Secret Sister (24 page)

“He cheats on a woman who looks like that?” The detective seemed incredulous.

“What can I tell you? Some men are never satisfied.  Roxanne and Michael are known for fighting and breaking up every couple of weeks because Cimino is an asshole. He mistreats her. If he calls again, ask him about that.”

“Physically mistreats her?” Strain’s voice was sharp.

“I can’t say I’ve ever heard that, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I know he shows her no respect. Look, Roxanne was my wife’s best friend. They cared about each other. They were tight and shared everything, maybe too much sometimes, if you want to know the truth, but the extent of my involvement with Roxanne is that she was my wife’s friend. Other than socializing, I didn’t have anything to do with her.”

“Did you dislike Miss Ruiz?” Morales asked quickly.

Nick stuck his hands in his pants pockets. “Frankly, I don’t know how I feel about Roxanne at this moment. Can you blame me?”

“Just one more thing, Mr. Chance.” Morales said. “Our final report rules out any reason to believe the accident was anything but just that. Do you have any issue at all with that conclusion?”

“Was it ever in doubt that it was an accident?”

“There were no skid marks from Miss Ruiz’s car.”

“And the seat belts on the passenger side were cut,” Detective Strain added. “But we think the EMTs did that at the scene when they were trying to get Miss Ruiz out of the car.”

Nick’s back twitched and he stared at the floor. I pressed myself against the hallway wall but kept my eyes glued to the men. I prayed Nick didn’t know I was standing there.

Nick looked at Morales. “The guy driving the truck was drunk, right?”

“Blood alcohol was one-point-five.”

“So bottom line, a drunk destroyed a couple of families and walked away alive. Unfair, but it happens every day of the year, right? Some of them do it more than once. Maybe the cops should start shooting the drunk sons of bitches at the scene. Save everyone a lot of heartache.” Nick cracked his knuckles.

I inhaled sharply and the floor under me creaked.

For a moment the house was dead silent.

Finally, Morales said, “That’s a pretty harsh suggestion.”

“It’s pretty harsh having your wife ripped to pieces by three tons of steel.”

Morales nodded. “If I haven’t said it before, you have our condolences on your loss, Mr. Chance. I don’t think we’ll need anything more.” The detective snapped his notebook closed and stuck it in his jacket.

I dared to move my head a fraction so I could see more of the living room. Morales shook Nick’s hand and the three men walked to the front door.

As soon as Nick opened the door I turned and hurried back into the bedroom and crawled under the covers. I wanted Nick to come back and lay beside me. I wanted him to hold me again, to come back to the cocoon of just ‘us’ that we’d shared a few minutes ago.

I heard Nick walk down the hallway and go into the bathroom. Water ran and then he walked toward the kitchen. The refrigerator door creaked. I hoped he was getting us something to drink. I was parched but couldn’t make myself move. I felt like a boneless mass of flesh.

What is he thinking right now?
Is he making peace with what we just shared? Is he trying hard to accept the reality that I’m really here?

Suddenly I thought of Michael Cimino. I would never forgive his lying rant to the police. But a new awareness rushed into my brain, a reality I had not focused on before.

Convincing Nick of my true identity was only part of the difficulties ahead. I was trapped inside a body everyone else we knew recognized as Roxanne’s. There was no way to explain to the world in general, including that scum Michael, who I really was. When Michael, or anyone else, neighbors, co-workers, Nick’s extended family, saw us together, it would surely lead to a gossip fest scandal that might never go away.

Everyone would be whispering and wondering how Nick and Roxanne could be so cozy after Cathy’s tragic death. They would wonder, the way I did, if their relationship had started before the accident. And if today’s visit from the cops was any indication, there would be many more conspiracy theories and vicious rumors to contend with.

I’d have to quit my job. We’d have to move.

I sighed and put the pillow over my head. This was too complicated to think about right now, but I would bet Nick had already started to wrestle with it.

Pushing the pillow off my head, I opened my mouth to call him when I heard the front door slam. A moment later, Nick’s car started and screamed off down the street. I lay still, disbelieving.

On trembling legs I dragged myself out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. The same messy emptiness I had come into hours before greeted me.

But there was a piece of paper, the car rental agreement, lying in the middle of the kitchen table. I walked closer. Nick had scrawled something on it in black marker.

‘I won’t do this.’

After I stared at the words, I collapsed in a chair and put my head in my hands and cried harder than I ever had.

I’d found a way to say the un-sayable, finally come home to my husband, to all my own things and our memories. But he wouldn’t take the next step and stand with me against the world.

I was alive
, but what good was that if I could not convince my husband? What good was this miracle life if I lost Nick?

