Together Alone (29 page)

But Doug had been in New York that day—Emily remembered because she, too, had thought it would be wonderful if he could drive Jill home, only he had ruled it out.

Pressing a hand to her chest, she read on.

“Jessica asked if the woman was my mom. That was when I realized I’d made a mistake. My father knew I was in Boston. If he was going to be there, too, he would have arranged to meet me and drive me home. Besides, my father wouldn’t be holding another woman that way. He wouldn’t be kissing her that way, or hugging the little boy so tightly before unwrapping his arms from his neck and handing him back to the woman. The man on the steps couldn’t possibly have been my father. He belonged to that family, not mine. He just looked a lot like my dad.”

Emily was breathing shallowly.

“I still think about that man. The other day I started wondering if it was possible for a man to have two families. If he traveled a lot, like my dad does, he could. He could see one family during the week and the other on the weekends. My own father wouldn’t do that, but another man could, I suppose.”

The writing ended. Emily whipped the page over, but it was blank. Same with the one after it. Flipping back to the first, she reread the last paragraph, then reread the whole piece, breathing faster with each page until her whole body shook. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “The
bastard
.”

Heart pounding, she set aside the paper and, not knowing what else to do, took out the last sweater. Trembling wildly, she folded it as best she could and replaced it. She put each of the others on top, slid the basket back into the closet, and shut the door. Then she took the paper and went downstairs.

“The
bastard
,” she murmured, returning a hand to her chest in an attempt to check the tumult inside, but her fury needed an outlet. So she began to pace the floor, back and forth, trying to accept that he had actually done the one thing she had positively
refused
all these years to consider, even
after
Brian, because just
considering
it had seemed a betrayal of Doug!

“How
could
you?” she cried as she paced, hurt now, as well as enraged. “A woman and a
child?
How could you betray
us
like this? It must have been going on for
years!
And
I
felt so guilty. I don’t believe this!”

Needing to vent the ugliness churning inside, she dropped the paper, swept out the front door, and set off into the night. She walked at a furious pace, then broke into a run. Breathless by the time she reached Sycamore, she stopped, bent at the waist to put her hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath.

Stupid, starry-eyed Emily
. Refusing to see, to imagine, to accept. But it made perfect sense!

Panting, she resumed her stride, as oblivious to the snap of the dried leaves underfoot as she was to the spectral arms of the trees, the shadows, the November cold. Driven by more adrenaline than she could handle, she stormed all the way through town and back. She was home before she felt the first inkling of fatigue, and when it hit, it was overshadowed by grief.

Sickened, she stumbled into the backyard. At the edge of the pond, her legs gave out. She fell to her knees, then her heels. Her hands went flat on the grass for support, but the ground was cold, the grass ungiving. Everything around her was dark. She felt bereft in ways she hadn’t since the day she had accepted that Daniel was gone. Doug’s betrayal was a final twist in that same, seemingly endless tragedy.

Tears came in a rush, then. She couldn’t stop them, couldn’t slow them. All she could do was to hug her middle and try to hold herself together against the pain that threatened to split her apart. She cried for herself and for Jill—and for Daniel and all the many things that had been lost that day at the post office. She rocked a little, but the motion didn’t ease the pain, so she slid to her bottom, hugged her knees, and buried her face.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her hair, then her shoulder, and in the next sobbing breath she was being gathered to a chest that was solid and warm. He didn’t ask why she was crying, didn’t beg her to stop, didn’t say anything at all. He just held her and let her cry, which she continued to do as though she had been granted permission, finally, deservedly, to be weak.

In time, the tears slowed. Embarrassed, she eased her hold on his sweater.

“We have to stop meeting this way,” he teased, but his arms remained looped around her.

She made a sound that might have been a laugh, and nodded.

“The weekend was bad, huh?”

“Some.”

“Want to talk?”

She shook her head. Her thoughts were too raw. She had to let them sink in.

He chafed her arms. “You’re freezing. Want to come up to my place?”

