Eleven Years Earlier
September 2012
IT’S LATE SEPTEMBER, AND TONIGHT will be our first pick of the chardonnay grapes. I went out to see them earlier today, the touch of sunburn on their filmy yellow skin indicating it’s time for them to leave the vine. In a matter of hours, when the air cools down, our picking crew will head out and fill containers that will be emptied into half-ton macrobins. The excitement, the frenzy, the sweet smell in the air: all reasons why I’ll never leave this land, why there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
As has become my tradition, I take a pair of pruning shears, slice off the first bunch of grapes myself, and let them hit the bottom of my container. It’s not a far drop, but every time they thud against the plastic pail, I imagine what would happen if they splattered on impact, the fall knocking the life out of them.
“Andrew,” I say. “Want to test one?”
He’s not paying attention. He’s staring at his phone, again, fixated on his screen with an expression I can’t decipher.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I just need to deal with a bit of business here.”
He thinks he’s being subtle, the way he glances at his phone. He thinks I don’t know what he’s up to. Men never give quite enough credit to the women who know them best. Six years and a child into our marriage, and Andrew doesn’t know that I’ve seen the change in him lately. His phone screen, always angled away from me; his eyes darting up to see if I’ve noticed. His sharp, dismissive nothing when I ask what’s wrong.
But still, I ask him again, this time more forcefully: “What’s wrong?”
He sighs and rubs his forehead, like I’m an inconvenience. “Sadie, I told you this already. Everything’s fine. Please just give me some space.”
He expects me to let it go, but I can’t. I’ve seen friends cheated on by their husbands. Infidelity doesn’t always look the same, but it has certain qualities in common. The short fuse, the long periods of needing to be alone, the sudden need for privacy.
I’ve asked him point-blank if he’s cheating on me, and he’s denied it. But still, the signs are there. Our sex life has been dwindling over the past few months. I’m approaching thirty, and pregnancy left my stomach permanently silvered in stretch marks, a shelf of flabby skin easy to hide in pants but on stark display in the bedroom. And Andrew, like the wines he’s devoted his life to, is only getting better looking with age. He must notice the way women look at him.
After the pick, when Andrew gets in the shower, I go into his phone, something I told myself I’d never do. And there it is: a number I don’t recognize, one without a name saved with it. I know exactly what that means. With my pulse in my ears, a sob wanting to wrench its way out of my throat, I ready myself for a long text message thread, for back-andforth flirtatious banter. But whatever Andrew and the woman have said to each other has been deleted on Andrew’s end, leaving only two messages. He has been careful to cover his tracks.
The first, from him: Are we still on to meet tomorrow? Mile Rock Beach, but up by the viewpoint, Lands End trail, where we can be alone. 7 a.m. I’ll make an excuse to leave, but I can’t be gone long.
Why so early, are you so afraid someone will see? says the response, and I picture the woman who must have sent it, who doesn’t care about Andrew’s wife and family at home. Fury grips my chest, and I set the phone face down where I found it, ready to barge into the bathroom and confront Andrew.
But I stop myself. If I confront him now, he’ll be able to come up with an excuse, or make me feel crazy—and this is not the first time I’ve accused him over the years. What I need is proof, and I know how to get it.
Make it 6:30. No more messages until then, my wife’s getting suspicious, I write back before I can stop myself, and promptly delete the message, along with her last one to Andrew.
At dinnertime, Andrew predictably makes an excuse for leaving the next morning. “I have a breakfast meeting with a client. Bastard’s still on New York time, so he wants to meet at seven. Just in case you’re looking for me.”
I smile sweetly, scooping up mashed potatoes with my fork. “That’s fine.”
The next morning, Andrew doesn’t see me leave the vineyard. I’m always up before the sun, and he’s still in bed when I slip into my rain boots and one of his old flannels. He will assume I’m out in the vines, and our part-time nanny will be with Declan. Nobody sees me get into my car and drive to Mile Rock Beach, where I park in the back of the Merrie Way parking lot and enter the Lands End trail. The hike leads to a lookout point, almost two miles there and back. It’s a place literally off the beaten path, where nobody is likely to recognize him.
About half a mile into the hike is a sign for the Mile Rock Beach viewpoint.
When I finally get there, a thin film of sweat coating my back, I don’t see a woman waiting. Instead, there’s a man facing away from me, staring out from the lookout. I would know him anywhere. His wide-legged stance, his broad shoulders and sandy hair. But how did he beat me here?
He turns around, shock all over his face. But he tries to hide his confusion with a smile. He’s wearing a shirt I’ve never seen before. He’s dressed up for the occasion, even smelling like fresh cologne.
“Hey,” he says, his eyebrows pulling together. He’s looking at me like a stranger, like he doesn’t recognize me. “You’re Sadie.”
“What do you mean, I’m Sadie?” I stammer, a curtain of white-hot rage descending on my body. “And how did you get here already?”
His forehead wrinkles in confusion. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand—I didn’t think you’d be here—”
I don’t give him a chance to finish, to formulate an excuse. I want to scream at him, but more than that, I want to hurt him. My temper, long dormant, snaps like a broken bone. Andrew wrote his own wedding vows, and in them, he had promised to always be faithful to me.
He takes a step toward me, palms up, like he wants to pacify me, and it’s that gesture—his desire to absolve himself—that makes me reach out and shove him. The motion sends him staggering backward, and he lets out a small yelp before tumbling over the rocky bluff. There’s a sickening crack on the rocks below, a sound I know I’ll never stop hearing. When I get to the edge, I scream. My husband’s head is bent at an unnatural angle, his limbs heavy and unmoving. There’s no blood—how is there no blood?—but he looks more like a broken marionette than a man.
