Little Secrets (ARC)

by Jennifer Hillier

  There’s a Xanax in her purse, but she’d be mortified to take it. She doesn’t want anyone to know she relies on prescription pills to keep herself from drowning. She takes another deep breath, and then another. After a moment, her heart rate slows, returning to normal. She opens her eyes. Her gaze focuses slowly on the PI’s face.

  “That sonofabitch,” she finally manages to say. She reaches for the bottle of water. “He’s with her right now?”

  “Actually, they’re not together at the moment.” Castro manages to sound both gentle and professional. “They spent yesterday together, and she took the train back from Portland alone early this morning. I checked her Instagram page, and it mentioned something about classes later today.”

  Portland. Train. Instagram. Classes. It’s all too much. Marin closes her eyes again, as if shutting them will blot out the images Castro just showed her. It doesn’t work. They’re already seared into her mind. “She’s a teacher?”

  “She’s a graduate student. Art school.”

  Marin winces.

  “I’m sorry.” Castro shakes her head. “I’m sure that doesn’t help.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  Twenty-four and an artist. A student, for Christ’s sake. Marin opens her eyes again. Her gaze meets the PI’s, who’s watching her with a look of utter compassion so genuine it almost makes her want to cry.

  Another moment passes, and then Castro begins to describe how her discovery had come about. Per Marin’s instructions at their last meeting, she’s been looking into Derek’s employees, and two who work in his manufacturing facility in Portland were flagged. Castro engaged a contact in Oregon, a cop who moonlights as a PI on his days off, to do some digging. He learned that both employees have arrest records, and both were charged, though the charges were ultimately dismissed in both cases.

  “What were they arrested for?” Marin asks, trying to focus on the investigative details and not the sight of another woman’s lips pressed against her husband’s.

  “One was arrested for a bar fight,” Castro says. “The other was accused of assaulting her next-door neighbor.”

  “Her?”

  A hint of a smile passes over Castro’s lips. “Apparently they don’t get along. It started when one neighbor accused the other of stealing her ceramic garden gnomes.”

  Castro explains that her Portland contact ended up outside the hotel where Derek is staying, and that’s when he happened to spot Marin’s husband coming out the side door with a woman he knew wasn’t Marin. Curious, he followed them for a bit. They were heading to dinner. Henry’s Tavern in the Pearl District.

  When Castro says this, Marin winces again. Henry’s is one of her favorite casual spots, and she and Derek always eat there at least once whenever they’re in Portland. They do a great mango margarita. They also do a fantastic calamari. Tempura-battered, flash-fried, dusted liberally with cracked pepper and sea salt with a jalapeño aioli dipping sauce, enough to share.

  “What led your contact to the hotel in the first place?” Marin tries not to imagine her husband feeding his mistress fried squid. Surely he wouldn’t order the appetizer they always get.

  “He looked into the employee’s cell phone records, the one who’d been arrested for the bar fight,” Castro explains. “And there was a ten-minute call from the Hotel Monaco to the employee’s phone. He staked out the hotel, and when he saw Derek come out with another woman, he snapped pictures and sent them to me.” She clicks on her mouse. “That lead didn’t check out, by the way. It turns out the employee’s brother-in-law is in town for a Blazers’ game, and they were making plans to meet up. The brother-in-law made the call from his room.”

  A new photo is on the screen. Now they’re inside the restaurant. Derek is speaking, gesturing with his hands. His mistress is laughing at whatever he’s saying. They each have a cocktail. An old-fashioned for Derek, which is his go-to drink, and even if she didn’t know that, the orange slice is a dead giveaway. Something pink—strawberry daiquiri?—with an umbrella for the mistress.

  They’re sharing the fucking calamari.

