by A. J. Banner
“He never looked at you that way, did he?” I said, sitting up straight. “I didn’t notice him looking at women that way.”
“Oh, he gave me the eye once in a while,” she said, pretending to pick lint off her T-shirt. “I ignored it. Just a glance now and then.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“People flirt—usually it’s harmless. I didn’t see any reason to mention it.” Chantal moved onto the couch next to me, and I scooted away from her.
“Did you flirt with him?”
“Hell no. I wouldn’t do that!” She played with the crystals on her bracelet. “Besides, I’m still getting over Bill.”
“You’ve been divorced—”
“Almost two years now.”
I smoothed down my sweater, held up my left hand, and looked at my ring finger, the gold engraving glinting in the light. “Tomorrow’s our anniversary,” I said. “We were supposed to go sailing this weekend. He mentioned showing me a secluded beach on one of the islands.”
Chantal reached out to pat my arm. “I’m so sorry—at least you found out now that he’s not the man for you.”
“He and Diane deserve each other,” I said bitterly. But inside I was reeling—I could still see Kieran reaching out to touch my cheek. Coming home with vanilla cake for my birthday. An accumulation of memories, blowing away like dust. “He said it was an impulsive thing, but if you saw her here yesterday . . .”
“He’s a planner. Last time you threw a dinner party, he was talking about specific travel routes he had all mapped out for the two of you, remember? To Australia, Bali, Paris? I’m willing to bet—”
“He planned this before I left.”
“Most likely.” Chantal pushed her hair back behind her ear. “And we all thought he was so . . . loyal. Our whole family loved going to see him. Even Jenny, and she hated doctors.”
“You don’t have to stop seeing him on my account.”
“He was good to Jenny.” She looked at me, her eyes bright with tears. “It’s her birthday next week—did I tell you?” She sat beside me again, another whiff of floral perfume hitting my nose.
“No,” I said, touching her hand. “How old would she have been?”
“Twenty. Can you believe it?” Chantal twisted her crystal bracelet around and around. “Four years gone, just like that. My baby girl would be a college sophomore now, driving for years. She was just getting her learner’s permit . . .” She stared blankly at the wall.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, squeezing her fingers.
“Yeah, well. I should move away, but I can’t abandon her spirit, you know?” She shook her head slowly. “Bill had the right idea, leaving me. And Nick’s even farther away in Korea—he’s still teaching. So no husband, no son. But look at me, bending your ear.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Misery loves company.”
“Anything I can do? I could plant a virus in the clinic computers.”
I smiled wanly. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want to harm Kieran’s patients.”
“We could target only his laptop. Where is it?”
“Probably at the farmhouse or the office.”
“I could mess with Diane’s computer, too.”
“I don’t know if she even has one. I don’t know anything about her,” I said, trying not to picture her leaping out of bed, breasts jiggling. I wished I had not seen her naked—now I would never be able to erase the image from my mind. Kieran had touched her with the same hands that had touched me. My insides were twisting, a blistering rage in my blood.
Chantal glanced nervously at the knife on the floor. “You might want to put that away.”
“Right, my murder weapon of choice.” Maybe I should’ve used it, I thought. I could’ve surprised Diane and Kieran in the throes of passion, stabbed them to death before they’d even known what was happening. I was surprised at how satisfying the images were to me, of their gaping wounds, of the blood seeping out across the sheets.
CHAPTER FOUR
After Chantal left, I grabbed Diane’s lacy bra off the towel rack. Size 32D, front closure, reeking of sandalwood. I tossed the slip of fabric into a donation bag for the thrift shop. Then I stuffed the bedsheets into the wash, unpacked my suitcase, hung up the clean clothes I had not worn in the city, threw the dirty ones into the laundry basket. When devastated, perform useless, mundane tasks to keep from jumping off a cliff. Not that there was a cliff nearby.
The conversation between Kieran and Diane kept looping through my head. Wish she could just be gone already . . . She must have meant she wanted Kieran to file for divorce and, what, kick me out of my own house? I would be the one to file for divorce. They would be gone, the both of them, as far from me as possible.
