She's Not There

by Joy Fielding

  Caroline knew even less about champagne than she knew about wine, but she knew that Dom Pérignon was one of the most expensive champagnes you could buy. “Are we celebrating?”

  “You might say that.”

  “What would you say?”

  He smiled. “That having lunch with a beautiful woman is reason enough for celebration.”

  Was he coming on to her? Was that the reason he’d phoned? “How’s Rain?” she asked pointedly.

  “Sharp as a tack,” he said with a smile. “And about as pleasant.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re separated.”

  “Oh.” Caroline sank back in her chair.

  “You seem surprised.”

  “I guess I am. You seemed so crazy about each other.”

  “I was crazy about her. She was just crazy.” He winked.

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said, ignoring the wink. While she and Rain had never been close, she had no interest in sitting here listening to him bad-mouth the woman. She’d heard enough bad-mouthing when Steve and Becky were going through their divorce. “You sound as if you’re having a difficult time.”

  “I admit it hasn’t been easy.”

  Was that why he’d called? Because he needed a shoulder to cry on? Did he have no one else to confide in?

  The waiter returned with their champagne, popped the cork expertly and efficiently, and poured two glasses.

  “To fresh starts,” Jerrod said, clicking his glass against hers.

  Caroline reluctantly brought the glass to her lips and took a sip, feeling the bubbles tickle the tip of her nose. “I’m sorry, Jerrod. I don’t mean to be rude, but why am I here?”

  “You’ve never heard of two old friends getting together?”

  “I haven’t seen you in fifteen years,” Caroline reminded him. “Even then, you were more Hunter’s friend than mine.”

  “Yes, well, so much for that.”

  “So much for what?”

  “You really have no idea what I’m talking about,” Jerrod stated more than asked. He took another sip of his champagne.

  “I really don’t.”

  The waiter approached with their menus.

  “Do you mind if I order for us?” Jerrod asked. “They make the most fabulous shrimp salad. I really think you’ll love it.”

  Caroline nodded, feeling her appetite already disappearing. If this was the way Jerrod had behaved during his marriage, then all her sympathies rested with Rain. It was a wonder their union had survived as long as it had.

  “Two shrimp salads. And could we have some bread, please? Thank you.”

  “You said on the phone that you’d recently learned some things that might interest me,” Caroline said as soon as the waiter retreated.

  “Absolutely true.”

  “Are you going to tell me what they are or are you going to make me guess?”

  “It’s about your former husband and my soon-to-be-ex-wife.”

  “What about them?”

  “You still haven’t guessed?”

  “I’m lousy at guessing games.”

  “They were having an affair,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “They were having an affair,” Caroline repeated, trying not to laugh. The man was out of his mind. Hunter had always seemed oblivious to Rain’s obvious charms. And even in the unlikely event that he and Rain had been involved, what difference did it make to her now? She was no longer Hunter’s wife. Other women were no longer her problem. Diana was the one Jerrod should be talking to. Hunter was her headache now.

  The waiter set a breadbasket on their table. “Try the olive bread,” Jerrod instructed her. “It’s the best in the city.” He took a slice and slathered it with butter. “I really thought you knew about it, or at the very least suspected.”

  “When exactly did this affair supposedly take place?”

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  Caroline felt a numbness begin to worm its way into the pit of her stomach. “Fifteen years ago?”

  “And there’s no ‘supposing’ about it. Rain admitted to the whole sordid thing. Frankly, I think she was relieved to finally get it off her chest. A chest that, I have to admit, I shall dearly miss.”

  Caroline felt the numbness starting to spread throughout her body. She’d known that Hunter had been cheating on her repeatedly in the aftermath of Samantha’s disappearance, but she’d never in her wildest dreams thought one of those affairs might be with Rain. “You mean after he got back from Mexico?”

  “After. Before. During.” Jerrod popped the piece of olive bread in his mouth and chewed vigorously.

  The numbness took root in Caroline’s lungs. She couldn’t breathe. “Wait. You’re saying they were sleeping together while we were in Rosarito?”

  “Happy anniversary.” He raised his glass in a toast, then immediately set it back on the table. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be glib. You don’t deserve that. You were clearly as duped as I was.”

  “And Rain just blurted all this out?”

  “Blurted out a lot more than that. As I said, I think she was relieved to finally come clean.”

  “What exactly did she tell you?”

  “That while we were in Mexico, she and Hunter were together whenever they had the chance, that they’d even snuck away during your anniversary dinner, that they were going at it hot and heavy while your husband was supposedly checking on Samantha…”

  A strangled cry escaped Caroline’s lips.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you. Water under the bridge and all that. What possible good would your knowing this do after all this time? But with all the recent stuff in the news, I couldn’t get you out of my head. I know it doesn’t change anything, but I guess I thought you had the right to know.”

  Caroline jumped to her feet. “I have to go.”

  “What? No, wait. You haven’t eaten. I thought we might go for a walk on the beach later, maybe take in a movie…”

  Caroline stared at him in disbelief. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered, running from the patio.

  Jerrod might be right about Hunter and Rain, but if what he said was true, he was wrong about it not changing anything.

