by Mina Hardy
“I was driving. Are you sure it’s not rebroken?”
He gives me a curious look, but then smiles. Charming. “Comparing it to your previous X-rays, there’s no new break. So when you fell, it looks as though it aggravated the existing injury.”
“Is it going to take me another ten weeks to get out of this thing?” I point at the sling, defeated.
“It might. But it might be much sooner than that. Just be careful. No more ice skating,” he scolds. “Or spilling wine on the floor. That’s a waste of good wine.”
I manage a laugh that doesn’t sound too forced. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Let’s get you out of here. Your mother-in-law is going to drive you home? It’s going to be a bit of time before you’re able to get behind the wheel again.”
I groan. “Great. Yeah, she drove me here.”
“I’ll make sure all the papers are waiting for you at the desk.” He pauses, the wide grin fading a bit to be replaced with some concern. “Mrs. Sparrow … you do realize that you can’t drink while you’re taking the medications I’m going to prescribe for you. It could be very dangerous. So if you’re not going to be able to stop yourself from drinking alcohol, I’m going to have to withhold this prescription for something less effective.”
My laugh fades away when I see that he’s not joking. “I like a glass of wine now and then, doctor, but I’m not an alcoholic. Do you think I’m a problem drinker?”
He presses his lips together. “Your mother-in-law shared with me that she had a concern when she discovered the spill that led to this accident.”
Stunned, I blink rapidly. “If I couldn’t stop myself from drinking it, there wouldn’t have been anything left to spill.”
Dr. Banerjee nods after a moment. “I suppose that’s right. Well, you take care. I don’t want to see you back here again.”
I flash back to being eight years old. My mother telling the pediatrician that I’d fallen off the swing set and broken my wrist. In reality, I’d tripped over some of her painting supplies, and it wasn’t broken, only sprained, but she’d convinced the doctor to give me some kind of pills. I wasn’t the one who took them.
“Do you think I’m faking this to get more drugs?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. If he didn’t think so before, he probably does now. But Banerjee is an overworked ER doc who sees drug-seeking patients all the time. He has to know I’m not that.
“If I truly thought you were drug seeking, I would not prescribe you more,” Dr. Banerjee says kindly. “But I’m happy to give you some information on support resources, Mrs. Sparrow, if you think you might need some.”
“I’m fine,” I snap, then repeat it more softly. “I’m fine.”
At the desk, I sign a stack of papers. I pull out my credit card to take care of the co-pay. It’s declined. Embarrassed, I offer my debit card. It, too, is declined. When I get the fraud alert text seconds later regarding the credit card, I reply with a bold “YES” to indicate that the charge was in fact mine.
“Try it again, please.”
The credit card goes through, no problem. I’m disturbed about the debit card, though. I rarely use it. In fact, I rarely use the account it’s linked to. I’ve had access, of course, but Jonathan has always paid the bills and kept control over the accounts. As with every other freaking app on my phone, my thumbprint isn’t opening the one for the credit union. I’ll have to wait until I get home to log in on the laptop.
“Let’s just pop into the pharmacy and pick up your pills.” Harriett glances at me as we leave. “You look upset.”
“It’s my debit card—never mind. It’s okay.” I’m not going to get into my finances with her again.
At home, I suffer her fussing, but because I haven’t been to the grocery store, there’s nothing much for her to make for the lunch I don’t really want to eat. She settles on canned soup and saltine crackers. She puts the bowl at my place on the table, along with two pills and a glass of water. She’d already mopped up the spill for me before we left for the ER.
“You should take your medicine with food,” she says, “so you don’t upset your stomach. I’ll go to the store for you. You might have mentioned it while we were out.”
“I just wanted to get home, Harriett.”
She nods. “Of course, honey. Eat your soup and take those pills. Then take a little nap. I called Jonathan to let him know what happened, but he didn’t answer.”
I take the pills but manage only a few bites of the soup before I excuse myself to go upstairs to grab my laptop. She doesn’t follow me up there, thank God, but calls up the stairs that she’s going to the store. For me to take a nap. She won’t bother me when she comes back. She’ll just let herself in.
