“I’m trying to collect real evidence Betsy can use when she goes to a lawyer.” She paused and surveyed the room we were in, a living room I doubted she ever used. “My ex gave me whatever I wanted so I’d keep my mouth shut. Justine wanted him to protect her at all costs, and he was so entranced by her that he did. He thought he’d have to ply me with financial promises, but the truth is, I wasn’t going to say anything for Heather’s sake.” She smiled with a glint in her eye. “But he didn’t know that.”
“I’ve got the proof you’re looking for,” I blurted out. “I took pictures of them just now.”
“You did?” Erica asked. “Why?”
“I had a feeling. I always have. I just took awhile admitting it to myself. I didn’t want to believe someone so … perfect … could do what she was doing. I guess I knew after the beach trip. I just thought that there was always time for second chances. For God to work,” I offered.
“The thing about God is He doesn’t force His way in. He works on people who are open to what He can do in their lives. Justine isn’t, and she hasn’t been for a long time.”
“But she’s a Christian. I saw the Scripture plaques in her house. And that display of crosses she has on her mantel. I saw the way the women at the mothers’ group look up to her. I saw how she—”
“Acted,” she said. “I’ll give you that. She’s a great actress. But this has been a long time coming. When Tom moved in, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, to use a cliché.” She smiled at me with just the corners of her mouth turned up. “I think she’s been really unhappy with Mark for a very long time, maybe always.”
“But Mark’s such a nice guy, and he clearly loves her so much. And she seems to love him. I can’t understand her being unhappy. It just doesn’t make sense. None of this does. Why would she throw all of this away?”
“The thing I’ve learned is marriage is a complicated thing that only the two people in it are really aware of. Those of us on the outside can think we know, but we just don’t.” She laughed and stood up. “You probably would’ve thought my husband was a nice guy too. You might’ve even been one of those people who believed he was a great guy and I destroyed the marriage for nothing.” She walked into the kitchen, and I followed her even though she had not asked me to. I watched as she filled a glass of water for each of us. I took mine gratefully and drained nearly the whole thing.
“I wouldn’t, you know,” I said. “Have taken his side. Or thought bad about you.”
Erica tipped her glass to me. “Ariel, no offense, but you already did.”
“But I—” I protested.
She drank from her own glass and smiled at me over the rim. “I forgive you,” she said and winked. “Just don’t do it again.”
“I won’t,” I said. And then, because it felt right, I clinked my glass with hers, even though mine was nearly empty. I knew that didn’t matter to her.
Chapter 35
Ariel
When I got home, David was asleep in our bed, still holding the book he had been reading. As I attempted to pull it from his hands, he woke up and looked at me, confused.
“Shhh,” I soothed him, “I just got home. Go back to sleep.”
He sat up and squinted at me as I turned on my bedside lamp. “Where were you?” he asked. There was no accusation in his tone, I noticed, just concern.
“I stopped off at Erica’s after—” After what? After I followed our neighbor—my friend—to her lover’s apartment? How did I explain where I’d been? I sat down beside him on the bed facing him. “Do you really want to hear this?”
He nodded, his eyebrows still knitted together.
I took a deep breath. “Are you sure? I mean, we could talk about it in the morning. It’s late,” I offered.
“In the morning I leave for Tampa,” he reminded me. I nodded. I would love to go to Florida, I thought. To flee all of this and hang out on the beach.
“Okay, so I’ll tell you now,” I said. “I mean, if you’re sure—”
“Just tell me already,” he said, smiling.
I paused, frowning at the order of the words, searching for a way to tell what I’d become so used to withholding. “Do you remember Tom Dean? The new neighbor we met at the pool at the summer-kickoff party?”
He nodded.
“Well, it turns out he’s Justine’s long lost love from when they were kids.” I raised my eyebrows as if to say, “What are the odds?” “So she and I went on that weekend together, right?”
He nodded again, his eyes still sleepy.
“And there was something I didn’t tell you. Because she asked me not to and—well—I didn’t. But now I need to tell you. That night we went to a club and danced. It was this cheesy salsa-dancing club, and even now I’m not sure why we went. Remember I texted you from there?” He nodded, still blinking away the sleep from his eyes.
“She was acting so weird the whole time. I wrote it off as just a reaction to Mark losing his job and her being stressed about it. She told me on the way home that she was going to have to go back to work. I could tell it wasn’t what she wanted, so I knew she was upset and maybe just a little bit mad at Mark for putting her into that position. So I totally sympathized with her feelings, you know?”
“So you kept a secret from me for her?”
I nodded and dropped my eyes. “I’m sorry. It felt wrong and I knew I shouldn’t. I wanted to tell you the whole thing as soon as I got home.”
“I would never keep a secret from you for anyone,” he said, looking wounded.
“I know. Please forgive me.”
“Finish your story,” he said.
