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Did I ever really get over the shock of seeing Claire
and my brother kissing? I’d ask myself that after enough time had passed that it wasn’t something I thought about every day. I’d forgiven her, I had, but I’d been changed by it. We’d been changed by it. And not in the ways I might’ve thought. I didn’t distrust her. I didn’t think she was going to end up in the arms of another man. I didn’t think she was going to leave me for Tim.

But did I feel like I had some credit? Some bad deeds stored up, some chips to cash?

I guess I did.

But that doesn’t mean that when I cashed them in, I didn’t feel guilty at the payout window.

The morning of day two at the retreat was taken up with putting together prize packs for the golf tournament and a couple
extremely boring lectures on “who we are” and “what we want to be.”

The only good thing about it was knowing I’d be playing golf all afternoon, and the shy, proud look on Tish’s face as she inscribed copies of her daughter’s poetry book for the prize packs.

I’d been assigned to the prize committee, as had Lori, the woman Tish was replacing at the retreat. As part of the team-building aspect of the weekend, we were supposed to put something personal in the prize packs — a kind of adult show and tell. All I could come up with were prints of pictures I’d taken of people from around the office on my phone at candid moments. Since Tish was late to the party, and Lori hadn’t been organized enough to put something together before she got sick, the only thing she had time to bring was her daughter’s book.

“You’re showing off,” I teased Tish as she wrote
I’m a proud mama
in copy after copy of the slim volume. There was a prize pack for everyone, fifty of them in all.

Apparently “winning” meant being there in the first place.

“If you can’t live vicariously through your kids once in a while, what’s the point?”

“So you have someone to look after you in your old age?”

“There’s that too.” Her pen paused. “Do you think it’s weird, me signing these instead of Zoey?”

“Do you think she’d mind?”

“No. She was kind of embarrassed when Brian ordered so many copies in the first place … and you should see our garage. We can’t even park in there anymore.”

I flipped through the deckled pages. “I’d love to meet her someday.”

“I’d like that,” she said, but there was a hesitation in her voice. I had a flash of her meeting Seth, and I felt weird.

Cold.

We finished our task and went to the buffet lunch. At some point, I slipped away to check our golf assignments; Tish and I were playing together, I saw with pleasure. In fact, we were a twosome in a sea of foursomes, presumably because of our low golf handicaps. Tish had listed hers as a four. Halfway into the second hole, I knew she’d lied.

“Why’d you do it?” I asked after she’d landed on the green in eagle position.

“What?”

“Lie about your handicap? You clearly don’t have one.”

She shot me a look over her collared shoulder. Her expression was hidden by the shadow cast by her cap.

“Didn’t I tell you I suck at putting?”

“Did you? When?”

“The first time we met.”

“I don’t remember you saying that.”

“Well, I did.” She tapped the side of her head. “I have perfect recall of conversations.”

“That must come in handy.”

“Sure. Especially at three in the morning. You’re away.”

I was the farthest away from the green, by a long shot. Unlike hers, my third shot wasn’t even on the green.

You know how you think you’re good at something until you see someone who’s really good at it?

I pulled off a tricky chip shot that was more luck than skill, but I took Tish’s “nice shot,” anyway.

I picked up my ball as a loud horn blasted through the air.

“Storm warning,” Tish said. “We should head for cover.”

She was looking into the distance at a massive black thunderhead that hadn’t been there ten minutes ago.

“I thought it never rained here?”

Her reply was silenced by a zigzagging flash and concomitant boom.

“What’d you say?” I yelled.

“Run!”

She pointed at a decrepit wood structure about five hundred yards away, a rain shelter that had been sorely neglected because it never rains in Palm Springs. Except when it does.

A second burst of thunder clapped us to attention, and we sprinted towards the shelter, abandoning our clubs. We reached it as the rain began to fall, fast and loud, thrumming against the sloped metal roof, running off in a curtain.

We stood there listening to it, our breaths escaping rapidly.

“I guess there’s going to be flowers this spring,” Tish said.

“Too bad we’re going to miss it.”

“It is.” She watched the rain. “I did lie to you before.”

“I knew it.”

“Not about my golf handicap.”

“What then?”

“About why I didn’t tell you I was coming.”

“Lori Chan wasn’t sick?”

“No, she was. She is.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t tell you I was coming because I wasn’t sure I was going to.

