glass pan with her spatula didn’t exactly invite him to bring that up.

  He started slow.

  “Good morning,” he offered, in a carefully neutral tone.

  She didn’t look up. “There’s coffee,” she said. “And some kind of egg casserole thing I found in the freezer. I put it back in the fridge but you can microwave it.”

  “You ate already?” he asked. “How long have you been up?”

  She shrugged. “Two hours or so,” she said, a little tightly. “I had to - clean up. The kids are coming home this afternoon.”

  And we left wine and cake and underwear all over the kitchen, he thought but didn’t say. Privately, he wondered if she was less worried about questions from the children and more worried about questions from Aunt Vera, but he kept all this to himself.

  “What time is your flight?” she asked as he opened the fridge and pulled out the egg casserole in its glass dish.

  “Two o’clock,” he said, scooping some onto a plate and sticking it in the microwave. “My hotel check-out time is noon, so I’ll probably just run back there to get my stuff and then head straight out.”

  She nodded. “And you’re back –“

  “The 24th,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know that leaves all the Christmas hassle on you. That’s the earliest I could finish up with work.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Let me take care of the presents, though,” he said, and that got her attention. She paused in her angry scrubbing and turned to look at him. “It upset you,” he said. “Thinking about the kids’ Christmas presents. Let me do it, then.”

  “Do you know what kids that age like?” she asked skeptically.

  “No idea,” he admitted. “Do you?” She shook her head, but he could feel her thaw ever so slightly, could feel what might have been the ghost of a smile.

  "I'll show up with presents on Christmas Eve," he said. "I'll be Santa Claus. It'll be fun."

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I want to. Let me take one thing off your plate for you. While you’re stuck dealing with all the rest of it. Plus your job. I have to go back to New York but this is like the one thing I can do for you from there. Let me do it.”

  “Fine,” she said, and went back to her scrubbing, and even though her face barely changed at all he knew she was relieved. He knew it had been the right thing.

  His eggs beeped in the microwave, and he pulled them out, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table. She had, finally, scoured the glass pan to such a sparkling shine that she could no longer use it as a pretext to keep her back to him, so she busied herself with refilling her own coffee cup, then stood leaning against the counter, watching him eat.

  It was silent for a long moment. He would have given anything to know what she was thinking, but he could not ask.

  “I’ve got movers coming to my apartment on Tuesday,” he said. “There’ll be boxes arriving here probably by the end of the week. I gave them your cell phone number in case they need to reach you.”

  “Fine.”

  “You don’t have to do anything with them,” he said, “they’ll haul everything in for you and I’ll unpack when I get here. You can just leave them all in my room.”

  The last two words landed with a heavy, startling thud on both of them.

  “Your room,” she said tonelessly.

  “I only meant –“

  “No, I know what you meant,” she said. “It’s fine. You didn’t say anything wrong. That room is your room now. The upstairs room is my room. I suppose we’d better start getting used to it.”

  “Would you rather we switch?” he asked, trying to be kind. “Is that better? Because if you’re more comfortable –“

  She laughed at that, a flat hollow laugh with no real amusement in it. “Better?” she repeated incredulously. “You really think which bed I sleep in makes a difference, Marcus? You really think one room’s less haunted than the other? I’m screwed either way, so I might as well take the room with the balcony.”

  “Annie –“

  “Don’t say anything,” she said warningly. “Whatever you were about to say, don’t.”

  He nodded.

  It was silent for a long moment after that.

  “You should go,” she said abruptly. “The hotel. You have to pack.”

  The hotel was five minutes from here, and he had two hours before he had to check out, and he was only halfway done with his coffee. All of which she knew. Which meant she wanted very badly to get him out of her house (their house?), and he didn’t want to pain her by prolonging it. So he simply nodded, stood from the table, left his dishes where they were, grabbed his jacket and made his way to the door. She followed him silently, uncertainly.