“Well, so what happened was we were at this club and it was really hot and crowded and just cheesy. I wanted to get some fresh air and this guy bought me a drink and I sat with him outside and drank it.” Was it really as innocent as I was describing? I looked him in the eyes. “And I shouldn’t have done that, but I promise it really was harmless.” I thought of the look Brian gave me as I rode away in the cab. Was it really harmless?
“Are you still in touch with him?” he asked.
“No. I promise, it was nothing like that.” I thought of his card tucked into the money but left that part out.
His hand found mine in the bed, and he squeezed it. “Please don’t ever do something like that again.”
“I won’t,” I said. “It made me feel terrible. Icky. I don’t belong in that world.”
He smiled. “Good.”
I smiled back and scooted closer to him. “So while I was out there on the patio, Justine comes and finds me and says that she’s leaving with some people from the club to go on to another club. And then she just left me.” I paused, wondering if I should tell him about Brian paying my cab fare home. I decided to tell the truth. “So when I realized I didn’t have enough cash to get a cab home, the guy paid for it.”
“And he definitely wasn’t in that cab with you?” David asked, his voice sounding anxious, even doubtful. My heart began to pound with the implication. I realized what it was I had done as I sat there with Brian that night. I had flirted with temptation, daring it to rub off on me, rationalizing that it wouldn’t leave a permanent stain—a Crayola to a Sharpie. Was I any different from Justine? What if David had just lost his job and I was scared about our future? What if Brian had been someone I used to love … someone I always wondered about? Would I have let him get in that cab with me?
“No,” I said in answer to David’s question, but also to my own. I thought of the flicker of wanting I felt in that moment before the cab pulled away from the curb. I saw Justine fall into Tom’s arms in the hallway all over again. I pushed aside the images that filled my mind and focused on David, continuing with the story.
“I left and went back to the condo totally alone. But Justine didn’t come i
n till dawn. And she begged me not to tell anyone. So I didn’t. Until tonight. When she canceled on me tonight, I decided to follow her.” I traced my finger around the pattern on our bedspread and tried to corral my erratic thoughts. “I couldn’t have even told you why exactly I was following her, except that some part of me just knew. I guess I had to see it with my own eyes or I would’ve never believed it.” I looked at him. “I found out that Tom left his wife. And there’s suspicion that he and Justine are having an affair. That he was there in Myrtle Beach that night.”
“So you followed her to see if she’d go to him?” David asked.
“Actually I told myself I was following her to see if she went grocery shopping without me. I’ve still tried to make all of this be about our friendship, about why she and I couldn’t quite get it right no matter how hard I tried to be a good friend to her.”
“And what did you find out instead?”
I shook my head and looked at him. A tear rolled unbidden down my cheek. “That she’s not thinking about me at all. I’ve just been a means to an end, an opportunity to enable her to do what she wanted. Our friendship, it turns out, never really existed. She was just using me.” I hadn’t realized any of that until I said it aloud to David. But as the words left my mouth, I knew they were true.
He pulled me to him, stroking my hair. A single tear slipped from my eye and hit his T-shirt, leaving a small wet circle as proof of its existence. “So tonight I followed her to his apartment and watched as she kissed him in the hallway and went inside. Then I sat there for a really long time and figured out what to do next.”
My voice was muffled from talking into his T-shirt. I sat up. “So I went to Erica’s—she’s a neighbor of Tom and Betsy’s and she’s been helping Betsy. And I told her everything so she could help me figure out what to do.”
“And what did she tell you to do?”
“To come home and tell you, which I’m doing. And to tell Betsy. She doesn’t want to be the one to tell her since she didn’t see it for herself. She said it would be better coming from me.” I flopped down beside him on my pillow and stared at the ceiling. “So now I’m faced with a dilemma.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why is it a dilemma?”
I raised up on my elbow and turned to face him. “Because I am betraying Justine. And it feels like I’m giving up on her. I know that once I do this, everything’s going to move very quickly. And I just wish it wasn’t up to me to blow the whistle.”
“What would you want Betsy to do if she knew something like that about me?”
“Well, I would want to know, of course. I mean, I guess I would. Does any wife want to know something like that about her husband?”
“You said she already knows, she just needs proof. You can give her what she needs. Like it or not, you need to do the right thing and tell her what you know.”
“But I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t followed her. And I still don’t know the extent of what happened at the beach.”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
I stuck out my tongue at him. “That something happened between them. And it wasn’t good.” I rested my head on my arm.
“Look, I know you liked the idea of being Justine’s friend. She challenged you to be a certain kind of person—someone you believed you should be. And I know you wish that nothing would’ve changed. But the reality is, something did.” He cupped my chin with his hand, lifting my eyes to meet his. “You can do what’s right. Don’t be afraid of that.”
He yawned and slid down on the bed, closing his eyes. “I’ve got to get some sleep. Early morning tomorrow.” He reached over and patted my head like a child. “I have faith in you, Ariel. You’ve just got to have faith in yourself. I think that’s what this is all about. I think that’s what you need to learn. You’ve got a lot in here,” he said, pointing at my heart. “Trust that.”