  The thing that’s surprising is how shocked Marin feels now that it’s finally sinking in, even though she sensed it, even though on some level she knew. It’s not like she hasn’t noticed certain things. She and Derek are on the verge of their twentieth wedding anniversary, and even though she’s self-medicating with wine most nights, she’s been aware that things have been shifting. It’s not just that they haven’t been having sex, or that Derek has been away overnight for work more and more often, and for longer periods of time. It’s that when he’s home, there’s an emotional distance between them that’s growing, and currently it’s the size of a continent.

  “I didn’t email you last night because I wanted to dig a bit deeper first,” Castro says. “Because I was assuming you’d have questions.”

  “How long?” The words come out a croak. Marin takes another sip of water to lubricate her dry throat, finishing the tiny bottle. Castro tosses it into the recycling bin beside her desk and places a fresh water on the desk.

  “At least six months, from what I can tell.” Castro is typing again.

  Six months. Six months. That’s not a fling. That’s a relationship.

  Marin lets out a long breath as the full weight of it hits her. Where the hell has she been for six whole months that she didn’t notice? Oh, right. Trying to cope with the disappearance of their child. It tends to keep a mother occupied.

  The restaurant photo disappears, and Marin braces herself for another emotional stab wound. But it’s not another picture. It’s a spreadsheet. Derek’s cell phone records. Castro scrolls rapidly through the pages, where she’s already highlighted every instance of when the other woman’s phone number appears, either as the caller or as the recipient of the call. They flash by in bright yellow sparks. Derek and his mistress are in constant communication, by the looks of it.

  “Six months is as far back as the phone records go. I could go back further, but I’d have to access that information a different way. I was only able to access these because his cell phone account is under yours.”

  Marin isn’t planning to ask her how she’d even accessed these records. At their first meeting last year, she’d been very clear in her instructions. Look under every rock. Leave no stone unturned. Follow every lead, no matter where it goes, no matter who’s involved. She’d expected—no, she’d demanded—complete transparency. Everything the PI discovered, Marin wanted to know.

  Castro had said she could do that, but warned Marin that her methods were unconventional. The less Marin knew about how she did things, the better. And then she cautioned that clients didn’t always like the answers, and that sometimes unanswered questions were easier to live with than the truth.

  And the truth is that right now, Marin’s husband of nearly twenty years has been having sex with a younger woman. For six goddamned months.

  Her throat feels like sandpaper, and she opens the second bottle of water. “Derek used to visit the manufacturing facility in Portland every month. Now it’s every week, and he’s often there for days at a time. His company has tickets to the Blazers,” she adds lamely, as if that explains it, as if it somehow makes it better that he’s never home. And then, because she’s a masochist, she asks, “Are there any more pictures?”

  Castro clicks the mouse again, and another photo fills the screen. Derek with his arms wrapped around the other woman. They’re both smiling, and once again Marin’s hit with the feeling that she’s seen her before. It’s not uncommon for her to think this about someone—she owns three salons that have thousands of clients, most of them women—and maybe Derek’s mistress has been in one of them before, for a haircut, or a manicure. Again, the feeling is fleeting, and it’s gone before she can dig deeper.

  In these stunned, shell-shocked moments, Marin can’t seem to process the details of the other woman’s appearance. Looking at her makes her feel
physically sick. She can’t seem to stare at the woman long enough to decide whether she’s pretty or not, or understand what it is her husband sees in her. By the time she starts figuring it out, she’s nauseous, and she has to switch gears and focus on Derek. And when she does, all she can see is her husband’s smile. The look in his eyes as he looks at the other woman. He hasn’t looked at Marin like that in a long time.

  Four hundred eighty-six days, to be exact.

  The pictures are clear and in full color, high-definition, not grainy and black-and-white like she assumed they would be. Nothing about this is how she assumed it would be. In the movies, the private investigator who delivers the bad news about a cheating spouse is an older, weathered man, cynical and lonely and dressed in a wrinkled, ill-fitting suit, and his pictures are printed and delivered in a manila envelope. In reality, the private investigator is a woman around Marin’s age, quite attractive in her dark blue skinny jeans and fitted jacket. She’s not wearing a wedding ring, but these days, that means nothing.

