Before they’d gone ten steps, Karin said it: “I cheated on Marcus once.” Just like that, her tone flat and unapologetic.
Josie’s feet stuttered and she almost tripped. She glanced at Karin, her most solid, together friend, the woman with the happiest marriage around. The woman who said she’d kick Marcus out if he ever had an affair. “Why?” was the only thing she could think to say.
“We went away for the weekend with another couple,” Karin began.
“Who?” Josie interrupted.
“You don’t know them. We don’t talk to them anymore. For obvious reasons,” Karin continued. “This was before the twins were born.”
Josie picked up her pace to match Karin’s, which had quickened.
“It was this couple Marcus knew from work,” Karin said. “The woman was in his office, and they became friendly when they worked on a project, so we met them out for dinner. It was one of those things, where you just hit it off as a foursome. Everyone liked everyone. But Marcus and the woman—Jane—had more in common, and I always seemed to end up talking to Brad.”
Karin glanced at Josie. “Are you mad at me?”
Josie shook her head. “More shocked.”
Was everyone having affairs? Apparently the answer was yes. Even the last people you expected.
“We all went away for a weekend,” Karin continued. “It was a work retreat, at a resort where there were conference meetings during the day and dinners at night. A spa and golf course to entertain the spouses. Brad and I ended up hanging out the first day while Marcus and Jane were at some boring seminar. We had a couple of mimosas at brunch, then went to the driving range. It started to rain and there was an indoor theater so we caught a movie. It was totally innocent, but it wasn’t, you know? Something changed that day. I can’t even describe it. We hadn’t touched or anything, but we were laughing a lot.”
Josie’s stomach tightened. It began at a work conference. This was hitting too close to home. But she didn’t interrupt.
“We all went to dinner together that night. I was sitting next to Marcus. Brad was across the table from me, by Jane. And then during appetizers, during the middle of a speech by one of the partners, I felt my phone vibrate. I looked down and saw a text from Brad.”
“What did it say?”
“ ‘Throw a roll at me if I fall asleep.’ So I texted back, ‘Why don’t we throw them at the guy at the podium instead?’ ” Karin hesitated. “It sort of felt like that was when we crossed the line. If Marcus and I had spoken those words so everyone could hear it would be one thing, but . . .” Karin shook her head. “Anyway, later that night Jane went to bed early and Marcus was busy talking to colleagues. I was stuck in a conversation with the managing partner of Marcus’s firm, this guy who always reminds me of a hyperactive rat terrier. I excused myself and told Marcus I was going back to the room. I could tell he wanted to stay; he was having a fine time. So Brad offered to walk me back. He said he wanted to head in for the night, too.”
Josie touched Karin’s arm. “Wait, Marcus didn’t pick up on anything?”
He must have felt so foolish, too.
Karin shook her head. “He just gave me a kiss on the cheek and turned back to the group. Anyway, the cocktails were on an outdoor patio that was set a bit away from the entrance of the hotel. You took a little path through some trees to get back to the rooms. The path was lit with these little round footlights, but it was still pretty dim. I told myself Brad was just being gentlemanly, that he needed a reason to escape all the work chatter. I told myself that up until the moment when he pulled me behind a tree and kissed me.”
Josie sucked in her breath. She wanted to know more, but she also didn’t.
“What was it like?” she finally blurted. She asked the hard questions quickly, before she lost her nerve. “Better than with Marcus? More exciting?”
Karin shook her head. “Just . . . different. I kissed him back. It was a long kiss.”
“How long?” Josie asked.
“A few minutes,” Karin said.
“Jeez,” Josie said. “Weren’t you afraid someone would see you?”
“Not during but right after, yeah. It was crazy. Marcus couldn’t see us from the patio, but he could’ve walked up along the path at any second. Or one of his colleagues.”
It was hard to believe the kiss hadn’t been more exciting than with Marcus, Josie thought, feeling a jab of jealousy. Otherwise why would Karin have risked so much?
“But then we broke apart and I don’t know . . . I just wanted to get away. I went right to my room. Brad kept texting me, asking what was wrong . . . It was awful. I didn’t respond. I told Marcus I was coming down with something. I stayed in our room the next day, and we left early.”
Karin moved aside to let a woman walking a golden retriever pass.
“Does Marcus know?” Josie asked.
Karin nodded. “I told him pretty quickly. Right after we got home. I just couldn’t keep it from him. He was so angry. I’ve never seen him like that.”
“What did he do?” Josie asked.
“It was the way he looked at me,” Karin said. She shrugged but her voice grew ragged. “Like he’d stopped loving me—like he didn’t even know who I was anymore.”
Josie nodded. She could see how Marcus would feel that way. “Did he confront Brad?”
“No,” Karin said. “I don’t know if Brad’s wife knows, but I don’t think so. She tried to get together with us a few times after that, but we always made excuses. She probably thinks I hate her or something. I feel awful about that. But the truth would be worse for her.”
Would the not knowing be easier? In a way, yes. Josie hadn’t known about Frank’s affair for seven whole weeks. She’d been happy during that time. Perhaps if she hadn’t borrowed his phone, the affair would have run its course, and she might have lived her entire life without ever discovering it. But she would have been existing within the bubble of a lie; she would have been living with a man who wasn’t truly in their marriage.