I want it to be done, Diane had said. What had she wanted done? The divorce? Their sneaking around? A specific plan she imagined had been set in motion?
Patience . . . You have to learn to play the long game. Kieran’s replies made me shiver. What was the long game? It was crazy to think he would want to, what, kill me? But we were supposed to go sailing over the weekend—he could’ve been planning to throw me overboard.
No, impossible. I was still in shock, my mind racing in crazy directions. Maybe he’d meant to come clean, to tell me about the affair. Or was he seriously planning to leave me for her?
I sat on the edge of the bed, doubled over again, a cramping in my abdomen. This couldn’t be happening—I tried to rewind to our blissful moments. His gentle kiss on my neck, from a place of genuine love. She came on to me . . . I love you. What if he meant it? What if he did regret his mistake?
No, it didn’t matter. His actions, what he’d done—that was what mattered. And what he had done could never be forgiven. Stop looping on this, I admonished myself, getting up. I went down to the kitchen to make a calming tea blend, watching the kettle steam, rattle, and then whistle shrilly as the water boiled. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.
I could cancel the rest of my appointments . . . We could fuck all afternoon. I wanted to unhear his words, gouge them out of my ears. Sever his vocal cords. Silence him. These violent thoughts weren’t normal, I knew, but then nothing about this day had been normal. He and Diane had not been normal lovers engaging in normal adultery. They hadn’t said, Come to me, baby. I want you. I need you. No, he’d said, Patience. Chill out . . . the long game.
I’d kept pouring into my mug, the hot water overflowing onto the countertop, like a wound bleeding out. Blinking back to reality, I wiped up the water, tossed the tea leaves into the compost bin. I had to tamp down my rising nausea, keep my head on straight.
I thought of confronting Diane, demanding to know exactly what she’d meant. Perhaps she would be honest with me, if Kieran wouldn’t. Or did I even care? I didn’t want to give them the time of day. I felt violated, befouled, duped—and embarrassed. Of all the ways to discover the emptiness of my marriage, I’d been subjected to the sleaziest, most clichéd kind of humiliation.
And I’d told Chantal all about it. She was not a gossip, but I regretted spilling my guts to her. What if the news were to leak out? Clueless Wife Discovers Unfaithful Doctor Husband in Sordid Affair With His Mistress . . .
No matter what he had done, I would look like the fool to have been so blind. I didn’t care what anyone on the island thought, did I? But I had to live here. I had to shop at the co-op, run my business. Interact with my neighbors. It mattered what they thought, but then, if they were going to gossip about me, were they really my friends, anyway? I couldn’t be concerned about what might leak out into the community.
I didn’t want anything of Kieran’s in my sight. He was out of here. I began throwing his clothes into his large suitcase, and when the suitcase was full, I stuffed garbage bags. I had half a mind to let the waste management truck pick them up, but I dumped everything downstairs by the front door.
In the dining room, on top of the liquor cabinet, I found two tumblers next to his most expe
nsive whisky, a Glenlivet single malt. So I emptied the bottle in the kitchen sink. Five hundred bucks down the drain. Along with the rest of his pretentious collection. Bon voyage. I dropped the empty bottles into the recycling bin, proud of my achievement.
Then I bagged the supplies and the anniversary gifts I’d bought in Seattle and took them outside to the shop. I would sell them or maybe even give them away. Along the garden path, I slowed through fragrant lavender beds, fennel stalks, lemon balm, and patches of mint. The odorless white flowers of fern-leaf dropwort made an excellent tea for treating rheumatoid arthritis. But what herb could heal a shattered heart?
A strangely shaped plant had reemerged in the herb bed, the reddish flowers themselves resembling tiny hearts. The Juliet. My mother had brought back cuttings and seeds from South America many years earlier and had not been able to identify the species—so she had named it herself. Juliet had been her middle name. Selene Juliet Watters.