I walked to the sink and drank some water out of the glass Nick had used, but it didn’t soothe my constricted throat. I eyed the large carving knife lying in the sink, then dumped dish liquid over everything and washed all the dishes, furiously scouring away dried cereal, egg yolk, grease. I left it all to drain and scrubbed the counters and tables. Then I attacked the refrigerator, ridding it of old food and empty cartons. I carried the trash outside, my brain numbed.

As I walked back into the house, the phone rang. I stood still and listened. Was it Nick, calling to tell me to stay there, he was on his way home? I took a step as the machine clicked on, but the caller did not leave a message.

I put on my clothes. Washed my face. The image in the mirror now looked like no one I knew. Not Roxanne, not Cathy, just a desolate stranger.

I circled slowly through the house, staring at every wall and room, memorizing all the details. I didn’t know when I’d be back.

In the bedroom I saw a vase on the dresser, filled with dead flowers; roses I’d picked weeks ago that Nick had not thrown away. There were also piles of clothes, and dust motes hovering in all the corners. I rubbed my cheek against the robe I’d given Nick for Christmas.

It felt familiar, but it seemed as if everything I remembered was from years, not weeks, ago. When I opened my closet I saw Nick had not given my clothes to the Salvation Army as I’d imagined. But as I looked through them, dragging the hangers across the closet rod, I realized they wouldn’t fit this new, smaller body I now inhabited.

The accident had truly changed everything and nothing else would ever be the same again. Even if Nick someday accepted that the soul, spirit and memory inside this body were mine, he might always look at the physical exterior and see only Roxanne.

I grabbed my favorite sweatshirt and wrapped it around my shoulders. I let myself out the patio door and went back to Roxanne’s car. But I just sat there for a long time, hoping Nick would come home.

I knew he wouldn’t. I prayed he wasn’t drinking. I didn’t know what to do.

As dusk settled around me, I finally started the car and headed back to the apartment, watching my house on Manderly Drive grow smaller in the rearview mirror. And I prayed to all the powers of the universe to please take care of Nick.

It was he who needed a guardian angel now, not me.

After one in the morning, the phone in Roxanne’s apartment rang. “Hello,” I said on the second ring, swimming up from a dark hole of sleep.

“Roxanne? It’s Bradley. Did you call and leave a message earlier tonight? You didn’t say your name, and your voice sounded so strange.”

I had. I’d called Nick at home twice every hour until midnight, and then left a message for Bradley, hoping he could help. “Yes, I did. Where are you?” There was music in the background.

“I’m at a party. But I just checked my messages and got worried when I heard you say you needed me to do something right away. Is everything okay?”

No, nothing is okay. “
Bradley, I need you to do me a big favor.”

“What?”

“Call Nick. And if he doesn’t pick up at home or on his cell, can you go by his place and see if his car is there?”

Silence.

“Bradley?”

“I’m here, Roxanne. What’s going on?”

I took a deep breath. “Nick got picked up for being drunk a few days ago. I’m worried about him, and I don’t think Zoë is staying at his house tonight. But I think he’s having a really tough time, and I hoped—”

“He’s drinking? You’re kidding!”

“No, no, he had a relapse last week. He passed out in his car and the cops hauled him off to the hospital.”

“How do you know this? Did you see Nick
after
the other night at Simone’s?” Bradley was clearly shocked he hadn’t heard this directly from Nick.

“Yes. I’ve seen him a couple of times since then.”

A second round of silence. “You have? So what’s up with that?”

I knew Bradley was trying hard to keep from asking me more direct questions. “It’s hard to explain.” I stopped, ambushed by a thought. Did Bradley know about Roxanne’s affair? The abortion?

Would he know who her lover was?

“Rox? Are you still there?”

I focused. “Sorry. I’m zoning out. So, Bradley, can you go now if you can’t get him on the cell?”

“Yes. Of course. Geez, I can’t believe Nick’s drinking. Is he going to meetings?”

“He said he was.”

“Well, that’s a good sign. I’m a few minutes away in Eagle Rock. Shall I come by and see you afterward, or in the morning? We can talk about everything that’s going on. With you and Michael. And Nick.”

I pinched my hand. “Sure, we can get together tomorrow. But could you call me when you get in tonight? I’d like to know what you found out. That Nick’s okay.”

“Yes, I will. But wait a minute, did you already try to call him at home?”

“I did. But I don’t know if he’s there and just not answering.” I took a breath. “If he is there, he wouldn’t pick up if he thought it was me. And I don’t want to go over there. We had words earlier today.”

“Words?”