  It changed everything.

  The phone was ringing, interrupting a nightmare in which Caroline was being pursued down a dark corridor by a man wearing a hockey mask and brandishing a large butcher knife. “Shit,” she cried, sitting up in bed and trying to orient herself to her surroundings. She was in her room, in her bed, the odor of stale popcorn hanging in the air like cheap cologne. It was dark, except for the light coming from the TV on the opposite wall. On the screen, a terrified young woman was being chased through a cornfield by a knife-wielding lunatic. The digital clock beside her bed read 1:35.

  “Fright Night will continue in a moment,” announced the disembodied voice from the TV as Caroline muted the sound and reached for the phone, her heart pounding, her adrenaline pumping. Being chased by a knife-wielding psychopath was never a good thing; phone calls in the middle of the night were almost as bad.

  “Hello?”

  “You better get over here,” Hunter said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Michelle. She’s…”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Take it easy,” her ex-husband said, his voice instantly softening. “She’s fine.”

  Caroline’s mind struggled to focus, to arrange the events of the evening in some sort of order. It was Saturday night; Michelle was at a party; Caroline had spent the night alone, watching horror movies in bed, a bowl of homemade popcorn in her lap. At some point during the nonstop carnage, she’d obviously fallen asleep. Michelle had just as obviously missed her one o’clock curfew. What was she doing at Hunter’s apartment?

  “I don’t understand,” Caroline said, her brain unable to make sense of the situation, her head threatening to explode.

  “She’s drunk.”

  “What?”

  “You’d better get over here.”<
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  Caroline glanced down at her butter-stained nightgown, then back at the clock. It was late. She was in bed. Michelle was unharmed. The fact that her fifteen-year-old daughter had been drinking was worrisome, but it wasn’t exactly a medical emergency. “Can’t she just stay there tonight? I’ll come get her first thing in the morning.”

  “Now,” Hunter said, then hung up the phone.

  Caroline stared at the receiver in her hand. “Aye, aye, Captain.” Reluctantly she tossed off her covers and climbed out of bed. “What’s the damn urgency?” she muttered as she pulled on a pair of jeans and exchanged her nightgown for a lightweight gray sweatshirt. She was almost at the front door, car keys in hand, when she realized she didn’t know where she was going. “I don’t know your address,” she told Hunter on the phone moments later.

  Mercifully, there was little traffic at that hour and Caroline soon found herself in the formerly sleazy but now trendy downtown neighborhood known as the Gaslamp Quarter, her eyes searching the rows of beautifully restored Victorian buildings for her ex-husband’s address. When they were married, Hunter wouldn’t have considered living in this part of town, filled as it was with tattoo parlors, porn shops, and tenements on the verge of collapse. But the last decade had seen such old eyesores supplanted by shiny new art galleries, boutiques, and upscale restaurants. It had become the “in” place to be and be seen, so it was only natural that Hunter had recently purchased a condo here. Caroline opened her car window and breathed in the cool night air. Even at almost two A.M., music from several of the nearby clubs could still be heard, the throb of a lone bass guitar spilling out onto the street like an errant heartbeat.

  Caroline located Hunter’s address and pulled into the first available parking spot, which was almost a full block away. It was October, and a slight breeze was blowing in from the ocean. She probably should have thrown on a jacket before she left the house, she was thinking as she walked briskly down the street. But Hunter seemed in such a damn hurry. What was the rush, for God’s sake? Why was he so anxious to get Michelle out of his apartment?

  They were waiting for her in the rose-colored lobby, Hunter looking attractively disheveled in a pair of tight jeans and a white T-shirt, Michelle looking vaguely green around the gills, her long, uncombed hair hiding all of her face except for her eyes, eyes that were glaring at her mother with unabashed hostility.

  “Are you all right?” Caroline asked her, ignoring Hunter, whose feet she noticed were bare.

  “Get her home and into bed,” Hunter said, as if Michelle’s condition was somehow Caroline’s fault.

  “I don’t understand. What happened?”

  “It’s late,” he said, already turning toward the elevators. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Hunter…”

  “Can we just go home?” Michelle wailed.

  Caroline watched Hunter step inside the waiting elevator, then led her daughter out of the lobby and down the street, Michelle shrugging her mother’s arms off her shoulders as soon as they reached the sidewalk. Glancing back at Hunter’s building as they walked toward her car, Caroline saw a shadowy figure peeking out at them from behind some curtains about five stories up. Had Michelle created such a disturbance that she’d awakened Hunter’s neighbors? Was that why he’d been so anxious to get rid of her?

  “I’m not an invalid,” her daughter said when Caroline tried to help her into the car.

  “No, you’re fifteen and you’re drunk,” Caroline said, unable to keep her anger at bay any longer. “What the hell happened tonight?”

  Michelle hunkered down in her seat, said nothing.

  “What happened?” Caroline persisted, starting the engine and pulling away from the curb. “What were you doing at your father’s? And put your seat belt on,” she added when the seat belt signal started beeping.

  Michelle dragged her seat belt across the low scooped neck of her tight powder blue T-shirt.