  He began to open the door, then stopped and turned back to her.

  “Annie,” he began, but he never got the chance to finish.

  “Nothing happened,” she said firmly, her voice hard and sharp and cold. “It’s fine. We’ll deal. I got drunk and made a stupid decision. And you – “ She waved her hand dismissively. “This is just what you do. So.”

  He was so stunned by the sudden attack he could not even be offended. “What do you mean, it’s what I do?”

  “Your delightfully consequence-free life,” she said, leaning against the wall with her arms folded, regarding him with studied casualness. “You buy up companies and sell them for scrap, never mind that people lose their jobs, and then you go home to your fancy loft and you drink expensive whiskey and you bang supermodels and you fly Danny to Vegas for his 30th birthday and give him like ten thousand dollars of chips to lose, and it all just rolls right off you. That’s your thing. I get it.”

  “Are you trying to trap me into saying that last night meant nothing?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You don't have to say it. I'm not an idiot. I don't need to be let down gently, Marcus, I'm an adult woman. Not one of the 22-year-old fashion majors you usually date.”

  He was astonished at how quickly simmering irritation erupted into full-blown fury. “You know what, Annie,” he snapped, “you don’t know nearly as much about me, or about my life, as you think that you do.”

  “So you’re not currently entangled with a dozen women half your age?” she said, eyebrow raised. “Your brother made that up?”

  “It’s not a dozen, it’s one,” he fired back defensively, before he could catch himself, the self-satisfied look on her face as he realized he’d accidentally confirmed her petty little dig causing him to seethe inwardly.

  “But she is younger.”

  “Why are we even doing this, Annie?”

  “Is she a model?”

  “She’s an auto mechanic,” said Marcus, and Annie laughed out loud.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, “it's like the beginning of a bad porn film. First he screws a girl mechanic, then he cheats on her with a woman he meets at a funeral. I think I’ve seen that one, actually. Wasn’t very believable, though.”

  “All right, first of all,” retorted Marcus, who was so tense with anger now that he could hardly look directly at her, “don’t talk about Linnet that way.”

  “Linnet. God. Of course her name is Linnet.”

  “And secon
d of all, I didn’t cheat. It’s not like that with me and her, it’s not a – we don’t live together or anything, we have busy lives, we just see each other occasionally. There’s nothing scandalous, there was no infidelity. We have an arrangement.”

  “How bohemian of you.”

  “Why are you being like this?” he asked her, genuine astonishment beginning to filter through his anger. “Why are you being so nasty? I haven’t pushed you, I haven’t crossed any lines, I haven’t asked you for anything you didn’t want to give. I’m genuinely confused as to what you think I did that's so wrong.”

  Annie did not, of course, have a real answer for this, but she was not quite willing to admit that. “I just hate what a cliché this all is,” she said dismissively, looking away. But she could feel his eyes on her and knew that he didn’t believe her.

  “You’re really going to pretend like last night didn’t happen?” he pressed her. “That’s really what you want?”

  “I can’t be trusted with the things that I want, Marcus,” she said frankly, a note of desperation creeping into her frosty tone. “Right now, I’m trying to think about what this family needs.”

  “You’re part of this family,” he pointed out. “You get to ask for things too.”

  “Marcus, if I got all the things I asked for, you wouldn’t be here,” she said, almost absently, and it stopped them both short.

  He looked at her.

  She looked at him.

  “You haven’t changed your mind,” he said quietly, realizing as the words came tumbling out how desperately true they were. “You still wish you were doing this all yourself. You still think I’m just in the way.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  It was foolish of him to feel so hurt, foolish of him to think that things might have changed after last night. Not when she was looking at him like this. Not when she was all but throwing him out of the house. It was what he had rationally expected – he had known she would wake up mortified and resentful and that there might be consequences – but there was something warm and open in the way they’d looked at each other last night that made him feel like the ground had shifted beneath his feet and changed something fundamental between them.