I awaken at noon feeling disoriented, like I don’t know where I’ve been or even where I am.
Then, I do know.
I’m in our bed.
The book, the texts, all of it, are real.
Jeff and I? Maybe not so much.
I lie there pondering this, staring at the ceiling, until I feel like I’m going crazy. Not bothering to change out of my pyjamas, I go downstairs in search of Beth.
She’s in the kitchen, but not alone. Tim’s here, and they’re talking like conspiratorial buddies, though they’ve never been. Beth’s always disliked him, from the first, though she’d never tell me why.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, and in their guilty looks I know.
“Did you have a good rest, honey?” Beth replies.
“I’m kind of hoping I’m still sleeping, to be honest.”
She shakes her head and walks to the counter where the coffee machine sits, gurgling slightly, the pot full of the blackest coffee.
“Don’t believe it, Claire,” Tim says. “Don’t you believe it for a second.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know that Jeff would never—”
“What? Betray me? How could you possibly know that?”
“He’s my brother. I know him in my bones.”
“Like he knew you? Like he knew me?”
“Yes. Exactly like that.”
“So if Jeff were here, and I were dead, and he found … He found out about us, he wouldn’t have been surprised? Devastated?”
“Devastated, yes. Surprised, no.”
“If you’re saying what I think you are, then fuck you. And get out of my house.”
Beth puts her hand on my arm, pressing a warm mug into my hands. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s right.”
“Well, then, fuck you too.”
My knees feel weak. I sway away from Beth. She steadies me, and in an instant, Tim’s there to help her. They hold me up and sit me down, and neither of them looks like they’re going anywhere.
“That’s not what I meant,” Tim says. “I only meant,” he glances at Beth, wishing, maybe, that she wasn’t here, then continues, “I meant that he wouldn’t have been surprised I acted that way.”
“We both acted that way.”
“But we had a history, and … do you want to hear this?”
“If you know something about what Jeff thought, then yes.”
He runs his hand over his face. “Jeff worried, sometimes, that he was your second choice. And so, what he saw confirmed it, but … you already know this, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“Jeff told me, when we started talking again, how you’d worked things out.”
I can’t help the hurt from creeping into my voice. “He told you?”
“I think he needed to. But you have to listen to me. You have to believe this: when you told him that you really did choose him, he believed you.”
I absorb this information like a dry sponge.
“But even if that’s true, that doesn’t explain any of this. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t—”
Beth’s arm is around my shoulders. “Of course it does, honey, and that’s why there has to be a rational explanation for all of this.”
“There does?”
“Yes,” Beth and Tim say together with certainty.
I look back and forth between them until I connect the dots.
They’re certain Jeff wouldn’t betray me because I’d betrayed him. He knew how it felt, and he was too good a person to ever make someone feel the way I’d made him feel.
But see, I have another theory: if Jeff was going to betray me (if he did), it wouldn’t have been prevented by my actions, but caused by them. Like a chemical reaction that needs the right condition, my actions, Tim’s and mine, created the nitroglycerine, waiting, locked away until the right reagent came along.
Then somehow, somewhere, he met Tish, and the air rushed in, and any resolve he had exploded.
The problem with my theory, though, is that Jeff’s not here for me to test it. He’s not here for me to ask. He left me clues that point to something, something, but maybe nothing, and I already know in my clouded brain that if I don’t solve this puzzle, I will sink, I will go under, I will drown.
So when I get away from Beth and Tim and their little co-conspiracy to make me forget, make me believe, make me dismiss for lack of evidence, I check one last thing on the computer.
Springfield to Springfield.
If I leave right now, I can be there by dinner.
It’s after six. I’m in my rental car, headed towards town. The sun’s setting behind the rounded hills that surround it, and a full moon is rising to replace it.
I’m driving. I’m actually driving. For the first time, since Jeff died, I’m driving.
The minutes I had between flights were enough time to realize that I literally didn’t know where I was going, and that I’d be arriving too late to find Tish at her office. I had no idea where she lived or how to contact her other than through Facebook, and something told me she wouldn’t accept my friend request.