  “That’s not what you were wearing when you left the house,” Caroline said, recalling the more modest black blouse her daughter had been wearing earlier. “Start talking, Michelle. What’s going on?”

  Michelle groaned.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Michelle bolted upright in her seat. “You want answers? Fine, I’ll give you answers. Did you know Daddy and Diana have set a date?”

  “That’s a question, not an answer,” Caroline shot back, fighting to stay in control.

  “And that she’s all of twenty-one.”

  “Your father’s girlfriends are none of my concern.” Dear God—twenty-one? “Nor are they the issue here.”

  “Did you hear what I said? They’re engaged. They’re getting married in June.”

  “Again, none of my concern.”

  “So it doesn’t bother you that he’s getting married again?”

  “It’s not exactly unexpected.”

  “Or that they’re planning this big wedding with more than two hundred guests and at least ten bridesmaids?”

  “They told you that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “How exactly?”

  “I heard them.”

  “What? When?”

  “Before they knew I was there.”

  “I don’t understand. How didn’t they know you were there? You’re saying you snuck into your father’s apartment?”

  “I have a key. It’s not exactly sneaking in when you have a key.”

  “What were you doing there in the first place?”

  Michelle shrugged and leaned her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes.

  “Oh, no,” Caroline said. “Nobody gets to sleep around here until we get to the bottom of this. Now start at the beginning,” she instructed. “You went to a party at Chloe’s. You got drunk.”

  “It’s not like I was plastered. I just had a few drinks.”

  “You’re fifteen years old! You shouldn’t be drinking at all. Where were Chloe’s parents?”

  “How do I know?”

  “You told me they’d be home.”

  “Yeah, well, I lied. Guess you should have checked.”

  “I guess I should have. You can add it to the list of my failings.”

  “Yeah, poor you.”

  “Except this is not about me. It’s about you.”

  “I know. I know. I’m a horrible daughter and a horrible person…”

  “Nobody said you’re a horrible person or a horrible daughter.”

  “You don’t have to say it. I can feel it. I feel it every damn day.”

  Caroline stopped the car in the middle of the road and swung around in her seat to face Michelle. “What are you talking about?”

  “You think I don’t know what a disappointment I am to you? God, no wonder I drink.”

  “You’re saying it’s my fault you got drunk?”

  “Of course it’s not your fault. Nothing’s ever your fault.”

  From behind them, a car started honking. Caroline checked her rearview mirror. “Damn it. Where did he come from?”

  “It’s downtown Saturday night, Mother. You’re not the only person on the road.”

  Caroline threw the car back into drive and pulled to a stop at the curb, then shut off the engine.

  “Really?” Michelle whined. “We’re doing this now?”

  “We’re doing this now,” Caroline said, turning her daughter’s question into an answer.

  “I don’t feel well. I just want to go home.”

  “Then tell me what you were doing at your father’s.”

  “Chloe’s party was boring, so a bunch of us decided to head over to Maxie’s.”

  “Who’s Maxie?”

  “Not who. What.” Michelle rolled her eyes, as if to say, Don’t you know anything? “It’s a club.” She waved her hand in its general direction. “A few blocks down.”

  “How’d you get in? You’re fifteen.”

  “I know how old I am. You don’t have to keep telling me.” This time she rolled
not only her eyes but her whole head. “I have a fake I.D.”

  “You have a fake I.D.?”

  “Everybody does.”

  “Not everybody does. I don’t.”

  “Because you don’t need one,” Michelle said, as if this should be self-explanatory. “You’re old, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Okay, that’s quite enough.”

  “Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?”

  Caroline said nothing. She turned her right hand palm up, as if giving Michelle the floor.

  “We went to Maxie’s. We were dancing. It was hot. I started feeling kind of sick, so I left. Dad’s place was right around the corner, and I figured I could stay there tonight. I was planning to call you. So you wouldn’t worry,” she emphasized. “I have a key, like I told you. So I let myself in. I was tiptoeing down the hall, ’cause I didn’t want to wake him up in case he was sleeping, and that’s when I heard them.”

  “You heard your father and this…this Diana person talking about their wedding.”

  “Yeah. Well, not at first. At first I just heard them, you know…groaning and stuff.”

  Shit, thought Caroline, trying not to remember the variety of noises Hunter used to make when they were having sex.

  “Then Diana said something like, ‘Is it going to be this good once we’re married?’ and Daddy said, ‘Even better.’ And I think that may have been when I threw up.”

  “You threw up?”

  “That’s when they realized I was there.”

  “You threw up?” Caroline repeated, fighting the urge to throw her arms around Michelle and smother her face with kisses.

  “Dad freaked.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “He jumped out of bed and started running around the room like a crazy person. And Diana was screaming for him to put some clothes on, ’cause he obviously forgot he was naked. Anyway, that’s when he called you, told you to come and get me. Okay? Are you satisfied now?”

  “Yes,” Caroline said, stifling a laugh before it could escape her throat. Very.

  “Can we go home?”

  “Is she really only twenty-one?”

  “I think she’s closer to thirty. Can we please go home now?”

  Caroline restarted the car’s engine. “I love you,” she said.