“A fight. Please, Bradley, it’s really complicated. I can’t explain it all now.”

“Okay, okay. I’m leaving as we speak. Talk to you as soon as I know anything.” The line went dead. Wide awake now, I put the phone beside me on the pillow.

I covered my chilled body with blankets and wondered for the hundredth time if my husband and Roxanne had been lovers. I shuddered and blocked the images of them lying together in this bed.

Only one thing Nick had said today, his vicious, “Are you that jealous?” gave me a shred of hope that he had not betrayed me. And while he’d told the cops he only knew Roxanne through me, did that prove he hadn’t slept with her and fathered her child?

The phone shrieked and I jumped and dragged myself back into a sitting position. The caller ID said private. “Hello?” No one answered. “Hello,” I said again.

“Cathy,” a male voice whispered softly. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Who would call me by my true name? “Who is this?”

“It’s Ryan Seth, Cathy. My wife and I are at Simone’s Restaurant. Nick is here, too. I think you should come.”

I swallowed. “Did he ask you to call me?”

“No,” Seth said. “But I think this is a good time to talk to him.”

“I’ll be right there.”

This is it
. Seth and I could convince Nick together. Nick would believe Seth. He would listen to him.

Wouldn’t he?

The phone rang again. Bradley’s voice, leaving me a message that Nick wasn’t at home or picking up on his cell. I pulled on my shoes. I had to go.

My husband was waiting.

Chapter 21

Tuesday, August 2, 2 a.m.

Cathy at Simone’s

Most of the lights at Simone’s restaurant were off when I drove into the parking lot. I recognized Nick’s car and Jen’s Mercedes. The last, a sleek white BMW, must belong to Seth’s wife.

I stood in the entry a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the candlelight. There was a fire going in the main dining room.

Jen waved and called out to me. “We’re over here.”

The café smelled of flowers and baked bread and some rich wine sauce that had been cooking all night. My stomach said I was famished, but I could not imagine taking a bite of food. I made my way through the chairs and empty tables to where Jen was sitting with a slender, silver-haired woman.

The woman rose halfway from her chair. “Hello. I’m Inga Olson, Seth’s wife. Please, come sit. Would you like some wine? Jen recommended a wonderful chardonnay tonight.”

“Yes, please, I’d love a glass,” I said.

Jen pulled a glass from the cart behind her and held it for the woman to fill. I had seen pictures of Seth’s wife, but in person she was far more beautiful, like an art deco hood ornament on a vintage Rolls Royce, elegant and unattainable.

Inga handed me the glass, her pale fingers tipped with scarlet polish. “Drink up, my dear.”

“Thanks.” Wondering what Seth had told these two women, I took a large gulp of wine and welcomed the buzz and warmth coursing through me. “Where is Seth?”

Jen looked toward the alcove off the hall. “He’s in the private dining room. He said to tell you to relax for a few minutes while he talks to Nick.”

I sat beside Inga, who wore a blue silk tunic that matched her eyes, and a lavender scarf around her long neck. Next to Jen, ever chic in a black satin dress, they looked like a Vogue cover for an issue on eternal beauty.

I glanced at my jeans and the baggy gray sweatshirt with ‘Ohio State University’ in faded letters. I’d taken it from my closet because it was one of the few things I’d kept that had belonged to my mom. My hair was a straggly mess and my makeup nonexistent. I drank more wine, thinking it ironic how quickly I’d transformed the gorgeous Roxanne Ruiz into a bag lady.

“How long has Nick been here?” I asked Jen.

“He came in about ten tonight.”

“Is he okay?”

Jen raised her brows. “He was very low key. He ordered dinner which he didn’t eat and then asked Eduardo, his waiter, to bring a bottle of champagne to the table.”

Inga lit a cigarette. It was illegal to smoke on the grounds of a commercial establishment in California, but Jen ignored her.

Inga blew out a smoky cloud, which hung over us like a ghost. We sat in silence and drank, three chatty women without a word to say.

A moment later Seth walked up to our table. I’d never seen him with a cane before. He used it surely and discreetly, moving past chairs and tables without mishap. He looked more handsome than I had ever seen him in dark turtleneck, pants and jacket. The firelight glinted off his skull and the lenses of his sunglasses.

“Inga?” he said.

“Here, darling. With Jen and another lovely friend.”

“Hello, Dr. Seth.” I got up and gave him a hug. Inga stood beside me.

“Glad you could come by,” he said gently. “Why don’t you go in and talk with Nick.”

“How is he?” I asked.

“He’s about how you would expect him to be. I talked with him awhile, but he needs a friend now, not a therapist. He’s miserable. But not lost.”

