The Girl I Used to Be: A gripping and emotional page-turner

by Heidi Hostetter

  The women watched the men cross the yard then Jill returned her attention to Nadia. “Did you have a good time in Freeport too?”

  “Not especially, no.” Nadia’s lifted a flute of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray.

  “Really? Why not?”

  Nadia’s expression flickered just before she changed the subject. “For one thing, when we returned, Cush was served. It seems that his ex-wife Angela is dragging him back into court—that put him in a mood.”

  “Why would she do that? What happened?”

  “No idea.” Nadia sipped her drink. “The curse of the second wife is never to ask questions about the first wife, so I don’t.” She lowered her voice. “But I do overhear things.”

  “Really?” Jill had heard whispers of husbands traveling out of the country, to Freeport specifically, just before a divorce settlement. She had a theory that those men were hiding assets, but she didn’t know for sure. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Cush doing it too.

  “Who goes to Freeport in August? I’ll tell you: the heat was unbearable.” Nadia brought the champagne to her lips and sipped. Her diamond tennis bracelet glinted in the late afternoon sun as she gestured toward the pool. “What’s happening over there?”

  Jill followed Nadia’s gaze to a quiet corner of the pool house, where Brittney stood and where Marc and Cush were headed. Brittney looked different than she had earlier, more relaxed. She’d put her hair up in a messy bun and one long tendril rested on her ample cleavage. Her lipstick seemed brighter, too—a different shade of red, more vibrant. She looked up and smiled as she waited for Marc to approach.

  “No idea.”

  “You’d better watch that,” Nadia warned. “This is how things get ugly.”

  “I think she’s about to be fired.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Makes sense. Dewberry Beach hasn’t sold and she’s in charge of selling it.”

  Nadia eyed her with a critical gaze. “She doesn’t look that worried.”

  Five

  Two weeks after Marc’s party, Jill had good news of her own. To celebrate, she was attempting to recreate Aunt Sarah’s magnificent stuffed shells from memory. But it wasn’t going well. The dish that Aunt Sarah could whip up in a few minutes had taken Jill most of the day and even now she wasn’t sure she’d gotten the recipe right.

  She peered into the pot, at the red sauce that was far more complicated that she remembered. Jill had driven to the fancy organic market across town for the last of the summer tomatoes because Aunt Sarah always used Jersey tomatoes. Jill had heated the pan and added a healthy pour of olive oil, just like Aunt Sarah always had. And when the oil shimmered, Jill had added the chopped tomatoes, diced onions and fresh oregano all at once. But she hadn’t expected the ingredients to pop and burn like they did. Or the smoke alarm to go off so quickly.

  It took three attempts and a second trip to the store, but the effort had paid off. Now, the aroma of softened onions and rich garlic threaded the air, and Jill was transported to summers in Aunt Sarah’s tiny kitchen. Clad in an apron and standing on a chair, Jill’s job had been to add ingredients when instructed, but it was always Aunt Sarah who’d provided the magic. Later, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Barney, all the cousins and their friends would gather around the table and dinner would become a free-for-all of conversation, interruptions, and, eventually, an epic battle waged over the last meatball.

  Those were the best memories of her life—summers at Aunt Sarah’s beach house.

  Even if Aunt Sarah would have been disappointed with how long it had taken Jill to recreate her red sauce, she’d celebrate the occasion. Mrs. Brockhurst’s personal secretary had telephoned earlier that morning. Mrs. Brockhurst wanted to meet with Jill to discuss ideas for the upcoming family Christmas portrait. Jill managed a cool “of course,” as if that sort of thing happened every day, and they’d arranged a date. But the moment she’d hung up, Jill had shrieked with glee. Her moment had come. And it was this news that she planned to share with Marc tonight before he left for the Berkshire property. The new project had ramped up quickly and Marc now spent much of the work week at the construction trailer on site.

  Jill listened as the front door opened, then closed. A few seconds later she heard Marc toss his keys onto the foyer table.

