The Vacation

by T. M. Logan

  “She was for a bit, but she kept kicking holes in our dam. Said it was boring.” Ethan took a huge bite out of the apple. “Said she was coming back here.”

  “Well, where is she?” She looked at her sleeping husband, laid out on his towel. “Russ?”

  Ethan took another bite from his apple, shading his eyes with one hand as he scanned the beach. “Is that her, over there by the water?”

  15

  It was Odette. Standing at the water’s edge, sun glinting off the shiny panels on her pink swimsuit, ankle-deep in the lapping surf. The tide was out and it was a good fifty or sixty meters away from our spot on the beach. It made me uncomfortable, seeing her alone near the water.

  Rowan put a hand to her chest. “Why is she on her own?” She raised her voice and waved both hands over her head. “Odette!”

  As we watched, a tall figure walked up to her. Bent over to talk, before taking her hand. A man in a baseball cap and sunglasses, his shirt open. I only needed to see him for a split second to know who it was. His stride, his profile, the way his shoulders moved, the way he held her hand.

  Sean.

  Hand in hand, he walked Odette back to our little encampment of towels, Daniel trotting along beside him carrying two big bottles of water.

  Rowan went down on one knee, taking her daughter gently by the shoulders.

  “You gave me a fright, Odette,” she chided. “You must promise that you’ll never go into the sea again without someone to look after you, OK? Do you promise?”

  “Wasn’t in the sea,” the little girl mumbled, stubbing at the sand with her toe. “Only in the tiny waves.”

  “Russ?” Rowan said, her face lined with worry. “Why weren’t you with her?”

  Russ sat up. “Eh?” He blinked in the bright sunlight. “She was supposed to be playing with the boys, making a dam. I told her not to go into the sea without me, but she doesn’t bloody listen.”

  “Perhaps if you weren’t sleeping off a hangover,” Rowan said, her voice rising, “you would have noticed her in the water on her own! Christ, you’re so irresponsible!”

  “It’s all down to me, is it? As usual.”

  Odette whispered something into her mother’s ear.

  Rowan frowned. “What do you mean, honey?”

  In reply, Odette turned to look at Jake and Ethan, pointing her tiny index finger at them. “It was the boys,” she said in a small voice.

  “What was, honey?”

  “Their fault.”

  Rowan frowned over at the two teenagers.

  “Why?”

  “Wanted to play with them but Jake said I couldn’t, said I wasn’t allowed.” Her index finger prodded the air for emphasis. “He told me to go and play on my own, in the water.”

  Jake’s face darkened. “That’s not true,” he said, his voice rising. “She was trying to tell us what to do all the time, she wanted to build a fairy castle instead of a dam. She was kicking holes in it, letting the water through. Then she said she wasn’t playing and stormed off.”

  “Never!” Odette said.

  “Did!” Jake said loudly. “She’s just trying to get us in trouble!”

  Sean held his hands up as more voices collided in disagreement.

  “All right, all right, the main thing is she’s safe now, right? So why don’t we all have an ice cream or something.”

  Rowan stood up and went over to Sean, hugging him tightly, arms clasped around his broad back. “Thank you, Sean, thank you,” she said, her voice cracking. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you for keeping an eye out for her.”

  He hugged her in return, biceps flattened against her back.

  “No worries,” he said quietly. “It was nothing.”

  They stood there like that, not saying anything else, simply holding each other tight.

  Two people, two parents, giving and receiving thanks for the safety of a young child.

  Holding each other.

  For just a little too long.

  Just as they were about to part, half turning away from me, Rowan lifted her head up and stood on tiptoes, her lips near his ear. Just for a moment. Sean tilted his head down so his ear was almost touching her lips. Her hands at the back of his neck. His expression softening into a smile. A few seconds, nothing more, then they moved apart into an awkward silence.

  Had I imagined it?

  Had she whispered something?

  What did she say?

  What was that?

  Finally, they separated. Rowan smiling at my husband, the hero.