Not till the last minute.”

“Why?”

She turned to me. “You know, if we were in a movie, this is when we’d have our first kiss. In the unexpected rain.”

She blushed and looked at her muddied golf shoes.

“You’re right,” I said as my heart sped up. “Tish …”

She raised her head. We were inches apart. I could smell her sunscreen and feel the warmth of her body as the air cooled around us. Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted. It took an act of will not to pull her towards me, put my mouth on hers, and finally taste this person I knew so well in some ways, and so little in others.

She started to raise her hands, then lowered them. “I didn’t tell you I was coming because of the possibility of this.”

I took her hands in mine. It felt like touching a lightning rod right after it’s been struck.

“You don’t have to worry.”

“I don’t?”

“No.”

She dropped her arms to her side. I let her hands slide away.

“So I’ve been imagining it?” she asked. “There’s nothing happening between us?”

“You haven’t been imagining it.”

“Then I’m worried.”

“Why?”

“Because we shouldn’t. Because I should say no. But I don’t think I can. Not if …”

“No, Tish. It’s okay. I mean it.”

“How? How is it okay?”

I looked at her and I thought about how hard it was to say things, even though it was easy to think them, to feel them.

“Because I’m not going to ask you for anything. I’m going to keep myself from saying and doing what I want to say and do. I’m going to make that effort. So you don’t have to worry. You really don’t.”

She let out a long slow breath that sounded like relief.

“Is that what you want?” I asked.

“It’s what I’ve decided too. Not because …”

“No.”

Her wide eyes met mine, all at once happy and sad, mirroring the feeling in my heart.

“Did I make a mistake, coming here?” she asked.

“I’m glad you’re here. I’ll always remember this.”

She smiled as the rain stopped, the water still dripping from the roof.

“Me too,” she said. “Always.”

We sat at different tables at dinner that night. We could easily have fudged with the dinner assignments, but we didn’t. Instead, I sat with seven people I didn’t know from her office, and she sat with seven people she didn’t know from mine. I made polite conversation with the twenty-something sitting next to me. I think she might’ve been flirting with me—or maybe she was someone who always repeatedly touched the leg of the person she was speaking with—but I was too distracted to decide. My mouth answered her questions when necessary, while my brain was still half on the golf course, in the rain shelter, and what had almost happened. I couldn’t decide if the twist in my gut was guilt or regret or a combination of both.

My eyes darted across the room to the back of Tish’s head, the white of her neck below where she’d bunched her hair into a knot, the side of her face when she turned towards the man sitting to the left of her, the right.

I ended up behind her in the food line again, but this time it was no accident.

“How’s your table?” she asked.

“Deadly. Yours?”

“A notch below a Safety Minute.” Her hand hovered over the chafing dishes. “What do you reckon? Pasta or fish?”

The fish looked dried out, even though it was drowning in a thick white sauce. “I’m thinking pasta.”

She nodded and helped herself to a small serving of shaped pasta in an orangey sauce. It looked like something from a can.

I guess the consultants hadn’t specified that team building worked better surrounded by creature comforts you couldn’t regularly afford.

“The sun and the moon and the stars,” she said.

“I … what?”

She nodded at the shape of the pasta on her plate. “Seth would love it,” I said.

“Zoey used to make galaxies with hers. Did you know there’s a conjunction tonight?”

“What’s that?”

“Jupiter and Venus are at their closest point. They’ll be lined up in the sky in a row with the moon. It’s rare and pretty cool.”

“How did I not know you liked astronomy?”

She shrugged. “There’re lots of things we don’t know about each other, right?” She paused. “Zoey and I usually watch that kind of stuff together.”

“Will you watch tonight?”

“I might do.”

I waited for her to invite me to come along, to go with her and lie out in the grass somewhere and watch the heavens. But I also didn’t want her to ask. On some level, I didn’t want to have to face the choice I knew I shouldn’t be making.

“Well, I should be getting back,” she said.

“Right, me too. How about a drink after dinner?”

She bit the edge of her thumb. “How about … breakfast tomorrow? Yes?”

“Yes. Sure. That sounds good.”

“Have a good night, Jeff.”

“You too.”

She turned to leave, then turned back quickly, her plate tottering on one hand. She leaned in close to my ear for the briefest moment, her breath a tickle.

“This is hard,” she said, her lips touching my skin. Then she turned away and walked to her table without looking back.

