The Good Neighbor (14 page)

“For you it was. You can just have sex. Casually.” The refrigerator kicked in, a loud hum, and a wood beam creaked in the attic as the house settled.

He ran his fingers through his hair. Of course he could have casual sex. What man couldn’t, in the end? What had I held on to? Assumptions as combustible as every material thing in my home? The touch of his hand at the wedding, the reciting of our vows, the way he’d so tenderly slipped the ring onto my finger, held my hand in such a tight grip. Had it all been a lie?

“I want you and you only,” he said. “That is not a lie.”

His words bounced off me. “I have no idea what is a lie and what is not.”

“Sarah, don’t do this.”

“I’m not the one doing anything. You are. You did. Exactly when did it end? Were you still sleeping with her after I met you?”

He looked at his palms. “There was a short
. . .
overlap.”

The room darkened, shadows lengthening, and suddenly there was too much furniture, too much clutter. “How much overlap?”

“I wasn’t yet sure about you. You were so cautious.”

“How long?”

“Not long. Nothing happened between Monique and me, not after I knew I wanted to be with you. I told you.”

“She lived in the house next door. Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”
But I am. I’m a total idiot. I couldn’t see Jessie’s crush on Chad, Chad’s internal struggles, the fire between Johnny and Monique.

Johnny reached out to me, but I kept my distance. His hands fell back to his sides. “You loved the house—I told you I wanted to move away. Don’t you remember?”

“I do. And you did.” He’d said,
Let’s make a new life in a new house.
I’d said,
Why do we need to move? I love this house. I’ll add my feminine touch.
“This was going on right under my nose. Why didn’t I see?”

“I told you. She and I weren’t meant to be together. When I saw you at the polar bear plunge, and you handed me your towel, and we started talking, I was drawn to you. We could talk about anything—literature, movies. We were comfortable together. You had the kind of beauty I couldn’t stop looking at. Inside and out.”

I faltered, my armor dissolving a little. “If you knew right away, why did you keep sleeping with Monique?”

“I don’t know—it wasn’t for long. There was something special about you. Always something new. I never felt the same way about Monique. Ever. It was casual.”

“What about Mia? Is she—?”

“After I broke it off with Monique, I found out she was pregnant. I asked her if the baby was mine. I figured, if Mia was my daughter, I would do whatever Monique wanted. Marry her, even. Help her with the child.”

“What did she say?”

“She said the baby was Chad’s. The timing was off. I couldn’t be the father.”

“Did you ask her to do a paternity test?”

“Why would I? I figured she knew her own body. She knew the truth. Why would I push? Anyway, Monique made me promise to leave Mia alone, to move on. She wanted me to move away. Then the bottom fell out of the housing market. And you wanted to stay in the house.”

The rain started again, pattering on the roof, the skylights. “Maybe it’s in the past for you, but for me, it’s new. Monique wrote about the whole thing only recently.”

“Something must’ve happened.”

“She and Chad were finally planning to move away. In her journal, she was reflecting on her relationship with you.” I went to the window, rested my hand on the sill, the painted wood cool against my fingers.

“Whatever happened between Monique and me—it’s in the past. I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t betray you.”

“You don’t think omission is a betrayal?”
How do we ever know about the people we love? The people we want to trust?
But if his affair with Monique had truly been in the past, perhaps, then
. . .
“I babysat Mia! We had drinks with Monique and Chad. We sat in the backyard, chatting about stupid things. Why didn’t
she
tell me? Did you make her promise not to?”

“She did ask me about you. We did talk about how to handle the situation. She wanted to tell you. But she didn’t want to destroy our marriage or hers.”

“How upstanding of her. I deserved to know.” I was a
situation
to be handled.

“You’re right. You did, but I thought I could keep my past in the past. Now I know it’s not possible.”

“You should’ve known from the start.”

“I’m sorry. What else can I say?”

“Nothing.” How could I have spent so many blissful nights in our king-sized bed on Sitka Lane, my heart at ease? Certain that our happiness would last forever? “You’ve been getting phone calls, hang-ups. Are you having an affair now?”

He looked affronted. “What? No, of course not.”

