Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (11 page)

     After making the dismaying discovery about her husband's phone sex, she had put the accordion file aside, afraid of what else it contained, afraid of the conclusions she might jump to (certainly those statements and credit charges had nothing to do with Ed). One phone call would clear it up and she could get back to concentrating on her scrapbook.

     However, she had been unable to bear sitting in her room waiting for Ed to call, unable to address the scrapbook project, and definitely unable to sit there and listen to the sounds of her neighbors doing it
yet again
on the chaise lounge. On top of that, her luncheon with Abby Tyler had been re-scheduled. So, tying her pale orange hair into a pony tail and donning twill capris and a crewneck sweater, she had gone out for air and to walk off the tension. Beyond her door Sissy had discovered a wonderland she
had not seen the evening before, when the plane landed and a hostess had whisked her away in a little cart. Now Sissy saw the fabulous greenery, the little paths meandering through jungle growth, people cavorting in swimming pools, laughing at outdoor bars, even openly making out.

     Sissy started to turn away from the sex books. And then curiosity got the better of her. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one saw, she pulled one of the volumes off the shelf and flipped through it. The illustrations made her face burn. She just
knew
Father Ignatius was hiding behind the cookbooks watching her. She stopped at one picture and ogled. Sissy hadn't even known people could
do
that.

     Ed wasn't one for sexual experimentation. In fact, he was predictable. But he was loving so you couldn't fault him for not being a Casanova.

     Her thoughts shocked her and her conscience screamed at her to put the book back. But her hands would not obey. More illustrations flipped past, naked people doing things together. Her curiosity mounted, as well as a strange little hot feeling deep in her abdomen.

     And then an even more shameful thought occurred to her. To buy the book.

     Well, why not? Sissy was a grown woman, a wife and a mother. She bought all four.

     When she returned to her cottage, she found the phone message light blinking. Ed had called!

     But it turned out to be a message from Vanessa Nichols, apologizing for having to reschedule Sissy's dinner with Abby Tyler, adding that she hoped it wasn't a terrible inconvenience. The truth was, Sissy had been so preoccupied with the discovery of Ed's secret phone sex activities that she had forgotten all about her date with Ms. Tyler.

     And now Ed hadn't returned her call.

     It was nine o'clock in Rockford, he would have gotten the message from his secretary by now. Feeling an unpleasant foreboding steal into her bones, Sissy ordered room service—bacon, lettuce and tomato on rye toast, salad and a side of fries—and stepped onto the patio to decide what to do next. A spring moon was rising. Music and perfume filled the dusk. Sissy felt as if she were living inside someone's dream. Her real life—kids and husband and friends—was miles away in another world.

     She found herself listening for sounds in the next garden, almost hoping to hear the noise of lovemaking.

     Her dinner was delivered and she let it sit there while she stared at the phone. Ed's secretary was a very efficient woman. He would have gotten the message that Sissy had called. So why hadn't he called back?

     Finally, unable to eat until the mystery was solved, Sissy took the initiative and dialed home. She was pleased to hear her fourteen-year-old's voice at the other end. "Mom! Are you having a good time? Have you see any movie stars?"

     Sissy offered her daughter a few names and heard Adrian swoon with envy. Then she asked for Ed.

     "Daddy isn't here. Grandma's here."

     "Put her on please. Mom!" Ed's mother, not hers. Sissy's mother didn't have time for her grandchildren. No surprise, since she never had time for her own daughter. "What are you doing there?"

     "Ed asked me to sit with the kids tonight."

     "When?"

     "A couple of hours ago. He called from the factory and asked me to pick the kids up from school. Said he was going straight to his sports club with that friend of his, Hank Curly."

     "Thanks. I'll call over there."

     Hank Curly wasn't exactly Ed's friend. He was the factory's Sales Manager and had been working under Ed for three years. It was Hank who had persuaded Ed to join the Rockford Men's Racquet Club, a very expensive place, and they had been going two and three times a week since.

