“I don’t know how you two do it.” Sam motioned to me with her drink, and then to Lucy. “It takes me hours to craft a simple work email, yet you two crank out books. When’s your next one coming out, Cori?” She drunkenly slurped her beer.
“February.” My publisher wanted to release it before the holidays, but I had my agent push it back. This wasn’t the time to hit the road promoting a novel. No way could I abandon Kat to deal with the one-year anniversary alone.
“Harold says it’s your best yet. Very Bell Jar-like.”
I laughed, ignoring the comparison to Plath’s masterpiece. “Harold’s paid to say that.” After the success of my first release, I’d hired Harold, the ultimate book nerd with an amazing Twitter following, as my assistant.
“Trust me, Harold doesn’t lie when it comes to books.”
“What does he lie about?” I separated a portion of cheesy fries. Strings of gooeyness elongated before snapping off and kinking back to the greasy mound on the plate. Harold was prone to exaggeration, but deep down, he was a kind and simple man.
“Usual guy stuff.”
I lived mostly among women, except for my father and uncle; luckily, they both shielded me from men talk most of the time, unless you counted sports. Harold didn’t really count as a man’s man in my book, prompting me to query, “Which is?”
“Gosh, you’re such a super-dyke sometimes. You know—conquests, penis size—stuff that matters to them. Maybe you and Kat should consider a throuple. Expand your horizons.” Sam waggled her brows. “What about Clementine?”
I nearly choked on my beer when Sam mentioned Clementine, but I quickly spat out, “Puh-lease. No way would I share a woman like Kat. Besides Clementine isn’t a dude.”
“Who is she?” Sam pushed.
Lucy shifted in her seat.
Weeks ago, Sam had eavesdropped on a private conversation between Kat and me, and since then she had been trying to figure out who or what Clementine was. Her pursuit was useless: Clementine was a secret weapon that even my sexually confident wife would never reveal.
My glare silenced Sam’s fishing expedition. Instead, she focused on the conversation at hand. “Harold’s sharing Simone,” she countered.
“Only because he met her after falling for Amber, who popped Harold’s cherry, by the way.”
Lucy indicated she wanted Sam to let her out of the booth. “I need to pee.”
When the restroom door closed, I asked, “What’s going on with you two?”
“Well, she hasn’t come out and said it, but I think Lucy suspects I’m having an affair.”
“Really? Why?” I wanted to kick myself for putting Sam on the spot and for inserting myself into the middle of their relationship. It was none of my beeswax.
Sam squirmed in her seat. “Let’s meet for lunch this week. Does tomorrow work?”
Was that why Sam brought up Clementine and the throuple? To make having an affair seem like something everyone did? If that was Sam’s agenda, she was barking up the wrong tree. Clementine wasn’t a threat to my marriage.
I nodded and tried to extinguish any trace of guilt from my face. I wasn’t the one who was cheating. Allegedly. Lucy must have espied my efforts to obliterate all judgment from my features, because she paused outside the bathroom door for a moment before returning to our booth.
Cheating was a topic that plagued my family. Not that I’d ever cheated, nor had Kat. It wasn’t in her DNA. But Uncle Roger was more promiscuous than Tiger Woods, even if that was a closely kept family secret.
Sam stood and Lucy scooted into the booth. She had a thing about sitting in the corner.
“What I’d miss?” Lucy asked.
“N-nothing. Why?” I stammered.
“Because the score is different.” Lucy pointed to the TV above my head with a scowl.
“Oh, that. The Pats scored”—I glanced at the screen above Sam and Lucy and made a quick calculation—“a field goal.”
Sam’s tight smile didn’t alleviate the tension. We all drank beer, not looking at each other, staring at the television screens.
Chapter Two
“Cori, want to shoot some hoops?” Roger pounced soon after Kat and I arrived for the weekly family dinner.
My uncle had introduced me to basketball when I was a kid. It turned out to be my sport. A knee injury in college meant I hadn’t played much after graduation, except for an occasional game of horse with Roger.
