by Joy Fielding
—
Michelle was still sleeping at noon the next day when Hunter phoned to talk about what had happened and to apologize for his behavior.
“I understand you’re getting married,” Caroline said.
A second’s silence, then, “I was going to tell you…”
“Have you set a date?”
“June nineteenth. We thought it best to wait a while. Until things calm down.”
Caroline knew he was referring to the barrage of articles that were likely to start appearing over the next few weeks, stories marking the upcoming tenth anniversary of Samantha’s disappearance. What would have been their twentieth anniversary had they stayed married, Caroline thought. Reporters would be eager to pounce on any new tidbit, however unrelated it might be to the original event. When Hunter and Caroline had divorced, it made the Milestones column of every national magazine in the country. His remarriage to a younger woman would certainly add more fuel to what was already an unquenchable fire.
“I’m sorry,” he said again before Caroline hung up.
She didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the tears funneling between her lips. She brushed them away with the back of one hand and reached for the small pad of notepaper she kept by the kitchen phone with the other. Gone to Nicola’s, she scribbled, referring to the small grocery store several blocks away where she sometimes shopped despite its exorbitant prices. “If you want to know what grocery stores will be charging in the future,” Peggy had once quipped, “shop at Nicola’s today.” Back soon, she added.
Not that they needed anything, Caroline thought as she was walking down the street. More that she just needed to get out of the house. And she could use the exercise. She couldn’t help having noticed how good Hunter still looked, how he’d kept himself in such great shape, while she’d let herself go a little, first giving up her membership in the gym they used to frequent together, then abandoning the treadmill she once kept in her walk-in closet and used daily, and not bothering to replace it when it stopped working.
She entered Nicola’s, grabbed a small green plastic basket from beside the front door, and began walking up and down the aisles, stopping at the produce section and lifting an avocado, mentally measuring its ripeness.
“Is everything all right?” she heard someone ask.
Caroline spun around, finding herself face-to-face with a handsome man of about forty. Well, not exactly handsome, she decided, assessing the thinning dark blond hair that fell into his light brown eyes, and the deep creases surrounding his too wide mouth, everything just a little off. Still, there was something very appealing about him. “Excuse me?”
“You have a choke hold on that avocado,” he said. “Is there a problem?”
Caroline quickly dropped the avocado into her basket. “I guess I just drifted off for a few minutes. I’m sorry.” Why was she apologizing? She didn’t know this man. She didn’t owe him an explanation, let alone an apology.
“No need to apologize,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “You seem to know your produce,” he continued with a smile. “Maybe you could help me out.” He extended a cantaloupe in her direction. “I never know when one’s ripe or not.”
Was he coming on to her? “Are you asking me to feel your melon?” she asked, amazed at the flirtatiousness in her voice. It had been so long since she’d engaged in this sort of banter with a man. Not since Hunter. And now he was getting married. To a woman at least a decade her junior. A woman with whom he’d been having great sex when their inebriated fifteen-year-old daughter showed up unexpectedly and threw up in his doorway. And Caroline hadn’t had sex in eight years. She hadn’t so much as looked at another man since Hunter left. How fair was that?
“Why don’t we start with a cup of coffee?” the man asked. “My name is Arthur Wainwright, by the way.”
“Caroline,” Caroline answered, deliberately omitting mention of her surname. She dropped her basket onto a stack of hothouse tomatoes and followed the man out of the grocery store to the Starbucks around the corner without another word.
“Son of a bitch!” Caroline was shouting as she sped north on Mission Boulevard toward the upscale neighborhood of La Jolla. “Son of a bitch!” She slapped the palm of her hand against the steering wheel, causing it to bark in protest, then used the back of her hand to wipe away the tears that had been falling down her cheeks ever since she’d left Jerrod Bolton standing openmouthed beside his table on the patio of Darby’s. “How could you do this, you miserable son of a bitch?”
She glanced to her right, saw the driver in the car beside her regarding her with a mixture of concern and fear. “Mind your own damn business,” she hollered at him through the closed window of her passenger door, and he quickly turned away.
Did he recognize her? Would she read about her strange behavior in tomorrow’s papers? Was he even now snapping pictures of her surreptitiously with his cell phone, pictures that would wallpaper the Internet come morning? Mother of missing child Samantha Shipley has public breakdown in the middle of busy thoroughfare.
“I don’t believe it,” she muttered, speeding up and switching into the right lane when Mission Boulevard morphed into La Jolla Boulevard, keeping an eye out for her exit. “I don’t believe it.”
What don’t I believe? she asked herself in the next breath. That Hunter had cheated on her? That was a laugh. Of course Hunter had cheated on her. Many times and with many different women. But with Rain? Had Hunter really cheated on her with a woman he’d dismissed as a lightweight, saying on more than one occasion that “a little of her went a long way”? How little? Caroline wondered now. Exactly how far had she gone?