  He entered the kitchen with a stack of mail. He must have noticed the delicious smell because his expression changed from concentration to bemusement.

  “What’s all this?” He lifted a brow in query.

  “I happen to be cooking,” Jill announced happily as she leaned in to kiss her husband. He smelled like the spicy aftershave she liked, the kind he used after a fresh shower. Oddly, the scent seemed to have once again lasted all day. “We have something to celebrate.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “I heard from Georgiana Brockhurst today. She wants to talk to me about ideas for her family’s Christmas portrait.” Jill sprinkled salt into the pasta water, feeling almost professional. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Christmas?” Marc repeated as he lowered the stack of mail. “I thought you were still working on getting me an invitation to the wedding. I’d expected that we’d be going.”

  Jill turned to face him, honestly confused. “I told you this before, Marc. Libby’s bridal portraits were not part of the wedding. Even if they were, I’d be a vendor at the wedding, not a guest. We were never going to be invited.”

  “So you said.” Marc frown deepened. “But I thought you understood how important an invitation is to me, to my company. I told you I’d been trying to break into that social circle for years. If you had brought an invitation home, that would have been something to celebrate.”

  On the stove, the tomato sauce plunked against the skillet lid and Jill adjusted the flame. Marc had been short-tempered lately and Jill had assumed the reason was lack of sleep. She imagined him spending restless nights on a cot at the construction trailer on the Berkshire site, working extra hours just to get the project off the ground. For the past few days she’d been choosing her words carefully and had ignored most of his moods, but not this time. The Brockhurst phone call was too important.

  Jill straightened to meet his scowl. “Marc, this is big news for me. Georgiana Brockhurst has seen my work and likes it enough to consider me for another project. I’m really excited about this.”

  “We’ll celebrate when you do something worthy of celebration,” Marc muttered as he tore open an envelope. “Until then, you’re wasting your time. And my money.”

  The pasta water rolled to a boil. It spattered on the grate, hissing as it touched the hot metal. Jill let it burn.

  “This is the second time you’ve said that and I’m beginning to think you might really believe it.” Jill drew a steady breath, though it took effort. “So now I’ll ask you directly: do you think my photography is just a hobby?”

  He ignored her, focusing instead on sending a text from his phone.

  “Marc, I asked you a question.” Jill planted her hand on her hip, her South Jersey temper flaring. “I would appreciate an answer.”

  “Just a minute,” he snapped, his face flushed as he typed.

  She watched him receive and send not one but a flurry of texts, his expression appearing more desperate after each one. Clearly whoever he was texting wasn’t cooperating and Jill felt her anger soften just a little. He looked so utterly exhausted. Of course he hadn’t meant what he said…

  When he was finished with his texts, Marc lifted his gaze and blinked, as if he’d forgotten Jill was in the room. It took him a moment to pick up the thread of their conversation, but when he did, his expression cleared.

  “No, of course I didn’t mean that.” He reached for her and Jill felt her anger melt. But then he added. “You know I don’t care that much about your pictures.”

  That was worse.

  Jill shook him off and turned her attention back to the skillet, though the sauce had long since finished cooking. “Why
don’t you go upstairs and take a hot shower?” His comment hurt and she wasn’t ready to let it go so easily, no matter how exhausted he might be. But neither was she ready to fight. Her day was too good to be ruined.

  “Fine.” As he left the kitchen, he unlocked his phone.

  She used to forgive casually hurtful remarks like this one. But this felt different, purposeful and targeted. As Jill added pasta to the salted water, she wondered what had changed.

  A few minutes after Marc left the room, Jill’s cell phone vibrated with an incoming message. Ellie had promised to send pictures of the Brockhurst compound in East Hampton and Jill looked forward to seeing them. As she rinsed her hands, her cell phone vibrated again. And a third time as she dried them on the towel. She retrieved her phone and swiped at the screen to open her mailbox. But the messages were not from Ellie. They were from Brittney. Three new emails, each with attachments and blank subject headings. Jill tapped the icon to open the attachments and as she flipped through the pictures, she felt the floor dissolve beneath her.

