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One precious pearl for each sin against our marriage. I’m sober enough to realize I’m just tipsy enough to let my imagination run rampant, but I’m okay to drive. I wouldn’t get behind the wheel otherwise.
Fingering the pearls, I grab my purse, say good-night and escape into the chilly cloak of moonless night, wishing it would swallow me whole so I wouldn’t have to go home and face my husband.
During my twenty-minute drive to Winter Park I realize I need to come up with a game plan. I’ve had since ten o’clock this morning when the mail arrived to think about it. Yet I still can’t force myself to go there. What in the world am I going to say to Corbin when I get home?
“Sweetheart, I received the strangest letter in the mail today. It said, ‘Ask your husband what he’s been doing all those nights he claimed to be at the hospital.’” Then I’ll laugh to prove I’m confident the note’s a prank.
Then he’ll laugh, and it will become our own private joke. He’ll pull me into bed and make love to me to show me how absurd the letter was.
We haven’t made love in months. Why would tonight be any different? Especially when I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be overly thrilled about getting his own dinner. When it came time to go out, I fed Caitlin and let her go play at the neighbor’s house. I was in such a fog I didn’t even think about fixing his dinner. I hope I locked the door.
I can’t think straight for all the bells and whistles sounding in my head warning that something’s rotten in the Hennessey household. If I ignore my gut feeling I’ll be just like all the other pathetic women who know damn well their husbands are screwing around, but pretend they don’t have a clue so they can keep the big house and the fancy cars and the summertime trips to Tuscany. How can they live knowing their whole life is a sham?
I look at the dashboard clock glowing azure. I now have approximately ten minutes to concoct a plan. Most likely he’ll be asleep. Do I wake him up and confront him? Throw the letter in his face and scream, “What the fuck have you been doing?”
I shudder. I hate that word. I hate feeling compelled to ask him to account for his time. But most of all, I want him to know I hate playing the fool.
I could wake him and ask, “So, Corbin, what have you been doing lately?”
Ha. I can see it now. He’ll blink because he’s sleepy, then he’ll look at me as if I’m an idiot and repeat the question back to me. “What have I been doing lately, Kate?”
He’ll tick off a list of noble and important deeds. You know, a typical surgeon’s fourteen-hour day. It won’t be what he says that hurts, but how he says it. Especially when he adds his favorite line: “That was my day, Kate. What did you do today?”
And I’ll say, “Well, Corbin, today I pondered why someone would send me a letter encouraging me to ask you what you do with yourself. But if it were any other day, I’d probably have to stop and think, God, what did I do today? It certainly slipped by fast. When itemized, my list would be just as long as yours, I’m sure. But since I’m just a mom and a typical day for me revolves around the PTA and organizing school bake sales and timing my life to have dinner ready in between running our daughter to two-hour dance classes and peewee cheerleading lessons, I didn’t have time to discover the cure for AIDS and the common cold, much less screw around on you. Certainly not as complex as a doctor’s day, but my life is full.”
I steer the car off the interstate and as I coast to a stop at the light at Fairbanks and Highway 17-92, I realize I’ve been talking to myself—out loud. There’s a couple in a black Corvette in the lane next to me, but they’re making out, oblivious to my self-banter and my watching them go at it.
If Corbin does have a girlfriend, where do they rendezvous? A cheap motel? Her place? In the car? I surprise myself at how I can ponder the possibilities so calmly. I suppose the logistics would depend on the bimbo.
God, who is she?
Do I know her?
Someone in his office? The hospital? The country club? Someone I’ve invited into my home? That would be the worst. The champagne bubbles up sourly in the back of my throat. I take a few deep breaths and remind myself this whole thing could be a hoax.
“A hoax.”
I say the words aloud hoping they will ring true. But my gut instinct doesn’t buy it.
Somehow I know.
I just know.
The light turns green, and I stomp on the gas pedal. The wheels scream as I lurch into the intersection. There’s something satisfying about the obnoxious sound. Like steam screaming through the release valve on a pressure cooker. I hope the noise startled the kissing couple in the Corvette enough to make them knock noses.
A few minutes later, I steer my Lexus SUV into the driveway and hit the garage door opener. I wait for the door to lift and notice the glow of the living-room lights seeping through the slats of the plantation shutters, as though a happy family lives here. Maybe Corbin’s still awake. A wave of panic seizes me, and I can’t breathe for a few seconds.
But I force air into my lungs. I still have no idea what I’m going to say to him, but I decide right then and there I’m not going to make it easy for him. Girls’ getaway be damned. Going out of town with Alex and Rainey would be like handing him a free pass to be with her.
