Tell Me You're Sorry (2 page)

C
HAPTER
O
NE

 

I
t was the only handwritten envelope among the letters on his desk. There was no return address.

Scott Hamner, a 43-year-old ad executive with the Whetsell-Lombard Agency, had just returned from a long business lunch. He was chewing Orbit gum to combat the aftereffects of two vodka gimlets and linguine with clam sauce. Dressed in a black suit and a white shirt with no tie (it was casual Friday), he looked dapper. Though not necessarily handsome, Scott did the best with what he had. He kept his receding brown hair trimmed to a quarter of an inch to give it that balding-is-sexy look, and he visited a tanning bed weekly. He had a slight potbelly, but was in better shape than a lot of guys his age.

Whetsell-Lombard occupied the thirty-third floor of a building in Midtown, across from Bryant Park and the Public Library. From his office window, Scott had a covetable view of the skyline—with the Chrysler Building as the star.

His assistant had set the mail by his computer keyboard while he'd been out.

Scott left the other letters on his desk, and tore open the hand-addressed envelope. He stopped chewing his gum for a moment as he took out a card. On the cover was an illustration of a man's shirt with a loud, jazzy tie. Over the shirt pocket it said in script:
For a Very Special Dad . . . Fashions come and go . . .

Scott opened the card, and read the inside:

The card wasn't signed.

Scott frowned. With Father's Day coming up, he should have known what to expect when he'd seen the anonymous, handwritten envelope. Every year for the last three years, he'd received an unsigned Father's Day card at work. The first one had been postmarked from New York City. He'd figured one of his kids must have sent the card and forgotten to sign it. The children had been seven and ten at the time. But when he'd asked them, neither his son, Ernie, nor his daughter, CC, had known a thing about it. He'd asked his wife, Rebecca, if maybe she'd sent it on behalf of the kids.

“Somebody sent you a Father's Day card and didn't sign it?” she'd countered. “Are you trying to tell me that you might have a kid out there I don't know about?”

They'd almost had a huge fight about it. He'd insisted he'd never been unfaithful to her, which was a lie. Still, Scott was 99 percent certain he hadn't gotten any of those women pregnant. And as far as he knew, he hadn't knocked up any of the girls he'd dated before Rebecca. Scott had quickly dismissed it, telling his wife that the anonymous Father's Day card must have been a prank or some mistake. He'd hoped the sooner he stopped talking about it, the sooner Rebecca might forget about it.

Scott had decided to forget about it, too. But another unsigned card had come to his office just before Father's Day the next year. The postmark had been Phoenix. He didn't know anyone in Phoenix. And last year, the card—a syrupy Hallmark card with a father and his kid in silhouette walking along a beach at sunset—had been from St. Louis.

For a while, he'd figured Rebecca's younger sister, Stephanie, might have been sending the cards. She was an airline pilot, and always traveling. Maybe that explained the cards coming from different cities. Stephanie had moved in with him and Rebecca back in their Portland days when they'd practically been newlyweds. Considering the circumstances that necessitated her living with them, Scott couldn't really object to the arrangement. But it hadn't been easy putting up with Rebecca's kid sister and all her late-teen traumas. They'd moved to New York while Stephanie had been attending the University of Oregon in Eugene. That had been twelve years ago. Stephanie was still single, and she visited them frequently—too frequently as far as Scott was concerned. The kids adored her. She and Rebecca were still extremely close. Scott couldn't help feeling like a third wheel whenever Stephanie was staying with them. He'd managed to tolerate his sister-in-law's visits for the sake of Becky and the kids. And he always sensed the feeling was mutual from Stephanie.

He would have asked her if she was the one sending the unsigned Father's Day cards, but good God, what if she wasn't? She was so fiercely protective of her older sister. Scott could just imagine her reaction—so much worse than Rebecca's, all the questions and accusations and bitch bites. No, thank you.