“The night of the fire, you weren’t in your room. I couldn’t reach you.”

“I told you why.”

“In light of what I now know, how can I believe you were comforting a colleague?”

“She’d lost a patient.” He opened his mouth to say more, then closed it.

“If I were to talk to her, she would tell me all you did was have a drink in the bar.”

“Yes, basically
. . .
”

“Basically?”

“That was it, Sarah. I knew her
. . .
before.”

“Like you knew Theresa?”

“I didn’t know Theresa before we moved into the cottage.”

“You’re not having an affair with her, either?”

“No,” he said. “Her baby is not mine, either.”

“But you knew this
. . .
colleague, before the conference.”

“I knew her in medical school. She’s married now. She has kids.”

“Marriage isn’t an obstacle for some people, apparently. They continue to do whatever they want.”

“I didn’t sleep with her in San Francisco.”

“Then where?”

He said nothing, clasped his hands together, and looked down at them.

“In medical school?”

He didn’t reply.

“I can’t believe this.”

“It’s not what you think. She lost a patient, we had a drink, she cried into her whiskey. We went our separate ways.”

I felt spent, too exhausted to ask any more questions. Was he still the Johnny I knew? The Johnny who loved me?

“What else do you want from me?” he asked in desperation, but he already knew. He got up slowly and headed for the front door, and I followed.

“Look, you can’t stay here,” he said. “Don’t you have a book signing coming up? I saw your books at the cottage.”

“I’ll work it out.”

“Your mom will be back soon. You’re going to stay here with her?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’ve got some things to figure out.”

His expression softened, a pleading look in his eyes. “I don’t want to be away from you. I’ve been faithful to you. I’m feeling my way through all this, just as you are. I didn’t tell you about Monique because I didn’t want to lose you. That’s the truth. There’s nobody else. Come back to the cottage. Please.” He touched my cheek, his eyes full of pain.

“I need to be alone for a while, to figure things out. That’s all.”

“Sarah
. . .
”

“I need some time.”

He nodded, his shoulders slumped. “I’ll move into a hotel. You go back to the cottage and stay there. I’ll give you the space you need. But I want you to know. I love you. I’m not going to give up. If this marriage fails, it will be because you decided to leave.”

“Don’t lay this responsibility on me.”

“I don’t mean it that way. I only mean—it will be your decision. The cottage is yours for as long as you need it.” He turned and walked away, but the faint scent of him lingered in the air long after he was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

When I pulled up to the cottage and found the driveway empty, my entire being went still. Johnny had drawn the curtains against an icy sky, and then he had vacated the premises. The gray morning hung lonely and desolate. The birds had gone silent, as if they sensed the chill in my soul. Even the rhododendron bushes curled their leaves against the frost.

Inside the cottage, Johnny had left the rooms pristine. His magazines were gone from the coffee table. His shoes were missing from the doormat. His coats had disappeared, the brass hooks on the wall bare, except where I’d hung my raincoat.

But his smell remained—the pine scent of his aftershave and his indefinable male aroma, reminiscent of spice and the salty sea. I’d heard that smells conjured the deepest emotional memories—it was true. I remembered the way he’d held my hand on the beach in Oahu, his impulsive stop at a roadside stand to buy me a bag of lychee fruits. He understood my moods, sensed what I needed when he made love to me. What was the measure of a marriage? These moments of caring and bliss? Or the secrets withheld?

Had I ever known the real Johnny? He was a contradiction. He became efficient under stress, and yet more absentminded in small ways. He kept track of finances but left his socks lying around. He balanced the checkbook but scattered crumbs on the countertops.

Was he still in Shadow Cove, or had he escaped to another town, where he wouldn’t be easily recognized? Here in our insular community, he might run into people he knew. They would ask questions.

Had he removed his wedding ring, or did he keep it on, idly turning it around on his finger, as was his habit? He removed anything else restrictive the moment he got home. Wallet and keys, bills and coins, all emptied from his pockets.

This morning, he had taken the contents of his pockets with him. On the kitchen counter he had left me a supply of my favorite foods—soft challah bread, organic blueberries, soy milk, and ground coffee. He knew I often became so involved in writing, I sometimes forgot to eat. He wanted to remind me of his thoughtfulness. But could the good things be fairly weighed against the lies? Or more accurately, against sins of omission?

