I crossed my arms, mentally preparing myself for an argument. “We already have.”
“You told her it’s over?”
“Yes.”
He jerked his head back in surprise, giving himself a double chin. “Oh, well, good. Good job.”
“Yeah, thanks. We through here?”
Looking solemn, Larry leaned his shoulder against the wall and buried his hand in his pocket. “Does Kyra know yet?”
The mention of her name made my stomach feel like it was full of battery acid. “She doesn’t know about Danielle.”
“No, I mean that you and she are—were—separated.”
Perspiration started to trickle down my back. I leaned over and stuck my hand in front of a wall vent. Sure enough, hot air met my palm. Thompson was so cheap, it could be a hundred degrees outside and rather than turn on the AC, he would insist on using the fan. As if circulating the same hot air would magically cool things off.
I slipped off my jacket and laid it across the back of my desk chair, feeling the dampness on my back and armpits. “Not yet. She’s starting to remember. I think the doctor was right, and she’s figuring it out on her own.”
Larry rubbed beads of sweat from his forehead, giving the vent a perturbed look. “Can I give you some advice, chief?” He paused like he was waiting on my answer. As if it mattered what I said.
When I raised my eyebrows, he said, “Come out with it. All of it. It’s like one of those stupid TV sitcoms, where everyone’s being goofy and covering up something when they could have saved themselves a mess of trouble if they just told the truth up front.”
I stared at him. Was he really comparing my failing marriage and infidelity to a poorly executed comedy? This wasn’t some stupid TV show. This was my life. And it was more than a few laughs at stake; it was my marriage. My heart . . . and Kyra’s.
“My point is, just tell her. It’s bad no matter how you look at it. Rip the tape off fast. It’s going to hurt either way, so why drag it out?”
I chewed on this a minute. He was right, of course. It would be bad, no matter what, but Kyra would probably remember in a day or two. Maybe figuring it out piece by piece on her own would make it easier for her to swallow.
But maybe she’d never remember just how bad things had gotten . . . or find out about Danielle. Then what? We’d live happily ever after. Why not? I’d never have believed a week ago that my wife would so much as look at me again, let alone gaze at me with that spark back in her eyes. I’d already been given a miracle. What was one more?
Larry licked his lips. “Can I ask you something?”
Looking into his grave eyes, I knew the question was going to be a heavy one.
He studied me. “Why wasn’t she enough?”
I knew that what he was really asking was why he wasn’t enough for Tina. “It wasn’t her . . . and, man, it wasn’t you. I mean, she’s great and, Larry, you’re great. It’s just . . .”
He pulled the chair away from the other side of my desk and sat. As he studied me, it was no longer my friend’s pain I was looking at, but Kyra’s.
I pushed pens around in their coffee cup holder. “It wasn’t her, but it wasn’t exactly not her either.” I glanced up at him.
He pulled at his goatee, looking deep in thought.
“She stopped wanting me to touch her but wouldn’t even tell me why. It was always a different excuse. Besides that, everything I said or didn’t say irritated her. Nothing I did was right. Nothing. I stopped feeling like I was good for anything but bringing home a paycheck and taking out the trash. I stopped feeling like a man. You know?”
The truth will set you free.
“Yeah. Yeah,” I answered.
“Yeah, yeah, what?” Larry asked.
“The truth will set me free.”
He smirked. “Your conscience finally talking to you?”
“What?”
He laughed. “You’re losing it, man.”
“Whatever. Listen, I’m going to do like the doctor said and see if Kyra will figure it out on her own.”
“The separation. But what about the affair?”
Affair? I cringed at the word. It wasn’t an affair. It was a one-night stand. A lapse in judgment. A thing. “One problem at a time.” I flipped through my desk calendar, looking for nothing in particular.
“You have to tell her.”
I said nothing.
Larry’s face mottled. “Dude, you have to tell her. I’ve been on the other end of the stunt you’re pulling, and it bites. I don’t know, maybe if Tina had come clean herself rather than being found out, maybe I could have forgiven her.”
