He blushed at that, popping a piece of bacon into his mouth to hide his embarrassment. He’d been sexually insatiable all weekend, and she’d teased him about it every chance.
“Listen,” he finally said. “I’ve been thinking, and . . . I guess we should probably leave this here.”
She added a little cream to the strong coffee. “Leave what here?”
Noah cleared his throat. “This.”
“This?” she teased, but her amusement fell away when she looked up from stirring her coffee and found his forehead creased into deep wrinkles. “Noah? What are you talking about?”
“I thought I could do this, but it isn’t natural for me. I feel . . . Jesus, I feel sick.”
He felt sick? She shook her head.
“My wife is texting me pictures the kids drew for me. Telling me I don’t have to travel because they’ll supply plenty of work for the gallery. They miss me. And I’m . . .”
Evelyn felt herself blinking rapidly, as if her brain were trying to hit “Reset.” “We just had sex,” she said, the coffee doing a slow turn inside her stomach.
“I know.”
“You didn’t feel sick then.”
“I know. Evelyn, I’m sorry. This is a shitty thing to say to you now. I get that.”
She pressed a hand to her spinning stomach. “I don’t understand. Noah, this has been . . .”
“A fantasy,” he said quietly. “A dream. It felt . . . separate. But now I’m going back to my real life, and I just keep thinking, what if Juliette finds out? What if we weren’t careful enough? She called while we were having dinner last night. And I just . . . I can’t do that to her.”
“I see.”
“She’s an amazing person. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”
An amazing person. His slutty, psychotic, sick wife. Noah couldn’t do this to her?
Right then, Evelyn wanted to tell him. Blurt it all out. The whole truth. It hovered on her tongue, the words a metal weight in her mouth, the taste like copper. At the very least, he should know Juliette had cheated. That he was free to enjoy Evelyn as much and as often as he wanted.
“I can’t do this to my kids,” Noah whispered. “I can’t bear for them to look at me and see a man who did this.”
Who did this. Her. Evelyn.
Coffee sloshed over the rim of her mug and burned her fingers. She tightened her grip on the handle. “So this whole weekend? These nights together? You knew they were a one-shot deal?”
“No, I—”
“Because I wish you would have told me. Before.”
“Evelyn, I—”
“Before you pushed through your sickness enough to have sex with me. In the evening. In the middle of the night. Before dinner. This morning. Ha! When, exactly, did this all make you so sick? Because you seemed to be in raging good health for quite a few hours of every single day.”
He grabbed her free hand, wrapped his fingers around her clenching fist. “That wasn’t how it was. It didn’t hit me until last night. I was thinking about going home. Panicking a little, honestly. I couldn’t get back to sleep. Being here with you felt like a different world, but now we’re going back to real life, Evelyn.”
“No,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. I swear to God, I’m sorry. If things were different, then maybe we could have this. But I’m married. You’re married.”
“People get divorced all the time, Noah.”
“I don’t want that for me or my kids. I honestly don’t.”
Right. Of course. Was she actually pleading with him to leave his wife for her? How disgustingly pitiful was that? He was trying to break it off, and she was trying to talk him out of it? She looked down, away from him, and saw that her robe was gaping open, showing half her breasts. She jerked her hand from his and pulled the collar tightly closed. She didn’t want him seeing her body anymore. Looking and laughing.
“Okay,” she bit out. “Sure. We had this weekend. It was lovely. Thanks for that. You can go.”
Noah sighed and stayed where he was, his pained look the perfect expression of sad regret. She wished she hated him enough to slap him.
“It was just sex. I get it. Now go.”
“It wasn’t just sex.”
“But you’re going to walk away like it was?”
“I’ve said this all wrong. I’m sorry. I just . . . Shit, I didn’t want to tell you later on the phone. I didn’t want to be a coward about it.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you.”
“Don’t say thank you,” he growled. “I know I’m not doing the right thing. There is no right thing. I’m just trying to be honest about it. I swear, Evelyn. This has meant . . . God, it wasn’t just sex to me.”