  Castro is looking at Marin’s ring, something other women do often. Ten years ago, Derek upgraded her engagement ring to a five-carat Asscher-cut diamond. It seemed like a reasonable size at the time—most of the women in their social circle had diamonds the same size, or bigger—but here, in the small office, with its plain yellow walls and leafy potted plants, and the tiny fish in the tiny aquarium, and the pictures of Derek with another woman on the computer screen, the ring seems like a joke. It’s huge. Flashy. Expensive. Which is what Marin wanted, wasn’t it? For everyone to know how well they were doing, how fortunate, how—and she hates this word in particular—blessed?

  She’s tempted to take her diamond ring off and toss it into the fish tank. Her eyes are stinging, and she blinks rapidly, willing the tears not to fall. She stares at the photo of Derek and his lover, the images blurring through her tears, turning into a mess of colors and shapes that don’t make sense.

  “I have to take this,” Castro says suddenly. Marin turns away from the computer screen to find the PI holding her cell phone. She didn’t hear it ring. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The office door closes behind her. Marin doesn’t hear her speaking in the waiting room, which has a receptionist’s desk but no receptionist. She realizes after a few seconds that there is no phone call. Castro is giving her client some time alone to react, to fall apart if she needs to. It’s kind of her, but Marin isn’t going to fall apart. At least not right now. She’s good at faking it. She knows she can quash it until she gets home, where she can lose it in private, without anyone watching, with her pills and a bottle of wine.

  Marin got cocky. It’s the only explanation. Especially once she had Sebastian, after four difficult rounds of IVF. She’d been given too much—too much money, too much success, too much love from her husband and child—so the universe set out to correct that imbalance of abundance by taking the one thing from her that meant anything.

  Her son.

  Numbness is beginning to set in, and she’s grateful for it. She knows from experience that humans can only tolerate intense emotional pain for so long before things begin to dull. It’s the body’s way of coping, and it isn’t so much relief as it is a reprieve. The pain will be back. Marin will feel every ounce of it later, and when she does, she’ll wash it down with a Xanax and a bottle of cab sauv before it gets too bad.

  The office door opens again.

  “I’m back.” Castro drops into her seat. Marin notices, and not for the first time, how slim she is. A size 4, maybe even a 2. Marin’s never been that tiny. Not even when she was sixteen and bulimic.

  The PI looks at her closely. Marin knows she looks fine, and she wonders if the other woman is judging her for it. Is it more acceptable for her to be a basket case than to handle all this information about Derek like a champ? She wants Castro to like her. Marin wants her to feel for her, but not feel sorry for her.

  She’s never done well with other people’s pity, especially other women. She does, on the other hand, crave their validation. She suspects it comes from having a mother who was really hard on her, right up until the day she died.

  “I put a small file together for you, if you want to look at it when you get home.” Castro types something. “I just emailed it to you.”

  Marin’s phone vibrates a few seconds later. She pulls it out of her pocket and checks to make sure the file opens properly. She taps on it and it downloads. “Got it,” she says.

  “I want to be honest with you.” For the first time since they met, Castro looks upset. “When I got these photos yesterday, I wasn’t even sure I should tell you about it. It isn’t what you hired me for, and I thought it might be possible that you already knew about the affair. I didn’t want to make it awkward. You’re already dealing with a lot.”

  “You did the right thing,” Marin says. “I was clear with you at the beginning, and I asked you to tell me everything you discovered. Don’t feel bad. I’d rather know. I . . . I can’t deal with any more unknowns.”

  Castro exhaled. “Okay. That’s what I figured.”

  She catches the PI glancing at her watch. That must be it for today, then. Marin finishes the second bottle of water, then reaches for her coat. It feels like she’s moving in slow motion. Being emotionally blindsided knocks the wind out of a person.