  My husband, who seemed to be losing his way in life.

  Whose midlife crisis had snowballed into an affair.

  Who had been lying to me for weeks, maybe months.

  Not for the first time, I wondered whether Rowan had brought us here to impress him, to impress my husband. If that was what was really going on. The free vacation and the villa and the champagne were all to impress Sean. An in-joke, of which only the two of them were aware. They had worked out a way to come away on vacation together—the rest of us just happened to have been invited along for the ride.

  Stop it.

  Stop. It.

  Russ extended a hand and Sean shook it, both men nodding awkwardly.

  Sean had strong hands. I loved his hands. They were already starting to darken with exposure to the Mediterranean sun. I noticed something else about him as he reached to drink from a bottle of water: a pale line of skin around the fourth finger of his left hand.

  Where his wedding ring should have been.

  16

  ETHAN

  Ethan tore a bunch of dark grapes from the vine, picked the biggest one, and put it in his mouth. He bit into it, the juice sweet and sharp on his tongue, chewing slowly to savor the taste. Turning away from Jake and spitting the pips on the ground before plucking another from the bunch, savoring the pop as the grape burst between his teeth. Pluck, chew, spit, repeat. He’d never been in a vineyard before. He’d never eaten grapes straight off the vine before, either. Always from the supermarket packet, always washed and rinsed because Jen—calling her that instead of Mum wound her up every time—insisted they were washed, never eaten when they were even slightly soft or had been left out of the fridge or might have had flies buzzing around them.

  There was no breeze at all and the afternoon heat was brutal. He and his brother were in the middle of the vineyard down the hill from the villa, stretched out in the shade of a row of vines bushy with green leaves and fat red grapes. It was more private here; they couldn’t be seen from any of the balconies unless they stood up.

  Ethan propped himself up on one elbow, plucking another bunch of grapes from the nearest stem.

  “So,” he said, “are you going to ask her then?”

  “Ask her what?” Jake said.

  “You know.”

  “Nope.”

  Ethan slid a grape between his lips.

  “Whether she’s with anyone.”

  “What the fuck do you know about it? About girls? About anything?”

  Ethan shrugged. It was one of his brother’s surefire windups: girls. Wind him up and watch him go, and if he stood close enough when Jake kicked off, maybe—just maybe—Mum would notice him, too. He ran through a few options: straight to the point; or maybe the rumor about Rosie’s party; or the rich rugby boy; or go for the nuclear option? Nah. That was best kept for another time. Might as well get straight to the point.

  “So do you fancy her?”

  “Fuck off,” Jake said.

  “You do, don’t you?”

  “Fuck. Off.”

  “That’s a yes, then.”

  “You’ve got literally no idea what you’re talking about. You haven’t got the first clue what I do or don’t think.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re such a twat.”

  “Oh, I’m a twat? That’s brilliant.” Ethan reached for a lie with enough weight to do some damage. “I’m not the one making a twat of myself over some
girl who’s done every lad in Year Eleven.”

  Jake’s head snapped around.

  “Say that again.”

  Ethan shrugged again.

  “Just saying what I’ve heard.”

  “You heard wrong,” Jake said. “Way wrong. That’s total bullshit, what you’ve heard about her.”

  “OK, fair enough.” Ethan paused a beat. “So you do fancy her, then?”

  Jake got to his feet, his hands tightening into fists. “You never know when to shut the fuck up, do you?” He threw the half-eaten bunch of grapes he was holding into the undergrowth. “You never know when to stop.”

  “That’s funny, bro, that’s a good one.” Watch him go. “Especially coming from you.”

  Ethan braced himself for the first blow.