“Clearly all the way,” she announced to her startled reflection in the rearview mirror. So she did believe Hunter could have slept with Rain. How could she not have suspected as much before? She thought back to that night in the garden restaurant of their hotel in Rosarito, remembering that Hunter and Rain had excused themselves from the dinner table at the same time, Rain ostensibly to get a sweater, Hunter to check on the kids. Her mind’s eye watched them go their separate ways at the entrance to the restaurant, although that deception could have been easily staged and just as easily remedied. She watched them return approximately fifteen minutes later and only moments apart, Hunter supposedly delayed because of a slow elevator, Rain because she’d had to unpack her entire suitcase to find her sweater.
Except Rain hadn’t been unpacking and Hunter hadn’t been checking on the kids. Instead they were together, going at it like a couple of horny teenagers while someone was entering Caroline’s suite and absconding with her baby. And Hunter hadn’t said a word. Not to the police. Not to her. Not then. Not for fifteen years. What else hadn’t he told her? “Damn you, Hunter! Damn you to hell!”
Caroline left La Jolla Boulevard at Torrey Pines Road, barely noticing La Jolla Natural Park as she sped past the leafy enclave. She didn’t see the police car sitting at the side of the road, didn’t register the officer’s presence until he was in full pursuit, didn’t realize the sirens blasting were meant for her until she saw the red lights flashing in her rearview mirror and watched the uniformed cop cut in front of her and wave her to a stop at the side of the road.
“Any idea how fast you were going?” he asked as Caroline lowered her window.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize…”
“License and registration,” he directed.
Caroline grabbed her purse from the passenger seat and fished inside it for her wallet, extending it toward the policeman, who looked shockingly young beneath his helmet.
“Take it out of your wallet, please.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She had trouble opening the wallet, and even more difficulty extricating her license, her trembling fingers refusing to cooperate. She took a deep breath, lowered the wallet to her lap, then tried again.
“You nervous about something?” the officer asked, his voice an accusation.
Caroline shook
her head, apologized again. Ever since her experience with the Mexican authorities, when they’d all but accused her of being complicit in the disappearance of her daughter, she’d experienced terrible anxiety whenever she was around police officers. Her heart would pound, her hands would break into a sweat, her breath would escape in short, painful bursts. “Here,” she said, finally managing to free her license and registration from their plastic confines.
The officer checked her face against her photo, paused for a second over her name. “You’re Caroline Shipley?” he asked. Did you murder your child?
Caroline turned away, unable to respond.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, I’m Caroline Shipley.”
“You were going twenty miles over the limit,” he told her.
“Twenty miles,” she repeated numbly.
“Have you been drinking?”
“Drinking? No.” Would the officer insist she take a Breathalyzer test and would the tiny sip of champagne she’d taken earlier register on it? What would he say if she refused to comply? Would he haul her off to jail, as had happened with Michelle only months ago? She could see the headlines now: Mother of missing child Samantha Shipley arrested for driving drunk. Or worse: All in the Family: Mother and sister of missing child Samantha Shipley both face charges of driving under the influence.
“Please stay in the car,” the policeman said, returning to his vehicle and feeding her information to headquarters. “I’m afraid this is going to cost you,” he announced upon his return, handing back her license and registration along with a speeding ticket for three hundred dollars. “Mind telling me why you were in such a hurry?”
I was rushing to confront my ex-husband about his affair with the wife of his former business associate, a woman who was supposedly helping us celebrate our tenth anniversary when, all the while, she was actually fucking my husband. In fact, she was fucking him when he was supposed to be checking on our children, possibly even mounting him at the very moment that our youngest child was being lifted from her crib and spirited away. And I was in such a damn hurry because too much time has already been wasted as a result of his lies, lies he told me, lies he told the police, lies he’s been telling the world for fifteen fucking years. “Just taking a drive,” she said instead.
The officer sighed. “Well, slow down. You don’t want to kill someone.” Did you murder your child?
Caroline tossed the ticket, along with her license and registration, into her purse. She would return the license and registration to their proper compartments in her wallet when her hands stopped shaking. “Thank you,” she told the policeman when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He stepped back and she threw the car into drive and pulled back onto the road, watching the officer in her rearview mirror as he returned to his vehicle. Had he known who she was or was his scowl indiscriminate, the one he used on all reckless drivers?
“Damn you, Hunter Shipley,” she said as she pressed down on the accelerator, careful to keep within the posted speed limit as she continued toward Hunter’s new home. “This is all your fault. I should give you the fucking ticket.”
Torrey Pines Road twisted into Torrey Pines Drive, its magnificent mini-mansions overlooking the ocean. It had always been Hunter’s dream to own property here, in what the residents of La Jolla referred to as the “Jewel” of San Diego. And now, due to a combination of hard work and a rich young wife, here he was. Some dreams do come true, she thought ruefully, pulling her car into the driveway of the wood-and-glass, ultra-modern two-story home and shutting off the engine. “Damn you, Hunter,” she whispered as she got out of the car, repeating the words silently as she hurried up the stone walkway to the massive oak front door.
She rang the bell, then banged on it with the tail of its bronze dolphin knocker. “Hurry up, you miserable son of a bitch.”
