Leaving Haven (22 page)

Enough,
it read. Georgia ignored it and continued to tap out her message to Liza. Another text arrived from Alec.
I'm sorry.

Dear God, Alec, whoever he was, was a pain in the ass. Every time a text came in, Georgia lost track of what she was typing to Liza and had to start all over. The phone beeped again.

You excite me more than any man I've ever known, but I can't do this,
Georgia read.
It's over.

She froze, shook her head to clear it, and looked at the phone again. She must have misread the message. But when she read it a second time, it said exactly the same thing:
You excite me more than any man I've ever known, but I can't do this.

Alec found John exciting? Georgia felt all the blood drain from her head, then her heart. She grabbed the counter, and even that wasn't enough to calm the dizziness so she sat down abruptly on the floor. Her mind raced so fast she could almost feel it, like little pinballs ricocheting around her brain. John had been acting strangely for months, even before she got pregnant. She remembered that time almost a year ago when she'd called Polly, worrying that John might be having an affair. She remembered talking to Alice about it, and Alice's confidence that John would never cheat. She remembered the odd feeling she'd had about Amelia, although Amelia was so
young
. And even though Alice and Polly had reassured her over and over that she had nothing to worry about, she hadn't been able to still the persistent small voice inside her that said,
Something is wrong.
John had been
absent
from her in some fundamental way for a long time. But she had never, in her wildest dreams, imagined he might be
gay
.

The baby kicked inside her, a thump against her rib cage, and reflexively she put a hand against her belly. She was too stunned to cry. Her mind raced through scene after scene with John—John on their wedding night, using his teeth to peel off her panties; John using a pastry brush to paint whorls of melted chocolate on her breasts and then bending his head to lick it off; why, John had had sex with her right here on this kitchen floor just a year ago. And he was
gay
? Georgia simply could not believe it. But there it was, the evidence, in black and white on the touch screen of John's phone, some man named Alec writing,
You excite me more than any man I've ever known
.

Georgia drew in a deep breath. Maybe there was another explanation. Maybe Alec was apprenticing in John's kitchen at Bing's and was amazed by John's culinary skills. Or maybe he was a new player in John's Tuesday night tennis clinic, and was blown away by John's backhand. But would any heterosexual man ever write to another heterosexual man, “
You excite me
”
?
No, Georgia thought. Absolutely not.

The doorbell rang. Georgia remained where she was on the floor. She was just so, so
surprised
. Everything she thought she knew, about John, about herself, was dissolving, shifting, like some alien being in a movie.

The doorbell rang again, and someone started knocking. The knocking continued, stopped, and a minute later Georgia heard someone knocking on the glass of the kitchen window and looked up to see Duncan, of all people, peering in at her.

“Are you all right?” he said, his voice loud so she could hear him through the glass.

She nodded.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

This in itself was so bizarre—Duncan arriving at her house at ten on a weekday morning, apparently alone, without Alice—that Georgia was motivated to roll over onto her hands and knees and push herself up into a standing position. She leaned on the counter for a moment to make sure she wasn't still dizzy, but her head seemed fine so she walked around into the hallway and opened the front door.

“Are you okay?” Duncan asked again. “I'm sorry to disturb you. When I saw you sitting on the floor I was worried.”

“I'm fine,” Georgia said. “But are
you
okay?”

Georgia had never seen Duncan look anything other than serene and unruffled, even in the face of crises large and small. Somehow he always emanated a sense of mild good humor and well-being. Once, the four of them had been out to dinner downtown and as they were walking from the car Duncan had stepped in dog poop on the sidewalk in his good shoes. “My goodness,” he'd said, “can you believe that?” He had carefully scraped it off with a piece of folded cardboard. John would have let loose with a stream of choice epithets, kicked the wall, and sulked for thirty minutes if the same thing had happened to him.

But now Duncan looked flustered, with his hair standing up as though he'd run his hands through it repeatedly, a white toothpaste stain on his collar, his polo shirt untucked and hanging out over his khakis.

“Yes, thank you, I'm fine,” Duncan said. He stepped into the front hall. He cleared his throat and said, “Well, actually I'm not fine. Can I talk to you?”

“Now?”

Duncan's forehead creased into a worried line. “Is this a bad time? I'm sorry, Georgia, I should have called you first.”

Georgia was still trying to imagine John with another man and failing miserably. But she nodded at Duncan and led him into the kitchen, where they both sat down at the old pine farm table.

“I wouldn't have bothered you but this is important. It's about Alice.”

Duncan looked so worried, so unstrung, that Georgia forgot John for a minute.

“What is it? Is she hurt?”

“
No,
no. It's—” Duncan paused, and his face twisted. Georgia could see the pain and confusion in his eyes as he tried to wrap his mind as well as his mouth around the words he needed to say.