  They used to fight a lot when they were younger. Ethan had figured out how to light the fuse at a young age: niggle—provocation—anger—confrontation—scrap. Dead arms, Chinese burns, barked shins, stinging ears, pulled hair, bent fingers and bruised balls on a daily basis. Then they had both started getting bigger, almost at the same time, and a few months ago things had got a whole lot more serious without either of them realizing before it was too late. They found themselves having a next-level scrap, a full-on, proper, adult-sized fistfight over—Christ, Ethan had no memory of what even caused it, over something, anyway—and it had ended with split lips and black eyes, bloodied noses and bruised knuckles, Mum screaming at them to stop and Dad running downstairs and physically pulling Jake away from him, pinning him to a wall, Jake’s eyes crazy wide, the way they always looked when he really kicked off. Ethan had grinned at him with blood on his teeth, dizzy from punches but jubilant, ready for round two. Blood on both of them, on their clothes, on their knuckles, big fat drops of it on the cream carpet. Mum had an absolute shitfit. It was kind of hilarious.

  That was the day Ethan discovered he liked the taste of blood in his mouth.

  But since then there had been an unspoken truce. Each knew the kind of damage he could do to the other. Jake was taller and had a longer reach, but Ethan had strength and power on his side. Both knew that whenever they had a proper fight now, both would end up bloodied—whoever won.

  “Stand up,” Jake said.

  “Why?”

  “Just fucking stand up and you’ll find—”

  He stopped midsentence, staring back up the hill.

  “What?” Ethan said, following his brother’s stare.

  Lucy was walking toward them between the parallel rows of vines. Ethan sat up to get a proper look at her. She was wearing a white vest top and short cotton skirt, a wide-brimmed straw hat over blond hair still damp from the beach. The white top was very white, almost dazzling in the bright sunlight, so that it was hard to look at her. She was all-right-looking, he supposed. Better than all right—she was hot. Tall, nice face, slim but with big tits, not much to fault her on, really. Way out of Jake’s league, although he didn’t seem to realize, which was pretty funny.

  She walked slowly, unselfconsciously, taking her straw hat off when she reached them.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Not much,” Jake said, trying for nonchalance. “You all right?”

  “Bit bored. You?”

  “God, yeah. This heat is savage, isn’t it?”

  “I kind of like it.” He brushed a hand through his fair hair. “What do you reckon, then?”

  “About what?”

  “This place.”

  “Pretty amazing,” she said. “The pool’s great.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ethan had to agree: all in all this wasn’t a bad place. Not bad at all. Much better than the crap rentals they usually had to put up with on summer vacations.

  Lucy fanned herself with the straw hat, one hand brushing her long blond hair back away from her face, before setting it on her head with the brim tilted back.

  She gave Jake a big smile. “It’s just so hot out here and there’s no shade at all, is there?”

  “Fancy a drink?”

  “What’ve you got?”

  Jake produced a half-sized bottle of vodka from the pocket of his black cargo shorts, unscrewing the cap and handing it to her. She took a swig and grimaced as she swallowed, coughing as she gave it back to him.

  “Prefer it with a bit of Coke,” she gasped.

  “I’ll get some from the house, if you want.”

  “No, no.” She laughed and held a hand up. “It’s fine.”

  Jake took a swig from the bottle and set it down in between him and Lucy.

  Ethan thought about asking for a go on the vodka but didn’t want to give his brother the opportunity to say no, to embarrass him in front of her. He watched them chatting, his muggy older brother and this hot girl with her chest stretching her vest top. The beautiful people. Laughing together, having fun together, and she wasn’t even pretending this time like she sometimes did. The three of them went to the same school and knew one another in that respect—even though they were in different years—as much as they did family friends. Jake trying to be all cool and casual, Ethan thought, spitting another pip into the dry earth. It was obvious that his older brother didn’t want him to be here. Well, tough shit. I’m not going anywhere.

  “So,” Jake said, turning his back on Ethan to block his view. “You OK?”

  Lucy nodded. “Yeah. Just want to get the GCSE results day out of the way.”

  “Me too. Bet you’ll get all nines though.”

  She snorted. “Don’t know about that.”

  “Everything else … all right?”

  “Yeah.” She took another swig of vodka. “Peachy.”