“Okay,” she said, but she wasn’t okay. Because if it wasn’t just sex, how could he go back to his life and never have this again? How could he even imagine living without it?
“If we weren’t married, this would all be different.”
Yes, it would have been 100 percent different, because he would have been single and dating twenty-nine-year-old artsy girls, and he wouldn’t have looked twice at Evelyn if she’d walked into his gallery. She’d thought about that yesterday. How lucky she was to have someone like him. How everything had pushed them together at just the right time.
So lucky.
“We both knew this was an affair,” he said softly.
“Yes.”
When she’d asked if they could do this forever, he’d said yes, but he hadn’t meant it, and now she felt so, so stupid. He hadn’t meant any of it. She’d been too far removed from college and dating to remember that men would say anything in the pursuit of sex. Hell, they probably even meant it at the time. But once they were satisfied and showered, they suddenly had no idea what you were talking about: “I’m not looking for a girlfriend right now.” “I don’t want things to get too serious.” “I forgot to mention I’m in a relationship.” All of it designed to make the woman feel he’d been saying it all along and she hadn’t paid attention.
This was just the newest version of the same old thing: “Now that we’ve had sex two dozen times, I don’t want to hurt my children.”
Well, she didn’t want to hurt his children either, but they were going to be hurt. He’d probably come crawling back then. He’d need some comfort when the police found that friend of Kaylee’s and announced his wife was a cheating killer.
“So you’ve told me in person,” she said, staring at the coffeepot as if it were the one breaking up with her. “I want you to go now.”
“I’m sorry,” Noah said again, his voice pleading. What the hell did he want from her? Gratitude? Forgiveness? Was it her responsibility to make him feel better about this?
“I’m sorry too,” she answered. She got up, tightened the belt of her robe, and walked to the bathroom. “Please be gone when I get out.”
The sound of the shower covered her weeping and took her tears down the drain. She soaped up, then cried more when she realized she was washing the last of Noah away. They’d never have sex again. Never even touch. This was the start of her life without him.
She missed him already. Because the truth was, no matter how much she was hurting, he wasn’t a bad guy. He was torn. She understood that. Even if he wanted more with Evelyn, he was trying to do the right thing. Granted, this pious sacrifice came a little late, but Evelyn had known he loved his wife. He’d been honest about that from the start.
By the time she got out, the bathroom was a solid square of steam. She wrapped one of the thick, oversized towels around her and opened the door, pretending she meant to dissipate the moisture, but in all honesty she was looking for Noah. Her lips parted to tell him she’d been harsh, that she understood his fears and regrets. Of course she did.
It wasn’t until she saw the empty room that she realized she hadn’t believed he’d go. He should have been waiting there, sorry and sheepish, too worried about her to leave that way. He wasn’t.
Evelyn
closed the door again and curled against the steam-slick wall to cry.
CHAPTER 24
BEFORE
The buzzing of her cell phone woke Evelyn at noon. She dug it from under her pillow and squinted at the screen. Gary. She tossed the phone to the other side of the bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t want him to know she was still in bed, and if she answered he’d hear it in her voice.
He was probably calling to remind her that she’d promised to go to the grocery store today. She hadn’t forgotten. It was just that she had other things to do.
Like sleep. Didn’t he know she was sick?
It had only been eight days since her life had blown up into little pieces, but it felt like she’d been crawling through the rubble for months. She was empty. Exhausted. Ill. But after his call, she couldn’t doze off again. She tried valiantly for ten more minutes before reluctantly pulling herself from bed to shuffle downstairs to make coffee and check Facebook.
The phone buzzed again, and she saw that Gary had left a message. She put it on speakerphone and got coffee beans from the cupboard. “I got your list of therapists,” Gary said. “I’ll give you an answer when I have time to look at them. When you go to the store today, don’t forget to grab that vitamin C I like. And maybe I should call Vigo’s. We never did go. It would be good for you to get out.”
