The Consequences (23 page)

Would he finish with Stephanie?

CHAPTER 38

K
athy sat with both elbows on the kitchen table, forehead pressed into right palm, while her left hand held the portable phone pressed to her ear. “Pick up, pick up,” she murmured.

An answering machine clicked in, and a polite, accentless male voice said,
“No one is available to take your call at the moment. Please leave a message after the tone. Thank you.”

“Sheila? Sheila, are you there?”

There was a click, and then Sheila's slightly amused voice cut in. “Yep, I'm here. I was just screening my calls. Julia's stalking me.”

“I figured. She came over tonight.”

“Shit, sorry about that.”

Kathy heard a series of rustling noises, then a thump, and when Sheila spoke again, her voice was slightly muffled, “Sorry,” she said. Then the sound cleared. “I'm in bed—I was just lying down. Tell me exactly what she said. But before you get to that, tell me: Did you go and see the mistress?”

“Yes,” Kathy said slowly, “I went to see Stephanie.”

There was a tiny pause, then Kathy heard the rustling again and guessed that her sister was now sitting up in the bed. “Oh my God . . . I can't believe you had the balls to confront her!”

“I had to.” Kathy stopped suddenly. She heard the door to Robert's office close above her, then a stair creaked. “Hang on a sec,” she said quickly, putting down the phone. By the time she got to the kitchen door, Robert had already stepped out the front door into the night.

Kathy stepped out into the hall. “Are you going out?” she asked, her voice carefully neutral.

“I just want to bring the car in,” he said. “I parked it on the street earlier.”

Kathy didn't wait for the rest of the explanation. She stepped back into the kitchen, shut the door, and grabbed the phone. “Sorry,” she said to her younger sister. “I thought I heard Robert leaving, but he was just bringing the car in.”

“Wait! You went to see the mistress, and Robert's still there? What happened?”

Kathy quickly filled Sheila in on the day's events. As she spoke, she darted upstairs and slipped into the bedroom. Standing well back from the net curtains, she looked down to the front of the house. Robert was slowly and carefully maneuvering the car into the drive. So he hadn't been lying. She watched him for a moment and wondered if she would ever trust him again. Could she afford to? Was she going to be constantly on edge every time he left the house? Would she end up checking and double-checking his whereabouts, noting his mileage, verifying every reason he gave to her when he stayed out at night? She couldn't live like that; no one could.

And she wouldn't.

Kathy turned and hurried back downstairs to the kitchen, then she heard the hall door shut as Robert came back into the house. The stairs creaked, then she heard his study door close and the creak of floorboards as he moved around the room.

“So you took him back,” Sheila said, her voice carefully neutral.

“It was a little more complicated than I thought,” Kathy said.

“It always is,” her younger sister said. “In an affair, there are no blacks and whites, only shades of gray.”

Kathy nodded. She was beginning to understand that now.

“So what happens now?” Sheila asked.

“I don't know,” Kathy said truthfully. “Robert and I need to talk; we need to really, seriously talk. I want to go to marriage counseling. I want to get back into the business, to start taking control again. . . .” And suddenly, with the flood of words, came the tears. The sobs came from deep in the pit of her stomach, tearing at her very being, and, for a moment, she thought she was going to throw up.

“Kathy, oh, Kathy,” Sheila said miserably, “I'm coming over.”

Kathy attempted to compose herself. “No. I'm fine. Stay where you are. The roads are terrible. I'd never forgive myself if anything happened.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and rubbed away the tears. “I'm fine,” she repeated, knowing it was a lie. It was going to be a long time before she would be fine again. “I just need a little time to decompress.”

“Would you rather not have known?” Sheila wondered.

Kathy's response was instant. “No. I needed to know. But I'm glad I found out myself. Discovering the truth, piece by piece, has, I think, allowed me to deal with it. I would hate to have had it sprung on me.”

“The sort of news Julia would like to break,” Sheila said grimly.

“Exactly.” With the phone propped between her head and shoulder, Kathy started to clear off the kitchen table, loading the cups and plates into the dishwasher. She needed to start prepping the vegetables for Christmas dinner, and it would be nice to get the kids up to bed at a reasonable hour for once. She wanted them up early in the morning; Christmas Day was the one day of the year when the entire family attended church, and it was always preferable to get to one of the early masses. They were shorter. Floorboards creaked overhead, and she suddenly glanced up. Would Robert be attending church with them tomorrow?

In the few days that had passed since she had discovered Stephanie Burroughs's name in Robert's phone and begun to suspect the affair, she had found herself asking so many questions. Suddenly everything that she had taken for granted was open to doubt. All the certainties of eighteen years of marriage lay shattered about her. “Why?” she said, and didn't realize she had spoken aloud until Sheila answered her.

“Why what?”

“Why did he have the affair?”

“Because he could,” Sheila said immediately.

“I keep asking myself if I could have stopped it, prevented it by being more . . . I don't know, more present,” Kathy said eventually. “And, by the way, what in the world possessed you to tell Julia about Alan?”