“I don't know any way to say this, other than to say it straight out,” he said. He looked down at the table, then up at Georgia. “Alice is gay.”

Georgia stared at him.

“I'm still kind of in shock,” Duncan said. “And I wanted to talk to you—you're her best friend. Honestly, I even wondered if maybe you and she”—Duncan's face reddened—“if you two had—I don't know. I don't know how to say this.”

Georgia chose to ignore the very bizarre idea that she—almost eight months pregnant—might be having an affair with Alice. “Alice is
gay
?” Georgia said. “How do you know?”

Duncan looked at her. “So you didn't know, either? It's come as a complete surprise to me. I mean, I can't believe it. All these years I've known her, we've been together, we've—” Duncan blushed again. “I don't know what to think.” He sat back in his chair and let out a long breath. “That makes me feel a little better, to know that I'm not the only one who had no idea.”

“How do you know?” Georgia repeated. She knew she must be dreaming, and if her semiconscious brain could push harder, she'd wake up.

“I found these text messages on her phone,” Duncan said.

Something buzzed in Georgia's head. She squeezed her eyes shut tight.

“I know, it stunned me, too,” Duncan said. “Last week she fell asleep early one night, and I was out reading in the living room when her phone started beeping. One text message after another kept coming in. Wren was on that field trip last week, the one to Montreal with the French class, and I got worried—she's been through a lot lately—” He stopped and caught Georgia's eye. “I'm sorry. You know. Anyway, so I picked up Alice's phone, and there it was.”

“There what was?”

“The message. From someone named Jane.”

“What did it say?”

Duncan's blush spread from his collarbone to the roots of his hair, and diffused itself across his face until even his ears were red. He looked at the ceiling. “It said, and I quote, and please excuse the language, Georgia: ‘
I miss your sweet pussy and can't get enough. I have to see you again.
'”

He brought his eyes down to look at her again. “Jane. Some woman named Jane wrote that to my wife.”

Georgia heard the buzz of a fly trapped between the window and the screen behind her. She felt her heart beating in her chest,
thump, thump, thump,
each beat more forceful than ever with all the extra blood whooshing through her veins at this stage of her pregnancy. She looked down at the table and noted the white stain in the wood, made long ago by a wet glass.

“This was last week?” she said at last.

“Yes,” Duncan said. “I didn't tell Alice about it, although I did kind of hint to her that I wondered if she might be gay.” He blushed. “I'm afraid I even suggested she might be involved with you.”

“With
me
?” This was moving from the bizarre to the ridiculous at the speed of light.

“I haven't talked to Alice about it; I haven't talked to anyone about it. But it's been difficult for me. You're her best friend. I thought she might have talked to you, or you might know—I don't know.”

Alec. Jane. Alec. Jane. The idea that John and Alice were both gay
and
had been carrying on affairs
and
hiding their sexual orientations for years—it was too incredible to be believed. And too coincidental. Jane. Alec. Jane. Alec. John. Alice. John. Alice.

Georgia went completely still. She felt her heartbeat in her temples, a throbbing pulse at the side of her head.

“I'm like some terrible cliché,” Duncan said. “My whole life—what I thought was my life—has been a lie.”

Georgia took a deep breath. “Duncan,” she said, “your life has not been a lie. Alice isn't gay.”

“What do you mean? The text—”

“
Shh
.” Georgia sat back in her chair. “The text isn't from Jane, it's from John. Your wife is having an affair with my husband.”

Duncan looked at her, confused. “John?”

“John is ‘Jane.' Alice is ‘Alec.' Don't you see?”

“No,” Duncan said. “That can't be true.”

“It is true.” Georgia knew it. She knew it the way she knew she would take a bullet for her child, the way she knew gravity was real. Some things were just irrefutable.

All at once Georgia was exhausted. She closed her eyes. The baby inside her kicked, wriggled, kicked again. She put a hand to her belly.
Hello, you. I'm here.
Her eyes flew open.

This baby she carried, her heart's desire, was the biological child of her husband and his mistress.

15

Georgia

June 18, 2012

G
eorgia refused to let John in the delivery room, which was awkward at first because the nurse kept insisting he should come in. Finally, panting in pain and exasperation, Georgia said, “I don't want him in here because he's having an affair with my best friend, okay?” She didn't go on to say that this baby who was about to be born was the genetic child of her husband and said best friend, because it was too much for Georgia herself to get her mind around, let alone try to explain to a complete stranger. But after the nurse said, “Seriously?” and Georgia nodded and began to brace herself as another contraction rose deep within her, the nurse went to the door and said something to John and whoever else was out there, and Georgia didn't see John again. The nurse, whose name was Lakesha, must have told all the other nurses because everyone was extra nice to Georgia after that, and one nurse even came in and told Georgia the whole story of her own lying, cheating, no-good husband, who had slept with her daughter's teacher for a year.