The path and half court had been cleared of snow, which wasn’t normally the case this time of year. The edges of the court were lined with small hedges that were buried under half a foot of snow. The effort put into shoveling the court was proof positive I was about to receive one of Roger’s pep talks.
“How are you doing?” Roger’s three-point shot was all net. He hiked up the sleeves of his cashmere sweater, revealing defined forearms. His black down vest remained zipped, though, and I wondered whether he wore tights or bike shorts under his corduroy pants, restricting his movement, since they made a zip-zip sound with each step.
“Nice!” I said, referring to his bucket, and dribbled the ball to shoot from where Roger had just scored. I planted my feet, raised my arms, and released. It was even prettier than Roger’s basket.
Roger retrieved the ball, tucked it under his right arm, and with a stern frown, prodded me to answer.
“I’m okay. I promise.” I put two palms up.
“I hear you aren’t sleeping. And from the bags under your eyes, you haven’t been for quite some time.”
Kat worked with my aunt at the studio, and it didn’t take a relationship expert to divine Barbara probably received a daily report about anything and everything under the Tisdale-Finn roof.
I looked down at my Nikes. “I… I’m working on it.”
“Has your doctor given you sleeping pills?” Roger dribbled to the free throw line and the ball effortlessly banked against the board and sailed through the hoop.
“In the beginning. She’s worried about addiction, though. On the bright side, I’m getting a lot of writing done. Two novels in eleven months.” I smiled half-heartedly.
“How about Kat?” He tossed me the ball.
I bounced it a few times. “It’s killing me. She’s trying to put on a brave face, but I see it.”
“I wish I could say it gets easier, but it doesn’t. Not really. The pain never goes away.” Roger motioned for me to pass him the ball. I did, and he tried a hook shot à la Kareem. The ball ricocheted off the rim and landed in my waiting arms.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been told the heartache never disappears; truth be known, hearing it didn’t spark a lightbulb moment. Instead, it solidified my fears. I’ll never recover. Of course, no one in my circle wanted to hear that, so I never confirmed their fears.
“Some days are better than others. This month, though… I can’t escape reminders of the time…” I let my voice trail off.
Roger concentrated on the hoop, and I studied his handsome face, his profile marred only by a crooked nose, broken during his boxing days. “Barbara and I suffered four miscarriages in seven years.”
I was about to shoot, but I lowered my arms and cradled the ball. “I didn’t know that. I thought she couldn’t get pregnant.”
He shrugged. “Back then, people didn’t talk about it. Still don’t, really. Even now it’s still difficult to remember. Maybe I should have talked about it with you earlier, helped you understand.” His distraught eyes didn’t leave mine, and I wondered what the confession would help me with. Dealing with my loss or understanding the reason for his infidelities? “I won’t tell you to get over it, but I will say you need to get back into the game. Not just for you. Kat needs you. This family needs you.”
I nodded. “I know.” My voice cracked. “The guilt from that night. If I’d been there—”
His hand waved through the air. “No. You can’t do that to yourself. It was not your fault. Not Kat�
�s either. Someone else made an awful decision on an icy night that had a terrible—”
He stopped himself from saying consequence. It was almost as cold as me referring to Charlotte as the situation.
The other driver had never been found, and no witnesses had come forward either. It left me with no one else to blame—only myself.
Roger’s cell phone buzzed, saving both of us from continuing the thread. He peeked at it, momentarily looking pissed, but then his easygoing grin slid back into place. He put a hand on my shoulder. “If you ever need to talk, I’m always here for you.” He freed the ball from my grasp and attempted another skyhook. This time it was nothing but net. “I better put the steaks on the grill. How do you like your veggie burger cooked?” He winked. It was his usual joke regarding my vegetarianism, and it was his way of telling me he’d said his piece.
It was time for me to act human again. Responsible. Time to stop running.
“Crisp,” Kat answered him, appearing around the corner.
“One crispy veggie burger coming up.” Roger patted Kat’s shoulder as he breezed past.