Good for her. Was he playing superior doctor, or did he really care? Did he want to take her to dinner, or was he desperate for her to wash her hair and put on clean clothes? The joke was on him. She’d showered yesterday; Gary just hadn’t gotten close enough to smell the soap.
She didn’t bother to smile at her bitter joke. Her own cynicism was exhausting her. She wanted to get back to being who she used to be. Someone who saw the sunny side of life, who laughed off her husband’s quirks, who thought she was good enough for someone. She wanted to love him again. Wanted to be happy. Or at least content. Maybe she hadn’t been jumping-up-in-the-air happy, but her life had been good before this.
After listening to his message once more, she brewed her coffee—organic, medium roast, single origin from Ethiopia, just as Gary liked—and sat down at the desk to browse Facebook. Wincing, she shifted her weight on the wooden kitchen chair.
Her butt was marked with tiny purple bruises where twigs had stabbed into her from her fall. It was worse today than yesterday. She wouldn’t forget that adventure for a while.
Not that she would have forgotten. Pulling up Dawn’s page, Evelyn checked for new evidence that the woman knew about the sad place her daughter had likely spent her last days. Surely the police must have told her, but it seemed Dawn didn’t want to dwell on that knowledge. There was still no mention of it anywhere.
Evelyn read the latest shared memory of Kaylee, then headed over to Juliette’s page to check in on her. Yesterday had been field-trip day, apparently. Juliette had taken the kids to a local petting zoo. There were five pictures of the kids, but the last one showed Juliette Whitman herself, holding a baby goat.
She was smiling brightly, as usual, but she did look different. Curious, Evelyn enlarged the picture. Juliette’s normally bouncy blond hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and if she was wearing makeup, it didn’t cover the dark circles under her eyes. She looked tired. Maybe a little gaunt.
“Hm.” Evelyn regarded the picture skeptically. Maybe the hit-and-run had brought her pain. But even if she was suffering, that didn’t mean she was sorry. She could be scared. Even a sick, evil sociopath didn’t want to go to jail.
Evelyn moved back through posts she’d already memorized, hoping to glean something she hadn’t before. But she’d mined this page for what it was worth. She’d learn nothing new here. She needed to see Juliette in person.
Not a confrontation. Not yet, anyway. But if she saw Juliette, maybe Evelyn could detect what kind of regret she was experiencing. Heck, she might even decide the woman wasn’t as pretty and perfect as she seemed.
Evelyn sipped her coffee and noted that it was twelve thirty. Plenty of time for her to drive the thirty minutes to Juliette’s school. She wouldn’t try to sneak in the building or anything. That would be crazy. She just wanted to check it out. After all, the trip to Old Highway 23 had been well worth it.
Invigorated by the plan or the coffee, she pulled a pad from the desk and made a grocery list. She’d stop at the store on the way home. She could make Cameron’s favorite spaghetti, spicy meat sauce with fresh mushrooms. Mushrooms weren’t her favorite, but they were easy to pick out.
When her phone buzzed, she grabbed it with a quick hello, happy she could tell Gary that she was getting out of the house.
“Evelyn,” a woman’s voice drawled coolly.
She pulled the phone from her face to look at the caller ID. Crap. It was Wanda. “Hi, Wanda,” she said in a duller voice.
“Do you have any idea when you’ll make it back to work?”
“I’m still very sick to my stomach. I couldn’t come in if I wanted to. I’m hoping by Monday I’ll be on the road to recovery.”
“All right. Just be sure you bring in a doctor’s note. It’s been a bit more than three days.”
“Of course,” she answered. It hardly mattered. Her husband was a doctor. Surely Wanda knew that.
“Jackie Arthur has been in to ask about you several times. She says you’re not returning her emails.”
“Yes, I’ve been in bed all week.”
“Well, you might want to get in touch.”
“Sure,” Evelyn answered, anxiety crawling through her gut. She didn’t like dropping the ball on her duties, but she was losing her grip. Couldn’t anyone sense that?