As I thought about what he was saying, I could practically feel the ulcers forming. What I needed was a guarantee. If only I could play out what would happen if I did tell her, then compare it to what would happen if I didn’t. How was I supposed to gamble with our lives this way? But then I knew, of course, that I already had.
Fifteen
Before I stepped through the front door, I had one thing on my mind: to get to bed and fall asleep as quickly as possible. After Kyra greeted me in the foyer wearing a bedroom smile and long silk nightgown, soft wisps of hair brushing against her face, that mission became all the more imperative. If I laid a hand on her tonight, not only would Marnie let me have it, but it would add fuel to Kyra’s anger later when she found out what I’d done.
When she leaned in to kiss my lips, it took everything in me to turn away and give her my cheek. Although she had to interpret my reaction as rejection, if I’d hurt her feelings, she managed to hide it. Her smooth, painted fingernails softly scraped my palm as she scooped the car keys from my hand. She set them on the table by the door, then took my hand and led me through the dining room, out to the screened porch. As we passed through the house, I caught a whiff of steak, asparagus, and something freshly baked.
Both excitement and dread filled me as I realized that my wife might be trying to seduce me. It had been years since she’d taken this kind of initiative. I knew what I should do if she indeed was, but the feelings she stirred in me made me afraid of what I actually would do when and if the time came.
The door squealed as she pushed it open. There, in the shadows, stood our patio table set for two. She’d adorned it with a tablecloth and the silverware she only dragged out on holidays. Cloth napkins fanned out from empty wineglasses, which were paired beside crystal goblets of water. Candlelight flickered up from the center of the table and the iron sconces that hung on the brick wall behind us. Balmy night air wafted in through the screen, making the flames bend and bow.
Candlelight danced in Kyra’s eyes as she gazed at me for the longest time.
My heart lodged in my throat. “What’s all this?”
She smiled at me, then the table. “Happy anniversary, lover.”
My mind raced. What was today? It was April. We weren’t married in April. Were we? No, it was definitely October. The mistake was hers, not mine. “We were married in October. October twentieth,” I added, now confident. “You’re a few months off.”
Her smile grew as she sauntered toward me. The hem of her nightgown swayed around the ankles I could only catch glimpses of, leading down to pretty, manicured toes.
A sudden realization hit me like a sucker punch. I was just as in love with her tonight as I’d ever been. When she reached out to touch my cheek, I fought against the urge to draw her body tight against mine. Instead, I stepped back. She flinched, looking unsure. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t rejecting her. That I wanted her more at this moment than I ever had. Of course, I couldn’t. I’d lost that right. I’d lost everything.
Recovering, she pulled the chair out for me. It was all I could do to keep my eyes off the silk clinging to her curves. She waited for me to sit, then disappeared back into the house, quickly returning with two plates of romaine topped with pieces of bloodred tomatoes and dollops of blue cheese dressing. She set a salad before me. “You’ll need your strength tonig
ht. So you’d better eat up.”
I grew warm at the truth of this statement. I would need every bit of my strength all right, but not for the reasons she implied.
As she plucked her napkin from the glass before her and slid it across her lap, I did the same. She picked up the wine bottle and tilted it over my glass.
I put a hand up to indicate I didn’t want any. If ever there was a night to keep my inhibitions, it was this one.
She gave me a questioning look. “Since when don’t you want to share a glass of wine with your wife?”
“The last time I drank that stuff it gave me a terrible hangover.” One I’d be paying for the rest of my life.
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t remember you ever drinking enough to get a hangover.”
“There’s a lot you don’t remember,” I said, hating the sound of my own voice.
She handed me a goblet of water from the table and picked up her wine, then clinked our glasses together. “To remembering . . . and our anniversary.”
I started to remind her of what I’d already said, that it wasn’t our anniversary, but she spoke first.
