Torrid Exposure

by Carla Coxwell

  “April! I didn’t think…”

  “Yeah, I thought it’d be good to stop by… with everything going on.” I gesture vaguely, not wanting to bring up Dad.

  “I’m sure she will appreciate it,” she tells me and then suddenly pulls me in for a hug.

  I cannot remember the last time that I was hugged by my mother. It is so sudden and over so soon that I can barely hug her back before she pulls away.

  “She’s busy getting ready,” Mom tells me. “Mingle, mingle.”

  She turns away now and is quickly swallowed up by the crowd. I watch her go and then look around, feeling a bit lost. Besides my family and Bennett, there doesn’t seem to be anyone I know here.

  I find myself looking for Kevin. I trail through the house, keeping an eye out for him. I don’t know what I will do when I see him. I just know that I want to see him.

  I finally find him in the kitchen, which is still being remodeled. He is chatting up an older woman who is laughing at one of his jokes.

  “Kevin,” I say.

  He looks over and seems surprised to see me. “April. Please excuse me,” he says to the woman, who then glares at me.

  Kevin comes over to me. “Sorry to interrupt,” I tell him.

  “Ah, no, don’t worry about it. Wasn’t an interesting conversation. Was trying to get out of it anyway.”

  I find myself staring at him. What is it about this man that has somehow cast such a shadow over my life? Bennett is afraid of him. Spencer might be involved with him. He was right by me as I sat in the car, with my leg crushed, and was concerned about fending off the ambulance. I suddenly want to punch him in the face. I hold back but something must show on my face because Kevin frowns.

  “April,” he asks, “everything okay?”

  “Have you seen Spencer?” I blurt out suddenly.

  He frowns. “No. I believe your mother said she was getting ready upstairs.”

  “I just assumed you’d know... as her mentor.”

  Kevin is studying me now. “Is there a problem I don’t know about, April?”

  I want to tell him off. I can feel the words bubbling in my chest but I know I can’t. Not yet, anyway. Not until I talk to Spencer.

  “No, everything is great,” I tell him with a clenched jaw.

  I turn away from him, determined now to find Spencer before she comes downstairs. Kevin speaks up then and I stop in my tracks.

  “April, are you upset about the purchase of your father’s company? I can assure you there is no ill will between your family and my purchase. I consider it a final favor to your father to save the company from going under. Spencer has learned a lot from me but not enough to turn it around without some help.”

  “Spencer has clearly learned a lot from you,” I say simply and make my way out of the kitchen.

  Seeing Kevin doesn’t change anything for the better. Now I just feel highly irritated and jittery, as if I am revving up for a fight. I pass by a group of people that are near the snacks Spencer has put out and move around them, heading back toward the staircase to find Spencer upstairs.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  I turn around to see Bennett. He frowns when he sees my face. Apparently, I am not good at hiding my emotions very well.

  “I have to see Spencer.”

  “Everything okay?”

  I want to tell him no. I want to tell him that Kevin was there the night of my accident. That maybe we were both wrong and Spencer is sleeping with him. But I don’t want to tell Bennett anything until I speak to Spencer.

  “I just have to see Spencer,” I tell him. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  I turn away from him and head up the stairs. He watches me go. There is a strange look on his face that I can’t figure out and don’t have time to. The hallway is empty. I push away all memories of Dad that are conjured up by standing here and head toward Spencer’s room.

  I can hear music playing softly in her room. She is still getting ready. I wonder if she is going to look unlike herself. Does Kevin pick out her outfits too? I think bitterly as I knock on the door.

  “Mom, I’m almost ready,” she calls out.

  I open the door and step inside. I haven’t been in her bedroom in a long time. It has changed since the last time I have been in it. Any signs of the old Spencer I knew when we were kids has been erased. Her room has been repainted from a vibrant blue to an off-white. There is a large desk in one corner with a state-of-the-art laptop. No more posters or photos adorn the walls. The entire room feels deeply impersonal.