The thought suddenly occurred to her that he might not be home. It was the weekend, after all. Maybe he and Diana had taken their two young children for a stroll along the beach, or a drive up the coast. Maybe she’d sped all this way, incurring a three-hundred-dollar ticket, for absolutely nothing.
The door opened. A young woman with flawless skin, long blond hair, and a baby on one slender hip stood before her, blue eyes wide with alarm. “Caroline?”
“Diana?” Caroline had actually never met the woman who was Hunter’s second wife. She’d seen pictures of her, heard Michelle casually extol her beauty, but nothing had prepared her for how lovely the young woman actually was. Like a little porcelain doll, she thought, feeling fleshy and oafish in her presence. In comparison, the baby in her arms was more Cabbage Patch doll than china, red-faced and wrinkly, although Caroline could see traces of Hunter, traces of Samantha, in her huge, almond-shaped eyes. She turned away, fighting the urge to grab the child from her mother’s arms and run.
“Is something wrong?”
“Where’s Hunter?”
“Has something happened to Michelle?” Diana’s soft voice resonated with concern.
“Michelle’s fine. I need to speak to Hunter.”
“What’s going on?” her ex-husband called from somewhere inside the house.
“Caroline’s here to see you,” Diana called back. “Come in,” she told Caroline, ushering her inside and closing the front door behind her.
“I need to talk to you, you son of a bitch,” Caroline yelled in his general direction. Her eyes swept across the huge circular front hall and up the winding staircase to where Hunter stood, looking down on them from the second-floor landing.
Within seconds he was at her side. “What the hell is going on? What are you doing here? Is Michelle…?”
“You were fucking Rain, you miserable son of a bitch?” she exploded as he took a step back. The baby in Diana’s arms began to whimper.
“Whoa. Hold on a minute. Lower your voice.”
“Don’t tell me to lower my voice…”
“Take the baby upstairs,” he directed his wife, who complied immediately and without question. “Calm down,” he said to Caroline.
“I will not calm down.”
“Then you’ll have to leave.”
“Oh, really? You gonna throw me out? You gonna call the cops? You really want the world to know you were fucking another man’s wife while someone was making off with your child?”
The color drained from Hunter’s face, like milk from a straw. He raised his hands in surrender. “I just want you to calm down and lower your voice. I’m prepared to discuss this…”
“You’re prepared to discuss this?” Caroline repeated incredulously. “After fifteen years, you’re prepared to discuss this?”
“Come into the living room. We’ll sit down, talk about this like two rational adults.” He motioned toward the large sun-filled room on his right.
Caroline almost laughed as she followed him into the tastefully furnished living room whose wall of front windows overlooked the ocean. Did he know how ridiculous he sounded? Didn’t he realize she’d ceased being a rational adult fifteen years ago? She sank into the overstuffed pillows of the aubergine velvet sofa. He remained on his feet, hovering over the gold brocade armchair to her left.
“What is it, exactly, that you think you know?”
“I know you were fucking Rain…”
“Do you think you could stop using that word…?”
“No, I don’t fucking think I can stop using that fucking word,” Caroline told him, watching him wince. “It’s a good word. A great word. And I don’t fucking think I know anything. I know, for a fucking fact, that you were fucking Rain Bolton. You’re not really going to try to deny it, are you?”
Hunter looked on the verge of doing just that, then thought better of it. “All right. Fine. Yes. I had an affair with Rain. But that was after we got back from Mexico, when you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Liar!” Caroline snapped.
“Caroline…”
“I spoke to Jerrod Bolton
today. He called me, told me that Rain had confessed the whole thing. They’re getting a divorce, by the way. You can be very proud of yourself.”
Hunter sank into the armchair, said nothing.
“You made me think it was my fault, that you were leaving me because you couldn’t live with the blame you saw in my eyes every day. That it was my coldness that drove you into the arms of other women. When the truth was that you’d been sleeping with other women all along. Before we went to Rosarito. After we came home. While we were there.”
“Okay. Okay. You win. I’m a total shit. Is that what you want to hear me say?”
“I already know you’re a shit. I don’t need you to tell me,” Caroline shot back. She pushed her hair away from her face, shaking her head with the memory of their last night together. “When I think of how I begged you, pleaded with you to stay, promised you that things would be different if you’d just give me another chance…”
“You didn’t want that. Not really. We both knew that. We both knew it was over, that it had been over for two years.” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t understand what possible good can come of talking about this now.”
“You really don’t get it?”
“If it’s an apology you’re after…”
“I don’t want your damned apology.”
“Then what do you want?”
Caroline ignored the question. “You were sleeping with Rain,” she reiterated.
Once again Hunter raised his hands in surrender. “Yes. I believe that fact has already been stipulated to.”
“And you were sleeping with her while we were in Rosarito.”
“Yes.”
“On the night of our tenth anniversary.”
“Yes, dammit.”
“No swearing, please,” Caroline said, because she couldn’t help herself. “And you were with her when you were supposedly checking on our children.”
“You and I had been taking turns checking them every half hour, for God’s sake. You’d just been up there. You said they were fine.”