“So Marcus just . . . forgave you?” Josie asked.
“Yeah,” Karin said. “He did. He didn’t talk to me for two days. Then we went to therapy. I suggested it. I told him everything, every last detail. He punched a wall when we got home. I’ve never seen him like that.”
Josie couldn’t imagine it. Easygoing, soft-spoken Marcus, who seemed always to be trying to woo Karin, even after all their years together.
“For him it wasn’t just the physical act of the kiss,” Karin said. “It was the betrayal. He kept going over the times the four of us had spent together, obsessing about things. Like whether I’d been flirting with Brad when I’d told him I liked his shirt this one time. Marcus said the two of us had turned him into a fool. His pride was wounded.”
It was just one kiss, on one night. It seemed so minor compared to what Frank had done. Plus Karin had confessed. That detail was crucial. She had chosen to put Brad on the outside, and to let Marcus in.
If Frank had come to her and confessed, rather than let Josie discover his affair, would she feel any differently? The hurt and anger would still be there, but at least she’d know he felt guilt and remorse. It would probably still be unforgivable, though.
“Was it really an affair, though?” Josie asked. “I mean, I know it wasn’t right, but you barely did anything.”
Karin nodded firmly. “I have to take responsibility for this. I can’t ever minimize what I did. It became an affair the moment I answered his text. The moment we created a secret.”
• • •
The hurt fell over her again, heavy and gray as a dentist’s X-ray apron. After Josie left Karin, she picked up Izzy at preschool and brought her home. She still had work calls to return, laundry to throw in, groceries to buy. But she couldn’t do any of those things.
She parked Izzy in front of the television, and she crawled into bed. Visions invaded her head, memories that were shifting shape now that she was assimilating new informati
on.
Like Frank gesturing for the waiter and ordering Josie a second margarita on her birthday. She’d laughed, protesting that it was a weekday night, but Frank had just cupped a hand over his ear: Did you say something? I didn’t hear you, babe. The girls had been playing with tortilla dough—the waitstaff at this place always brought kids hunks of it—and Josie had reached over and pulled off a piece, twirling it into a mustache and sticking it to Frank’s upper lip. Such a good look for you, handsome! She’d laughed. The girls had wanted mustaches, too, so Josie made them for the whole family.
Frank’s hand, warm and comfortably familiar, on her thigh, on the drive home. His reaching for her under the covers, sliding up her nightgown as he positioned himself over her.
Had he been thinking of Dana?
She thought of the time last summer when they’d gone to the pool and stood in line at the snack bar behind a woman who was wearing a white crocheted bikini. Josie had been aware of Frank’s awareness of the woman. She’d felt a slight hitch in his energy as they’d stood behind the gloriously tanned, fit woman.
Josie had noticed the woman also. She’d taken in her sculpted shoulders and the curve in her lower back, wondering how someone her age could have the body of a twenty-year-old dancer.
The woman had gotten a bottle of water from the snack bar and sauntered away. Josie and Frank had moved up to place their order for hamburgers and fries for the girls, and within minutes, Josie completely forgot about the stranger in the white bikini.
Had Frank? she wondered. Or did Frank’s eyes roam around the pool as he sought her out again?
Josie curled on her side, facing away from Frank’s half of the bed. She felt so empty. Her entire marriage had been a sham.
She lay like that for two hours, until it was time to pull herself up and retrieve Zoe from school. She felt as though she were seeing everything through a foggy lens, as if the sun had fallen out of the sky. She ached down to her bones.
She put Zoe in front of the TV alongside Izzy and microwaved a bag of popcorn for them. She tore open the top of the bag and allowed the hot steam to escape before handing it to them, not even bothering to pour it into a bowl.
She wished she could ask someone to come stay in the house and care for the children, so that she could remain in bed. Her parents wouldn’t be of any help, though. Her mother could run the kids to school and make them dinner, but she’d demand to know what was going on with Josie, and anything she said would undoubtedly make Josie feel worse. Josie would feel the weight of her mother’s judgment in every impatient gesture she made: her mother would shut the dishwasher door a little too firmly, or run the vacuum in whatever room Josie was in. Snap out of it, her mother would be silently saying. As long as things looked good on the outside—if Josie’s hair was brushed and her children were in tidy outfits—her mother would assume the complexities of Josie’s life were also under control.
Josie couldn’t ask Frank’s parents, or either of his older brothers, even though they were all great with kids. They’d pick up on the tension running through the household. Josie wasn’t ready to confide in any of them yet. Besides, they shared Frank’s blood. They might take her side in this particular instance, but their long-term loyalty would be with Frank.
Josie thought back to the last time she’d been sick. It was two winters ago, when Izzy was still pretty small. Josie had come down with a fever that was quickly followed by chills. Her throat felt as if it were on fire. She dragged herself into the doctor’s office, where she was diagnosed with strep. Are you sure it isn’t the bubonic plague? she’d joked, then she’d coughed profusely into her elbow.