Of course she will.
It takes a few minutes for me to log in to the credit union account, longer than usual because I can type only with one hand, I’m fuzzy with pain meds, and I have to reset my password.
My checking account has only the minimum balance in it, which is why the card was declined at the hospital. I haven’t looked at this account in months, and why would I? Jonathan deals with it. There’s supposed to be plenty of money in it. I check the savings, the money market, the vacation shares. There’s money there, but not as much as I would have thought.
There’s his paycheck, regularly deposited. Utility bills paid with auto-payments. The mortgage, the credit card, our streaming accounts, all there. I glance over the cash withdrawals with a frown. Of course he uses cash for all the things he doesn’t want me to see listed on the credit card bills. So, where’s the money?
My payout isn’t there.
To be honest, I can’t remember if the payout ever hit my account. That would have happened sometime in June, during the months I can’t remember. It’s just the sort of screwup I’m used to from GenTech.
I toss off a quick email to my contact in payroll at GenTech. It bounces back within seconds. No longer with the company and no forwarding information. Damn it. I’m going to have to do more research into who to contact, because they owe me that money, and it should have been deposited months ago. I’m not surprised I might have to chase them down, though. There’s a reason why I left instead of moving along with them during the restructuring, and it was just this kind of thing.
Jonathan won’t be home until at least midnight tonight. A little less than twelve hours away. Harriett thinks I’m napping, and I can’t drive myself anyway, so I thumb open the app to call for a Ryde.
I can’t stay in this house right now.
It takes me a couple tries to get the message just right, no typos. I send it.
I’d like to see you again.
In seconds, three little dots appear. Cole is typing. I hold my breath, waiting.
Anytime.
Now?
Please, comes his answer. Yes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Cole
“Tell me about the first person who ever betrayed you,” she says.
This isn’t the sort of question I’m used to being asked in bed. Or anywhere. The women I used to get with usually aren’t much for asking questions that have any kind of depth to them. I sit up to look at Diana, but the sight of her naked body has left me unable to talk for a few moments.
“Cole,” she says and pushes my foot with hers.
Her breast, the one I can see beyond the sling, jiggles a little. My dick twitches again. Does she know what she’s doing to me? She has to, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“The first person who ever betrayed me? Hell. I don’t know. You mean like a girlfriend?”
Leaning, I pull open the nightstand drawer and take out a pack of smokes and my pop’s old Zippo. It’s older than I am. I don’t light up. She doesn’t like the smell. But there’s a comfort in having the habit right there next to me, where I can at least look at it.
Despite the mid-February cold, my bedroom is sweltering. My furnace is old, but it works hard. I can taste the sweat
on my upper lip. See it beading on her forehead. I should get up and turn on the overhead fan to get some air stirring. I can’t make myself get off the bed, though. I don’t want to move away from her.
“It doesn’t have to be a girlfriend. Anyone. Mine,” she says, “was my mother. What a cliché, right?”
“The reason things are cliché is because they’re true for a lot of people.”
She tilts her head. “Yes. You’re right. Sometimes I think I tolerate my mother-in-law more than I would otherwise because I’m just not sure what’s normal for a mother to do. You know? I mean, mine was pretty awful, but at least she had the decency to get out of my life when I was in sixth grade. She did try showing up again later. By that time, I was married. And—stupid me—I gave her a chance, and surprise, surprise, she went and messed it all up again. Just up and disappeared without a word. It was weeks before I found out she’d died of an overdose.”
“But I thought—” I cut myself off before I can finish.
I lost my mom in middle school. She’d told me that, very specifically, a couple times. I had assumed her mother had died and that it wasn’t much of a loss. But then, I’m not very sympathetic toward druggie winos who abuse their kids. Once, she’d even told me she’d found her mother during a suicide attempt. Maybe Diana had been deliberately blurring the facts. Maybe she’d just flat-out lied. The thought is unsettling, but I have to remind myself that she’s completely capable of it. I’d just always thought it would be about me, not to me.