He'd decided long ago not to say anything about it to his sister-in-law. And he hadn't told Rebecca about the follow-up cards. It had become something unsettling and irritating that happened every Father's Day, a secret between him and the anonymous creep sending the cards.

Scowling at the envelope for this latest one, Scott saw the postmark was Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where he lived.

“Damn it to hell, what's going on here?” he muttered.

He liked it better when the cards had been mailed from hundreds of miles away. Sure, the first one had been postmarked from New York City, but that had been before the sender had started making the cards a yearly ritual. And besides, the city was a whole hour away from Croton-on-Hudson.

This new card had been sent by someone just minutes from his house.

He remembered Rebecca mentioning to him last night that someone had called the house three times. “I could tell they were listening to me when I answered,” she'd said. “And each time, they didn't say a thing. They just hung up. It was strange, creepy . . .”

Scott couldn't help wondering if it was the person who had been sending the Father's Day cards. Maybe they'd called Rebecca again today—only they hadn't hung up this time. They could have even stopped by the house. They could be talking to Rebecca right now.

Scott didn't want to find out from his wife who this person was.

Reaching for the phone on his desk, he speed-dialed the landline at home. After two rings, it went to voice mail. “Hey, hon, it's me,” he said. “Just checking in. I—um, I was wondering if you want to go to Tino's tonight. Let me know as soon as you can, okay? Give me a call. I'll try you on your cell.”

But when he called her cell, it went to voice mail, too. Scott left another message about going to Tino's, an old-style Italian steak house in Hawthorne they both liked. He'd had no such plan for dinner until he'd desperately blurted it out while leaving the first message. He just needed an excuse to have her call him back. And he needed to make sure everything was okay. All these alarms were going off inside his head because of this goddamn card. His stomach was in knots.

An hour later, Scott left another message on her cell as he finished up at the office. Then on the crowded, hot, noisy Metro train to Croton-on-Hudson, he tried texting her.

Still no response.

He started to imagine Rebecca sitting at a table in Black Cow Coffee, getting an earful from some woman he'd unknowingly impregnated five or six years ago. He tried to think of who it might be. He remembered the brunette from Buffalo with the rocking ass, Marcia. He'd met her on the plane to Miami for a business trip. They'd spent three nights together at the Marriott Marquis. He remembered her saying he didn't need a condom, because she was on the pill. She'd been dynamite in the sack, but kind of clingy-crazy, too. He'd been somewhat relieved when it had ended. But he'd faked a sad good-bye to her the morning he'd caught his plane home. He'd never heard from her again.

Was Marcia the one sending him the cards? Or was it someone else? There had been a few one-nighters around that same time, women he'd met in hotel bars while out of town. But he'd always been pretty careful and discreet. He'd kept track of his wallet, too—after taking off his pants. Sometimes, he hadn't even used his real name. Could one of those women have somehow gotten pregnant with his child? It seemed impossible.

He tried to remember the women's faces and wondered which one might be talking to Rebecca right now.

From the train station, Scott practically sped home. Their house was a brick, mid-century split-level on a woodsy, winding road. His wife's SUV was in the driveway. As he hurried toward the front door, he noticed through one of the lower level windows that the family room's big-screen TV was on. Scott let himself in, and paused on the landing. “Honey?” he called, over the blaring TV. “Honey, are you home? Becky?”

He took a few steps down toward the lower level. He found Ernie ensconced in the recliner chair and CC sitting on the sofa. On TV, two women with bad perms, a lot of makeup, and gobs of jewelry were screaming at each other. It must have been one of those
Real Housewives
shows. His two teenagers were barely watching it. They seemed deeply focused on their respective iPads. They didn't even look up at him as he came down the stairs.

“Well, don't both of you greet me at once,” he groused. “I couldn't stand all the attention.”

“Hey,” said CC, eyes glued to her iPad.

“Hi,” Ernie muttered, glancing up for a moment.