  Spencer is sitting at her vanity, leaning forward as she applies her eyeliner.

  “Geez, Mom. I said I’m almost done,” she says, too focused on the eyeliner. “I’ll be down in a second.”

  She finishes applying her eyeliner. That is when her eyes flick up in the mirror and she notices it isn’t Mom in her room. Her mouth opens in surprise and she turns around.

  “April! I didn’t – I didn’t think you’d make it.”

  I shut the door behind me and lock it, just in case anyone decides to burst in on us. Spencer doesn’t notice. She is telling me about how hard it has been to plan the party this year. Her words slide in one ear and slides out the other. She is dressed in an elegant simple black dress. Her hair is still blonde and in a French braid.

  “Anyway, I told Mom that it couldn’t be as festive as last year’s. Obviously. I mean—”

  “Kevin was there the night of the accident.”

  Spencer stops speaking so quickly it is as if someone hit the pause button on her. She stares at me with her wide eyes. Silence fills the room besides the music on her radio.

  “April,” she finally says, “let me explain.”

  But the rage I have been holding in all night threatens to spill over. “Explain what? How can you fucking explain this?”

  She flinches at my language. The color has drained out completely from her face. Spencer looks like a frail ghost now in all black.

  “April, please—”

  “Is that the sort of thing he’s mentoring you in? Moving your sister around and bribing the hospital to hold off on sending an ambulance until I was moved? Why was he there, Spencer? Tell me!”

  I step toward her but she moves back. She is pressed against her vanity now. Her fingers are gripping it and her knuckles have turned white.

  “He… he was behind us,” she finally says.

  I stare at her, not comprehending what she is telling me. “Behind us?”

  “Yeah… the car behind us.”

  “Why the hell was he behind us?!” I demand.

  “April, please. Please, I’m sorry. For everything that night. You don’t understand. There is a lot you don’t understand.”

  “So explain it to me!” I shout in her face. “Why won’t you just fucking explain it to me instead of hiding it? You ruined us! You know that, don’t you? You know you ruined our relationship, Spencer!”

  Spencer looks as if she is going to cry. Her bottom lip trembles. But it doesn’t affect me. I am too angry to let the fact Spencer is going to cry bother me.

  She lets out a gasp for air and then shakes her head, “I know what I did. I know that it’s the main reason you left… I know that! I’m sorry, April. I want to tell you—”

  “I can’t believe you. I cannot believe you, Spencer. What the hell is wrong with you? Why was Kevin following us that night? Why did you just stand by that night? I could have died! I could have lost my fucking leg!”

  Spencer is crying now but she remains mute. I want to throttle her. I want to break something. I take a deep breath and move close to her. She closes her eyes as if she is afraid of me hitting her.

  But all I say is, “Are you fucking him?”

  “What?!” she gasps.

  “Kevin. Is he the married man you are having an affair with? He is, isn’t he? You know, I considered it but I thought no way. It’s Kevin, after all. We’ve known him our whole lives. Why would you be with Kevin of all p
eople? I feel like I don’t even know you.”

  “April, things are more complicated than what they seem, okay? Trust me. It isn’t as black and white as it appears.”

  “God, you sound like a politician!” I say, throwing my hands up in the air, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “April, please—”

  I am too furious to stare at her any longer. I turn around and open her bedroom door and head down the stairs. Even now, after everything that has happened, after everything I have found out, Spencer still won’t tell me the truth. It is enough to make me want to stop in the middle of the staircase and scream.

  I don’t bother staying. I open the front doors of the house and march out toward my car. I want to get out of here before my head explodes. I am so close to having everything figured out and even now Spencer refuses to help me!

  I am opening my car door when I hear Spencer call out for me. I turn around in spite of myself and see her running toward me. Her make-up, once perfectly applied, now looks messy. She catches up to me.