  “One more thing, before you go,” Castro says gently. “This might be a good time to reevaluate our goals here.”

  Marin pauses, resting her coat in her lap. “What do you mean? My goals haven’t changed.”

  “At our last meeting, I told you I’ve been repeating the entire investigation PD did sixteen months ago. Nobody in your inner or outer social circles has flagged as suspicious. I’ve sifted through all of Derek’s past and present employees, his business contacts, your employees, your business contacts, and your entire client roster for the year leading up to Sebastian’s disappearance. The camera footage from the market has been dissected by two different video forensic specialists I hired personally. Nothing new has surfaced. It’s been more than a year now, and we have no new leads.”

  Marin suspects what the PI is going to say, and braces herself. Seattle PD and the FBI did a comprehensive search immediately after Sebastian went missing. Their son’s picture was all over the local news within two hours, and his Missing Child poster went viral on Facebook and Twitter the next day. A few days after that, the case had garnered national attention, prompting accusations of classicism and elitism because the authorities appeared to be giving the Machados special treatment. But neither Marin nor Derek could apologize for that. Why not use every advantage they had? What was the point of having money and powerful friends if they couldn’t help in a situation like this? They were desperate to find their son. Any parent would be.

  Castro is watching her closely, and Marin forces herself to focus.

  “I don’t want to waste your time and money, but I feel like we’ve come to a place where I can say to you . . .” Castro sighs, and puts her hands in her lap. “I know it doesn’t make any sense at all, and it’s incredibly painful and unfair, but a lot of the time . . . these kidnappings just aren’t personal.”

  Jesus Christ, Marin hates when people say that. It’s the exact same thing the police said. Dr. Chen said it, too. But it doesn’t make it easier to know that it wasn’t personal. It doesn’t help at all to think that her four-year-old child got kidnapped only because he happened to be the kid in closest proximity to the psychopath who stole him.

  She doesn’t say any of this to Castro. She keeps it together. The PI is just doing her job.

  “You have about twenty-five hundred unused in your retainer,” Castro says. “I’m more than willing to keep going, but I think at this point, you might want to consider—”

  “We’re not done.” The strength of Marin’s voice surprises them both. Her throat isn’t dry anymore. She sounds like herself again, decisive and commanding and a total “lady boss,” as Sadie would say. “We’
re not even close to being done. I want you to keep looking.”

  Their eyes lock. Castro’s face is expressionless, but Marin can picture her mind working, attempting to read her. But she doesn’t say anything, and with every passing second, the weight of what the PI said grows heavier.

  “Vanessa,” Marin says, and her voice cracks on the last syllable. “Vanessa, please.”

  She’s never used the private investigator’s first name before.

  Castro glances at Marin’s ring again. If she isn’t married now, then she was married before. Marin senses it. She probably has kids. Marin senses that, too. Moms recognize other moms—it’s in the lines of their faces, their weariness, their protectiveness, their vulnerability. Marin’s tempted to give the PI her goddamned ring, if only she’ll stay on.

  “I know you can’t promise results, and I’ve never expected you to. I just need you to promise you’ll keep doing your best.” Marin is in full boss mode now, speaking to the PI the way she might speak to one of her salon employees, someone who’s highly valued but perhaps requires a little motivation. “What about the affair? Who is this person sleeping with my husband? What is it she really wants? Derek isn’t a celebrity, but he’s in the media often enough. We both are. She has to know who we are, and what we’ve lost. I think she’s worth digging into.”

  Marin leans forward. “I understand it’s not possible for you to work on this every minute of every day. I know you have other clients. But whenever you can, whenever you have a spare moment . . . I need to know that someone is always looking for my son. If you need more money, that’s not a problem.”

  Marin’s voice starts to shake, and she’s back to being a mother again, not a boss lady, not a client. She hates that she can hear herself trembling, that she sounds like she’s losing control, that she’s begging. Which she is.