  The attachments were selfies.

  Pictures taken by Brittney.

  Photographs of Brittney and Marc together… in bed.

  Jill sank into a chair as her breath left her body. She flipped through the images again and felt her world crumble. This had to be a mistake.

  She forced herself to look at the pictures, to zoom in on the details. One looked as if it had been taken on a cot in a construction trailer—had to be the Berkshires. Two others, graphic images of Marc and Brittney together in the master bedroom at the Dewberry Beach house. Another on the couch in the pool house, just fifty yards from where Jill now stood. The last one taken in the bedroom Jill shared with her husband on the night of his birthday party.

  So many of them.

  It occurred to her, in an odd, detached way, that this explained Marc’s afternoon showers and the reason she had smelled his cologne just now.

  The phone burned in her hand and she flicked it away. It skittered across the table and crashed to the floor.

  After that, time melted into memory. Fragments of memories that didn’t quite make sense on their own suddenly arranged themselves in a surreal game of Tetris and the picture became whole. That August in Dewberry Beach when Marc’s hand had grazed Brittney’s shoulder as he’d passed her in the kitchen. Marc’s unwavering confidence in her work, despite her inability to sell the Dewberry Beach house. And finally, his bizarre request for Jill to lend Brittney “something nice” from her jewelry case. Like a cyclone gathering strength as it spun, the images came, clawing her with unexpected force. The whispered phone calls taken in another room. Routine work meetings that suddenly ran late and required an overnight stay in the Greenwich Village apartment. The renewed interest in the Dewberry Beach property and the trips to check on it.

  All of it came together in one picture, a truth that struck her like a physical blow.

  Marc was having an affair.

  Jill gripped the edge of the chair as she felt the room spin. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe, though she’d forgotten how. They’d only been married three years.

  “Hey, dinner ready?” Marc entered the kitchen, freshly showered.

  She heard him pause at the doorway and she opened her eyes.

  “You good?” Marc asked casually as he lifted the skillet lid to inspect the contents underneath.

  Jill stared at the man she’d married.

  She’d been twenty-two years old when she’d accepted a temp job in Marc’s office, commuting into Manhattan because city jobs paid two dollars more an hour and she needed the money. Their first date began with a casual invitation to lunch. Marc had said he’d meet her outside but when she’d seen him standing beside a sleek black limousine, she’d been sure she’d mistaken the dates. Their “simple lunch” date had included a carriage ride through Central Park to the Boathouse restaurant where Marc had reserved a table overlooking the water. After a two-hour lunch, he’d taken her to Bergdorf’s and told her to choose anything she wanted from the jewelry case, something that would remind her of their first date. It was an outrageous offer, and Jill had suspected that Aunt Sarah would have disapproved, but Jill had just ended a terrible relationship and Marc’s attention had been precisely the balm she’d needed. When she’d shyly asked for a charm bracelet, Marc had bought it without hesitation, even though it was outrageously expensive. And when the clerk had suggested a horse and buggy charm to go with it, Marc had laughed and added several more. For the next two weeks, he’d taken her out every night and gifted her a different charm before the start of every date.

  Idly, Jill wondered if Brittney had received a charm bracelet too.

  “Jill?” Marc’s voice felt like a stab.

  “You’re sleeping with her.” Saying it out loud made it real. The accusation was explosive, and the resulting mushroom cloud floated on the air like poison.

  Marc cursed softly under his breath and she knew it was true. Jill felt her heart shatter, her soul splinter. A part of her hoped he would deny it—wanted him to deny it. She wanted to believe that there would be a reasonable explanation for the pictures.

  “Then it’s true?” she asked again, just to be sure. Maybe there was an explanation, something she could hold on to. Something that would make things right again.

  “I told her not to send the pictures,” he sighed, as if the worst part was that Brittney had disobeyed him.