I would have stood there, frozen, if it wasn’t for the person behind me in line knocking into me, propelling me out of whatever dream world those five seconds had sucked me into. As it was, I don’t really remember going to my table, starting to eat, knocking back half my glass of wine in two gulps. I came to when my maybe-flirtatious dinner companion took up where she’d left off, touching my arm, saying my name once, twice, to get my attention.

“Pardon?”

“Did you look in your prize pack?” she said, swinging the small party-favour bag.

“No need. We … I helped put them together. No surprises there.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re no fun.”

I agreed and took another swig of wine, trying to decide if I could take one of the bottles and leave without it being remarked on.

It was only later, in my room, after too many glasses of wine and too many speeches, that I found that my prize pack did contain a surprise, after all. When I up-ended it onto the bed,
looking for the souvenir wine bottle opener we’d included to keep the party going, Zoey’s book slid out. It fell open to the inscription page, the page where Tish had written the same thing over and over. Only, somehow, she’d managed to inscribe this copy to me personally and sign it. And though the three extra words —
To, Jeff
,
Tish
— weren’t much, I held them against my chest and thought:
Always
.

I awaken at noon feeling disoriented
, like I don’t know where I’ve been or even where I am.

Then, I do know.

I’m in our bed.

The book, the texts, all of it, are real.

Jeff and I? Maybe not so much.

I lie there pondering this, staring at the ceiling, until I feel like I’m going crazy. Not bothering to change out of my pyjamas, I go downstairs in search of Beth.

She’s in the kitchen, but not alone. Tim’s here, and they’re talking like conspiratorial buddies, though they’ve never been. Beth’s always disliked him, from the first, though she’d never tell me why.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, and in their guilty looks I know.

“Did you have a good rest, honey?” Beth replies.

“I’m kind of hoping I’m still sleeping, to be honest.”

She shakes her head and walks to the counter where the coffee machine sits, gurgling slightly, the pot full of the blackest coffee.

“Don’t believe it, Claire,” Tim says. “Don’t you believe it for a second.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know that Jeff would never—”

“What? Betray me? How could you possibly know that?”

“He’s my brother. I know him in my bones.”

“Like he knew you? Like he knew me?”

“Yes. Exactly like that.”

“So if Jeff were here, and I were dead, and he found … He found out about us, he wouldn’t have been surprised? Devastated?”

“Devastated, yes. Surprised, no.”

“If you’re saying what I think you are, then fuck you. And get out of my house.”

Beth puts her hand on my arm, pressing a warm mug into my hands. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s right.”

“Well, then, fuck you too.”

My knees feel weak. I sway away from Beth. She steadies me, and in an instant, Tim’s there to help her. They hold me up and sit me down, and neither of them looks like they’re going anywhere.

“That’s not what I meant,” Tim says. “I only meant,” he glances at Beth, wishing, maybe, that she wasn’t here, then continues, “I meant that he wouldn’t have been surprised
I
acted that way.”

“We
both
acted that way.”

“But we had a history, and … do you want to hear this?”

“If you know something about what Jeff thought, then yes.”

He runs his hand over his face. “Jeff worried, sometimes, that he was your second choice. And so, what he saw confirmed it, but … you already know this, right?”

“How do you know that?”

“Jeff told me, when we started talking again, how you’d worked things out.”

I can’t help the hurt from creeping into my voice. “He told you?”

“I think he needed to. But you have to listen to me. You have to believe this: when you told him that you really did choose
him
, he believed you.”

I absorb this information like a dry sponge.

“But even if that’s true, that doesn’t explain any of this. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t—”

Beth’s arm is around my shoulders. “Of course it does, honey, and that’s why there has to be a rational explanation for all of this.”

“There does?”

“Yes,” Beth and Tim say together with certainty.

I look back and forth between them until I connect the dots.

They’re certain Jeff wouldn’t betray me because I’d betrayed him. He knew how it felt, and he was too good a person to ever make someone feel the way I’d made him feel.

But see, I have another theory: if Jeff was going to betray me (
if
he did), it wouldn’t have been prevented by my actions, but caused by them. Like a chemical reaction that needs the right condition, my actions, Tim’s and mine, created the nitroglycerine, waiting, locked away until the right reagent came along.

Then somehow, somewhere, he met Tish, and the air rushed in, and any resolve he had exploded.