She gave a tiny headshake.

“For a brandy?”

She repeated the headshake.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

With a choppy sigh, she said, “I have to be. I have to work out some things in my mind.” She wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hands.

He rose, drew her up, and walked her to her kitchen door. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She nodded, even managed a small smile. “When you hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.” She liked the idea of going up. It seemed forever that she had been dreading that fall to rock bottom. But she had survived.

“Thanks, Brian,” she whispered, knowing that she owed him more than two words, but unable to do more for now.

She caught his acknowledging smile in the dark. He touched the tip of her chin, turned, and left.

Emily actually slept. She woke up early the next morning, rested enough to be able to handle the storm of emotion that immediately hit her. Seeking an outlet in activity, she filled the house with the sound of Miles Davis and tore off the new wallpaper she had put in the upstairs bathroom such a few short weeks before. She crushed it, crammed it into a trash bag, and took it to the dump with the rest of the garbage. On the way home, she picked up wallpaper far more suited to her own taste than Doug’s, and spent the morning putting it up.

Because that felt good, she drove to the mall and bought new sheets and a comforter in a pale blue and white floral pattern that was feminine and fresh, plus extra sheets to make curtains, plus a slew of throw pillows with ruffles. Caught up in her statement of self, she bought blue paint for the walls, and then, because blue made her think of sun, sand, and surf, she bought several large seaside prints. Then she stopped at the local garage and made an appointment for a new muffler, new fan belts, and new tires.

Riding a wave of bravado, she came home and called Jill. When the answering machine came on, she left a light-hearted message about how much she had loved seeing Jill. She didn’t mention finding the paper. She didn’t know what to say about it yet.

Likewise, to Kay and Celeste. Monday meant dinner with them, and though she would have liked to pass that night, she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to cancel without an explanation. So she simply told them about the weekend and shrugged when they asked about Doug. Any slack in the conversation was picked up by Celeste, who raved on ad infinitum about Carter.

Kay looked uncomfortable with it all.

Emily felt uncomfortable with it all. She tried to be happy for Celeste’s sake, but every Carter-miracle that Celeste cited reminded Emily of Doug’s treachery and her own very sad, very deep humiliation. Thinking about the latter made her angry again, because, damn it, she hadn’t done anything to deserve what he’d done, certainly not the extent of it, such deliberate betrayal over so long a time. He should have spoken up if he was so unhappy. He should have asked for a divorce himself if he was in love with another woman.

There was no message from him on the machine when she arrived home. But he was in New Haven, just as he had claimed. She called to check. The hotel confirmed it, and not surprisingly. She assumed that some of what he said was the truth, but there was a pattern. During each week on the road, he went to one, maybe two cities, with plans to be back on Thursday or Friday. Increasingly, he called midweek to postpone his homecoming a day.

Playing a hunch, she waited. Sure enough, he called on Wednesday night to say that he had been late getting to Bridgeport and wouldn’t be home until Saturday. The tiny part of her that still held out hope against her suspicions twisted and writhed, but the rest of her was vaguely gratified.

She might have been blind for years, but she wasn’t stupid, or as small-town naive as Doug wanted to believe.

Nor was she dependent on Brian in any way, shape, or form. To the contrary, she was trying to keep her distance and make independent decisions, but she needed feedback now, and he seemed the best one to ask.

So, soon after Doug called, she knocked on Brian’s door. He opened it wearing sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a warm, sleepy look. She nearly backed away, not because she feared she had woken him, but because the sight of him made her weak at a time when she had to be strong.

Halfway into the room she paused, listening to a jazz piano, something by Jelly Roll Morton, but new.

“Marcus Roberts,” Brian said. “Know his work?” She shook her head. “I heard him play in the city last year. He’s good. Want coffee or something?”

“No coffee. Just a little of your time.” She took Jill’s paper from her pocket and passed it across, waiting until he read it before explaining how she had found it. “Jill must have meant me to. She kept telling me not to clean her room, but she knew I wouldn’t be able to resist straightening up, especially when she didn’t do any cleaning herself when she was home, and there it was, lying all crisp and clean.”