My heart raced at these words. It seemed as if Seth spoke to me in code, one I didn’t have the key to. I glanced at Jen. She stared at me, her black eyes betraying nothing of what she knew and little of what she thought.

“Does he know I’m here?”

“No.” Seth settled beside his wife, his arm encircling her possessively. “I didn’t tell him I called you. But since
you
were all he talked about, I made the decision to put you in front of him as a favor to the boy.” He waved toward the small dining room. “Enough stalling. Go join him. Find out what’s on our friend’s mind.”

I put the wineglass down. “How late are you staying tonight, Jen?”

“As late as you need. Inga and Ryan and I still have half a bottle of wine to drink before their soufflé is done. We’re here for awhile.”

I walked toward the hallway, my heart racing. Nick had probably spent the evening thinking about everything and wanted to ask me for a little time. He was probably going to tell me we had to go slow. That he knew there would be problems with people accepting this strange, unexplainable event. But he’d want us to be together in the end.

I smiled, so sure it was going to work out that I had to fight to keep myself from running. Candlelight flickered from the wall sconces and Nick’s profile loomed in the shadows.

My breath caught at the sight of him, leaning back in his chair at a corner table, his arms crossed. His bruised face was gorgeous to me, full of our shared history. A wine bucket sat in the center of the small table, an opened bottle of champagne inside. There were two sparkling wine flutes beside him.

“Nick.” The sight of the opened alcohol shocked me but I couldn’t keep a smile from spreading across my face.

When he saw me, he sat upright and ran his left hand through his hair three times quickly, as if his fingers were a comb. The gesture was so familiar, tears welled in my eyes, but they dried before they fell.

Nick wore the same clothes, jeans and a blue dress shirt, that he’d had on earlier when he’d left the house. He looked more presentable than I did.

I stopped at the chair opposite his. “May I sit?”

Nick nodded. “Be my guest.”

“Are you going to run out on me again?”

“I’ll try not to.” He narrowed his eyes.

I glanced at the bottle and saw the glasses were dry.  “So, where did you go after you left the house?”

“I went to the vet, to help Zoë with the cat. The doc found two stingers in her flank. They dug them out and put her on an IV with some antibiotics. I’ll bring her home tomorrow. The vet said we saved the cat’s life, getting the stingers out today. They were abscessed.”

I nodded.

“So you were right about that,” he added.

“Good.”

His left eyelid twitched. “After the vet, I took Zoë to my mom’s. Then I took a drive up into the Verdugo hills. Then I went to an AA meeting before ending up here.” Nick moved his eyes to the bottle.

“Are you going to drink tonight?” I whispered.

Nick chuckled without a trace of humor. “You’re nothing if not consistent, I’ve got to hand that to you, Rox.” He sighed. “No. I’m not going to drink. I’m going to pour a toast to my wife. It’s the eighth anniversary of buying our house. A special day.”

August 1. I’d forgotten that we’d closed on the house on this date. Before I could think how to reopen the conversation that had ended so dramatically this afternoon, Nick spoke softly.

“How did you find me here? Did Jen call you?”

“No. Seth did.”

“Oh.” He laughed. “Must be the
devil winds
.”

“What?”

“It’s a private joke.”

“Oh.” I knew I had to go slow. I pinched my left hand. “What now? Did you talk to Seth about me? Did he tell you he knows?”

“Knows what?” Nick asked. “That you think, or at least say you think, that you are Cathy?”

“I
am
Cathy.” My voice rose. “Didn’t today prove that to you?”

“All today proved was that I’m not the man I thought I was.”

His words cut into my heart like jagged glass. “Seth believes me. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Did he tell you I came to see him? That he asked me a hundred questions about things only Cathy could know? Did he?”

“No, he didn’t tell me that.”

I slumped back in the chair and felt as if this afternoon had never happened.

“You look like you could use a drink,” Nick said. “Shall I pour you one?”

“No, thanks. Not much for me to celebrate, is there?”

For an instant his face held compassion, but it quickly vanished. “I’m leaving,” he said. “I told Seth I decided to quit my job and bum around a little. Maybe go to Europe.”

“When?”

“As soon as I can. In the next couple of weeks for sure. I need to get away from all the memories. Get over Cathy’s death. Well, not get over it, but learn how to live with it.” He met my eyes. “I need to start over.”

‘Without you,’ he didn’t add, but those unspoken words crowded into the room with us. I wanted to grab him and shake him, but I couldn’t move.

