A Week in the Snow (23 page)

“You come here,” he said, breathing hard, “and you think you can get me into bed, and that will make everything okay? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

All the tenderness in her was gone. “Is she really half your age?”

He couldn’t resist the comeback. “She’s half of yours.”

Amanda drew back as if he had slapped her. Richard was immediately sorry for what he had said, but he wasn’t going to take it back. He wasn’t going to give her the slightest bit of hope for reconciliation.

“You wanted to know why I left,” she said, and he nodded, still wary.

“Tell me why.”

“I left you for another man.”

Though he had thought of the possibility more times than he cared to admit, he was not prepared for the reality of hearing it from her lips. She was entirely cold as she delivered the news, as if she had finally decided to play hardball and had turned on some inner robot.

“I left you for a man who fucked me in all the ways you didn’t even think about. His dick was bigger, he could last longer, and he could come more often.” Her eyes actually twinkled as she looked at him. “He taught me that there’s more to sex than the missionary position.”

Richard looked away.

Amanda stood up and slowly put the chair back under the table. She picked up the divorce papers and righted the second chair, the one she had knocked over when she had first risen from her seat. Had that been only a few minutes ago? Time no longer seemed accurate, whether it was minutes or years.

“This is still my house,” she said calmly. “I’m staying here for as long as I’m in town, and I’ll sleep in the guest room. I won’t darken your door, and I know you won’t darken mine. I’ll pack up what belongs to me over the next few days, and then I’ll go after you for this house. I’ll get half the bank account. After that, I’ll get half your business, and I’ll shut your little rag down.”

With that, she turned and walked into the darkened living room. He listened as she went down the hallway and firmly shut the door to the guest room behind her.

Richard sat down at the table and put his head in his hands, trying to make the world stop spinning, so he could make sense of it all.

Chapter Fifteen

Rebecca woke up early the next morning and stretched. Her body was warm with sleep and sore with the memory of Richard’s hands. It was a delicious kind of soreness, the kind that said she had been loved thoroughly and often, and she had the sudden thought that everyone, at some point in their lives, should have that kind of wake-up call in the morning.

She smiled at the sunlight coming through her window as she reached for the telephone. She had fallen into the custom of calling Richard every morning as soon as she woke. He was usually getting dressed, and they talked while he got in the truck and went to the office for another day of detailing the events and lives in Crispin. She would hang up the phone and jump into the shower, refreshed and renewed, ready to face the day. She was certain that her work lately had been so much better because of his influence—simply because he made her happy—and her customers were appreciative.

She was still smiling as the phone rang, but that smile faded fast when the phone was answered.

“Hello?”

It was a woman’s voice. Rebecca shook her head, confused. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have the wrong number.”

She was just about to hang up when the woman said, “Are you calling for Richard?”

Rebecca didn’t answer for a moment, too surprised to think of what to say. She was still convinced she had the wrong number, but wasn’t this odd?

“I’m calling for Richard Paris,” she said.

“He’s in the shower.”

The woman’s voice was lower now, sultry, as though she had just woken up. Rebecca took in the words, but still they didn’t quite register.

“He’s what?” she asked.

The woman laughed. Rebecca’s body went cold. “He’s in the shower,” she repeated, slowly, as if Rebecca hadn’t heard properly the first time. “We’re both running a bit late this morning.”

The familiarity slammed Rebecca in the gut. She rolled over in bed, unable to let go of the phone, unable to break the connection. The confusion was still there but now the edge of shock was setting in, the realisation that things were not what they seemed. Something was different, something sinister, something very bad.

In the back of Rebecca’s mind, she already knew things would never be the same again.

The woman sighed on the other end of the line.

“You must be his girlfriend,” she said.

Rebecca wiped a tear from her face. Her cheek was hot, and her hand was shaking.

Her body was already rebelling. “Yes.”

“My name is Amanda,” the woman said. “I’m his wife.”

The world started to spin. “You’re…”

“I’m the woman who is married to him,” Amanda spat, and Rebecca could feel the contempt in her voice. “I’m Mrs Paris, the woman with his last name and his wedding ring. I’m the one who married him before you were even a blip on the radar, and you were wrong to think you could ever change that. I’m back to claim my husband, and you’re history.”

The woman hung up. Rebecca stared at the phone, then dropped it on to the bed as if it had stung her. She buried her face in her hands then she was in limbo, uncertain of what to think, not knowing what to do. She lay there for an eternity before the reality of what just happened hit her, and when the pain sank in she rolled on to her belly and screamed into the pillow. It smelt like Richard, and that just made her cry harder.

How could this happen? How could this woman come back? She knew Richard, knew he had never lied to her, but she also knew he was an honourable man, and that damned honourability was the reason why his wife was in his house right now.

His wife.

Richard was a married man. She had known that, hadn’t she?

She curled into a ball, her whole body hurting, and wailed while the sun spilled through her windows and the man she loved was in the same house as his long-lost wife.
 

Richard came down the stairs and stared at Amanda. She was sitting on the couch, the phone in her hand and a self-satisfied smile on her face. When Amanda waggled the phone at him, he realised what had happened.

“How dare you?” he said.

“Good morning to you, too.”

He pointed a finger at her. “You are not staying here any longer.”

“It’s my house.”

“Then I’m staying at a hotel.” He marched to the kitchen and grabbed his coat from the hook by the door. She followed him to the kitchen and leaned against the doorway.

“Coffee’s hot,” she offered.

“It’s probably poisoned.”

She gave him one of those patented glares. He slammed the door on it.

On the way to the office, he dialled Rebecca’s number and got no answer. He called her studio and got no answer there either. As he was walking into the back room of the
Crispin Tribune
, she finally answered the phone.

“Rebecca,” he started, but she cut him off.

“I talked to her.”

