“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a hobby.”
“I thought they were professional. Wow, you’re really good.”
“Thanks.” He tilted his head back and took another sip of beer. Josie watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he drank. He was one of the sexiest men she’d ever seen.
Steve set down his bottle and ducked down lower in the pool until only his head was above the water.
“What about you?” he asked. “What do you do when you’re off duty as a mom?”
“I’m never off duty,” Josie said with a laugh, meaning it. But then she wished she could snatch back the words. They made her sound dull.
“Dancing,” she blurted. “That was what I loved most before I had kids.”
“Like, ballet, or . . . ?” Steve asked.
Josie shook her head. “Just dancing,” she said. “I mean, I studied a little as a kid—some modern dance and tap—but my favorite thing to do was always to just go to a club and dance.” She probably sounded like a party girl now, she realized.
“Cool,” Steve said, nodding.
Had he moved closer? Perhaps by an inch or two.
Their surroundings suddenly seemed almost unbearably intimate: all that exposed skin and darkness and languid water. She looked at Steve. It was impossible to discern his expression; he was facing away from the house, so he was backlit. But she thought he was looking at her, too.
Josie felt her body tighten. Goose bumps formed on her arms and she shivered. She held her breath.
She was backed up against the edge of the pool, the concrete lip pressing into her shoulder blades. She imagined Steve taking a slow, silent step closer to her. Her heart pounded in her chest.
“I should check on the kids,” she said, her voice louder than it had been a moment earlier. She jumped out of the pool and hurried inside.
• • •
When she recounted the story to Karin the next day, she exaggerated a couple of details. In her retelling, Steve was just a foot away from her, and it was completely dark outside.
“He looks so good in a bathing suit,” Josie had said, sighing.
“Take a picture next time,” Karin had cracked, and Josie had laughed.
“Do you think he would’ve made a move?” Karin had asked. “If you hadn’t skittered away?”
“I mean, I got a flirty vibe from him, but maybe he’s one of those guys who flirts with everyone,” Josie said. “I honestly don’t know.”
“So what happened after you jumped out of the pool?” Karin had asked.
Josie had shrugged. “We stayed another half hour and then I took the kids home. It was getting late.”
She’d also poured herself a glass of chardonnay and had sat in the living room, listening to a John Legend CD, feeling a smile play on her lips as she relived every detail of the afternoon and evening.
It was more fun to remember the encounter than it had been to experience it, Josie realized. She hadn’t revealed to Karin that the overarching emotion she’d felt during that electric pause—right before she’d jumped out of the pool—wasn’t lust or excitement or longing.
It was fear.
Having a crush on Steve from afar was thrilling. Imagining he desired her was delicious. The possibility of taking it any further was unthinkable. It would be like lighting the fuse to a bomb.
But that was exactly what her husband had done.
How could he?
• • •
When Josie was certain the girls would be asleep, she asked Karin to take her home. Karin wanted to walk her inside, but Josie asked to be dropped at the curb. She didn’t want Karin glaring at Frank and making pointed remarks about how Josie and the girls could come stay with her anytime. Karin had many strengths, but subtlety wasn’t among them.
By now, Josie had obtained a little more information: Dana was married. She also worked as a pharma rep. She lived maybe twenty minutes away.
She wasn’t beautiful, but she was pretty enough—at least in the photographs Google had turned up. Like Josie, she had pale skin and shoulder-length, dark blond hair. So Frank apparently had a type.
But Dana’s eyes were set a shade too close together, making her look a bit intense. Frank had always told Josie he loved her big, wide-spaced eyes. What did he compliment Dana about?
She appeared to be fairly short. But she was very slender, which infuriated Josie, who’d carried an extra ten pounds since Izzy’s birth.
Josie had thought seeing the other woman’s face would conjure intense feelings of rage or jealousy. But that hadn’t happened—at least not yet. Dana looked like an ordinary woman, the kind Josie saw every day in the grocery store or at PTA meetings.
Josie had also cross-referenced Frank’s emails with her calendars. She was desperate for more facts. More truth.
She was certain she had pinpointed the date of one of Frank’s encounters with Dana because Dana had written a message referencing the “killer” margaritas she’d drunk the previous evening. The message was carefully phrased—it wasn’t incriminating—but if you parsed the words, its lack of context indicated Frank already knew about the margaritas. Which Josie suspected meant he’d been there.
Her own calendar had revealed Josie’s schedule that evening: Movie with Tamara, she’d written. When Josie thought back to that night, she found the details formed surprisingly quickly in her mind, like colors and shapes lifting up from a developing photograph.
She’d been looking forward to seeing La La Land all week. She’d missed it when it had first come out, but their local theater showed older releases every Wednesday night.
Josie had phoned Frank that afternoon at work to remind him she had plans. He’d seemed flustered.
“Agh—forgot, I’ve got this work thing tonight. What time is the movie?” he’d asked. (She could remember their conversation word for word! It was incredible, really.)
“Eight thirty,” she’d said.
“I’ll be home by eight,” he’d promised. He’d been a few minutes late, but the theater was just a five-minute drive away, so Josie hadn’t been stressed. Tamara had already texted that she was planning to arrive early to get tickets and secure seats.