“Did you two get a chance to talk?” My wife slumped against the pole supporting the hoop.
I laughed. “Apparently, a little birdie said I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Those damn birds. Can’t trust them.” Kat crossed her arms over her expansive chest. Her long, silky raven hair was tucked behind her ears, and she wore a deep-plum hand-knitted hat.
“You know, Harold’s started calling beautiful girls ‘birds.’ The other day, he bumped my arm and said, ‘Check out the fit bird at seven o’clock.’”
Kat laughed. “Was the woman hot?”
I nodded, and she punched my arm playfully.
“He’s been watching tons of British television shows and reading more English authors than normal. Have you noticed?”
Not answering, Kat pried the basketball from my hands and made a show of attempting a basket. It was nowhere near the hoop.
“Maybe you shouldn’t wiggle your ass so much when shooting,” I said with a grin.
“Maybe my intention wasn’t to make a basket.” Kat wheeled around and playfully nudged my shoulder with a finger. She licked her full lips.
“If your intention was to get my attention, you succeeded the moment you stepped into the light.” I tweaked the drawstrings on her hooded sweater and met her eager mouth. “Have you ever thought there might be another reason I can’t sleep at night?”
“Such as?” Kat put one hand on her hip and fluttered her lashes, making it nearly impossible for me to think straight.
“You’ll have to wait until we get home for a thorough explanation.”
She captured my lips and laid one on me. When I tried to deepen the kiss, she backpedaled.
Kat placed a cold finger against my lips. “Don’t forget you promised we could stop at your aunt’s studio for a bit.”
“Haven’t forgotten,” I replied. She was shivering from the cold, so I twined an arm around her waist.
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Besides the studio favor?” I teased, burrowing my face into the crook of her neck.
“Yes.”
“Anything for you. Shoot.”
“You need to start sleeping.” The pad of her thumb probed the black circles, as if trying to draw out the darkness. “I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be, Kit Kat. I’m doing okay.”
“Don’t add liar to my list of concerns.” She peered at me with murky, soulful eyes.
I kissed her forehead. “I love you.”
***
When we waltzed back into the kitchen, my mom and Barbara stopped talking and failed miserably to banish the worry from their faces.
It made me angry. Not at them, but at me. I needed to get my shit together for everyone’s sake. How hard was it to fall asleep? Even babies…
“Did Roger clean your clock?” Mom tugged on each end of her scarf, doing her best to comport herself.
“As usual,” I replied with a forced smile.
“Let me put the kettle on and make you a cup of tea. Your cheeks are redder than Rudolph’s nose. I told you to put on a jacket.” Barbara flipped around and filled the kettle with tap water.
I wished people would stop reminding me of the time of year. Not that I thought any of them did so with malice.
Mom rubbed my cheeks and then pinched one with an evil relish in her eye. Oddly, it settled me some. Maybe I wasn’t overly delicate. Leave it to my mother not to go overboard with coddling.
“So what’s this top secret project Kat’s working on?” Barbara asked in a flat voice, her back to me.
I peeled a slice of cheddar cheese from the silver serving platter. “Nice try.”
“Foiled again.” Barbara snapped her fingers. “Clients are asking when she’ll have the next collection done.”
“This painting is private,” Kat said. She’d sworn up and down that no one would see it. “But I’m working on others. A couple at home you haven’t seen yet.”
“When can I pop by?” Barb asked over her shoulder.
“Any time. You know that.”
I was curious to see how the public would take to the drastic change in her style. Most thought Goya mad after viewing his black paintings. I tried to imagine the press releases. Would Charlotte’s death and a line about the artist reeling from the loss appear in the first or second paragraph? Of course, I’d wondered the same thing about my next novel, which had been heavily revised after the incident.
Mom and Barbara shared a conspiratorial shrug, and I sensed they’d do everything they could to get to the bottom of the mystery project. I didn’t trust them. Not one bit. Secretly, I admired their grit, but I enjoyed trying to stay one step ahead.