I lay silently beside him, letting his words sink in. Within minutes, he was snoring. I envied his ability to slip into unconsciousness so easily. My mind raced and my eyes darted around the room. I clicked the bedside lamp off and slipped from the bed, padding out into the hall to check on the boys. One by one I kissed their sleeping faces, studying the curves of their dark, glossy eyelashes, the traces of babyhood still left in their chubby cheeks, their pursed lips, a sign they were just as intense in their dreams as they were in daily life.
I lingered in the dark, the soft light from the hall making them seem ethereal, angelic. I hardly ever paused long enough to see them this way—too intent on getting them to sleep so I could have my own time. That night I didn’t want any more of my own time; I wanted more of theirs. In their world there was no adultery, no betrayal. I wished all that awaited me when I woke up was cereal and cartoons and wringing the last few drops of summer out of the day. I returned to my room thinking of what awaited me instead—a phone call I didn’t want to make but had to. I fell asleep praying for the strength to do what was right and for God to guard me from situations that could land me in the same situation Justine had gotten herself into. I was learning we all need protection from ourselves.
Justine was at my door at seven a.m., looking chipper and ready for a walk as though nothing had happened, as though we still walked all the time and the gap between us didn’t exist, as though I had not stood and watched her kiss Tom just the night before and the proof wasn’t in my camera. I wanted to close the door in her face, tell her I was just too tired to keep up this charade and to please find someone else to confuse. Instead I forced myself to return her smile and let her into my kitchen just the same as I had all summer long. “I thought we could walk,” she said, a little too falsely.
I picked up my coffee and took a sip, staring at her. “I’m not really in the mood to walk,” I told her. I prayed silently, asking God to help me stand up to the woman whose approval I used to want more than anyone’s—even His.
“Oh, okay,” she said, her voice lowered. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
I shook my head, surprising myself that this was coming out the way it was. I had intended to tell Betsy, not Justine. “I know,” I said. “About Tom. And you.”
She waved her hand, dismissing my admission. “You’re just listening to gossip,” she said. “People’s minds are running away with them. Just because Tom and I were involved once doesn’t mean we’re involved again. He’s helping me get a job, that’s all. My husband lost his job, and I have to do what I can. I’ve poured out my heart to you.” Her eyes were wide, and there was no trace of the smile I was used to.
“I followed you last night,” I blurted out. “I saw you. I saw him. I—I had to see for myself.”
“What?” she shrieked.
The boys came running into the room, alarm on their faces. “It’s okay, boys,” I said. “You can go back to watching cartoons.” I shooed them out and turned back to Justine. “I thought,” I said, sounding pitiful, “that you were going grocery shopping without me. I thought that you just didn’t want to be with me. I was worried about our friendship, which just seems so stupid now, considering.”
She snorted. “What friendship? If you don’t trust me any more than that, then what good is our supposed friendship?”
“Look, I’ve known something was up for a while now—since before that weekend at the beach. So when you canceled last night, I just had to know if you were lying to me. I knew you were lying; I was just wrong about what.” I raised my eyebrows at her.
Her lower lip trembled, and she looked at me as tears filled her eyes. “So what do you want?” she asked.
“Want?” I laughed. “Want? I want a friend, a good neighbor. I want to borrow sugar from you and learn about organization and trade recipes and talk over the back fence. But that’s not what I get. So now I just want honesty. I want you to be honest with Mark, and
with Betsy. I want to move past this and get on with my life, and I want you to figure out what it is you want. Because apparently you don’t know.”
Tears ran down her face, and she didn’t even bother to wipe them off. They hit the kitchen floor like little drops of rain. “I do know what I want,” she said. “That’s where you’re wrong.” She sniffed and walked over to my paper-towel dispenser, helping herself to one.
She dabbed at her eyes. “I want Tom,” she said. She closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud. To anyone.”
I shook my head. “Tom’s not your husband,” I said. “You’ve got kids. You’ve got a life. You made vows.”
She wadded the paper towel up and glared at me. “Don’t tell me about vows. Don’t tell me what I should do. You in your picture-perfect world. ‘Teach me how to organize. Teach me how to bake bread. Teach me how to plan meals.’ As if that will make you happier, better. News flash: It doesn’t.” She snorted. “I’m living proof. I ran around making my life perfect, and I was still miserable. Tom happened to me for a reason. I realized I’ve been waiting for him all my life.”
I ignored her romantic babblings. “Justine, I hope you’ll do the right thing. You still have time before things go any further to do the right thing. It might take some work, but you and Mark could work through this. Mark loves you; he’ll—”
“You don’t know the first thing about Mark’s feelings. You don’t know the first thing about what goes on in our marriage, behind closed doors. You have no idea how miserable I was. For years.” She pressed the damp piece of paper towel to her eyes. She looked at me, tears welling. “Maybe I did have perfection—at least your version of it. But I always wanted more than what I had.” She shrugged, looked around. “I think we all have a little bit of Eve in us. She had perfection and everything she could ever want and still she reached for more.”
She Makes It Look Easy Page 23