Whoever she is.
I pull into the garage, kill the engine and sit there until the door wheezes and squeaks shut behind me. Once closed, the garage is perfectly silent, except for the occasional tick and sigh of the car’s hot engine.
If I really want to know who she is I can find out.
The thought makes my heart beat so fast it hurts. I take a deep breath to calm myself, run my hand over the tan glove leather of the passenger seat. I need to touch something tangible, something tactile, to ground me in reality.
I love this car. It was Corbin’s present to me three months ago for our twentieth anniversary. He picked it out himself. Had it delivered with a big red bow on the hood. Like something you’d see in a television commercial.
If material gifts were a standard of measure for his love, there would be no doubt. Always generous. A good provider. And a good father.
Because of that, doesn’t he deserve the benefit of the doubt? Or at least a chance to explain?
The beginning of a headache buzzes in my temples. I close my eyes and press my fingers against the lids, but it doesn’t help. When I open my eyes again, the dim overhead light casts an eerie yellow glow. Everything looks fuzzy and out of proportion, especially the shadows.
If I shine a bright light directly into the darkness, will I prove this dread is merely a figment of my imagination?
As my eyes focus, I see Caitlin’s in-line skates hanging on the Peg-Board next to the kitchen door. Corbin’s golf clubs sit below. My treadmill, slightly dusty, is next to it. Our three bikes are suspended by chains from the ceiling.
Am I willing to give it all up so easily because of an anonymous letter containing one vague sentence?
A chill winds its way through my body. Despite the cool January-in-Florida weather, the night air feels clammy and clings to me like a bad omen.
Okay, I’ll ask him.
I’ll ask him because I need Corbin to explain this away. Not so I can turn the other cheek while he fools around. I want him to convince me it’s not true for the sake of our family.
For the twenty years I’ve given him.
God, that’s half my life.
I let myself out of the car. As I put my key in the kitchen door, I hear Jack, our yellow Lab, barking before I let myself inside. He jumps up to greet me as I step into the kitchen.
“Shh, Jack. Be quiet. You’re going to wake the whole house.” I stroke his silky head half hoping, half fearing Corbin will call out to me that he’s in the living room. But he doesn’t.
The dirty dinner dishes are still on the table along with the remnants of Chinese takeout. I flip off the kitchen light.
My heels click on the hardwood floor as I walk into the living room. Is every light in the house on?
“Corbin?”
The house is so still my words seem to echo back at me. I turn off the downstairs lights and make my way upstairs, which is completely dark by contrast. I push open Caitlin’s bedroom door. Her night-light glows in the corner.
She’s sleeping on her stomach like an angel child in her pink canopy bed. Long, curly blond hair flows around her. She looks like a princess floating on a spun-gold cloud.
As far as her daddy’s concerned, she is a princess. Although he wasn’t exactly thrilled when I found out I was pregnant. Caitlin was a surprise. Our son, Daniel, was thirteen when she was born, and Corbin was ready to “have his life back,” as he put it. We were going to travel, and he wanted more time for golf.
Secretly, I was thrilled to be pregnant again. I’d miscarried three times after Daniel was born. Then I quit conceiving.
I just knew she’d be a girl. Not that I don’t love my son. I do. I just always wanted a baby girl. And now that Daniel’s away at college, it’s great having someone who still needs me. See, she was meant to be.
That’s what I kept telling Corbin and, of course, the minute she was born she had him wrapped around her little finger. So it’s been a moot point ever since. I mean what’s not to love?
She just turned six. It’s a wonderful age. Every age is wonderful, but this one is particularly nice. She’s so sweet, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than be her mother.
Is that so bad? Does it make me unambitious to find fulfillment in motherhood?
I suppose I should add wife to that job description. But it goes without saying.
Doesn’t it?
I stroke a wisp of hair off Caitlin’s forehead and realize with startling clarity as if I’m staring back through a tunnel of years that mine and Corbin’s relationship went a little off track when I got pregnant. I guess we haven’t had a chance to reconnect as we should have. But you know how it is having a new baby. Since then, life set sail on its own course. Corbin’s practice has just been named the staff physicians for Orlando Magic—the NBA team—and he’s busier than ever at the hospital. Sometimes I’ve felt as if all I can do is hold on or risk falling overboard.
But now everything’s run aground because of that damned letter.
My heart aches. I kiss Caitlin’s cheek and linger to inhale her sweet scent, but she stirs, and I pull back so I don’t wake her.