  Ethan’s ears pricked up at her tone. There was a silence between the two older teenagers for a moment, something passing wordlessly between them. Ethan leaned around to look at them but he was too late. The moment had gone.

  “Right.” Lucy looked farther down the hill. “Who’s coming down to the woods, then?”

  17

  My book lay unread in my lap. Every time I picked it up and read a few lines, my mind slid off in another direction as I wrestled with the painful truth of my husband’s infidelity: the poison at the heart of our marriage.

  Sean had been upstairs taking a nap since we returned from the beach. It seemed incredible to me that he could act perfectly normal, that he could appear normal, in the face of what he’d done and what he was still doing. How could he carry on this pretense so blatantly that he wasn’t even wearing his wedding ring anymore? What had Rowan whispered to him at the beach? Was Russ right to suspect her of having an affair? It was exhausting thinking about it all the time.

  I needed a plan.

  I sat up on the sun lounger and looked around. Russ was pushing Odette around the pool on a pink floating mattress. Rowan was nowhere to be seen. Alistair was wandering around the gardens with his phone, snapping pictures of … I wasn’t really sure what he was taking pictures of. He turned his back to me and held up the phone again, zooming in on something. A bird in the tree, maybe? He was a bit too far away. Tonight, the four of us were going out for dinner: Rowan, Jennifer, Izzy, and me. I was going to have to be careful, keep my emotions in check, because right now every time I opened my mouth I felt like I was going to cry or confess everything—especially if someone tried to be nice to me. I was coiled up so tightly with worry and fear and desperation that it felt as if an accusation might burst out of me at any moment. But I had to keep a lid on all of that long enough to make sense of what was happening. If I could get on the front foot, find out what Sean was doing, I could prepare myself for what was coming. And maybe that would mean a better chance of keeping my family together.

  * * *

  I had done enough watching, enough listening. It was time for action. Time to do something.

  I crept along the first-floor hallway on the balls of my feet. No sound, no voices. Pushing the heavy oak door open, I peered inside Rowan and Russ’s bedroom. Like ours, it was decorated in cr
eamy marble and antique wood, with a four-poster bed and beautiful carved bookcases. The sliding glass door out to the balcony was open slightly, gauzy white curtains stirring gently in the breeze from outside.

  What was I looking for? What was I even doing in here?

  I didn’t really know. But there had to be something, some clue that would help me find my way out of this maze. Where would I hide something, if it were me? If this were my room?

  The wardrobe doors were open. I pushed a dozen dresses and tops aside and saw two matching red Samsonite suitcases stacked at the back of the space, one slightly smaller than the other. I selected the smaller of the two and unzipped it, poking through empty plastic bags, charger cables, and a gray cotton laundry sack, also empty. The pockets inside the lid of the case had a few papers in them that seemed to relate to Rowan’s company, columns of figures and accounting terms that I couldn’t make head nor tail of.

  I crossed the room and pulled open a bedside drawer. An open carton of ten packets of Marlboros, with only six packs remaining. A spare lighter. Assorted pills, a penknife, a plastic envelope stuffed with a thick wedge of fifty-euro notes, a phone charging cable, an iPad, and a Google Pixel cell phone, both switched off. Russ’s side of the bed. That was a bit weird, that his phone was here, switched off. He seemed to be on it all the time.

  Creeping around the other side of the bed, I pulled open the drawer there.

  Three passports, paperwork for the rental car, flight details in a plastic wallet, packets of pills, hair straighteners, scissors, a notebook, pens, lip balm, suntan lotion.

  I moved the boxes of pills aside and reached farther into the drawer, trying to leave the other contents as I found them.

  But none of it was familiar, none of it meant anything. None of it helped.

  Hold on.

  Wait.

  There.

  Something I did recognize. Something I knew very well. Perhaps the last thing I actually expected to find in this room.

  Without realizing I was doing it, without even making a conscious decision, I reached in and picked it up. Held it between thumb and forefinger, shaking my head. Hot tears pricking my eyes.