Nick leaned on the table. “When I was talking to Seth earlier, I told him about our conversation today. Everything you said and asked me about. I told him I lied to you when I said I didn’t know about the abortion. He told me I should level with you, tell you the truth. He said that I owed it to Cathy."

My heartbeat slowed and I felt dizzy. Was he saying Seth didn’t believe me, either?

“Okay,” I said. “So tell me.”

He didn’t blink. “When you stayed with Cathy and me, last November, you told me, when we were alone in the kitchen in the middle of the night, that you were pregnant. I was shocked.”

I thought I might stop breathing.

Nick looked beyond me into the shadows. “You said you’d been having an affair with Freddy Apodoca, Cathy’s friend Vera’s husband.”

My mind hummed with this news, shaken at the extent of Roxanne’s secret life, but my shock was overshadowed by elation. Roxanne hadn’t won my husband to her bed. Nick was faithful; he had not cheated.

“Thank God it was Freddy . . .”

Nick’s face was impassive. “You asked me to drive you to a clinic the next day, and not to tell Cathy. You said you couldn’t go to your mother because you didn’t trust her to help you and not throw it in your face for the rest of your life. And you said you couldn’t ask for Cathy’s help because she and Vera were very close.” He stopped and fished out a mint and popped it in his mouth.

“I told you ‘no’ at first, Roxanne, but you begged me. You said things wouldn’t ever be the same between you and Cathy if Cathy found out what you and Freddy had done. You spilled that Vera had been taking hormone treatments for years, trying to get pregnant. Had even tried in-vitro, but it had failed. Plus she’s hardcore Catholic, and if Cathy told Vera about you and Freddy, Vera would probably try to get you to keep the baby so she could raise it.”

“Roxanne would never do that,” I blurted out.

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “
You
said it was too complicated to resolve any other way but by ending the pregnancy and what you really cared about most was that Cathy not find out. You said she was the only real friend you ever had and you wouldn’t be able to go on living if Cathy broke off being friends with you.”

“I would never have abandoned her.”

Nick shook his head at my words. “I knew you had tried to kill yourself before, Roxanne. So I believed what you said, that you didn’t have anyone else to ask.”

“But why not tell your wife?” I asked. I wasn’t overjoyed he’d kept such a thing from me, but I was thrilled to find out that Nick was true to me. And now I expected to hear him say he hadn’t told me because he didn’t want me to be hurt about Roxanne feeling she couldn’t trust me.

But instead, he said something very different.

“Why didn’t I tell Cathy? I didn’t admit the real reason to myself until today. When I left the house earlier, driving down the street, I had one of those self-awareness moments people write books about.” His glance ran over my face and down my neck and chest, then back to my eyes. “Today I admitted to myself that I’ve been attracted to you since the first day I met you, Roxanne.”

I couldn’t speak.

Nick’s eyes glistened. “I’ve thought about your body more often than you might believe over the years, and I betrayed my wife with you in my imagination more than once. So I think that night in my kitchen, it was my dick I was thinking about, not Cathy’s feelings. I think I kept your secret, and helped you out, because my reptilian male brain thought someday I might get something from you in return. Something like I got today.”

He looked like he hated Roxanne, but hated himself even more. Then he leaned back in the chair and waited for me to reply.

“That’s a lie,” I protested. I clutched the tablecloth in both hands. “And I know it’s a lie because I know you. I’m your wife and it doesn’t surprise or hurt me that you were attracted to Roxanne. Every man who ever met her, including our gay friend Bradley, is sexually attracted to her. A person can’t control their mind from fantasizing about having sex with someone.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I know
that
from experience. But the important fact is that you never betrayed me. You were honorable and empathetic when you helped Roxanne, and kind to try shielding me from the pain I would have felt if I knew about Freddy and the abortion. Everything you’ve said here tonight has only made me love you more, not less. You’re being too hard on yourself.”

I stretched my hand across the table to him, but Nick didn’t move. Instead, he met my eyes. “For Christ’s sake, Roxanne, this fantasy of yours is going to lead to more grief. I just told you the God’s honest truth, and you can’t accept it. I’m sorry, but that’s the last thing I’ve got to say about the past. Get some psychiatric help, and leave me alone.”

After he spoke those cruel things, relief seemed to flash across his face.

No matter what he said now, I wouldn’t accept it. I knew Nick
did
believe I might be Cathy. I had seen it in his eyes when he held me earlier today. My husband had believed he was holding
Cathy
in his arms. He was with
me
, Cathy, movement for movement, caress for caress. He had let his guard down and given in to instinct and accepted the truth.

But when the passion was sated and the cops showed up full of Michael Cimino’s gossip, he had reverted back to his logical, ‘trust only what you see’ self.