  “April, wait,” she says to me, grabbing onto my arm. “Listen… there’s a lot to explain. There’s so much to say. It isn’t… give me a chance, okay?”

  “A chance? I’ve given you years!” I snap. “How long can I wait? You moved me! Kevin was there! What the hell was going on that night?”

  Spencer glances behind her and then looks back at me. She lowers her voice to a whisper.

  “April, I have to start at the beginning and there isn’t much time—”

  “Spencer? Are you out here? Your mother is looking for you.” Kevin’s voice cuts through our conversation like a knife. Spencer’s breath catches and she looks behind her. Kevin is standing just outside the front door. He is holding a drink in his hands and is looking at us innocently. But I cannot ignore the sick feeling that boils up in my stomach.

  Spencer’s reaction is almost instant. It is as if I can see her eyes shuttering closed. She is pulling away from me before I can stop her. Whatever she was going to tell me has been locked back down by the arrival of Kevin. And he knows it. I can tell by the way he is looking at us.

  “I have to go,” Spencer says to me. “Get home safely, okay?”

  I watch her turn and head back toward Kevin. I watch the two of them enter the house. Kevin places his hand on the small of her back. He turns his head to look back at me. His face is pleasant looking, as if he hasn’t just brought my sister back into the house away from me.

  I turn away from him, not wanting to spend one more second staring at the man who has somehow trapped my sister under his thumb.

  Chapter Ten

  “Didn’t think I’d be back here so soon!” Emily trills as we get out of the car.

  “Thanks for coming along. I didn’t feel like going by myself.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is juicy stuff. Like a soap opera,” Emily retorts.

  I know she is trying to make things feel light. I am glad that Emily stopped by after coming back from her honeymoon to hang out with me. Unable to go to Bennett about what his father is doing, I told Emily instead about everything going on between Spencer and Kevin. When I told her I wanted to go back to that toy shop in Tusona, she leapt at the chance to come with me.

  It has been a few days since Spencer’s birthday party. No matter what I did or where I was working, my thoughts kept drifting back to our conversation. Even though she didn’t come right out and confirm it, I feel confident that Kevin is the man that she was – maybe still is – having an affair with.

  All that I have left, however, are more questions. Why was Kevin following us that night? Why did he not want Spencer to be seen at the accident? How did he stop the ambulance from coming right away? The questions lay at my feet. I have barely gotten any sleep over it.

  I also feel cut off from Bennett. It feels wrong to see him and not tell him what had gone on with his father. But I also don’t feel ready to go to him and tell him what his father had been doing. I just can’t bring myself to do it yet. What would he say? Would he even believe me?

  Emily is the one person, as usual, that I know I can talk to. Even with her marriage to Adam, I’m not going to suddenly stop being her best friend. When she came by to get some things out of the apartment and catch-up, I found myself spilling everything out to her.

  Now, here we were, ready to go to the toy shop to find that old lady who thought I was Spencer.

  “What do you think she’ll tell you?” Emily asks as we cut across the parking lot and head toward the downtown shopping area again.

  “I don’t know. Spencer was so close to telling me something when she came out to the car. I just know she was. But then Kevin came out and… she was just lost to me.”

  “I never thought Kevin would trap Spencer, of all people. I mean, don’t get me wrong… he doesn’t seem like the type to be loyal to his wife,” Emily is saying as we walk. “But I still didn’t think he’d do that. However, there has to be something major going on. She sounds terrified to tell you. I never thought Spencer could be scared of anything.”

  “Me neither,” I admit.

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll get some answers from this old lady,” Emily says.

  We walk in silence for a little while. My heart is beating quickly in my chest. I wonder what we are going to find when we talk to this lady. Next to me, Emily is texting someone on her phone.

  “How’s Adam?” I ask.

  “Great. He got another promotion at work. Honey, you know that singer you took photos for at her launch party, is so furious that her debut album bombed.”

  “So he got a promotion?” I ask, confused.