It had seemed like any other evening.
But now Josie realized she’d tucked away certain moments in her mind, as if carefully wrapping them in a packing box for future excavation. The ones that stood out the most sharply had been warning signs; perhaps that was why she’d cataloged them, then buried them beneath a layer of distracting, everyday busyness.
That night, when she heard Frank’s car pull into the driveway at ten after eight, she’d risen from the couch and had gone to the landing at the bottom of the stairs, where a small closet held their coats. She was putting on her black leather jacket—a night out without the kids meant her puffy down North Face coat stayed behind—when Frank came in.
“Hi,” she’d said, stretching out her arms for a hug, feeling happy. The kids were asleep, the house was tidy, and she had a fun night ahead of her. Frank had walked over and embraced her briefly. Because the landing was up a step, they were nearly the exact same height. (She somehow remembered all of these details!)
Frank had responded to her gesture, but he’d pulled away quickly. Away from the kiss she gave him, and out of her arms.
“Don’t you have to hurry to make it to the movies?” he’d asked.
“Right,” she’d said, ignoring the little frizzle of hurt she’d felt. She’d smelled beer on Frank’s breath, but he said he was going out for a work thing. No big deal.
She’d been unsure whether the movie had left her feeling happy or sad, but she’d enjoyed it. She couldn’t remember what had happened when she’d returned home—whether Frank was already asleep or in bed watching TV. She’d probably changed into a nightshirt and brushed her teeth and climbed under the covers and fallen asleep quickly. It was late for her, especially for a school night. Other than that, the evening had seemed completely unremarkable.
Now, as Josie walked up the steps toward her front door, she wondered why she hadn’t put the pieces together sooner. Maybe it was because she hadn’t wanted to believe it could be true.
Josie inserted her key into the lock and pushed the door open. She turned and waved to Karin, who was idling in the driveway. Then she stepped inside.
Frank was seated in the living room, on the couch, with the newspaper by his side. He looked up at her warily.
“You’re reading the paper?” she asked incredulously.
“No, I was just— I was waiting for you,” he said.
“Well, here I am,” she said.
He leaned forward and steepled his hands and stared into her eyes. Clearly he’d been rehearsing. “Jos, I’m so sorry. I never should have done it—”
“How did it happen?” Josie interrupted.
Frank frowned at her, looking puzzled.
“How did it start?” Josie clarified. “Where? Who flirted first?”
“In Atlantic City,” Frank said.
“And?” Josie prompted when he hesitated.
“I went to a dinner. A ton of people were there. There were drinks first . . . One of the companies sponsored the whole thing, so . . . Anyway, I went to the bar and she was there. And . . . Do you really want to hear this?”
No, Josie thought. But she nodded.
Frank cleared his throat. His eyes were red-rimmed. Had he been crying, too?
“She came up to me and said, ‘Hi, Frank Moore.’ ”
“And?” Josie prodded.
“And I just said hi, because I had no idea who she was.”
Dana could not have come up with a more effective opening line if she’d practiced for weeks, Josie realized. Dana had inflated Frank’s ego. She’d made him feel memorable. Important. Her words seemed . . . predatory.
She looked at Frank sitting on the couch, staring up at her beseechingly. He’d cleaned up the girls’ toys but he’d missed a tiny pink shoe for one of their dolls.
“I thought I should sleep here tonight.” Frank gestured to the couch. “I can shower in the basement tomorrow morning.”
As if that gesture would make everything okay. As if it would offset those emails, the birthday date, the pushing away.
Josie also knew these facts about Dana: Dana was a year younger than Josie, and she was married. Josie had even read her wedding announcement. Dana had a husband named Ron who was probably as stupidly unaware as Josie had been just this morning.
“You disgust me,” Josie said. She felt a piece of the wall crumble, allowing some of her rage to steam through. She blinked back tears that felt as sharp as diamonds.
“I know,” Frank said.
“I hate you!” she said, her voice raw and loud. She wanted to hit Frank, to hurt him, to throw everything in the room at him. But he looked so sincerely miserable that despite everything, she felt a softening toward him, and that only made her angrier. “You need to move out!”
“Josie, no, please.” Frank collapsed to his knees. “I fucked up. I’m so sorry, I’ll never talk to her again—”
She’d been playing Candy Land with the girls and cleaning the bathroom and schlepping in food from the grocery store while he’d been conducting an affair. One encounter would have been bad enough. Maybe she could’ve chalked it up to drunkenness. But he’d woken up the day after he’d cheated, presumably talked to his family—because Josie and the girls spoke to Frank every day when he traveled—and then he’d gone back to Dana for more.
“Please,” Frank was saying, but Josie turned and walked upstairs, leaving him kneeling on the carpet, just as he’d done when he’d proposed to her all those years ago.
* * *
Chapter Five
* * *
JOSIE KNEW SHE WOULDN’T be able to fall asleep that night. Ten hours had elapsed since her discovery, but it seemed as if a lifetime had passed—or, more accurate, as if her entire life had unspooled.
