“I’ll be back soon,” she told Izzy, backing up as she spoke. “I love you! Daddy’s here! See you soon!” She turned and ran out the door, then kept running all the way down the block.
• • •
While she waited on the corner for Karin, Josie thought about sex.
She and Frank had met just after she’d turned twenty-five. They’d dated for a couple of years, then moved in together. A month before her thirtieth birthday, they’d gotten married. Zoe came along when Josie was thirty-four, and Izzy was born shortly after Josie’s thirty-seventh birthday.
They’d been together for sixteen years, nearly half of her life. Nearly half of his, as well; at forty, Frank was eight months younger than she. It wasn’t surprising that the early heat had seeped out of their relationship long ago.
These days she and Frank made love about once a week, usually on Saturday nights, and occasionally they threw in a morning quickie while the kids watched TV. Sex was almost always at Frank’s instigation, except for the time a few months ago after a party during which Josie drank an entire bottle of wine. Lately, Josie felt about sex with her husband the way she did about exercise: it wasn’t something she particularly craved, but once she started, she realized it felt good and she vowed to do it more often.
Did other long-married couples feel that way about sex? She wondered.
She still found Frank attractive, or she had until her discovery cut off her access to her emotions. He annoyed her and occasionally repulsed her—he had a disgusting habit of blowing his nose in the shower—but she liked to feel his strong arms around her when he came home from work at night. She liked to slip her cold feet between his legs under the covers. She liked to flop on the couch next to him and watch Homeland or Modern Family.
If Frank had slept with Dana, it was definitely over. She would never be able to have sex with him again. She’d barely be able to be in the same room with him, to breathe the same air.
Karin’s blue minivan crested the hill and came into view. Josie waved and Karin gave the horn a little toot. She pulled up to the curb and Josie climbed in.
“First, a hug,” Karin instructed. She opened her arms and pulled Josie close to her generous curves. Josie laid her head on Karin’s soft, wide shoulder. Unlike many of the mothers at the school, who wore spandex to drop-off and immediately rushed to spin class, Karin didn’t obsess about her weight or hair. She ate what she felt like eating, let her long, dark curls dry in whatever direction they pleased, and she joked that she only reached her target heart rate when she watched a Brad Pitt move. Josie knew Marcus made good money, but Karin’s home was as soft and unpretentious as she was: squishy couches with floral prints filled the living room, and the kitchen counters were covered with a hodgepodge of cookbooks and plants and spices and, often, a tray of cooling cupcakes or a slow cooker filled with chili.
“Let’s get you back to the house,” Karin said when Josie pulled away. She shifted the car out of park and began to drive. “Marcus took the twins to a movie, then he’ll call us and if we need him to, he can keep them out until bedtime.”
“Can you just pull into someone’s driveway and turn around?” Josie asked. “I really don’t want to drive past the house.”
“Of course, sweetie,” Karin said. They proceeded in silence for a few moments. Then Karin said: “You saw his emails?”
“Yeah, we were getting coffee, and I needed to make a call— Damn, I forgot to pick up a prescription. Izzy’s EpiPen refill,” Josie said.
“Do you want to ask Frank to do it?” Karin asked.
Josie shook her head. “Can we just— It’s a few blocks away. The CVS.”
“Heading there now,” Karin said.
“He said he met her on a business trip,” Josie said. “He said it was nothing. Only kissing, twice.”
Josie saw Karin’s jawline tighten.
“You don’t believe him?” Josie asked.
“Do you?” Karin asked. Another thing about Karin: she never lied.
Josie looked down at the cloth bag by her feet. “I still have his phone. I haven’t looked at all the messages. I thought I could go through them at your house. I’ve got my calendar, too. I have to figure it out, I need to know when he saw her and what they did. I was with the kids all those times—I was so fucking stupid, Karin, I was just puttering around and telling him to go to his dumb work happy hours as long as he did something with the girls on the weekend so I’d get a break, too, and all the while, the whole time—maybe not the whole time, but for the last couple of months—he was—he took her out for her birthday—”
Karin’s arm was around Josie before Josie realized that Karin had pulled the minivan to the side of the road. Josie hadn’t realized she was crying, either; her chest heaved and the tears dripped down her face, but she wasn’t making a sound. She still felt numb. Why couldn’t she feel?