“So, Kat tells me Harold has a new woman.” Mom sipped her wine and leaned against the edge of the island. She wore a thick woolen sweater. For as long as I could remember, Roger and Barbara kept the heat low, even on the coldest winter days. Granted, it probably cost a fortune to properly heat their ten-bedroom Colonial revival home built in 1881, which Roger had inherited decades ago. Not that money was an issue. Roger was a business magnate. While he wasn’t as wealthy as Warren Buffet, he wasn’t too far behind the “Wizard of Omaha” either.
“Yes and no. Harold now has two women. Thanks to you.” I gestured to my mother.
“What’d I do?” She put a hand on her chest and wobbled her head about as if she’d been shot.
“Formed your sex book club.”
“All we do is read and discuss. Harold’s responsible for his own actions,” she tutted with a satisfied smirk.
“You can ask him for yourself.” Kat deposited her cell into her jeans pocket. “He’s on his way over.”
“That doesn’t sound good. What’s up?”
She shrugged. “You know Harold.”
I did.
“Is it Simone?” Mom steered back to her favorite topic: sex.
“Yep. What’s up with this chick?” I loved Harold, but a hunch clued me in to the possibility that Simone was up to something. Harold wasn’t the kind to attract a beautiful vixen.
Mom and Kat shared a worried glance.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m worried she has the hots for Amber.” Kat retrieved ranch, blue cheese, and French dressing from the stainless-steel fridge door and set them next to the bowl on the counter. Every appliance was brand spanking new, giving the kitchen in the century-old home a modern feel. The rest of the house retained late nineteenth-century touches: arched ceilings, crown molding, and an abundance of fireplaces. Most of the furniture had been handed down over generations.
“Why the throuple charade, then?” I tossed my arms in the air.
“Because Amber’s never been with a woman.” Kat’s duh look urged me to get with the program.
“And Simone thinks this will convert her permanently to the lesb
ian side, gradually awaken her lesbianism? Seems far-fetched.” I stroked my chin. “Kinda brilliant, though.”
Dad and Roger returned from the back deck, shivering. Mom had insisted on steaks for dinner. I wondered whether she’d done that to temporarily evict the men to the deck.
Roger hoisted a platter heaped with steaks, burgers, and my two veggie patties—crisper than crisp—over his head. “Me return from hunt.” He grunted and puffed out his chest.
Barbara shook her head and smiled at her foolish husband of forty years. Mom sneered. Most of the time, she thought Roger was as classless and brutish as a caveman. I could tell she was envisioning Roger bashing a young woman over the head with a club and dragging her back to his cave.
My father, Warren Tisdale—who went by Dale—slapped Roger on the back. They’d been best buds since before Dad married Mom.
Out of all of us, Dad was the most disheveled. His Christmas sweater was a bit too snug around his expanding belly, and some of the hair on the back of his head was mussed from his Red Sox beanie.
“Cori, you excited to see the Sugar Bowl game in New Orleans?” Dad asked.
“Been counting down the days.” This was another trick in my arsenal to get through the days: counting down to anything coming, a way to keep reminding myself I was still trudging forward.
He nodded. “January first isn’t far away.”
“It will be nice to have a few days in the sun.” Dad casually tossed his hand in the air as if we traveled to college bowl games every year, which we didn’t.
I pirouetted to Kat, who was grinning. She had been the one who’d come up with the idea to give me a different event to focus on. Not December twenty-fifth and not the anniversary of the accident.
Dad circled his finger. “The whole fam traveling together—it’ll be like the Griswolds.”
I laughed. “Let’s hope we’re nothing like the Griswolds.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Roger can fly on top of the plane, Aunt Edna style,” Mom said with zero irony in her tone.
“But Aunt Edna was dead,” I said.
“That could be arranged.” Mom laughed. Barbara gave her a menacing stare, and Roger simpered. He was used to my mother’s abuse, so hardly anything she or anyone else said stung. I wished I had his thick skin. I had known all my life about his sister and parents dying so many years ago, but I was still processing the bombshell he’d shared on the basketball court.
Confessions From the Dark Page 3