Sheila's laugh was completely without humor. “He was here at the time. He said he was going to tell his wife that he was leaving her for me. . . .”

“Sheila!”

“Hey, I begged him not to. Alan is fun and charming and sophisticated, but he can also be just a little bit pompous and more than a little boring. He's great in bed and fun to talk to, but he's definitely not someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. Over the past couple of weeks, he's been promising me an extra special Christmas present. Guess what it was? That he was going to tell his wife about us.”

“Very romantic,” Kathy said bitterly.

“Tell me about it. That's the last thing I wanted. I kept telling him not to make an announcement at Christmas, where every emotion is heightened. Then he accused me of being ashamed to be seen with him. I'd never even introduced him to my family, he was saying, and right at that moment Julia called. I have no idea what got into me, but I heard myself saying that I would come over for dinner if I could bring my boyfriend. I'm not sure who was more surprised, Julia or Alan.”

“But she recognized his name,” Kathy said.

“I know. Brookline is so small. How many Dr. Alan Gallaghers are there? She recognized the name, obviously thought about it, and then called me back, asked me point-blank if he was married, and then started asking me if his wife knew we were having an affair, saying she wasn't going to be able to let this pass. I mean, seriously, what does it have to do with her?”

“Robert asked her the same thing.”

“Anyway, she's been calling me on and off all night, obviously wanting to discuss the situation.”

“Is Alan still there?”

“No, I convinced him to go home and say nothing.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have no idea. Try and stall him 'til after Christmas. And then dump him. Nicely if I can, but I'm prepared to be brutal.”

“And will you bring him to Julia's for dinner?”

“Can you imagine how much fun that would be? I doubt she'd even let him in the door. Hey, Alan's calling my cell . . . d'you mind?”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you sure you're okay?”

“I'm fine. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

 

Kathy had a lot to do before she went to bed, and she wanted to bury herself in the simple Christmas Eve routine. Talking to Sheila, knowing that she was involved in her own affair with a married man, was a constant reminder of her own situation. And right now Kathy wanted to forget about it, just for a few minutes. She wanted things to be the way they were last Christmas.

And then she suddenly realized that Robert had been having his affair last Christmas too. Pressing both hands to her mouth, she raced out to the downstairs toilet, where she knelt on the floor and retched in great heaving gulps.

CHAPTER 39

Wednesday, 25th December
Christmas Day

 

 

K
athy Walker opened her eyes, suddenly awake and alert. What had awakened her?

She'd gone to bed alone just after midnight when she'd finished in the kitchen, leaving it rich with the smell of Christmas—odors of spice and cinnamon, cooking and candle wax, scents that she would forever afterward equate with betrayal. Rolling over, she glanced at the clock: just before one.

The house was absolutely still and silent, and she knew, even before she rolled out of bed and pulled back the curtains, it had snowed. The world outside the window was solid white, crisp, magical, and clean. Later cars would churn the road to filthy black sludge and children would turn the paths into glistening ice sheets, but right at this moment the world had lost all its sharp edges, and everything looked gorgeous and new.

Kathy slid back into the warm bed, lay on her back, and stared at the ceiling. The room should have been in total darkness, but the snow reflected gray alabaster light onto the ceiling.

A white Christmas.

She'd been a child the last time it had snowed on Christmas Day. It should be something to celebrate—but not this Christmas, not today.

Yesterday—was it only yesterday?—she had confronted her husband's mistress.

Yesterday, she had walked up to a woman she did not know and had slapped her across the face.

Yesterday, she had drunk tea with the woman who was sleeping with her husband.

Yesterday, that woman had given up Kathy's husband.

Less than twelve hours, and yet it seemed a lifetime ago.

Kathy pressed both hands to her churning stomach. From the moment she had set out to drive to Stephanie Burroughs's apartment, her stomach started to burn with acid indigestion. When she'd climbed out of her car before the woman's house and rested her finger on the bell, she'd thought she was going to throw up.

On the drive home, she'd had to pull off the road twice and roll down the window to breathe in great, heaving breaths. The cramping pain had come back at her again throughout the remainder of the day. It had grown worse in the late evening and into the night. With the sights and sounds of the encounter with her husband's mistress running and rerunning through her head, she'd felt her stomach protest, and she'd thrown up until there was nothing left but bitter bile. In desperation, she'd drunk Pepto Bismol—which she hated—straight from the bottle, the chalky liquid coating her tongue and mouth with its milky pink residue.

Kathy glanced across the bed.

Robert's side was empty. He'd made no attempt to come to bed with her, and she guessed he'd spent the night sleeping in the chair in his study. She wasn't sure what she would have done if he'd attempted to climb into bed next to her. Got out and slept downstairs, she supposed. But she should have known he wouldn't want to put himself in a position where they would have to talk.

She knew he didn't want to do that just yet. They'd had arguments and disagreements in the past, just like every other couple. His usual tactic was to state his position and then simply refuse to discuss it further. After a few vain attempts to raise the topic of conversation, she would normally let it drop, allowing him to win by default. That was not going to happen this time; they needed to discuss the future.