A passing car honked at them—Karin’s minivan was sticking out a bit into the lane—but Karin just lifted a hand and gave the driver the finger.
“It’s going to be okay,” she told Josie. “You can stay with me. The girls, too. You can do whatever you want. What do you want to do?”
Josie reached for her purse and pulled out a napkin. She blew her nose.
She said the only thing that came to mind, because life went on, just like the traffic streaming past their stopped vehicle, no matter how still and frozen you felt inside.
“I want to go to CVS.”
• • •
After they’d completed the errand and driven back to Karin’s house, Karin put on the teakettle while Josie huddled on the couch under a crocheted blanket. But she didn’t want to be alone in the living room, even though she had a clear view of Karin in the open kitchen, so she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders like a shawl and went to sit on a stool at the counter.
“Chamomile or mint?” Karin asked.
“Chamomile, I guess.” It didn’t matter. She couldn’t believe she’d ever had a strong opinion on anything as irrelevant as the flavor of her tea.
“Are you sure you don’t want wine, too?” Karin asked, but Josie shook her head. She didn’t need to unfeel any more deeply.
Karin settled the teapot and mugs and spoons between them, and put a jar of honey next to Josie. Then she took the stool next to Josie’s. “Here?” she asked. “Or the couch? The couch is cozier.”
Josie nodded and picked up her mug and followed Karin.
Karin blew on her steaming tea, then asked gently, “What did the emails say?”
So Josie stood up again and retrieved the cloth bag from the bench by the front door—she had been overly aware of it there, next to a basket of shoes and coats hanging on hooks, like it was just another household object—and she brought it back to the couch.
She tapped in the code to Frank’s phone and pulled up his messages. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“Are you okay?” Karin asked.
Josie nodded. “I just— I just felt sick for a second there.”
“When was the last time you ate?” Karin asked.
“I had a yogurt and banana this morning,” Josie said.
“You missed lunch. What can I get you? I’ve got lasagna, or potato salad, and there’s tons of ice cream in the fridge . . .” Karin loved feeding people and often brought buckets of Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins to school meetings. It terrorizes the Barbie moms, she’d whisper to Josie before popping a donut hole into her mouth.
“I don’t think I can eat,” Josie said. She tried a sip of tea and the mug clanged against her front teeth. Her hand was shaking, she realized.
“Would you rather I go through them?” Karin asked, gesturing to the phone.
Josie shook her head. “I need to do it. I just want to take it slowly.”
But once she’d scrolled down and opened the first email she could find from Dana—subject line What is with this weather?!—she found herself racing through them all, greedily consuming the sentences, bingein
g on the words.
When she finished, she leaned back against the couch, unable to decide if the news was good or bad.
The email referencing the shower was by far the most incriminating. The others were flirty and friendly, but not overtly sexual. If Frank had deleted that first email, the others would have made her suspicious. Perhaps even more suspicious than she’d been in the past. But she might have convinced herself the notes were only that—a flirtation.
The problem was, Frank deleted lots of emails rather than leaving them clogging his in-box. He’d always had that habit because he got agitated when the number on the envelope icon passed one hundred, which Josie attributed to the mild case of ADHD she’d long ago diagnosed him with. Frank had saved some messages from Dana. Had he deleted others?
Josie was suddenly certain the seven or eight rapid movements she’d seen him execute just before he’d handed her the phone were evidence that he had. She checked his trashed mail. It was empty.
Now that she’d made the decision to want to know, those expunged emails gnawed at her. They would tell the story Frank had tried to conceal.
She tilted the phone toward Karin.