Or maybe she would, this woman I met in a moment of crisis, this woman I tried to help, this woman who had the audacity to come into my home, talk to me, talk to my son.
Then it struck me: maybe there was something Facebook could help me with after all. A quick check on my phone proved me right. Her husband’s a doctor, and his number’s listed in the phone book. A reverse address search later and I have their address. It’s so easy, even in this day of suspicion and privacy, to find someone if they’re not careful.
It’s so easy to lose someone too.
Her address is loaded into the car’s GPS, and the woman’s voice emanating from it tells me calmly but firmly to turn right in a hundred and fifty yards, turn right, turn right, your destination is on your left.
I pull over, too close to the curb, and my wheels skim it. A man is backing out of their driveway. His car passes mine on his way out. This must be her husband, Brian.
The house is still all lit up, so she must be home. Perfect.
I watch her husband’s tail lights fade. Does he know the answer to my questions? Does he have his own clues, his own suspicions? Or if I follow him, ask him, would I bring his world crashing down?
I find this option tempting for a moment. There’s something about the power in it, but no. Dr. Brian Underhill isn’t the answer to the wreck that is my life. He’s just another person caught in the jetsam.
When Tish opens the door, half laughing, words of dismissal on her lips, her mouth drops open. She closes it quickly, hiding her surprise. She must be good at hiding things, I think.
“Claire? What on earth are you doing here?”
She’s still wearing her work clothes (a black skirt, a pale yellow sweater), and her hair is tied back.
“I came to get some answers.”
“You … what? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
She bites her thumb and glances over her shoulder. “Um, why don’t you … come in?”
I follow her into the house. It’s a typical four-bedroom suburban, not that different from my own. The furniture is nicer, though; a doctor’s house.
She takes me into the family room and motions towards the couch. “Will you take a seat? I need to check on something in the kitchen. Do you want anything?”
“I’m fine.”
She stares at me for a minute, then disappears. I look around the room slowly. School shots of her daughter and family vacations are on the mantelpiece. There’s an afghan over the back of a squashy chair holding a half-read book, the spine cracked, and unobtrusive art on the walls hanging over the taupe paint. With a bit of straightening, this house would be for-sale ready.
I track back to a shot of her on the mantelpiece, the same shot as on the company website. She isn’t prettier than me, I think, then feel a wave of disgust for making the comparison at all.
Tish reappears holding two glasses of white wine.
“In case you changed your mind,” she says, putting one of the glasses on the coffee table in front of me.
There’s a coaster next to it, and I resist the urge to move the glass onto it. I want to let the glass bleed water onto her nice mahogany, as petty as that is.
She sits across from me, cradling her wineglass in her hand, not drinking from it. She’s eyeing me like my therapist used to, waiting for me to say something.
Eventually, she does.
“I guess I’m just … really confused about why you’re here.”
“I have something to ask you.”
“Okay.”
I hesitate. In court, when you’re trying to get information out of someone, trying to get them to admit what you’re trying to prove, the better strategy is generally to ask a series of innocuous questions, laying a trap, building up to the final question so carefully that they can’t escape. But sometimes another strategy works: ask what you want to know so directly that the witness will be shocked into telling the truth. And because I haven’t had enough time to prepare properly, this is the strategy I use.
“Were you sleeping with my husband?”
“No!”
The vehemence of her denial startles me. Startles her too, I guess, since she nearly drops her wineglass, and as it is, half of its contents spills on her leg.
She looks down at the spreading wet and pats it with her hand, as if it’s absorbent. She puts the wineglass on the floor next to her.
“Sorry … I … that’s not what I expected you to say.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I really don’t—”
“Mom? Are you all right?”
Her daughter’s standing in the doorway, looking frightened. She’s wearing her school uniform, and she looks innocent, and less confident than in her book jacket photo.
Tish rises quickly. “Didn’t I say to stay in the kitchen?”
“I thought you hurt yourself.”
