Been There, Done That (28 page)

I closed the door more loudly than was necessary. Slipping back into bed with Jeremy was more appealing than I liked to admit, but sneaking out unseen in the morning would be impossible. Besides, the door had locked behind me as I left, and I wasn’t about to wake him up.

At the end of the hall, the orange fire door swung open: Amber. Maybe I could sleep on her floor. But she breezed right by, yapping into her omnipresent cell phone.

I had no choice: I had to go home. Fortunately, I had my backpack with me, car keys inside. So I’d miss another day of classes and another day of investigating. Maybe more. I’d poked around all I could and found nothing, unless you counted Dean Archer’s sleazy behavior, but I’d come to the conclusion that the girls weren’t hookers, after all. I’d kept a close eye on Brynn and never saw her with anyone else. Besides, if Archer was paying her for her sexual services, wouldn’t he take her to a hotel rather than a restaurant? And the other girl; I spent a bunch of nights hanging around her dorm and never saw her again. If she were a hooker, she’d be in and out a lot more. It was time to give up, I suddenly realized. The articles for Sheila were more important than this hopeless investigation, and I’d never get them written from my dorm room.

I heaved a sigh of relief as my Civic pulled out of the dorm parking lot. As unpleasant as my adult life was right now, I was tired of playing make-believe. I’d shared some sweet moments with Jeremy, but my gut ached when I imagined his face the moment he learned my true identity.

My gas tank was approaching empty, so I pulled into a convenience store parking lot. The store was closed—it was almost three A.M.—but the pumps were still open, thanks to the miracle of credit cards and auto-pay. Just a mile from the college, this spot lacked even a whiff of quaintness. Next door was a tire superstore, one of those chains you see everywhere. Across the street was a stark brown apartment building fortified by a cinder block fence. Lights twinkled in two windows several apartments apart, and I wondered if the insomniacs inside knew there were others awake at this lonely hour.

As the gas whooshed into my tank, I leaned against the side of my car and stared up at the sky. It was inky black tonight, without a single star peeking through. The pump shut off, startling me with its loudness.

A light blinked off in the apartment building across the street. I started my car and was about to pull out of the parking lot when I remembered my apartment keys. Sometimes I shoved them to the back of my desk drawer. There was no point heading back to the city unless I had them, and I hadn’t been doing so well on details lately. I pulled into a parking space on the edge of the lot, and killed the engine. Afraid of running down my battery, I shut off the lights. I rummaged through my backpack. The keys weren’t in the outside pocket where they belonged. I took a deep breath and stared out at the empty parking lot. Now what was I supposed to do? I opened the backpack’s main compartment and came up empty again. Desperate, I dumped the pack’s entire contents onto the passenger seat: disintegrating tissues, granola bar wrappers, a syllabus, a dull pencil, a pink gel pen. No keys. I was coming to terms with the idea of sleeping on one of the vinyl couches in the dorm lounge when he walked into the parking lot, head down, hands in the pockets of his oversized pants.

I froze. Had he seen me? I had every right to be here, of course, just as he did. But Troy gave me the creeps. I’d been keeping my eyes open for him, walking by his house at every opportunity, but I wasn’t prepared to face him on my own, especially in a dark and deserted parking lot.

He shuffled over to the side of the building, where a sporty silver BMW sat parked under a burned out street-light. As he pulled out of the lot, I sat paralyzed for one more moment before turning the key in my own ignition and slipping behind him on the deserted streets. At first I kept my lights off, but then I flicked them on. Hot shot investigative reporter or not, I respect the rules of the road. Besides, it was really dark, and I couldn’t see.

He drove a few blocks, then, surprisingly, pulled into a residential area. He wound through a few streets, very, very slowly, almost as if he were lost. The houses here were solidly middle class, wandering neither into the lower or upper ranges of the socioeconomic scale: ranches and raised ranches overlooked tidy hedges and lawns that were turning brown for the season. Little Tikes cars sat neatly parked beside closed garages. There were no street lamps back here, but a porch light was left on every now and again, rescuing the neighborhood from total darkness.

Finally, I had to turn onto a different street; we were the only cars out at that hour, and I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. I pulled over and turned off my lights, wondering what was going on, wondering what to do. I went back to where I’d last seen Troy’s car, assuming he wouldn’t recognize my Civic as the one that had been tailing him earlier.

I would have passed him if I hadn’t paused too long at a stop sign, contemplating my next move. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the hatchback parked on a side street, lights off, and two still, dark figures in the front seat. They were still there the next time I rounded the block. And then they were gone.

 
 
As I pulled into Marcy’s driveway, I glanced at the clock: 4:59 A.M. I groaned. Another time of the year, the sky would be glowing with the first hint of morning, but today it was as black as midnight. After I let myself in (Marcy hides a spare key under the mat because burglars would never look there), I crept as quietly as I could toward the television room. When a tall figure loomed in the darkness, I yelped, less from fear of death than from the terror of not being able to sleep for two hours before Marcy got up with the kids.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped at Dan when he turned on the hall light, clad in a flannel bathrobe and holding a mug of aromatic coffee.

“I live here,” he said with as little sarcasm as he could muster.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve heard the rumors. But what are you doing up?”

“Six-thirty meeting.” He sipped his coffee, and then used the belt from his flannel bathrobe to rub the steam from his glasses. “Coffee?”

I rubbed my eyes with my fists and shook my head. “I haven’t even gone to bed yet.” Then I thought of Jeremy and said, “Well, actually, I did go to bed, but I didn’t sleep much. Oh, never mind. I hope I didn’t scare you.”

He shook his head. “I heard your car pull up and looked out the window. I was just coming to unlock the door.”

