Lies of the Heart (5 page)

—That’s my son. That’s my Nicky.

Finally Katie turned her eyes to the table, to the sheet rising over Nick’s face. She saw his thick eyebrows, a patch of dark hair, before the sheet was pulled over him completely. Fought the urge to bang on the glass with the palm of her hand, to yell,
Wait, wait—I didn’t
see
!

She sensed Candice staring at her, refused to turn around. Katie had nothing to be ashamed of—she didn’t do anything wrong. Nick would have come back to her.

—
He was a brilliant man, Candice finally said to Katie’s back. Proud and accusatory at the same time.

Katie listened to her mother-in-law’s footsteps clicking away (her ex-mother-in-law now?) and wished she could shout at the woman—just hurl those last revelations Nick had shared with her before he left, the kind of husband-wife secrets that would ravage Candice on lonely nights.

And then she wished, despite herself, for that last tormenting image of Nick to crowd into her memories, to obliterate everything else that came before this moment. Instead of this, instead of finally turning around to watch his mother walk away, her head held high, strangely triumphant.

Y
es, Nick comes back to her in the nights now—in the shadowed recesses of their bedroom, in her dark, wandering dreams. And he is there in the day, too, when she prepares her solitary meals, when she makes the bed and smooths her hand over the comforter on his side, when she aimlessly flips through channels and catches herself stopping on the Discovery Channel, his favorite. Even when she stumbles into the bathroom in the morning, Nick is there and not there: the absence of the coffee ring he used to leave on the sink each morning before work, no matter how many times she asked him to clean it up. The surprise, the catch in her throat even now when she sees the gleaming porcelain.

Always this fixed, shapeless weight—he is still gone, he is still with her.

He is never far away, even when this heaviness lifts temporarily, and the moment is hers alone: in the shower, when she bends her head under the stream, the delicious feel of heat on her neck; in the car, an old song on the radio, the music recalling family vacations and her sister dancing into the ocean. Glorious, forgetting moments, like brief pockets of extra-oxygenated air—but then it is worse, because seconds after, there is the quick pulse of remembering, and Nick steals back into the frame completely. And another face, too, peering at Katie from the background. Jerry. Teasing his way into their story.

Today, before court begins, the moment comes with the dark brown smell of coffee sputtering into the pot downstairs as she runs a brush through her hair; as she inhales deeply, Nick slips away, and Katie feels the visceral joy of anticipation, the deep-roasted heat on her tongue. And then, before she can stretch inside the moment, she is propelled back once again: Nick in their kitchen on Sunday mornings, the clink of their mugs as he takes them out of the cupboard, his soft, happy whistling drifting up the stairs to her. And Jerry, he is there, too, bundled under the covers in the spare bedroom upstairs, asking her to tell it again to start his day with them.
It May,
he’d always begin, and Katie would settle at the edge of the bed, her hand resting on the rise of Jerry’s arm underneath the blanket. Wanting to go to Nick instead, to accept the mug of coffee and the first lazy kiss of the day, but not before this—not before giving her story with Nick to Jerry all over again, like a gift.

—We met on Patience Island, just after sunset, she’d always begin, but Jerry wouldn’t be fooled.

—No, Kay-tee. It
May.
His voice dreamy, a child waiting for a favorite fairy tale from beginning to end. Knowing each word by rote, ready to point out inconsistencies.

—It was May, she’d start again, and watch him grip the covers up to his chin, his eyes round with excitement.—The afternoon of Dana’s engagement party.

—It too hot, Jerry would say, and she’d nod.

It
was
too hot for May, and a deep, repressive heat had settled in her parents’ crowded backyard, wilting the streamers and the potato salad, the big YOU’RE ENGAGED! sign that one of her aunts had tacked over the back door. Katie sat away from the crowd in a scratchy lawn chair positioned under a canopy of leaves, fanning her face with a paper plate and waiting for the couple to arrive. At her mother’s insistence, she had spent twenty minutes mingling, taking part in mundane conversations with her extended family, until an uncle she hadn’t seen in years cornered her by the grill to comment on how much she’d grown, how much she looked like her older sister now.
Twenty-one now, are you?
he said.
Twenty-two,
Katie corrected, and he nodded, squinted hard at her.
The spitting image of Dana five years ago,
he declared, then nodded briskly as if he were trying to convince himself. Katie managed a smile at this well-intentioned compliment, then escaped to her private block of shade to wait it out.