“What is with this weather,” Karin read without intonation.
“Hang on.” Josie looked at the cloth bag.
How did she have the presence of mind to assemble the clues she’d need to untangle Frank’s lies? Josie wondered. Her body felt frozen; yet her brain was sharp and supple, guiding her almost of its own accord.
Josie pulled the wall calendar out of her brown bag and flipped back to the previous month. There! Frank had gone to Atlantic City on a business trip seven weeks ago. He’d stayed for two nights. The message from Dana had come in on his final day of the trip. So perhaps that was where they’d met. Maybe she, like he, was a pharmaceutical sales rep.
It would jibe with his story that he’d met Dana on a business trip. Perhaps that piece was true. Josie told this to Karin.
“We could try to find out who she is,” Karin said. “If you want to know, I mean. Google her name and ‘pharma rep’ and see what comes up. Or we could try to do a reverse email search. I saw something about that on a talk show once—you can get the person’s name and home address if you have their email.”
Josie nodded slowly, considering it. Dana used only her first name followed by a string of numbers for her email address. But Karin was right; her first name was unique enough to winnow her down.
Josie could try to find out whether she was married. How old she was. Whether she was pretty.
Josie tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry that her throat simply constricted ineffectually.
“Karin?” Josie said. “I’m ready for that glass of wine now.”
* * *
Chapter Four
* * *
HERE WAS THE THING about the hot stay-at-home dad named Steve: Josie’s interactions with him weren’t simply limited to the exchange of nods or smiles in the school hallways and that one sneaky photograph.
This past summer, during the week before school began—and several months before Frank had begun his affair with Dana—Steve had invited Josie and the girls over to his house on an afternoon when his wife was away.
Zoe and Steve’s daughter, Penny, were on the same soccer team. They didn’t know each other well, since they’d never been in the same class. But on one September afternoon right before Labor Day, the coach had paired them up for drills. They’d left the field giggling, and Penny had grabbed her father’s arm.
“Can Zoe come over to play? Please? Please?” she’d asked.
Steve, who’d been juggling a water bottle, Penny’s soccer ball, and a book (a historical biography, judging from the cover, which made him even sexier), had glanced at Penny, then at Zoe, then at Josie.
“We’ve met,” Steve said. “Haven’t we?”
Josie nodded, even though they never had, at least not officially. “I’m Josie,” she said. “Zoe was in Mrs. Marshall’s class last year. Your daughter had Mr. Kapp, right?”
“Right,” Steve said. His eyes were very blue against his tanned skin, and smile lines radiated out from them. “So, does your daughter want to come over? She’s more than welcome to.”
“We have to swim or we’ll die!” Penny shouted. Both girls were red-faced and so sweaty their jerseys were clinging to them; it was three o’clock, which always seemed to be the hottest time of the day. Josie bet it was more than a hundred degrees out. Josie and Izzy had sought refuge under the shade during practice, but it hadn’t helped much: sweat dampened Josie’s hair at the roots, and her T-shirt clung to her back.
“We need to swim!” Zoe echoed.
“Me too!” Izzy hollered.
“Oh, that’s so nice,” Josie said. “I don’t have her suit or anything, so . . .”
Then she remembered that she did. The pool bag containing suits for all of them was in the trunk of the Sienna. She’d packed it in case they’d decided to swing by the community center on the way home.
The girls were all chanting “Swim, swim, swim!” and jumping up and down, even Izzy.
Steve looked at them and laughed. He was sweating, too, but on him it looked good.
“Looks like we’re outnumbered,” he said. “Tell you what, why don’t all three of you come over?”
• • •
He lived only a half mile away from Josie’s house, in a part of town where the lawns were wider and the houses more stately. She’d driven by his place a dozen times and had admired the stone front porch and old-fashioned gas lamp at the end of the front walk.