“No, I … spilled something. See, nothing’s the matter.”
Zoey looks at me with her pale blue eyes. I feel a stab of guilt that I’ve made this child worried somehow, but that’s her mother’s fault, not mine.
“Who’s that?” she asks.
“This is … Claire. She came to … visit for a few minutes.”
Zoey relaxes and holds out her hand. It’s stained with blue ink. “Hi, Claire. I’m Zoey.”
My hand reaches out automatically. She takes it and pumps it up and down, once, twice, a grown-up’s handshake, though I know from my Internet snooping that she’s just a year younger than Seth.
“Nice to meet you,” she says. “How do you know my mom?”
“Zoey.”
“What? I was just curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat. Why don’t you take your homework and go up to your room? I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“Aren’t you going to change out of your wet clothes?”
“I’ll do that after Claire leaves. Room, now, please.”
“Oookkkaayyy. Bye, Claire.”
“Bye, Zoey.”
She leaves and pounds up the stairs, leaving an imprint on the world.
Tish returns to her seat. “Sorry about that.”
“No, I … I know how it is. Seth’s …”
“Seth is …?”
“You know what? I don’t want to talk about him with you.”
“Because you think that Jeff and I—”
“Were sleeping together. Yes.”
“No, Claire. We weren’t. We were only friends.”
“I find that hard to believe, given everything.”
“What everything?”
I rotate through the list that’s been cycling through my brain.
“Why did he have that book? Her book?”
“Zoey’s book? That Seth read from at the funeral?”
“For starters.”
“I gave it to a lot of people. Brian, my husband, ordered so many copies—”
“Did you give it to him at the golf retreat?”
“Yes, that’s right. I brought a bunch of them with me. For the prize packs. Everyone who attended got one.”
A muscle twitches in my eye. “Why did you text him?”
“I did?”
She looks genuinely puzzled, but I press on. “It was on his phone. A text from you.”
“What did it say?”
“I couldn’t read it. The phone’s busted,” I admit.
Her brow creases, concentrating. “I think … you know I work in HR, right?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s how we met. Jeff and I. About a year ago, he had to do HR training, and he was in my group. Afterwards, when he had an issue, he’d call me. Anyway, he called me a couple of weeks ago. He had to fire someone in his department, Art somebody, I think, and he was finding it hard to do it. So I gave him some pointers. He said he’d let me know how it went. When I didn’t hear from him … I thought I sent him an email, but I guess I sent him a text.”
“How did you have his cell number?”
“From the golf retreat. We were both on the prize committee, and we had to coordinate, so he gave me his cell number.” “So why was he texting you?”
“I … I thought you were talking about me texting him?”
“He texted you too,” I say, reaching into my bag for the cell phone bill. “This is your number, right?”
She takes the bill and looks at the three times her number appears that I’ve highlighted in yellow.
“So he was texting you.”
“To coordinate, like I said. I … that’s right. His phone wasn’t working properly. He could text, but nothing else.”
She hands the bill back to me, and I feel my confidence slipping. I didn’t have time to go through Jeff’s other cell phone bills before I ran off to confront her. I’ve gone about this the wrong way. I’m asking questions I don’t know the answers to, breaking the first rule of cross-examination. And her lies seem to come so easily. Is there any possibility they’re the truth?
“Why were you at the funeral? Why were you so upset?”
“Someone from HR had to go. I … I volunteered. I was the only one who knew him. I thought it made sense if it was me. And I’m sorry for being such a mess. I genuinely liked Jeff, and I am sad about what happened. But also, my father died a few years ago, and that poem Seth read, Zoey wrote that about him. I have a hard time listening to it.”
Her voice catches as she says this, but she holds her tears in check. She watches me, waiting for my next question. She looks sad but in control.
The texts. The book. The funeral. I have one piece of evidence left.
I reach into my purse again and pull out the corkscrew. “What about this?”
She stares at the item in my hand as if she’s trying to figure out what it is.
“I’ve never seen that in my life.”