He sighed and dropped his coat on the chair. “She appeared out of nowhere last night. She got the divorce papers and finally decided to have it out, I guess.”

Rebecca’s voice was distant. “And she spent the night there?”

Richard suddenly realised how it all sounded, and he was sure Amanda had done her best to make it seem like a happy reunion instead of the battle it had really been. He sank into the chair. “It’s her house, too. I couldn’t make her leave.”

Silence came from Rebecca’s side of the phone. Richard started to explain the fight they had had, but she was having none of it. “I don’t care.”

“What…what? You don’t care?”

“Your wife came back. You’re not divorced. She spent the night in your house.”

“That’s all true, but, Rebecca, you’re making it sound like I slept with her…”

“Did you?”

He suddenly thought of the kiss in the kitchen. His face flooded with shame. His pause was a little too long, and Rebecca’s answer was crystal clear.

“Fuck you, Richard,” she said. “Fuck you and your wife.”

Rebecca hung up the phone and turned off the ringer. She rolled over and pulled the sheet over her body. Every little ache and pain from her weekend with Richard was now a source of heartbreak. She wasn’t sure what had happened in Iowa, and she didn’t want to know. All she knew was that he had been with her, but now he was with his wife, and wasn’t that where he had wanted to be in the first place? Why else would a man wait three years for a woman who had left him?

How could she have been so stupid?

She thought of the words Gene had said the night she wound up stranded at Richard’s house.
You’re a fucking idiot, Rebecca.

She pulled a pillow to her belly, wrapped her body around it, and willed her love for Richard to disappear as easily as his wife once had. She had thought it was real, and, by God, it had been—she would never be able to believe otherwise. But she knew better than to get involved with a married man, even if his wife had flown the coop and he had seen fit to remove his wedding band.

She had been playing with fire. How had she let herself forget that?

After a long hour of falling apart, Rebecca started to build herself back up. She made herself get out of bed and she found her appointment book. She cancelled all her appointments that day—with all the crying she had been doing, her story of having a terrible cold was accepted with sympathy and without question. She made all the calls to clear her schedule, then sat in her lonely apartment, trying not to think.

By noon, she had decided that she needed some help in making the love disappear. She put on an old T-shirt and jeans, stuffed her hair under a ball cap, and left her building. She walked a few blocks down from her high-rise and ducked into a little bar. She stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light, and thought about how she was fulfilling every cliché in the book. She was going to start drinking before she even ate lunch—before she ate breakfast, truth be told. She was going to drink away the married man she loved, get hungover, maybe find somebody to fuck for revenge, and feel just as bad about everything tomorrow—if not worse.

She picked out a bar stool and planted herself on it.

The bartender eyed her from beside the rack of wine glasses. “What will it be?”

“Something strong, straight up.”

The bartender poured black label whisky. She took a sip of it and winced at the burn, then took a bigger sip. She looked at the television above the bar and watched as a reporter talked about the latest bombing in a country whose name she couldn’t pronounce. She looked down the bar at the only other person there, a middle-aged man having a beer while he worked on some paperwork at a side table. She watched him for a while then went back to the television. It seemed more interesting.

She downed the whisky and the bartender whipped another shot into its place. He ran a clean white rag around the inside of a cordial glass, eyeing her as she took another sip.

“Broken heart?” he asked, and she looked up at him with a wary gaze.

“Why?”

“That’s the only reason a pretty girl drinks alone in the middle of the day.”

She stared at the television, hoping he would get the hint.

“He’s probably not worth it, honey.”

“How would you know?”

The bartender raised an eyebrow at her. “Men never are.”

“Maybe this one is.”

“Then why aren’t you going after him?”

“He’s sleeping with his wife.”

The bartender nodded. “That’s a good reason to back off.”

She gave him a dirty look and downed the rest of the shot. The bartender brought her a double and retreated to the other side of the bar. The whisky was spreading warmth in her belly, a burning ember right underneath her breastbone. She watched a news story about a house fire, then another one about a traffic pileup in California. Nothing but bad news on the television, and she remembered why she never watched it.

An hour later, she was spilling out her story to the bartender, who nodded from time to time. He topped off her shot glass once more, then urged her to give it a rest for a bit. “Let it settle,” he said. “Or you’ll be hurting in a way you’ll wish you could forget.”

“Like I’m hurting now?” she asked.

The bartender shook his head and went to serve a beer to someone in the corner.

An hour after that she was talking to a man on the next barstool, listening to him bitch about work. He didn’t have a wedding band, but she knew to be wary of men without rings. She told him about Richard and he told her about a woman back in Boston, one who had broken his heart and left him for another woman. This made her giggle, and though the man looked offended at first, he was soon laughing with her.

By the time another hour had passed, she knew she was probably too drunk to make good choices, but when the handsome businessman slipped his phone number underneath her hand she took the card. When he asked her what she was doing that night, she gave him her best grin and suggested that
he
might be what she was doing.

Why not? It would serve Richard right, even if he would never know it.

The businessman—his name was Mark, wasn’t it?—leaned over to kiss her. His tongue was thick with liquor and he smelt like a beer keg. She fought against the urge to push him away and did a fine job of it, until she thought of Richard and wondered how long it had taken before he had kissed his wife. Immediately? Five minutes? Ten?

“Slow down,” she said, but Mark kept kissing her, whether she liked it or not. She pushed him and apparently did it a little too hard, because he stumbled off his bar stool, landed against the opposite table, stood up and cursed her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Fucking tease.”

Rebecca leaned heavily on the bar as Mark walked away. The bartender shot a concerned look in her direction. She stumbled to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. The woman there was more than a little drunk, heartbroken and looked like hell. She tried to brush her hair as best she could with her fingers. She smelt like alcohol, which she hated. When was the last time she had got drunk? College?