From across the lawn, Katie suddenly heard someone’s happy catch of breath, and then her sister, Dana, stunning in a sky blue sundress, was stepping out the kitchen door and onto the lawn. The backyard exploded with spontaneous clapping and cheers, with earsplitting whistles. Katie rose and clapped along, watched Dana’s modest smile grow. Her sister turned back to the door, pulled Michael out beside her, covered his hand with both of hers. Their relatives took this as their cue and instantly vultured around the beaming couple, offering their congratulations, touching and fussing and demanding equal attention.
I hope Michael shaves before the wedding,
Katie thought idly.
Otherwise we’ll never hear the end of it from Mom.

—He not shave, Jerry would interrupt here, giggling.

—No, he never did.

But even if Michael’s thick beard and curly brown hair were a little too scruffy for their mother’s taste, it was clear that he made Dana happy, that he adored her. As Katie looked around now, it was clear that
everyone
adored Dana, something Katie was used to by this point—it didn’t surprise her one bit that just seeing Dana could make the applause erupt, could make the family jostle each other out of the way to get closer to her. Katie wiped the sweat from her forehead, tried to ignore the jealousy that had come, unbidden, and then the sharp stab of guilt—always the guilt. Because if anyone in the world deserved to be loved and cherished like this, it was her sister, Dana—her kind and beautiful sister, the best person Katie knew. (Though these feelings of jealousy and guilt, along with many other things, she always remembered to keep from Jerry.)

The late-afternoon sun made a perfect spotlight for her sister, highlighting the thick auburn hair that framed her delicate face, turning her light brown eyes almost green as she stared up at Michael. Katie watched as Michael turned Dana’s hand around, leaned down and pressed his lips into her palm, half serious, half for effect; her relatives murmured their approval anyway, their faces bright and knowing.

—Dana pretty, Jerry would always say here, the sigh in his voice suspiciously familiar, like the sighs of the boys who had paraded in and out of their house from the time Dana was thirteen until she went away to college.

—Yes, Katie would say simply.—Dana has always been beautiful.

That afternoon Katie waited patiently until the crowd dispersed a little, and then she walked over, gave Dana a sticky hug.

Lucky,
Katie accused in her sister’s ear.

You, too,
Dana whispered with feeling, and Katie instantly knew what her older sister meant: Someday you’ll be lucky, too. You’ll meet him even if it doesn’t feel like it now.

Where’s Mom?
Katie asked, pulling away, and Dana smiled, pointed to the back door: inside the kitchen still, micromanaging food and drinks and her own sisters, bossing around their aunts and everyone else and then doing it all herself anyway.

After the burgers and antipasto and endless platters of food, after the toasts and gifts and thank-you speeches, Katie retreated under the tree again, thinking of ways to stay out of her mother’s direct path until she headed back to school that night—leaving behind the unspoken but always present accusation that she was wasting her time, because a degree in filmmaking was useless in the real world. It didn’t help any either that Katie was already twenty-two and taking extra time to finish because of a disastrous semester of mono and dropped classes: ever since the announcement a few months ago that she wouldn’t be graduating in June, that she had to take a summer class and then return in the fall, her mother had hinted endlessly at Dana’s tireless work ethic—finishing her master’s in social work at twenty-three, a year early! And now four straight years with the same agency, and not a single personal day! Her father had only smiled patiently at Katie, winked at her. Said later, when their mother left the room,
It’s okay, sweetie, you know how your mother gets.

Dana’s exaggerated coughing interrupted Katie’s cloudy plans of avoidance; she looked up, saw her sister pointing, her eyes wide with warning: their mother was barreling out of the house, had finally given up her oven mitts and spoons and directives and was pushing her way through the crowd. Small and compact, her dark hair rolled up on top of her head, she charged forward, searching the yard. Her mother had held back long enough.