As guilty as she felt, she had more important things to worry about. Evelyn went upstairs to change from her nightgown and robe, though she felt like she was stripping away important armor. Her robe, long nightgown, and thick socks were buffers, insulating her from the real world.
She tried to wear her nice black jeans, but they’d gotten loose, and she told herself she’d be happy about that later when she learned to be happy about things again. Her other pair of nice jeans didn’t fit either, so she had to wear yoga pants. They were stretchy enough to still hug her body and not fall off. She added a long sweater, brushed her hair and teeth, and set out for Oakwood Elementary.
Out of curiosity, she took Old Highway 23 to get there. It wasn’t the fastest way, but apparently it was the way Juliette took between their two towns. If Evelyn were being truthful, it was a beautiful drive. Most traffic around here was into or out of the city, so the space between the towns was quiet and dotted with farms.
She wondered, once she reached civilization again, what Juliette’s life was like here. She really did seem to have it all, so why had she risked it for an affair with Gary? Was this something Juliette did often, just a normal part of her life? Or had she thought she’d loved Gary? Had she daydreamed about him as she ran errands, carting her children in and out of the grocery store? Had she jogged these streets while plotting their next rendezvous?
The school was on the far side of Juliette’s town, tucked into a little neighborhood of new houses that looked like Evelyn’s own. She drove around the school and found a parking space that faced the playground. There were two hours of school left. With a second-grade class, there must be an afternoon recess. The kids couldn’t sit still long at that age.
As soon as she switched off the car and settled in to wait, Evelyn’s phone rang from an unfamiliar number. She looked nervously around. Gary’s mistress couldn’t know what Evelyn looked like, could she? Frowning, she tried to remember if there was a picture of herself on Gary’s desk, but she was almost sure there wasn’t. Too personal. Too unprofessional.
She put the phone to her ear slowly. “Hello?”
“Evelyn? It’s Jackie.”
“Jackie?” One of the school doors opened, and tiny children spilled out like ants surging from an anthill.
“Jackie Arthur. The office gave me your number.”
&n
bsp; “Oh.” She and Jackie had only ever communicated in person or through email. “Jackie, this isn’t a great time.”
A teacher followed the kids out, but it wasn’t Juliette. Another group of kids followed. Evelyn craned her neck, trying to see past the doors.
“I know you’re sick, but the book-fair boxes are coming in, and nobody knows what to do with them. And I think only two people have volunteered as cashiers, so . . .”
So. So what? “Maybe you could take care of that while I’m sick?”
“Oh, I don’t know anything about the book fair. I’ve just been getting lots of questions from people, and I don’t want this to become a disaster.”
Suddenly she was there. Juliette. She followed a third wave of tiny children, crossing her arms tight across her chest as she stepped outside.
“If you could answer the questions I’ve emailed, then—”
“Jackie, I’m sorry, I need to run to the bathroom. I’ll call you back.”
She hung up and grabbed the small binoculars she’d taken from Gary’s golf bag. Aware that watching a school with binoculars was a no-no, Evelyn hunched down before putting them to her eyes.
Strangely, she felt less wrong about this than anything else she’d done. Juliette had slept with Evelyn’s husband. This kind of reconnaissance was just routine in this situation. Juliette should be happy Evelyn hadn’t knocked on her front door.
She fiddled with the focus for a while, grunting when Juliette finally came through crystal clear. It felt as if Evelyn were standing right there with her as she leaned over and accepted a dandelion from a little boy. A dandelion. How adorable.
Evelyn really did feel like puking now.
Juliette smiled her wide smile, and the boy grinned back before running off. Did every male love her? Was it that petite, golden helplessness they couldn’t resist? Maybe they’d all love her more if Evelyn ran up and punched her in her cute little nose. Maybe they’d all gather around to protect her from the big mean old lady.
Evelyn growled and rubbed her eyes before looking again. Juliette hung back close to the school, arms crossed over her chest again.
Evelyn, After: A Novel Page 18