“Listen, baby, I know you’ve been under a lot of stress, and I know a big part of that is because of me and the accident.” She looked so contrite when she said it that I wanted to reach out and comfort her, but I figured it would only make matters worse.
“Maybe I don’t remember everything, but I remember what you did.”
A surge of panic shot through me and my mind raced with confusion. If that were true, why would she be dressed so sexy and behaving this way? Though it wasn’t really her style, I wondered if maybe she’d just been setting me up to knock me down. I searched her face but didn’t find hatred or even a glimpse of anger, which told me that she didn’t remember the e-mail. Even if she did, she couldn’t remember what she had never learned. She couldn’t know about my night with Danielle.
“I know you left a life you loved at Braddy’s Wharf to give me and Benji everything money could buy. I know we’ve fought about your long hours and me wanting a job, and I’ve probably seemed ungrateful when you’re obviously doing your best. I’m sorry for that. I appreciate the love that gets you out of bed six days a week to go to work.”
Suddenly she beamed at me. “You know what though? I’m alive and you’re alive and as long as that’s the case, we’ve got everything we need.” She reached across the table and held her palm out to me, inviting me into her grasp.
I knew it was wrong to accept her touch, but it seemed worse to leave her hanging out there thinking she was unwanted. And so, reluctantly, I placed my hand in hers. Her skin felt softer than ever.
“We have a good life, Samurai. Let’s not let the stress of my accident, your job, what’s going on with Benji, and everything else make us lose sight of that.”
I probably looked like a simpleton sitting there with my mouth open, not knowing what to say. I certainly felt that way.
“Let’s make tonight the first anniversary of the rest of our lives. Can we?”
For reasons I didn’t stop to question, the intense longing and regret I felt looking into her eyes gave way to a tidal wave of conflicting emotions—doubt, anger, pain, and a myriad of other feelings I couldn’t name. Her rejection came flooding back washing ashore once again all the loneliness and begging for answers as to why she no longer wanted me. I couldn’t breathe, knowing that now was the time to tell her everything, but how could I?
The glow of the candle flames painted her face in hues of gold. She picked up her glass again and held it out to me. “Wish me a happy anniversary, baby. Let this be the first day of the rest of our lives. Just say it and let’s start over. I don’t want to lose what I thought we had. What I know we can have again.”
Part of me wanted to hold my glass out to hers and part of me wanted to smack hers from her hand and ask her how it felt to want something she couldn’t have. I knew I had to tell her the truth about Danielle. Maybe she’d still feel the same way once she understood why I’d done it. Maybe her glass would still be extended.
It was now or never.
“Kyra, I love you,” I said, “but there’s . . .”
Before I could continue, her face scrunched up as she set her glass down. She dropped her head into her open hands and began to sob. Her shoulders heaved as she fought to take a breath.
Not knowing what else to do, I pushed away from the table and went to her. I wrapped my arms around her and laid my head against her trembling back, feeling her warmth, inhaling her scent, wanting her in a way that overwhelmed me. “I’m so sorry,” I said over and over until at last she quieted.
And I was sorry. Sorry for her, sorry for Benji, and sorry for me.
When she finally turned around to look at me, she wiped at her eyes and let out an embarrassed laugh. “You must think I’m crazy, but, baby, I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear those words until you said them. ‘I love you,’ I mean.”
And as if she had finally given a name to what I had felt all along, I realized that was exactly what I needed too. What I had needed all along maybe. Not just to hear them but believe them. “Do you?” I asked, feeling emotionally naked.
“Love you?” She stood, took my face in her hands, and began kissing it all over, her soft, damp lips pressing against my thirsty skin. She whispered, “I love you,” again and again, until our lips met.
As soon as I tasted her, I pulled away, but like a magnet that was too strong to resist, my mouth found hers again. And then, before my mind could catch up with my body, I was carrying her upstairs.