The problem with my theory, though, is that Jeff’s not here for me to test it. He’s not here for me to ask. He left me clues that point to something, something, but maybe nothing, and I already know in my clouded brain that if I don’t solve this puzzle, I will sink, I will go under, I will drown.

So when I get away from Beth and Tim and their little co-conspiracy to make me forget, make me believe, make me dismiss for lack of evidence, I check one last thing on the computer.

Springfield to Springfield.

If I leave right now, I can be there by dinner.

It’s after six. I’m in my rental car, headed towards town. The sun’s setting behind the rounded hills that surround it, and a full moon is rising to replace it.

I’m driving. I’m actually driving. For the first time, since Jeff died, I’m driving.

The minutes I had between flights were enough time to realize that I literally didn’t know where I was going, and that I’d be arriving too late to find Tish at her office. I had no idea where she lived or how to contact her other than through Facebook, and something told me she wouldn’t accept my friend request.

Or maybe she would, this woman I met in a moment of crisis, this woman I tried to help, this woman who had the audacity to come into my home, talk to me, talk to my son.

Then it struck me: maybe there was something Facebook could help me with after all. A quick check on my phone proved me right. Her husband’s a doctor, and his number’s listed in the phone book. A reverse address search later and I
have their address. It’s so easy, even in this day of suspicion and privacy, to find someone if they’re not careful.

It’s so easy to lose someone too.

Her address is loaded into the car’s GPS, and the woman’s voice emanating from it tells me calmly but firmly to turn right in a hundred and fifty yards, turn right, turn right, your destination is on your left.

I pull over, too close to the curb, and my wheels skim it. A man is backing out of their driveway. His car passes mine on his way out. This must be her husband, Brian.

The house is still all lit up, so she must be home. Perfect.

I watch her husband’s tail lights fade. Does he know the answer to my questions? Does he have his own clues, his own suspicions? Or if I follow him, ask him, would I bring his world crashing down?

I find this option tempting for a moment. There’s something about the power in it, but no. Dr. Brian Underhill isn’t the answer to the wreck that is my life. He’s just another person caught in the jetsam.

When Tish opens the door, half laughing, words of dismissal on her lips, her mouth drops open. She closes it quickly, hiding her surprise. She must be good at hiding things, I think.

“Claire? What on earth are you doing here?”

She’s still wearing her work clothes (a black skirt, a pale yellow sweater), and her hair is tied back.

“I came to get some answers.”

“You … what? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

She bites her thumb and glances over her shoulder. “Um, why don’t you … come in?”

I follow her into the house. It’s a typical four-bedroom suburban, not that different from my own. The furniture is nicer, though; a doctor’s house.

She takes me into the family room and motions towards the couch. “Will you take a seat? I need to check on something in the kitchen. Do you want anything?”

“I’m fine.”

She stares at me for a minute, then disappears. I look around the room slowly. School shots of her daughter and family vacations are on the mantelpiece. There’s an afghan over the back of a squashy chair holding a half-read book, the spine cracked, and unobtrusive art on the walls hanging over the taupe paint. With a bit of straightening, this house would be for-sale ready.

I track back to a shot of her on the mantelpiece, the same shot as on the company website.
She isn’t prettier than me
, I think, then feel a wave of disgust for making the comparison at all.

Tish reappears holding two glasses of white wine.

“In case you changed your mind,” she says, putting one of the glasses on the coffee table in front of me.

There’s a coaster next to it, and I resist the urge to move the glass onto it. I want to let the glass bleed water onto her nice mahogany, as petty as that is.

She sits across from me, cradling her wineglass in her hand, not drinking from it. She’s eyeing me like my therapist used to, waiting for me to say something.

Eventually, she does.

“I guess I’m just … really confused about why you’re here.”

“I have something to ask you.”

“Okay.”

I hesitate. In court, when you’re trying to get information
out of someone, trying to get them to admit what you’re trying to prove, the better strategy is generally to ask a series of innocuous questions, laying a trap, building up to the final question so carefully that they can’t escape. But sometimes another strategy works: ask what you want to know so directly that the witness will be shocked into telling the truth. And because I haven’t had enough time to prepare properly, this is the strategy I use.

“Were you sleeping with my husband?”

“No!”

The vehemence of her denial startles me. Startles her too, I guess, since she nearly drops her wineglass, and as it is, half of its contents spills on her leg.