When Steve opened the door and welcomed them in, Josie noticed a few signs of his wife—a bracelet on the kitchen counter, a pair of black pumps under the bench in the foyer—but no evidence she was on the premises. She assumed Steve’s wife was traveling. She often seemed to be. Josie wasn’t quite sure what she did, but she went to Europe and Asia frequently and wore expensive-looking suits when she came to school functions.
Coincidentally, Frank was also traveling this week.
Steve showed them to the large, main-floor bathroom, offering it for their use in case they needed to change. But Josie had already done so at home. She’d pretended to the girls that she’d forgotten their suits so she could dash up into her own bathroom and shave her legs and pick up her more flattering bathing suit, the emerald-green tankini, rather than the black one-piece she usually wore to the Y.
The girls immediately ran outside and splashed into the pool. Zoe was already a fairly strong swimmer. And Izzy wore a suit with a built-in flotation device around the middle, which meant Josie could ease herself into the water at her own pace.
Steve stripped off his T-shirt and walked over to the diving board. “Cannonball!” he called before he propelled himself into the air as the girls shrieked. He surfaced, shaking his hair out of his face and smiling.
Then he did an easy freestyle to the shallow end of the pool, where Josie was leaning against the wall.
“This feels great,” she said. “Thanks for inviting us.”
“Anytime,” Steve said.
They were close enough that Josie could see silver droplets of water glistening on his tanned shoulder. The thought occurred to her that she’d like to lick one off. She looked away, hoping that if Steve saw her blush, he’d mistake it for a sunburn.
“Daddy!” his daughter summoned him. Steve slipped under the water and swam away, sleek as a seal.
• • •
The kids grew hungry, so Steve ordered a pizza around five thirty. “How about a beer?” he’d asked her after he’d passed lemonade juice boxes to the kids.
By then the girls were wrapped in towels and sprawled in front of the television. Josie had put her shorts and T-shirt back on, but Steve was still wearing just his suit trunks as he padded barefoot into the kitchen.
“A beer sounds great,” Josie said. She’d let Huck out in the backyard when she’d gone home to change, so she wasn’t in any rush.
>
Steve popped the cap off a Sierra Nevada and handed it to her and she joined the girls on the couch, pretending to watch the Disney movie. She felt surprisingly relaxed, given the situation. But maybe it was because Steve was being so nonchalant. He’d probably had plenty of moms over to his house before, Josie realized. It was an atypical situation for her, but not for him.
The pizza arrived just as she was finishing her drink, and Steve brought her another beer, which she sipped as she nibbled a slice of pepperoni. Then the movie ended and the girls ran back outside. Josie joined them in the pool, but as soon as she slipped into the water, they raced back into the house, with Penny yelling that they wanted Popsicles.
“Fickle little beasts,” Steve said. He was sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling his feet into the shallow end. Josie laughed and started to pull herself out, but Steve showed no signs of wanting to move. So she stayed in the pool, the water lapping gently around her waist.
The sun had sunk low in the sky, and dusk began to gather around them. A few underwater lights illuminated the deep end of the pool, but the shallow section, where Josie stood, was inky. She couldn’t see her knees or feet below the surface.
“This is the first time today I haven’t felt hot,” Steve said as he lowered himself into the water with a sigh. He was maybe three feet away from her now.
She could see the girls in the living room through the sliding glass doors. They were eating Popsicles, and their attention was fixed on the screen. Normally Josie would have rushed inside to make sure they weren’t dripping on the floor. But she didn’t move.
“This summer has been brutal, right?” Josie said.
A lone cricket began to chirp nearby. The shadows stretched longer across the lawn. The moist, thick air had cooled significantly and now it seemed almost exactly the same temperature as the water.
“I’m ready for school to start,” Steve said. “It’ll give me more time for photography.”
Josie blinked, thinking of the stretched-canvas photos she’d admired in the living room. They were all nature scenes: hiking trails winding up a mountain; a lone, prickly cactus standing tall against the blazing sun, a squirrel carrying its baby in its mouth. “Were those your photos inside?”
The Ever After Page 3