  Jill unlocked her phone and turned the screen toward him without looking at it herself, because seeing them together again would break her.

  “How long?” she managed to ask. Of the million questions that bubbled up, this one seemed the most important.

  But Marc refused to look, refused to abandon his place by the stove. Would not accept the evidence of his betrayal. In a surge of rage, Jill hurled her phone at him, but she missed. It ricocheted off the fancy quartz countertop and clattered to the floor once more.

  “How. Long?” Her shriek filled the room, absorbing the air and smothering what was left of their marriage.

  Marc let the question hang in the air, unanswered. They locked eyes, and when he understood that Jill would not back down, his own widened in surprise. She’d always backed down before.

  He raked his fingers through his hair and shrugged. “I don’t know. A few months, maybe more.”

  Jagged emotions swirled and churned, erupting in questions that pelted her like scattershot, each one inflicting a wound that would fester. How could Marc so casually toss aside a marriage that had meant everything to her? Was Brittney his only affair or had there been others? Others that may have begun and ended with Jill blissfully unaware. And, most importantly, had Marc ever loved her or was she just a placeholder? The last question almost brought her to her knees, but she steeled herself because right now, she needed to know.

  “At the Dewberry Beach house.” Jill sagged against the countertop. “That’s why you traveled there so often.”

  “Yes.”

  His easy admission surprised her. It gave her the courage to ask another question, though it felt as if she were pressing on a bruise. And the pain was cumulative; she wasn’t sure how much more she could bear.

  “Your birthday party. You left me alone with your guests while you were with—” The room spun, and she drew breath to steady it. “You were with Brittney. You slept with her that night, didn’t you? That last picture was taken in our room. In our bed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “What?”

  “I assume you’ve set her up in her own apartment. That’s what you did with me. Or is that why the Dewberry house hasn’t sold? You’re keeping it for her? A house that big is quite a step up from the apartment you offered me, I must say.”

  Even as she asked the question, Jill knew the answer. All of this was so unimaginable that it had to be a dream. It must be a dream. Jill grabbed the metal spoon from the skillet and squeezed the handle as hard as sh
e could, hoping for pain. If it didn’t hurt, that meant she was dreaming—that what was happening now wasn’t real.

  Marc straying from her had been Jill’s deepest fear from the very beginning. The gap between Marc’s official separation from Dianne and the start of his relationship with Jill was razor thin, something that had always bothered her. If it were true that Marc had cheated on Dianne with her, Jill had always suspected he would do the same to her. And if she were honest, that was part of the reason she did everything he wanted, so that she would be good enough for him. She increased the pressure on the spoon, willing the stress of the party or the intensity of the Brockhurst interview to explain away the nightmare.

  All at once, a shock of pain radiated across her palm. She released her grip and the spoon clattered to the floor, spattering an arc of red sauce into the air.

  “You’re being ridiculous.” Marc moved from his spot at the stove. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

  “Why, Marc? Why would you do this to me?”

  “To you?” Marc’s eyes widened with genuine surprise. “This has nothing to do with you. I admit Brittney crossed a line when she sent those pictures and I’ll talk to her about it, but nothing’s changed between us. We can go on as we always have.”

  Time slowed as she considered what he’d said. Outside, Jill heard the air conditioner click on and felt a trickle of cool air rise from the vents. She glanced at the stove, oddly aware of a stray noodle clinging to the side of the pot.

  “No. We can’t,” Jill said, and she knew it had to be her answer.

  “We can,” he pressed, misunderstanding her. “To prove it, I’ll cancel the next few days of meetings and we’ll go away, just us.” He reached for her shoulder. When she flinched, he withdrew.

  “This is how it happened with Dianne, isn’t it?” Jill said, almost to herself. “She didn’t know about us, did she? You told me that you didn’t want your girls to meet me until you were sure, but the truth is that you didn’t want Dianne to find out. We weren’t ‘dating’ at all, were we? You were cheating on her too.”