I stood before our bedroom, like I had so many times in our early years, with her in my arms. The door stood shut, forcing me to pause to consider how I was going to get it open without dropping her. When I did, reason finally caught up to desire.
“Kyra, there’s something . . . I . . . Baby, I love you, but there’s . . .” My head swam trying to find the right words, knowing none existed. There would never be a better time to come clean than right now. If I could just conjure up the nerve to tell her everything. One more day may as well be forever, but when I opened my mouth to speak, she kissed me again, and before I knew it I was setting her on the bed. As she smiled up at me, I knew this would be the last woman I would ever make love to, even if this was the last time she’d let me.
Any remnant of self-control left me as she began to unbutton my shirt. She hadn’t made it past my sternum when the doorbell rang.
Out of breath and flushed, Kyra gave me a questioning glance. With a groan, she climbed out of bed and followed me down the stairs. I pulled back the curtain on the front window, and together we peered outside. Marnie stood under the porch light, swaying back and forth with her arms wrapped around herself and her eyes smeared with black.
Sixteen
I eased down the stairs trying not to wake Marnie, whom Kyra had set up the previous night on the couch. She’d shown up on our doorstep hysterical in one of her phobia-induced panics, convinced the mold from her carpet was of the dangerous black variety and had spread like cancer throughout her house. She needed a place to stay until the antifungus SWAT team could comb the place millimeter by millimeter and annihilate every last trace. Try as we might, we could not convince her of the ridiculousness of abandoning her home over a musty carpet.
We had three empty bedrooms upstairs, but she found fatal flaws with each. The guest room turned her eyes into saucers when she considered the canopy bed. “What if that thing falls on me and I suffocate?” she asked. Kyra and I both assured her this would not happen. That in the fifteen years we owned it, it had never fallen on anyone. Even if it did, it surely had no more potential to suffocate her than a standard bedsheet.
No go.
The spare bedroom beside the guest room, thankfully without canopy, housed a waterbed—a relic from my bachelor days. This was no good, of course. The mattress might puncture and kill her. After all, she said, it was common knowledge that a person could drown in
as little as a teaspoon of water, and she was a sound sleeper.
Like Goldilocks, we led her to the next room—Benji’s bedroom. Although she eyed the sports posters with apprehension I didn’t understand, it was the various trophies lined up on shelves around the room that made her deem it unsuitable. Naturally, one or all of them could fall and crush her skull.
When we’d offered to take the trophies down, she shook her head. It was the shelves themselves which were the real danger. They were built into the wall, which meant unless the whole wall tumbled, the shelves could not. This law of physics didn’t convince her, and neither could Kyra or I.
The last possibility was the sleeper sofa in my office. When I pulled out the hidden mattress, she hyperventilated. “Let me guess,” I said wearily. “It might magically fold itself up during the night with you in it and you’d suffocate.” And so, in a house full of empty bedrooms, Marnie slept on the couch.
As I descended the stairs, my view of the ceiling gave way to the living room below and Marnie, dressed for success, sitting on the sofa where Kyra left her last night. The blanket she’d given her lay neatly folded over the armrest.
When she saw me, she set down her mug and blew a strand of blonde from her face. “Oh, good, you’re up.
I sniffed at the java-scented air.
She pointed toward the kitchen. “I just made a pot. Want me to fix you a cup before we talk?”
I looked forward to the coffee, but the conversation, not so much. “I really have to get to work,” I said.
“Sit down.” Her voice was soft, but tone unyielding.
I sat in the chair beside the couch, not knowing exactly what was coming but having a pretty good idea.
She wrapped her manicured fingers around the ceramic cup she held, speaking at it instead of me. “I have a confession.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“With Kyra’s permission, I spoke with Dr. Hershing. When I told him about your little tryst with that girl, he was miffed that you didn’t tell him so he could have all the facts when treating her. He’s reconsidering his decision for you to let her remember on her own. He said it might end up hurting her more if you don’t tell her before she finds out herself.”