“Andrew,” I scream, scrambling for a way down, and finally locate a set of rickety stairs that lead to the beach, my legs like leaden weights as I descend. But by the time I reach his body, it’s too late. There’s no pulse, the skin on his throat already starting to cool. The fall must have broken his neck.
I lose the ability to breathe.
Our son is my first thought: Declan, our sweet, giggling boy who loves nothing more than kitchen dance parties with his mommy and daddy. I’ve killed his father, and I’ll go to jail for his murder. The thought of Declan makes me act quickly, survival mode activated not for myself but, foremost, for him. He needs me.
Andrew needed me too. We built a life together. We said vows. It hasn’t always been easy, but we loved each other deeply. I stare into his blue eyes, the eyes that used to crinkle at the corners when he smiled. Now they see nothing. I killed him. I killed him.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out to Andrew, even though he can’t hear me, and he’ll never hear me again. I try to move his body, a carousel of excuses circulating in my mind. I could run back to the parking lot and try to flag someone down for help. We were hiking, and he fell. It’s a believable excuse—but what if I’m wrong? What if an autopsy shows that he only would have landed at that angle if someone had pushed him?
And besides: he came here to meet someone, and she could arrive at any minute to disprove my version of events.
My hand hovers over his jeans pocket, where a bulge protrudes. I reach in and pull out an unfamiliar wallet and cell phone. Andrew still uses the same fake leather billfold I got him when we were dating; I’ve never seen him carry anything else. The cell phone is different too, gripped in a navy-blue OtterBox. I flip open the wallet, and the driver’s license is the first thing I see.
But the name on the license doesn’t belong to my husband.
Joshua Patrick Kelly, it reads, along with a New York City address, but with the same birth date as Andrew’s. June 25, 1982. I hold my breath, unable to wrap my brain around what I’m seeing. Has Andrew created an entire alter ego to use for his affair? Does he have a second address, a second life?
But no—that’s impossible. Andrew falls asleep beside me every night. His affair couldn’t have taken him that far away. As far as I know, he’s never even been to New York City.
I tap to wake up the cell phone, the lock screen picture of Andrew and a woman I’ve never seen before: young and pretty, with wavy light brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles over her nose. His arm is around her, and they’re on a beach, flashing their ring fingers at the camera, both of them in matching gold wedding bands.
“What—” I start to say, blinking repeatedly, as if the image will somehow make sense.
Suddenly, a text message flits across the screen, from a sender named June. Don’t be too long—I’m getting hungry, and not for food anymore!
I click on the text, realizing too late that it would show someone had read it. The phone doesn’t have a passcode, and I stare at the message before navigating out of the text thread and into the main messages. The last message beneath June’s is from Andrew. My husband.
My finger hovers over it, the puzzle pieces shifting into place before I click on Andrew’s name. And the screen is promptly flooded with the entire thread my husband had deleted from his end, a message history culminating in a planned meetup this morning. I scroll back to the beginning—almost two months ago—a timeline that coincides with the start of Andrew’s secretive behavior and unexplained moodiness.
I know you said you didn’t want to talk to me again, but you’re my brother, and life’s too short for us to hate each other forever. I’ve found someone, I’m really in love with her, and I’ve changed. I don’t want to keep secrets from her.
I sit back, clutching the phone, my breath coming in sharp waves. Andrew isn’t cheating on me, hasn’t been meeting up with another woman behind my back. He was talking to his brother, a twin brother, one I never knew existed. A brother he was apparently considering reconciling with. A brother, now dead on the rocks in front of me.
A rustling noise behind me makes me spin around. But it’s only a bird landing on a tree branch. Still—it’s a reminder that someone could show up any minute. Andrew will show up any minute, expecting to see his brother. Instead, he’ll find his brother’s dead body.
Unless there’s no body to find.
He’s heavy to haul off the rocks, and even heavier to move into the ocean. I take off his shoes and drag him into the churning surf by his ankles, willing myself not to vomit. I kick the sand back into disturbed disarray, stomping its surface like I’d once stomped on wine grapes, and momentarily, I watch his body bob helplessly, unsure if the tide is about to bring it right back to shore, like a cat bringing a maimed mouse to its owner. After a minute, it disappears into the brown spin of the water, and I’m aware that my fate rests completely with the tide. If it’s strong enough, it’ll take the body out with it. If it’s too weak, Joshua Patrick Kelly will wash back ashore with a broken neck, and there will be questions to be answered.
Salt spray licks my cheeks, my own tears mingling with it. I started the day as a wife and mother, as a winemaker, and now I’m a murderer.
On the sand, Joshua Patrick Kelly’s phone bleats. You’re not texting me back, you’d better be on your way with breakfast! Another message from June.
I type out a quick reply with violently shaking hands, trying to conjure a message a loving husband might send; wipe the phone clean on my T-shirt; and place it and his wallet inside his Chuck Taylors.
Decided to go for a quick swim first, be back soon ❤
I picture her reading it and smiling. I don’t stay long enough to read her response. How long will she wait for him? How long will she search for him once she realizes he’s gone? I hope she finds a way to move forward, to live without answers. Her husband clearly didn’t tell her what he was really doing this morning, but in death, he won’t have to answer for his lie.
In life, we aren’t so easily absolved. We all have our secrets—the ones we keep from everyone else, and the ones we keep from ourselves. Sometimes it’s the people closest to us who are the hardest to burden with our truths, but they’re the ones we need to trust will hear us when we tell them what we want, what we need. What we’ve done.
What will I say to Andrew when I see him later today? I won’t confess what happened here—I can’t—but I can do what felt impossible even an hour ago: Talk to him about our marriage, our life. Tell him what isn’t working. Let him know what I need.
Joshua Patrick Kelly will be the last secret we keep from each other.
THE END