She had tucked her purse and cloth grocery bag in the back of her closet again, behind her Goodwill bag, even though she had forwarded the emails to her own account so she could have an independent record of them. That had been Karin’s suggestion. Karin had also given Josie the name and phone number of a divorce lawyer. “I’m not saying you have to decide now if you want to go down that route,” Karin had said. “But call her anyway. You’ve got to protect yourself.”
Josie wondered if Karin had asked Marcus for the referral, and what the two of them had said about the affair. If you ever . . . she could imagine Karin saying. Then Marcus would have given a little laugh and responded, Never, my love. Josie could see them hugging, feeling more appreciative of each other, the way people always do when a catastrophe touches down close to home.
Josie shut the door to her closet, then slipped off her shoes and lay down in bed still wearing her jeans and sweater. It was cold in the house—Frank always set the thermostat too low—so she reached down and grabbed the edge of the extra comforter that was folded at the bottom of the bed. She pulled it up over herself and closed her eyes and somehow dozed off almost instantly. It was as if her battered brain had flicked a switch and shut itself off.
She awoke abruptly to a silent house. The clock on the nightstand revealed it was nearly three in the morning. She got up and padded quietly into Zoe’s room, then into Izzy’s. She could see their faces in the glow of the night-lights they both used. Her girls were sleeping peacefully. Their worlds were still intact. She stared at each of them for a few moments, then went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, but she didn’t bother to wash her face. She opened the medicine cabinet and took out a Benadryl and swallowed it, knowing it would help her doze off again. She climbed back into bed and ran through the events of the day in her mind repeatedly, her thoughts on a continual loop.
She imagined Frank and Dana close together on barstools, sipping margaritas, their bodies turned toward each other. She thought of them kissing, of Frank’s hands roaming over Dana’s body. The physical betrayal was bad enough. Even worse was the knowledge that her husband and another woman had shared this intimate secret. That they’d been linked together so strongly, in their own private world, while Frank pretended to live a normal life with Josie.
Seven weeks was the last thing she could remember thinking.
• • •
When she opened her eyes again, the brightness in the room told her she’d slept later than she had in months. She rubbed her eyes, then checked the clock. It was nearly eight o’clock. Frank must have intercepted the girls, because it was their habit to run into the master bedroom as soon as they awoke, and Zoe and Izzy rarely slept later than seven—and naturally, they never did so on the same mornings.
Josie went into the bathroom and took a long, hot shower, trying to clear away the lingering fog from the Benadryl. She turbaned her hair into a towel and wrapped herself in her robe and walked to the closet. She pulled her softest turtleneck sweater and her most broken-in jeans off the shelf, craving a comforting buffer around her body. Then she towel-dried her hair and got dressed.
When she went downstairs, she saw Frank had the girls doing art projects at the kitchen table. He’d made pancakes, as he did every Sunday morning. He’d also washed the frying pan unprompted, which he almost never did.
“There’s coffee,” Frank told her. “And I can make more pancakes . . .”
Josie shook her head and reached for the box of tea bags. She didn’t want anything from Frank, not even his leftover coffee.
“My babies,” she said, walking over to the table and kissing the tops of their heads.
“I’m not a baby,” Zoe said.
“Me neither,” Izzy added.
“Yes you
are.”
“I am not! You’re a baby!” Izzy’s face turned red. She was two seconds away from screaming, or throwing her Play-Doh at her sister.
“Hey, guess who the baby is?” Frank chimed in. “It’s me. Waah. Waah. I want a bottle.”
Both girls laughed. Frank looked at Josie, hope in his eyes.
What, you think I’m going to forgive you because you stopped the girls from fighting? she thought.
“What would you like to do today?” Frank asked. Josie raised her eyebrows and he looked down.
She was taking a savage satisfaction in showing him how ridiculous his comments were, in making him feel stupid. Maybe because she had been foolishly unaware for so long.
“I mean, I saw on the calendar that Zoe has a Girl Scouts meeting, so . . .” Frank continued.
“They’re having that little carnival,” Josie said. Every family had brought along a simple game for the kids to play; for weeks, she had been collecting thin-necked bottles to arrange in a cardboard box for a ring toss. “We need prizes for the winners. Lollipops or something.”
“Do you want me to take them?” Frank asked. “Or all of us . . . ?”
“I don’t know yet,” Josie said.
She realized Zoe was watching her, and she made an effort to soften her tone.
“Excuse me,” she said to Frank. He looked confused.
She gestured to the cabinet behind him, where they kept their mugs.
Yesterday morning, she would’ve put a hand on his arm to nudge him aside, or she would have simply reached behind him, brushing her body against his, while they chatted.
Frank stepped aside, giving her a wide berth, and she took down a chunky blue mug. She hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast yesterday, but food held absolutely no appeal.
All I needed was the adultery diet, she thought. She bit back a harsh laugh.
The house was too quiet. Frank kept looking at her as he moved around the kitchen, scooping up bits of Play-Doh the moment they hit the floor and putting the milk back in the refrigerator after Josie added a splash to her tea. Forgive me, his every gesture seemed to beg.
The Ever After Page 4