     As she called Directory Assistance for the club's number, it occurred to her that in all the time Ed had been a member she had never called him there. But this was something of an emergency. It troubled her that he hadn't returned her call from that morning.

     "Hello," she said when she was put through to the reception center. "I need to get in touch with my husband. He's playing racquet ball there."

     "Certainly. The member's name?"

     "Ed Whitboro." She spelled it.

     While she waited, Sissy heard footsteps pass her window. Stiletto heels
on concrete and a giggle she was becoming familiar with. The couple next door must have gone out and were now coming back. Would they do it outside in the moonlight, she wondered?

     "I'm sorry, we don't have any Ed Whitboro registered as a member."

     Sissy blinked. "He joined three years ago."

     "I'm sorry."

     She tried to think. She had obviously gotten the name of the club wrong. "Is there another men's racquet club in Rockford?"

     "No, maam."

     Maybe he had been attending as Hank's guest? Ed said Hank was one of the founding members, nine years ago. "Then would you please page Hank Curly? It's rather urgent."

     She heard the door to the next cottage open and slam shut, and then silence.

     "Sorry," came the person at the other end. "We don't have a Hank Curly registered either."

     Sissy frowned. "Please look again. He is one of the founding members."

     "Sorry."

     Sissy hung up and stared at the phone in perplexity. She then spent the next fifteen minutes calling every fitness club in the Rockford area. Ed and Hank weren't members of any of them.

     
Where was her husband?

     She called home again and asked her mother-in-law for Ed's secretary's number. "Is something wrong?" Mrs. Whitboro asked, sounding worried.

     "Oh no," Sissy said. "I just got some dates on my calendar mixed up." It occurred to her to say, "Are you sure Ed said he was playing racquet ball tonight?" but that would only alarm his mother, and plant unnecessary suspicions. Sissy was sure everything was all right. Ed was probably at Hanks' house right now, asking to use the phone to call Sissy.

     Ed's secretary was home. "Hi Susan, Sissy Whitboro. I'm sorry to bother you but I was wondering if you could give me Hank Curly's home number?"

     "Who?"

     Sissy gripped the phone. "Hank Curly. The company Sales Manager."

     "I'm sorry, Mrs. Whitboro, I don't know any Hank Curly. Our Sales Manager is Jim Phelan. He has been for six years."

     Sissy stared at her living room wall. Through the brick and paint and plants outside, and stretch of grass between the cottages, and more brick and paint, she was sure her neighbors were engaged in love making.

     "Mrs. Whitboro? Are you all right?"

     She apologized, hung up, and dialed Directory Assistance. There was no Hank Curly listed in Rockford, or Illinois, or the surrounding states.

     As she sat holding the phone, her heart thumping, the sense of foreboding growing, Sissy began to remember things. At the company Christmas party, Ed saying, "Honey, you just missed Hank. He had to leave. One of his kids slipped on some ice..." At a barbecue at their home: Ed waiting for Hank, going into the house because he said he heard the phone ringing, coming back out to say, "That was Hank, he had to cancel." All those times she had "just missed" Hank, and Ed feeding her enough information for her to form a picture in her mind—"I envy Hank his thick hair," "Hank's got perfect vision, doesn't need to wear glasses like I do"—making her think she had actually
met
him, when in fact she never had.

     The shattering truth hit her like a cold storm: Hank Curly, the man with whom Ed had supposedly played handball two or three nights a week for the past three years, did not exist.

     She seized the accordion file and upended it so that the rest of the contents tumbled onto her bed like autumn leaves. Now she saw more damning evidence: restaurant receipts, stubs from airport boarding passes, car rental charge cards, and cancelled checks with Ed's unmistakable signature. But she went through them all the same, still hoping to catch the lie, the stolen identity, the forgery, the terrible crime that was afoot here. But in the end she realized that the crime was Ed's. This was no identity theft. Her husband had opened a secret bank account, made secret deposits, and paid off secret credit cards with it.

     The statements went back five years.

     
When I was pregnant with the twins.

