St. Helena, Napa County, California
July 2000
I STORMED INTO THE HOUSE, rage emanating from my body. I wanted to physically hurt David. I pictured myself pushing him down the stairs; I imagined some kind of accident on the vineyard. I wanted him to suffer.
He was upstairs, getting dressed after taking a shower. His smile fell when he saw my face.
“Sylvie Mills,” I spat out.
From the look in his eyes, I could tell he knew that I knew everything.
“I can explain—” he started, but I cut him off.
“You told me it was one time, with somebody I didn’t know, when you were in Sonoma. You said her name was Ashley. Turns out, it had been going on for a year, David. A year, with the mother of your son’s girlfriend. And how many others before her?”
“Josh wasn’t even dating Michelle,” he stammered. “If he was, I wouldn’t have—”
“Like that makes it better somehow? God, David.” I thought about the details he’d peppered in. Ashley, in Sonoma, a woman I’d envisioned so many times I could see her in my head. I had forgiven him based on a scenario that never happened. David, my safe place, not safe at all.
“Did Ashley even exist?” I charged on. “Or was it Sylvie the whole time?”
“I panicked,” he said.
“You made promises,” I continued, my voice trembling. “To Sylvie. You told her you’d leave me to be with her. You told her you were in love with her. And she believed you, the same way I used to believe you. You never stayed at a hotel in Petaluma after I made you leave. You went to see Andrew, sure—but then you went straight back to Sylvie.”
“Bev, I don’t want to be with her. I broke it off with Sylvie months ago. It was a huge mistake, and I didn’t tell you because there was so much going on—”
“Like her daughter dying on our vineyard? David, the woman is completely broken.” The image of Sylvie in the parking lot, her body practically skeletal, puffy bags under her eyes, would haunt me for years. Was Sylvie the reason why Michelle had wanted to talk to me the night she died? Had she seen her mother with David, and tried to warn me?
I stood tall, even as my body sought to cave in. Michelle had been upset that night. There was something she needed to say to me, and maybe it wasn’t about my sons, but about my husband. Maybe David and I were to blame, our affairs trickling down, the knowledge of it polluting Michelle. She was just a teenage girl, and she never should have had to carry that weight.
No matter which way I spun it, Michelle was dead because of our family, and that was something I didn’t know how to live with.
David sat down on the edge of our bed, his head in his hands. “I messed up, Bev. I already admitted to that. I said I’d go to therapy. I’ll do whatever it takes. But things between us were so bad—”
“Don’t even think about putting this on me,” I said. I opened my mouth again, wanting to humiliate him as badly as he had done to me. I wanted to tell him about Emilia, that I’d realized his love might not be enough.
I didn’t yet know that it was the one time when staying quiet would save my life.
“Give me another chance,” David said, looking up at me with glassy eyes.
“Was there ever an Ashley?”
David’s silence did all the talking for him. Such careful details, conjured out of his imagination.
“Please, Bev. We can get through this. For us. For our family.”
I stepped away from him. “This family is broken.”
“We can fix it—”
“No, David, we can’t.” I paused before the next words tumbled out, letting them take on the right shape, impossible to misinterpret. “I want a divorce.”
It wasn’t what he expected. The word lingered between us, enormous and terrifying. It wasn’t about punishing David, because we were both guilty. It was about acknowledging that we were two broken pieces, and we no longer fit together to become whole.
David rebounded from the shock and kept fighting, like I knew he would. “We’re husband and wife, Bev. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.”
“It’s too late,” I said, heading for the door.
David was quiet for a long time, his fingertips clutching his knees. Maybe he finally saw it. The people who suffered because of the vows we’d made each other. The wreckage underneath the perfect couple we were so good at pretending to be. It was my turn to break the cycle.
“Is this really what you want?” David called after me, his voice lullaby soft.
I thought about what I wanted. Once upon a time, I’d wanted David, but time had pronged us apart. The incident with Abby had shown me how different we were, and Michelle’s death had compounded it. David and I had both tried so hard to neutralize the damage, but it had never gone away. It seeped into us, poisoning our marriage. All we had done was make the mess impossible to clean up.
Without turning around, I responded, “Yes.”