Has anyone seen Katie?
she demanded from no one in particular.

The people stationed around the grill with Katie’s father were shrugging, watching her determined progress through the backyard. Her mother ignored them all, eagle eyes roaming.

Katie knew that look—she rose quickly, caught Dana’s eye again. Gave her sister the customary grimace and eye roll, and then they held each other’s glance for a moment. Dana waved her away—
Go, go, it’s almost over anyhow
—and then Katie was moving fast, ducking around the side of the house and heading for her car. There was a party on Patience Island tonight—her friends Jill and Amy had called and told her about it this morning—and while she hadn’t had the slightest desire to go then, it sounded like the perfect plan now. Maybe she could still catch up with them before they left the marina.

She jumped into her car, cast one look back. Imagined her mother’s indignant voice over the phone tomorrow or the next day, the miles between them collapsing:
You went where? I can’t believe you just left without saying good-bye, for God’s sake! Your father almost had a conniption!

—Chance? Jerry would ask here, and Katie would smile.

—Yes, she’d say, and she shivered just a little, each time.—Nick and I met completely by chance.

She told Jerry this story so often that it became his, too. Meeting Nick again and again with Katie, their story merging effortlessly with Jerry’s over time.

And maybe this is why Nick won’t leave her, why he comes back to her even in the smallest moments she should be able to claim for herself: she had offered the discovery of Nick, and of Nick’s love, to Jerry without question. She stands in her kitchen, sipping her coffee, and hears Jerry’s excited voice:

—More, Katie. You tell more.

Yes, she thinks now, placing the mug on the counter. She had given Nick to him right from the start.

K
atie and her friends flew across the bay, the bow of the boat slapping up and down as they crashed through the gray, choppy water on their way to Patience Island.

—Your mother is going to
freak
! Jill shouted over the engine and churning water, her long hair flying around her face.

Behind the wheel, Amy shook her head, grinning.—No shit, Katie, are you crazy?

Katie grinned back at her friends, shrugged. Two beers and skidding across the ocean made her brave, but she wasn’t stupid: there would be a withering phone call tomorrow or the next day, a punishingly long Memorial Day weekend at her parents’ coming up. But for now she just laughed and opened another button on her shirt so the still-cold ocean could spray against her skin. Feeling powerful and free and reveling in the commiserating laughter of friends who had spent their teenage years terrified of her mother, even when they weren’t doing anything wrong.

It was about an hour before sunset when they beached the boat beside four others on the pebbly shore of Patience Island. They hopped out with their beer and ice, joined the crowd milling near a long row of coolers set up on a small dune. Two guys started stacking wood on the sand, and Katie and her friends helped gather the tall grass beyond the dune to ignite a fire.

—Look at that one, Jill said, elbowing Katie.

He was tall and blond and tan, and when he looked at them, he tilted his head to the side with a “these are my teeth” smile. Before Katie and her friends went off to set up their blanket on the narrow beach, he caught Katie’s eye, nodded at her in a way that said he appreciated more than her pulling up dead grass. She caught the surprised looks between Jill and Amy, pretended not to notice or care about this unexpected switch in the natural pecking order: Jill chosen first,
always
first, because of the cascading strawberry-blond hair and big blue eyes, the easy, quick laughter. And then Amy next, with her athletic body, her bold teasing. As early as junior high, this order was established—Katie last, and sometimes not even that, which gave the other two a chance to be benevolent, to happily sympathize with her the next day.
Guys are such idiots anyway. You didn’t miss a thing.
Katie always laughed it off, told them she didn’t mind a bit, because back then it really
was
okay at times just to have two friends sitting close, declaring their loyalty.
It would have been way more fun if we stayed in and watched a movie with you
, they’d tell her, and Katie accepted the lie for what it was—a compliment nonetheless.

The smiling guy wandered over to their blanket later, just before sunset, and introduced himself: Dave, a native southerner staying with cousins for the summer and waitering at the Coast Guard House in Narragansett Beach.