  “Oh, no, I mean like she fired everyone on her team. Didn’t want to deal with them. She wanted to hear from other producers. Adam slipped one of his tracks into the mix and she loved it. He might work with her on the next album and got a promotion on the spot for how his tracks sounded.”

  “Are you serious? He might work with Honey?”

  “Yup! But it’s up in the air right now. The record label is pushing for her to work with well-known producers. But she says she did that for her first album and it didn’t sell well. She wants to look for new people. Try something fresh.”

  I picture Honey back at the party. She is gorgeous and famous. A bad combination when it comes to Adam. Yet I bite my tongue. Emily swears that Adam has changed. I’m not going to fill her head with concerns that he is going to cheat on her.

  “Well, I hope it works out. Working on someone’s album like that would be a big deal.”

  “Yup, I can’t wait.”

  “What about work for you?”

  She scrunches up her nose, “Little boring.”

  Of course. Now that Emily has Adam, the job has become just another job. It is already hard for her to stick to things she enjoys doing. I can’t imagine her staying around there for long.

  Our conversation ends when we arrive at the toy shop. I open the door slowly and step inside. I am still trying to picture Spencer in a place like this. Just like the time I found her at the harbor, this doesn’t seem to be a place that she would frequent. The small store is filled with toys that look to be hand-crafted. There isn’t a generic toy in the bunch. Emily is instantly taken by a stuffed unicorn.

  “This is cute,” she says softly.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I whisper back because something in the store makes us both feel as if normal volume of talking is looked down upon.

  “Oh, my. Didn’t hear you two enter,” a woman says from the back of the store.

  She peeks her head out from around a shelf. She isn’t the same old lady as last time. This woman is much younger, probably around our age. Her hair is a mousy brown and shoved up in a messy ponytail. Her clothes look as if she bought them forty years ago. They are too big on her, giving the impression she is wearing adult-sized clothes on a child’s body.

  “Hi!” Emily says with a little wave.

  “How can I help you two today? My n
ame is Lee,” the woman says to us.

  “I’m actually looking for another person who works here,” I say to her. “Older woman. Short. Sort of… hunched over.”

  “You probably mean my mother,” Lee replies. “She owns the shop. She’s in the back room right now. Let me go get her.”

  “Thanks so much,” I say, relieved that the woman is here.

  Lee turns around and heads off to fetch her mother. Emily looks at me and shrugs and then turns around, busying herself with looking at some of the small wooden figures.

  “Those are cute,” I remark, looking at them.

  They remind me of Bennett’s handiwork. The style is different however. Bennett’s wooden figures had a raw quality to them. These figures look more professional than Bennett’s. I pick out one that I think he would like and decide to buy it for him. He might want to admire the crafting of it.

  “You’re buying one?” Emily asks, surprised.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think they’re for kids,” she points out.

  “Still cute though,” I reply, not wanting to give up Bennett’s secret.

  “I like these little teacups,” Emily says, going over to a small teacup set for children.

  “Looks hand-painted,” I remark.

  “Oh, it is,” Lee suddenly says and I turn around to see her smiling behind me. “Everything in our shop is hand-crafted or hand-painted. We offer one-of-the-kind toys for children and babies.” She looks at me. “My mother is coming out. She’s just finishing up something.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  Lee sees me holding one of the wooden figures. “You like? They go well in dollhouses.”

  “Yeah. They’re all really cute,” I reply. “Is the person who works on these local?”

  “Yes, yes,” Lee nods her head vigorously, her earrings bouncing against her neck. “I can give you his contact info if you’d like.”

  “That’d be great,” I say, thinking that Bennett might want to talk to someone who does this for a living.

  As Lee goes to fetch the contact information, her mother comes out from the back room. Lee points over to me. Today the old woman is wearing giant glasses that make her eyes look almost comically large. I didn’t even know they made glasses like that anymore. She comes over to me.