“I was hoping to crash on your couch for a couple of hours.”

He nodded toward the stairs. “Jacob’s bed’s empty. He had a nightmare and ended up with us last night. I’ll leave a note for Marcy.”

So, rather than waking up in either of my beds or even in Jeremy’s, I greeted the morning—which was almost afternoon—from under a Star Wars comforter. As with the television room, Marcy had decorated Jacob’s room without any input from me. On the ceiling directly over the bed was a poster of Yoda wielding a sword or saber or whatever you call those laser things. No wonder the kid was having nightmares.

I shuffled downstairs to an empty, tidy kitchen. A note on the counter read,

 
K.,

 
P.S. I expect a full report.

 
On the counter she’d left assorted whole grain cereals and fresh fruit. I ignored them and dove instead for the walk-in pantry.

She caught me. “Cocoa Puffs?” With some effort, she hoisted a brown paper bag onto the granite countertop. Her car keys followed with a clang. The door to the attached garage was open, her white minivan parked inside.

“I can’t believe you feed this crap to your kids,” I said between spoonfuls. The chocolate had leached into the milk, turning it almost as brown and sweet as the cereal.

“It’s the organic kind,” she said mildly, presenting me with a towering cardboard cup of hot, expensive coffee.

“You do love me,” I said.

“Someone’s got to.” She meant to be funny, but it stung. Stupidly, my eyes filled with tears. “Honey!” she said, coming over and giving me a squeeze. “Lots of people love you! Everybody loves you!” She then proceeded to list all the people who loved me. It was a pretty good list, even if most of the people on it were blood relatives and therefore obligated to feel some affection.

“Dennis likes you better than me,” I whimpered.

“Gay Dennis?” She looked astonished. I wondered why she felt the need to tack his sexual orientation onto his name until I remembered that there was supposedly a Straight Dennis who couldn’t wait to get into my pants.

I nodded.

“Are you insane?” she said. “I am a fat, suburban housewife—”

“You’re not fat; you’re pregnant,” I obediently interjected. “You’re a grown-up with a grown-up life, and my life is going nowhere. I slept with Jeremy.” Her eyes popped wide. “Twice.” Her mouth dropped open, and she started to smile. I shook my head. “He’s twenty-one years old, and he thinks I’m eighteen. It’s not enough for me to mess up my own life, I’ve got to mess up someone else’s as well.” I gazed at her cherry cabinets, her granite countertops, her stainless steel refrigerator plastered with Jacob’s artwork. “You are so lucky,” I sighed.

She stared at me for a moment, and then shook her head wildly. “You’ve got it all wrong! You are this cool, funky, creative type who’s doing this undercover story and sleeping with young studs, and, and, and
living
instead of just cleaning up a big goddamn house day after goddamn day! All I do is give baths and wipe butts and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that always end up pulled apart and facedown on the rug. I get up to pee five times a night, and if I actually manage to fall back to sleep, it never lasts long before one kid or another screams that he’s wet his bed or pooped in his pants, and my husband’s never goddamn home because he’s too busy trying to make partner so maybe I can have an even bigger house to clean!”

Now she was the one crying. I was so shocked that my tears had stopped, and I hugged her tight and rocked her as she sobbed. When she finally quieted down, I asked where the boys were. Jacob had gone to a friend’s house after preschool; Joshua was asleep in the minivan.

“Why don’t you go lie down?” I suggested, stroking her frizzy hair. “I’ll listen for Joshua.”

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said miserably, smearing tears down her cheeks with her palms. “My cleaning woman will be here any minute.”

thirty-three

I spent the rest of the week holed up in my apartment (the superintendent had a key), conducting phone interviews with a bunch of interior designers who I could count on to give a good quote. Normally, I’d work out of the office and interview in person, but this was quicker. Also, it meant I could remain in my bathrobe all day and break into tears without warning. There were two phone messages from Tim (“Where the hell are you?”), both of which I ignored. I had admitted defeat to myself, but I was not yet ready to admit it to Tim. Staying in Boston meant missing precious final days of the investigation, but my job was on the line. Besides, I’d come up empty during the previous six weeks; what made me think this week would be any different?

I sent Jeremy an e-mail: “Out of town for the week. I’ll explain later.” I hadn’t yet decided whether I would tell him the truth or concoct another set of lies upon my return. Maybe I could just sneak my stuff out of the dorm without seeing him. I sent Tiffany the same message, omitting the promise of a later explanation.

By Friday morning I’d sent the articles to Sheila and was back on the Mass Pike. I spent the drive back to Mercer thanking God I was nobody’s wife, but just my own person, free to do as I like, responsible only for myself. I almost had myself convinced when I arrived at my dorm and almost gasped aloud when I saw him, there on the bench: the man God intended for me. Why else would he have made me wait so damn long, if not for the chance to begin each day looking at this flawless specimen? Judging from his salt-and-pepper curls, he was forty-something, though his golden skin was smooth, save for crinkles around his brilliant blue eyes. He was conservatively dressed, in a striped Oxford shirt, windbreaker and khakis, but perhaps his tennis shoes hinted at the soul of a free spirit. Or something. I’d never seen him before, yet I felt this immediate connection, this oddly exciting familiarity.

He smiled at me, and my throat constricted so I could hardly speak, and I half expected him to come out with some Harlequin-inspired line like, “I was wondering when you’d turn up in my life.”

Instead, he asked if I lived in the dorm, and I thought desperately of a way to tell him that I wasn’t really a college freshman, that I was a suitable woman in my early thirties, a touch young for him perhaps, but I could work on discovering my inner trophy wife. But when I said that I did, indeed, live there, he smiled even more warmly, and I panicked, wondering what kind of a pervert goes trawling for teenagers.