Somehow, the plant kept volunteering in the garden, sprouting every couple of years in a new spot. Perhaps birds deposited the seeds. My mother had used the powdered extract in tinctures and formulas, but she had always warned me not to touch the plant. She had once told me the story of a client whose husband had died after ingesting too much of the extract in my mother’s Slumber powder, although the official cause of death had been a heart attack. No substances were found in his system, but I knew better, my mother had said. I told her to give him only two teaspoons. She must’ve given him the whole bag. She must’ve killed him, but nobody ever knew—and I couldn’t prove it if anyone asked.
The story had unsettled me. I didn’t know if it was true, but I did know that seemingly benign plants could have toxic properties. Tulip bulbs could cause skin irritation if handled for too long without gloves. The large-leafed angel’s trumpet dangling over the path could make the eyes dilate if sniffed, and ingestion would likely be fatal. I loved rhubarb, but the large leaves were high in oxalic acid, which could quickly cause kidney failure in humans.
I imagined Kieran and Diane munching on rhubarb leaves or angel’s trumpet or biting into toxic foxglove or larkspur. A salad of any number of poisonous shrubs would do, the way I was thinking. Garnished with deadly nightshade. It would take only a few of its bright red berries to kill an adult.
At the threshold to the Clary Sage, I wiped my feet on the mat. The shopfront was a hexagon, sashed windows on four sides, the sashed door in front. The sixth side was the back wall of the shop opening to the prep room. The effect was a panoply of lights reflecting off the many squares of glass. The door was unlocked. Kieran must’ve come out here while I was away, I thought with a stab of annoyance. He had a key—I would have to get it back from him.
Inside, my shop had been disturbed. The aromatherapy sprays, tins of tea leaves, and herbal tinctures were all still artfully displayed, but small things were amiss. A tea towel had been unfolded. And the soaps had been rearranged in the dishes. I had placed vintage apothecary bottles in strategic locations on the shelves, but one had been moved to the windowsill. I would have the locks changed, and Kieran would never be allowed back in here. I hated the idea that Diane might’ve been in here touching everything.
I’d bought a vintage amber bottle in the city, with a cork stopper, labeled MAGNESII OXIDUM PONDEROSUM. I placed it next to the clear bottle on the windowsill, which still had its original label reading POISON. But I didn’t know what the bottle had originally contained. The label listing the contents had long ago worn off.
My mother had made her formulas in the prep room, which now also showed signs of disturbance. The front row of her clothbound journals, on the shelf behind the prep table, had tipped over.
“What do you think, Mom?” I said to her photograph smiling from the wall. Her golden eyes gazed at me wisely, black hair spilling to her waist. “Did Kieran and Diane come in here and mess around?”
Her smile seemed to falter a little. Now I better understood why she had never remarried after my father’s death. Perhaps one heartbreak had been enough. But he hadn’t meant to hurt her. When the car accident had claimed him in Mission Canyon, he’d been on his way home to her with a dozen roses on the passenger seat. Her grief had run so deep, she had fled California, whisking me north to Chinook Island, where a college friend had run a bed-and-breakfast. I’d been only a year old when my mother had bought this blue Victorian and the cottage with a fraction of the funds my dad had left her. She’d had no inkling of his wealth. When she’d met him in the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, he’d been working as a groundskeeper. He’d kept his money a secret, preferring an ordinary life. He’d been a gentle and kind man, from all accounts, and after I was born, he was reportedly happy to dote on me, rocking me, singing to me, and telling me stories before I could understand the words.
She had kept his surname rather than reverting to her maiden name, Clary—except to name her shop the Clary Sage. And I’d never taken Kieran’s surname, lucky for me. I was still conveniently Elise Watters, not Elise Lund.
I placed the gifts I’d bought for Kieran on display shelves, priced the items, and then locked up the shop and called him from the driveway, where my cell phone caught a signal. He answered right away. I didn’t know where he was, and I didn’t care. “Why the hell did you go into my shop?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I swear.”