     She closed her eyes. The phone sex, the credit charges for flowers and hotels. Ed going on a diet, changing his clothing style, buying a sports car. Ed insisting she come to The Grove, practically packing her suitcases for her. "You deserve a vacation. I'll hold down the fort."

     The classic signs.

     Through tears she looked more closely at the credit card statements and remembered some of the dates when Ed was supposedly in Seattle or St. Louis. Yet here it said he was in Chicago. And now that she thought back, whenever Ed went out of town he would call when he checked in and then tell her he was going to be busy all day. He would call each evening and each morning—to head her off, to insure that she would never need to call
him?
Not once, whenever he went away, did he leave a number where he could be reached, and say, "Call me if you miss me." And now that she thought about it, did he ever tell her the name of the hotel where he was staying? It was always, "I don't know. My secretary booked me into one of those chains, the Marriott or Holiday Inn. They're all alike to me."

     But according to the credit statements, he had been in Chicago at the Palmer House every time.

     She felt dizzy.

     And then outraged.

     She had to dial the phone three times before she got the number right, her hands shook so badly. Linda answered and Sissy blurted the whole thing, the horrible discovery she had made. "I can't believe Ed is cheating on me!"

     Linda's tone was sympathetic. "Girlfriend, all men cheat at one time or another. They can't help it. It's in their nature. I suggest you do the same. Goose and gander and all that."

     "I couldn't!"

     "From what I've heard, you're in the perfect place for it. Private, safe, anonymous. God I envy you."

     That would serve him right. Find a man and do to Ed what he was doing to her! But Sissy knew she could never do something like that.

     After she hung up, she realized that Linda had sounded odd. Her tone guarded. As if she were holding something back. But that wasn't Linda's style. Sissy chalked it up to her own shaky nerves and imagination.

     She had not meant to open the wine. She never drank. But she went to the mini-bar in search of cold water and looked at the small bottle of burgundy and brought it out and unscrewed the cap and drank straight from the bottle.

     A few swallows and she wanted to cry. A few more swallows and she was blazing mad.

     How dare he! Bad enough to call strange women and talk dirty to them, bad enough to run around behind her back, but to invent a friend, a Sales Manager, to lie about his whereabouts three nights a week? And the hotel charges on the credit card statements! Weekends when he had said he was on Christian youth retreats. When he had gone to Washington on sales trips. When he was supposedly attending machine manufacturers conventions in other states! And the whole time he was at the Palmer House, ninety miles away!

     She dressed with fury, yanking a sleeveless dress from the closet, snapping the hairbrush through her shoulder length hair that she insisted was orange but which friends kindly said was strawberry blond. Then a dusting of face powder over her freckles and she grabbed her purse and the wine bottle, and fled into the cool night where crickets chirped and an owl hooted and wind rustled dry palm fronds. She had no idea where she was going. Her eyes were blinded by angry tears. How could Ed do this to her? What had she done to drive him to such deception?—and suddenly she came upon a beautiful little scene that made her stop and stare and sniff back her tears.

     The path ended at an arching wooden bridge, the type seen in Japanese gardens, curving over a pond so still it looked like glass. Moonlight reflected on the water like a perfect pale opal on black velvet. The bridge and pond were secluded amid dense shrub and tall trees. Sound was blocked out. Not even a breeze got in. A place suspended in time.

     Sissy walked to the center of the bridge and leaned on the rail to look at the water, noticing an occasional gold glint as exotic fish swam about.

     Her world had disintegrated. Ed cheating on her. Lying. Hotels, jewelers, florists.
Spending money on other women.
She felt betrayed and furious beyond belief.

     The tears started up again. She couldn't help it. And because she was completely alone, she let herself break into sobs.

     "Why are you sad?" a deep voice gently asked. And Sissy was startled to see a perfectly starched and folded handkerchief enter her vision.

     She looked up into a pair of searching eyes. He was a older than she, his dark hair silvered at the temples and his mouth nicely framed by lines of maturity. Impeccably dressed in a blue blazer, white shirt with a maroon tie, and casual gray slacks. He looked rich, a gentleman. She took the monogrammed handkerchief and dried her eyes.