Scott felt a little disappointed in how CC and Ernie were turning out. At least CC's complexion was starting to clear up, and thanks to six thousand dollars' worth of orthodontia, her teeth were finally straight. But she still hadn't lost her baby fat, and the tight, black tee and black shorts were hardly flattering. She was going through a punk-goth phase and had recently dyed her brown hair jet black. CC probably thought she looked cool, but Scott was almost embarrassed to be seen with her. “Next time Steffi comes to stay with us,” Rebecca had promised, “we'll both sit CC down and talk to her about her fashion choices. She'll listen to Steffi.”

Skinny and pale, Ernie was a sweet kid, but a hopeless nerd. Scott had been a jock in high school. But his son had absolutely no interest in sports—or girls, for that matter. He liked antique cars, and decorated his bedroom with model cars and framed illustrations of every kind of automobile from the Tin Lizzie to the DeLorean. He had a pet cockatiel named Edsel. The stupid bird couldn't talk—and it smelled up Ernie's bedroom, even though Ernie cleaned out the big cage pretty regularly.

Scott heard the parrot squawk down the hallway. “Where's Mom?” he asked, taking off his suit jacket.

“I dunno,” Ernie shrugged, eyes still on his iPad. He was probably in some antique-car-lovers' chat room.

“Haven't seen her,” muttered CC.

“Well, the car's out there,” Scott said, exasperated. “Was she here when you guys got home or what?”

CC looked up at him long enough to roll her eyes. “I said I haven't seen her. God!”

Ernie shook his head. “Neither have I, Dad. Sorry.”

They both went back to their iPads.

With a sigh, Scott threw his suit coat over his shoulder and treaded up the stairs to the main level. He poked his head in the kitchen, which Rebecca hated. It was small and outdated. The tiny built-in breakfast booth couldn't even accommodate the four of them—which would have been pretty inconvenient if they'd been one of those families who ate breakfast together.

Scott noticed the Mr. Coffee machine on the counter was still on. Beside it sat Rebecca's favorite mug with an old Rosie the Riveter illustration of a factory woman flexing her muscle, and the slogan:
We Can Do It!
Switching off the coffeemaker, he noticed the pot was still half full—exactly how he'd left it this morning. Her mug had some cream in the bottom of it—as if she'd dispensed the cream first, but hadn't gotten around to pouring the coffee.

Frowning, Scott set the mug in the sink. It wasn't like Rebecca to leave an appliance on. She always double-checked that the stove was off and the coffeemaker was unplugged whenever she left the house in the morning. She had a bit of OCD that way.

Scott stepped out of the kitchen and glanced down the hallway toward the bedrooms and the bathroom. Ernie's domicile and antique car shrine was downstairs off the family room. Scott's eyes scanned the open doors to the bathroom, the guest room, and CC's bedroom. Then he squinted at the closed master bedroom door at the end of the narrow hallway.

“Becky? Honey?” he called, heading down the corridor.

He opened the door, and saw she'd made the bed. On top of it she'd laid out a pair of jeans and a black sweater.

Scott looked toward the master bathroom. The door was closed.

“Becky?” He tapped on the door and opened it.

The light was on. The first thing he noticed was one of the blue Ralph Lauren bath towels in a heap on the tiled floor. Then he saw the words scrawled in lipstick on the medicine chest mirror:

The blue and white striped shower curtain was closed. Along one white stripe near the edge, Scott noticed a red smudge. It didn't look like lipstick.

He heard the faucet dripping steadily behind the curtain. The sound echoed off the bathroom's tiled walls.

Moving toward the tub, Scott pulled the curtain aside. The shower curtain rings clanked against the rod. “Oh, Jesus, no,” he whispered.

Rebecca was lying in the tub with her head tipped back against the tiles. Her eyes were open, and she looked so forlorn. She wore her white terrycloth bathrobe. Blood soaked the front of it.

By Rebecca's hand—in her lap—was an old straight razor that had been her grandfather's. They kept it on a knickknack shelf in the bathroom—along with a shaving brush and cup. It was just a silly, sentimental decoration.

Scott had never thought of the antique razor as functional.