The doctor had given her a prescription for antibiotics and recommended lots of rest and fluids. Josie had stayed in bed for thirty-six hours straight, napping and sipping herbal tea with honey, the comforting low hum on the television filling the background. It was exactly what she wanted to do now.
But the person who had stepped in then, who had taken time off work and had organized the kids’ meals and kept them entertained, was Frank.
• • •
When Frank arrived home from work that night, he walked directly into the kitchen, where Josie was stirring spaghetti in a pot.
“Ah, hey, can we talk for a minute?”
She looked at his face. Then she turned off the burner and followed him back outside. The spaghetti would absorb too much water and be ruined, but it didn’t matter.
Frank was going to tell her something important. Perhaps he was going to ask for a divorce.
A sharp wind cut through her sweater and she shivered. Frank clicked the fob on his key chain to unlock his Honda Civic and Josie climbed into the passenger seat. Had Dana sat here? Josie found her eyes skittering around as she searched for something. A strand of hair. An earring that had fallen into the crevice between the seat and the center console. But there was nothing.
Frank pulled open his door and sat next to her. They were so close now; barely a foot separated them.
Josie moved as close as possible to her door and waited. By now Frank must have talked to Dana. If he wasn’t going to tell her he wanted a divorce, then he would still be in damage-control mode. Whatever he was going to say would likely be a lie.
“Dana’s husband called me today.”
“What?” Josie heard the shock in her own voice. “What did he say?”
“He left a message. I didn’t answer,” Frank said. “Here.”
He reached for his phone and navigated to the voice mail section. Josie felt an intense curiosity gripping her: How had Ron found out about the affair? Had Ron threatened Frank?
Ron’s message began to play: This is Ron Hallman. I don’t want you to ever call my wife again. I don’t want your wife to call my wife. You need to stay away from us. Got it?
The message ended.
Josie stared at Frank’s phone, feeling betrayed. Ron was mad at her for calling Dana? But she and Ron were in this together; they were an unwitting pair. Shouldn’t they be aligned against their partners?
She glanced up at Frank. His face was expressionless.
“I know I’ve said this before, but there was no intercourse, Josie. I swear to you.”
His voice was confident and assured. It was the kind of tone he used to convince Izzy that there were no monsters hiding under her bed.
Obviously that confidence came from his knowledge that Dana was sticking to the same script. Josie felt fury ripping through her lethargy, so quickly that she knew it had been close to the surface all along, like lava boiling inside a volcano.
“Well, thanks, Bill Clinton.” She spit out the words. “I guess that makes it all better.”
He flinched. “I’m sorry, Josie. I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him, really and truly looked into his eyes, for the first time since her discovery. She’d always assumed she’d be able to tell whether he was lying. She knew Frank’s moods: She knew he liked being around his mother, but chafed when she reminded Frank that he was her “baby.” She knew he felt a little competitive with his two older brothers, who’d been football jocks in high school. She knew he was self-conscious about his thickening waistline, and that he thought he was a better singer than he actually was.
He hadn’t expressly told her any of those things. Through the years, she’d simply learned how to read him.
But now she couldn’t glimpse what he might be concealing.
A wild thought seized her: What if Frank was lying about the voice mail, too? Maybe he and Dana had cooked up this plan and gotten someone to leave the message so that Josie and Dana’s husband wouldn’t compare notes?
It was a crazy notion. But Josie couldn’t discount anything. She’d ignored her suspicions before. She wouldn’t be that naive again.
“Can you play that message again?” she asked. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes, so that she didn’t give Frank any clues about what she might be thinking.
“Sure,” he
said, sounding a little puzzled.
Josie kept her eyes closed until she heard Ron’s voice. Then she snuck a glance at the phone, which Frank was holding out between them. She saw the nine-digit number displayed on the screen. She repeated it to herself over and over as she opened the car door, hurried back into the house, and reached into a kitchen drawer for a pencil and Post-it note.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
* * *
Five years earlier
“YOU’RE GOING OUT FOR drinks with your ex-girlfriend?” Josie asked Frank.
“Yeah.” He looked at her more closely. His forehead creased. “What?” Frank asked.
Josie knew these things about Frank’s ex, whom he’d dated for all of his senior year in college: Monica was from Nebraska, she’d been an economics major, and she was drop-dead gorgeous. She had long red hair and pale, pale skin and blue eyes, but she didn’t look like a fragile china doll. Her cheekbones were strong and her teeth were perfect. The first time Josie had seen a picture of Monica, she’d thought: Jessica Chastain.
Monica and Frank were Facebook friends. She always posted a message for Frank on his birthday, but didn’t seem to interact with him often otherwise. She and Josie weren’t online friends. They’d never met.
“Why is she coming to town?” Josie asked.
“A cousin’s wedding,” Frank said.
Josie nodded. “Is she married?”
“Divorced. They were just together for, like, less than a year.”
There wasn’t anything wrong with Frank wanting to catch up with an old girlfriend, Josie told herself. They’d reminisce about college days; they’d briefly resurrect their twenty-year-old selves as they dived into old memories. They’d probably have two drinks—three, tops—and Frank would be home within a few hours.
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