She looks down at the spreading wet and pats it with her hand, as if it’s absorbent. She puts the wineglass on the floor next to her.

“Sorry … I … that’s not what I expected you to say.”

“What were you expecting?”

“I really don’t—”

“Mom? Are you all right?”

Her daughter’s standing in the doorway, looking frightened. She’s wearing her school uniform, and she looks innocent, and less confident than in her book jacket photo.

Tish rises quickly. “Didn’t I say to stay in the kitchen?”

“I thought you hurt yourself.”

“No, I … spilled something. See, nothing’s the matter.”

Zoey looks at me with her pale blue eyes. I feel a stab of guilt that I’ve made this child worried somehow, but that’s her mother’s fault, not mine.

“Who’s that?” she asks.

“This is … Claire. She came to … visit for a few minutes.”

Zoey relaxes and holds out her hand. It’s stained with blue ink. “Hi, Claire. I’m Zoey.”

My hand reaches out automatically. She takes it and pumps it up and down, once, twice, a grown-up’s handshake, though I know from my Internet snooping that she’s just a year younger than Seth.

“Nice to meet you,” she says. “How do you know my mom?”

“Zoey.”

“What? I was just curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat. Why don’t you take your homework and go up to your room? I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“Aren’t you going to change out of your wet clothes?”

“I’ll do that after Claire leaves. Room, now, please.”

“
Oookkkaayyy
. Bye, Claire.”

“Bye, Zoey.”

She leaves and pounds up the stairs, leaving an imprint on the world.

Tish returns to her seat. “Sorry about that.”

“No, I … I know how it is. Seth’s …”

“Seth is …?”

“You know what? I don’t want to talk about him with you.”

“Because you think that Jeff and I—”

“Were sleeping together. Yes.”

“No, Claire. We weren’t. We were only friends.”

“I find that hard to believe, given everything.”

“What everything?”

I rotate through the list that’s been cycling through my brain.

“Why did he have that book? Her book?”

“Zoey’s book? That Seth read from at the funeral?”

“For starters.”

“I gave it to a lot of people. Brian, my husband, ordered so many copies—”

“Did you give it to him at the golf retreat?”

“Yes, that’s right. I brought a bunch of them with me. For the prize packs. Everyone who attended got one.”

A muscle twitches in my eye. “Why did you text him?”

“I did?”

She looks genuinely puzzled, but I press on. “It was on his phone. A text from you.”

“What did it say?”

“I couldn’t read it. The phone’s busted,” I admit.

Her brow creases, concentrating. “I think … you know I work in HR, right?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s how we met. Jeff and I. About a year ago, he had to do HR training, and he was in my group. Afterwards, when he had an issue, he’d call me. Anyway, he called me a couple of weeks ago. He had to fire someone in his department, Art somebody, I think, and he was finding it hard to do it. So I gave him some pointers. He said he’d let me know how it went. When I didn’t hear from him … I thought I sent him an email, but I guess I sent him a text.”

“How did you have his cell number?”

“From the golf retreat. We were both on the prize committee, and we had to coordinate, so he gave me his cell number.” “So why was he texting you?”

“I … I thought you were talking about me texting him?”

“He texted you too,” I say, reaching into my bag for the cell phone bill. “This is your number, right?”

She takes the bill and looks at the three times her number appears that I’ve highlighted in yellow.

“Yes, that’s my number.”

“So he
was
texting you.”

“To coordinate, like I said. I … that’s right. His phone wasn’t working properly. He could text, but nothing else.”

She hands the bill back to me, and I feel my confidence slipping. I didn’t have time to go through Jeff’s other cell phone bills before I ran off to confront her. I’ve gone about this the wrong way. I’m asking questions I don’t know the answers to, breaking the first rule of cross-examination. And her lies seem to come so easily. Is there any possibility they’re the truth?

“Why were you at the funeral? Why were you so upset?”

“Someone from HR had to go. I … I volunteered. I was the only one who knew him. I thought it made sense if it was me. And I’m sorry for being such a mess. I genuinely liked Jeff, and I am sad about what happened. But also, my father died a few years ago, and that poem Seth read, Zoey wrote that about him. I have a hard time listening to it.”

Her voice catches as she says this, but she holds her tears in check. She watches me, waiting for my next question. She looks sad but in control.