How could I concentrate on writing? My upcoming signing, at the Shadow Cove Bookstore, weighed on me. How could I smile and pretend to celebrate? I heard Natalie’s voice in my mind:
Living well is the best revenge.
I would have to find a way to live well.

Or a way to simply live.

In the bedroom, the coverlet stretched across the mattress and tucked itself beneath the pillows. My normally messy husband had taken time to make the bed. Suddenly, I wanted his untidiness, the indentation in his pillow, his clothes left on a chair.

The second bedroom felt impersonal without his computer and pens, his books and mugs. The chair was locked in the reclining position, as if he had slept there. Maybe he couldn’t bear the thought of climbing into bed without me. Had he slept in the hotel? Or had he merely dropped off his suitcase, brushed his teeth, and gone straight to work? Did he miss me? I wanted him to long for me, although on a deeper level, I did not want him to suffer, despite the way he had deceived me. What would bitterness accomplish?

Still, I couldn’t stop dark thoughts from creeping in. How many evenings had we spent with the Kimballs, watching movies or chatting over dinner, when Johnny’s arm might’ve brushed Monique’s? When she might’ve leaned over him at the dining table, to place a platter of roasted vegetables on a trivet, and he might’ve caught a whiff of her perfume, glimpsed the curve of her breast? Made a plan for a rendezvous? Every moment carried new, adulterous meaning—the way Monique had sucked on a Popsicle on a hot day, while gazing over her sunglasses toward our backyard, where Johnny, shirtless and sweaty, had been digging in the garden.

He’d tried to leave nothing behind in the cottage. His side of the bedroom closet stood empty. He had taken all of his clothing, except for a shirt and a pair of slacks, which he’d left draped over a towel rack behind the bathroom door. For the first time since I’d known him, I found myself checking his pockets. If he hadn’t insisted on taking his own suits to the dry cleaners, I might’ve checked his pockets before, for mundane, forgotten things. An innocent kind of search. But now I sought evidence of deception, and I found the folded receipt, in pale blue ink, with the imprint of the Harborside Florist logo at the top, for the costs of a potted hydrangea and delivery, ordered the day before Johnny and I had gone to dinner at Eris’s house—paid for in cash.

I was still looking at the receipt when I heard the low rumble of a car prowling up the road. Adrian’s black Buick rolled to the curb and idled in front of the cottage, and then the engine kicked off. Jessie got out of the passenger side.

I wiped my eyes, smoothed my knit sweater, and opened the front door. Unseasonably wintry air pricked at my skin. “Jessie, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Just a minute,” she shouted at Adrian. “I’ll only be a minute!” She strode across the grass toward me, underdressed for the cold in a hoodie and skinny jeans. Her running shoes slipped when she reached the sidewalk, then she regained her balance and walked with her arms slightly out to the side. Her eyeliner was smudged, her face gaunt.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “You’ll catch your death. Would you like a jacket? Come inside.”

“I was worried about you,” she said. “My mom said you and Dr. M. are getting a divorce.”

“What? That’s not true.” The blood drained from my face. How had news of our marital trouble traveled so quickly? Who had told Pedra?

Jessie crossed her arms over her chest and glanced back toward the car, then she looked at me again, emptiness in her red-rimmed eyes. “Is it true? Are you guys splitting up? Was it the journal? He was having an affair, wasn’t he? Dr. M. was banging Mrs. K.”

“Banging? Who told you that?”

“I figured it out. That bites. I’m sorry.”

“Jess—”

“I just came to tell you I’m leaving,” she said, hugging herself around the waist now, shifting from foot to foot in the cold.

“Leaving for where? Why don’t you come in? We can talk for a while. You’re cold.”

“I can’t. Adrian wants to go right now. He has a job interview in Silverdale.”

“He’s not working construction anymore?”

She shook her head, kicked at the sidewalk with her shoe. “He got fired.”

“What are you doing with him?” But I knew the answer. I could see it in his hulking shoulders, in Jessie’s naïveté.