I walk down the dark hall, into our darker bedroom. I click on the overhead light. Corbin’s asleep on his side. His back is to me. When I sit on the side of the bed, my thigh grazes his body.
I touch his bare shoulder. He lets out a little snore.
“Corbin, wake up. We need to talk.”
CHAPTER 2
I remember a time when a pickup line was defined as a lustful attempt to make somebody’s acquaintance. For the past nineteen years, the only pickup line I’ve been party to is the slow-moving, after-school queue that snakes around the Liberty School parking lot.
I don’t miss being hit on. What bothers me as I sit waiting for my daughter to get out of school is the fact that I never noticed the incongruous dual usage of the term.
Pickup line.
It’s so ridiculous. How could I have missed it?
It makes me wonder what else I’ve overlooked all these years.
I trust so freely. I mean, why shouldn’t I? If a person—namely my husband—has never given me reason to doubt him, why shouldn’t I trust him implicitly? It can’t be any other way. A relationship without trust is a derailed train.
No. Worse.
It’s a yawning sinkhole that opens its greedy jaws and devours everything that once seemed stable. Without trust, you might as well end it before the relationship gets ugly.
Because it will. Without trust, sooner or later you’ll end up eating each other alive.
That’s why when Corbin pronounced the letter someone’s idea of a sick joke, I chose to believe him.
I had to.
If you could have seen him, his eyes hooded and heavy with sleep. He propped himself up on his elbow and blinked at the paper I thrust in his face. “What’s this?”
The overhead light cast shadows on his face, hollowing his cheeks, making his cheekbones appear even sharper. So handsome. What woman wouldn’t want him?
“I don’t know, Corbin. I was hoping you could explain it to me.”
The memory seems ancient, as though it happened years ago, but it still shakes me to the core. I move up three car lengths, edging closer, but not too close, to the Volvo station wagon in front of me, then pull the lapels of my navy-blue peacoat closed at my neck and wait in stone-cold silence for the pickup line to inch its way around to Caitlin. The radio’s off because every time I turned it on they were playing songs like “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and “How am I Supposed to Live Without You.” When was the last time I heard those ditties?
I glance in the rearview mirror. The line of cars stretches back to infinity.
I’m gridlocked.
Even if I wanted to get out of this line, I couldn’t. If I were in a better mood I might make a wry comparison about how gridlock reminds me of marriage.
I can’t leave him. I mean, my God, we’ve been married for twenty years.
Half my life.
Whoa. I will not waste my energy by contemplating divorce. Corbin’s not having an affair. Period.
Last night he caved in over the note, as if someone punched him in the stomach. He held his head in his hands and said, “What the hell…? This is bullshit. Kate? You don’t think—?”
“I don’t know what to think, Corbin.”
I stood there with my hands on my hips acting like such a bitch—for about thirty seconds. Then all I wanted to do was beg him, Tell me it isn’t true, Corbin. Make me believe this isn’t true.
But I couldn’t say it because I knew I should either believe in him…or leave him. Asking him to tell me it isn’t true is like admitting I don’t trust him.
Feeling the sinkhole rumble underneath me, I sit in the midst of pickup line gridlock, stuck in my own personal gridlock because I can’t write off the letter as a hoax. I won’t let myself slide down into the what-ifs of extramarital affair investigation.
You know—A plus B plus C equals Corbin’s opportunity to cheat. Oh, and remember that time that he should have been home at six, but didn’t get in until eleven-thirty—
La! La! La! La! La! La! La! I can’t hear me! Don’t want to hear me because my husband is not having an affair.
That’s better. I lean my head against the cool window. Try on the words for size: I believe him.
I want to believe in the way he reached out last night, took my arm and pulled me down next to him on the bed.
“Kate, look at me.”
He tried to lace his fingers through mine, but I jerked away and traced the burnished gold-on-gold woven into the raw silk of our duvet cover. Until he pounded the bed. “Goddamn it, Kate. Come on. This is fucking bullshit.”
I pounded the bed, too. “Don’t yell at me, Corbin! This is not my fault.”
Tell me it isn’t true. Make me believe this isn’t true.
He held up a hand. Squeezed his eyes shut. Drew in a deep breath through flaring nostrils. “I’m sorry, let’s just start over. From the beginning. Where’s the envelope?”
The plain white rectangle lay kitty-corner, half on the hardwood floor, half on the Persian rug next to the bed. The white stood out like a surrender flag against a blood-orange sunset.
Corbin picked up the envelope. Flipped it from one side to the other. Snorted. “Nothing.”