“Well, someone was in there!”
“Yeah,” he said, lowering his voice. “It was you.”
“It was not me. I’ve been away for three days.”
“You were in there the morning before you left. Don’t you remember? Early. You were in your pajamas.”
I held the phone away from my head, then pressed it to my ear again. “You’re a liar.”
“It’s the truth. I looked out the bedroom window and saw you coming out of there. Before sunrise. You came back to bed. I asked you if everything was all right. You just mumbled and went back to sleep.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“Look, I have to go. We have to talk about this later.”
I hung up, headed back into the main house. How could I believe anything he ever told me? He’d stopped short of suggesting I’d been sleepwalking. I’d told him about my previous episodes, during the traumatic last days of my first marriage, and about my mother’s occasional bouts of somnambulating when I was a child.
But I had no memory of going into the shop the morning I’d left for the city. I’d woken in bed, gone straight to catch the ferry. No, I couldn’t believe anything Kieran said. I needed to reclaim his key to my shop, right now. He’d left his entire set of keys somewhere in the house, probably on the foyer table.
But they weren’t there. I checked under the pile of mail. Then I glimpsed the keys on the floor behind a bookshelf next to the entryway. They must’ve fallen. I got down on my hands and knees and retrieved the key ring, to which he had attached a black caduceus monogrammed disk showing two serpents in a double helix around the wand of Hermes. A medical symbol of rebirth and regeneration, but the Greek god Hermes also protected thieves and liars. How apt, I thought.
The metal car key on the ring opened Kieran’s old Jaguar. The brass keys to our house and the shop were also on the ring, as well as a silver Schlage key to his farmhouse. I removed the key to the shop and tucked it into my pocket.
There were two smaller, identical keys, a double set for a lockbox, a safe, or maybe a filing cabinet.
Filing cabinet.
He’d moved two metal ones in here from his farmhouse. They were now in the alcove between the dining room and the library. I went down the hall to the alcove. Books were piled on his desk, on the shelves. One filing cabinet was unlocked, empty. The other was locked.
An envelope sat on the desk next to the filing cabinet, addressed to Kieran. The envelope had been sliced open with the letter opener. I pulled out a folded slip of paper, a credit card bill with a $5,000 balance. Not unusual, if he’d bought equipment for the clinic. But still
a startling amount. The bill had been delivered to a post office box, which struck me as strange. I’d been with him when he’d filled out the address-change form to have his mail forwarded here.
What else had been delivered to the post office box? And where was the mail now? I’d seen him casually slipping papers into the filing cabinet. As if it were nothing. But the husband I thought I’d known was now treacherous, unmapped terrain.
I hesitated, but not for long. He had forfeited his privacy, as far as I was concerned. I slid one of the matching small keys into the lock in the cabinet—it fit. The locking mechanism turned easily. It was cheap. I could’ve broken in with a screwdriver, I supposed. But Kieran had never expected me to try.
I opened the drawer, flipped through manila file folders marked “Insurance,” “Dental,” “Home Value,” “Repair,” and so on. Boring, the usual paper trail of a life. But in the very back, an unmarked manila file folder had been so tightly wedged in, I had to remove other files to extract it.
I closed the drawer, sat in the swiveling chair at his desk, and opened the file. Inside were student loan statements, presumably for medical school. The active balances were eye-popping. There were hospital bills for amounts not covered by insurance for his ex-wife’s emergency care when she had died of flu complications. And more credit card bills for several different accounts, all of which he had run up to their limits. He appeared to be making minimum payments.
That was by no means all. He owed a substantial mortgage for the farmhouse, payments for the boat, his old Jaguar, and several thousand dollars for an Eames armchair. The indulgence, especially in the face of his other debts, made me sick to my stomach.
The papers blurred—the walls receded. I felt like an idiot. But this was all only paper. What if he hid more from me in his laptop computer, in the proverbial internet cloud? He’d stuck with paper delivered to his secret post office box in town, but for all I knew, he had more debts that weren’t here in the file.