If there was going to be a future.

Then she heard it: the quiet closing of a door followed by the irregular creaking of the stairs. Every sense tingling, she heard him move around downstairs, shuffling from the living room to the kitchen. There was a long silence, and then she heard the kitchen door close. Footsteps hurried upstairs, and she heard his office door open, then close again moments later. This time when the footsteps descended the stairs they sounded more solid . . . as if he had put on his shoes.

Kathy sat up, heart thumping. Surely he wasn't going out?

The chain on the front door rattled, then the door was gently eased open and pulled closed with a click.

Leaping out of bed, she watched him back the car out of the drive. He hadn't put on his headlights because they would light up the bedroom, she realized, but his reversing lights painted the snow blood red.

He was going to her.

She'd thought . . . She'd thought . . . When he'd come back with her, he had seemed genuinely contrite, and she had been hopeful that once they got through these few days, they would be able to move on. She'd asked him to promise not to see Stephanie again, and he had, but without a huge amount of conviction, she'd thought. Talking about Stephanie, he'd said, “In any case, I think you can tell from today that she'll want little enough to do with me.”

He'd lied to her.

There were no tears now, just a cold anger . . . coupled with a feeling of absolute helplessness. What was she going to do? What could she do? Throw him out? Gather all his clothes, stuff them into the suitcases, and fling them out into the front garden? Call Stephanie and tell her that he was on the way and not to send him back?

Was he even coming back?

Pulling on her robe, she wandered out of the bedroom and into his study. It felt hot and stuffy, the air slightly stale with a hint of his old aftershave overlaying sour perspiration. Everything seemed in order—perhaps in a little too much order. The pile of mail on the desk was certainly a lot neater, and she guessed that if she went to it she would find that the parking ticket and the Visa bill would conveniently be missing.

She wandered down into the kitchen where she found the note beside the phone. “Office alarm has gone off; gone in to see if there's a problem.”

Her first instinct was to pick up the phone and call the alarm company to confirm. She'd actually lifted the receiver when she changed her mind and put the phone down again. If she and Robert were to begin again, then she had to start trusting him. She'd been wrong about him before, when she had suspected that he'd been having an affair six years ago. Her accusations then had desperately damaged their marriage, and she didn't want to make that mistake again. Maybe the office alarm had genuinely gone off . . . but she hadn't heard the phone ring, and when she checked the caller ID, there had been no calls since one of Theresa's friends had called the house much earlier that evening. If the alarm company were calling, would they have contacted Robert's cell first, and then the house second, or the other way around? Feeling a little relieved, she returned the note to where she'd found it, then went back upstairs and climbed into the cold bed.

Lying in the silence, she heard the snow hiss and spit against the window and suddenly found herself praying for his safe return.

But at the back of her mind, faint but insistent, was the thought that he had gone to Stephanie. And if he had, she knew, then they were finished.

Finished.

 

She was still awake at two thirty when he returned.

The minutes had crawled by, second by agonizing second, each one accompanied by visions of an equally terrifying scenario: Robert dead by the side of the road . . . the car on its roof in a pileup on Storrow Drive . . . Robert in the arms of his mistress.

Several times she had reached for the phone to dial his number or the office number or even Stephanie's number. But each time she had pulled back. If he had gone out for a genuine reason, she didn't want him to know that she was checking up on him.

When she saw the splash of headlights on the road and heard the car slowly crunch its way down the ice-locked street, she knew it was him and experienced a wave of relief that left her shaking with emotion.

Climbing out of bed, she stood and watched the Audi approach and then the lights click off so that they would not illuminate the front of the house before he turned into the drive. Leaning forward, straightening the curtains, she watched him climb out of the car, and the look of leaden exhaustion on his face convinced her that he had not gone to see Stephanie. If he'd gone to his mistress, surely he would have spent the night, and even if he had decided to return home before Brendan and Theresa got up to open their presents, then he would be looking a whole lot happier.

She heard the hall door open and, for a moment, thought about going down and asking about the office alarm, but then she decided that she didn't want him to be aware that she knew he'd been out. Stairs creaked, his office door opened and closed, then she heard the pneumatic hiss as he sat back in his chair.

Then silence.

Kathy sat on the edge of the bed for almost an hour, then she padded out of the room, down the landing, and stopped outside his door. She opened the door and peered inside.

Still wearing his leather coat and gloves, Robert was slumped in his office chair, fast asleep. His face was ashen and, even in sleep, lined with exhaustion. He must have gone into the office, she decided. And she felt vaguely guilty then for even having her suspicions.

She was going to have to learn how to trust him again. She would, she promised. Standing in the doorway, watching him sleep in his clothes, Kathy Walker made an early New Year's resolution: She was going to work to save this marriage because, despite the pain and anguish he had put her through, despite how small he had made her feel, she still loved him.

God help her, but she still loved him.