His eyes asked if she did believe that Doug was the man on the steps.

“Jill surely wants me to deny it,” she said, “but it makes too much sense. The minute I read that paper, I knew. It’s so simple, and explains so much—his short tempers, the kinds of clothes he buys, his taking up new activities like golf. It explains all the traveling, and the last minute calls to say he won’t be home for another day. There was the time he told me he’d be in Baltimore and he wasn’t. He was furious when I asked him about it. He was furious that I had tried to
reach
him. What kind of husband would react that way?”

She began to walk around the room, touching things for the comfort of it but seeing little. “There are other things that never made sense until now. He doesn’t like my asking about work, doesn’t like talking about his life at all. He won’t
hear
of my traveling with him. He wasn’t wild about Jill going to school in Boston, either. He kept trying to steer her to other places. For all I know, when he was running last week-end he went to
her
place.”

Brian leaned against the back of the armchair. “That’s a heavy accusation, a long-term affair.”

“But it
makes sense
,” Emily insisted. “It explains his relationship with me, or lack thereof.” She had passed the point where pride was an issue. Anger had eclipsed embarrassment. “It also explains where the money he earns goes. He did well when he sold his share of the farm, and he poured it back into the new business, but what did he need? His overhead is next to nothing! He must have stashed the surplus away. He kept Jill and me thinking we were hard up, but he always spent on himself. I’ll bet he has money we know nothing about!”

“Don’t you sign tax returns?”

“Sure. Do I read them? No. Stupid of me, I know, but I
trusted
Doug. Even when I received royalties from the book, I just signed the checks over to him to deposit in our account. I don’t pay the bills at the end of the month, so I don’t even know how much comes in and goes out.”

Something struck her then. “Y’know, I offered to do it once, to pay the bills and save him the time. Without giving it two seconds’ thought, he said that I wouldn’t know what was business and what wasn’t, and would only mess things up.” Something else struck her then. “He was
always
doing that—putting me down. Instead of saying that it would be easier for him to pay the bills himself, he’d say that my doing it would mess things up. Or that my getting a job would hike our taxes. Or that my traveling with him would be a burden.”

“It’s a form of abuse,” Brian suggested quietly.

Emily was disgusted with herself. “Well, I didn’t think anything of it. I assumed Doug knew better than I did, on money matters, certainly. He was always telling me things were tight. The economy and all. Jill’s expenses and all.” Her anger was returning to Doug, growing with each realization. “So when he said I could get a few more miles out of the tires on my car, I figured I could. I figured the bill would be better coming later, than now. Only
he
’s been buying all along. I chalked it up to the image he needed to be successful, but looking at it, it’s bizarre. His clothes, his car, his whole lifestyle is so far above my world—”

“Fancy clothes don’t mean a good goddamn.”

She stopped walking and took a breath. “I know. Still, you’ve met him. Would you have put the two of us together?”

“No. I’d have put you with someone of greater substance.”

“Oh, Doug has substance,” she said sadly, “just not in the same sphere I do. He used to. When we first moved here, we were of like minds about everything. Then Daniel was taken.” She thought of Jill’s paper again.

Quietly, Brian asked, “What about the little boy in Boston?”

Precisely. She studied her thumb. “I don’t know. It might be hers. Or theirs. That’s the part that hurts most, I think.”

“I would think
all
of it would hurt.”

It did. But there was something else. Going to him, she clasped his hands. “I’ve been confused for so long, not understanding why Doug was growing more and more distant, thinking that maybe I
was
imagining it. This would explain so many things, that there’s a kind of relief. And more anger than hurt, actually, and even then, as much on Jill’s behalf as mine.” She felt it rising again. “He missed a good deal of her childhood, Brian. Damn it, he couldn’t even stick around to drive her to college, and there he was, in the same city where she’s headed. Can you
imagine
her seeing him on the street that way?”