Diana gives me a curious look. “What?”
“I thought maybe you didn’t like your mother-in-law. You know, because she was annoying you the day we met.”
“She’s been better to me than my own ever was. I mean, my own wasn’t even my own. I was adopted,” Diana adds with a harsh, self-conscious laugh. “Of all the people in the world who could have adopted me, I got stuck with that one? So not-fair. It really wrecked me.”
“You don’t seem like you’re wrecked to me.”
She smiles. “No?”
“Nope.” I lean forward to kiss her. “Definitely not. Anyway, we all have damage.”
Her tongue teases mine. Her breath tastes sweet. She moves away to study my face for a few seconds.
“I worry that I’m still too much like her, no matter how much I don’t want to be. How much is nature versus nurture, you know? It’s why I decided never to have kids of my own. What if I screw them up as bad as she screwed me up? Or worse.” Diana shakes her head. Her voice is low, her gaze shadowed. “I’ve thought about trying to find out who my birth parents were, but I never have. Even when I worked for Sunny Days and could have looked up my adoption records, I didn’t. You want to know why?”
“Tell me.”
“I’m afraid my birth parents are even worse than she was,” Diana tells me, “and I’d rather not know. Anyway, you haven’t answered my question. Who’s the first person who ever betrayed you?”
“I guess the first person who betrayed me was a buddy of mine who stole my girl. We were in fourth grade. She was in fifth.”
“So,” she teases, “you’ve always had a thing for older women?”
I chuckle. “I guess so.”
She leans a little and offers me her mouth. I kiss her. My hands slide over her warm skin.
“Did you forgive him?” Diana whispers.
I’m too caught up in the taste of her to figure out what she means at first, but then I say, “Yeah. I mean, it’s not like it mattered in the long run.”
“I don’t forgive people who betray me. There’s something hard in me,” she says. “Always has been. Once you’ve crossed that line, that’s it. We’re done.”
“Is that a warning?”
She looks surprised. “Oh. No. Well, I guess it is, but I didn’t mean it as a threat. I was just thinking about what I’m doing here and why I don’t feel bad about it. That’s all.”
There goes the moment when I had intended to look her in the eyes and walk her through all the things she doesn’t remember. Plus all the things she never knew. I already have betrayed her, but she doesn’t know it yet, and if I’m lucky, she never will.
“Cole,” she says in that low, teasing voice with a small smile, “do you plan on betraying me?”
I kiss her again so I don’t have to answer that.
“I really like you,” Diana whispers against my mouth.
I close my eyes. “I really like you too.”
The breath she lets out is a shiver, a shudder, a sigh. “I need to get home. He’s due back soon.”
Stay rises to my lips, but I swallow it. She can’t stay. I should never let her come back here, but I know I will. If she wants me, I won’t be able to say no.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Diana
The lights are on inside Harriett’s apartment when I make it home just past eleven PM. I hold my breath, sure Jonathan’s car will be in its bay, and I will be caught out, but I’ve made it back before him. For all I know, he’s gone straight from the airport to Val’s place to greet her before coming back here.
At some point, is he just not going to come back here at all?
My fridge is bursting with food, courtesy of my mother-in-law. I’m not hungry. Cole fed me well before driving me home. Both my stomach and my soul.
Anyone who says really good sex can’t fix what’s wrong has never had really good sex. I went to his house anxious and unsettled. I left it relaxed, feeling like I could handle whatever else life decided to toss my way.
I’m not dumb enough to think this is going to end well. Things like this don’t, do they? I’ll be caught, and my marriage will end. Or I won’t get caught, and Cole and I will come to an impasse, and I’ll have to make a choice. Or he’ll get tired of me and break my heart. That’s the most likely scenario, but right now I’m not going to dwell on that. Right now, I’m tired and I plan to be long asleep before my errant husband gets into bed beside me.
* * *
Blood on my hands. Blood and mud. The stink of it fills me.
I did this. I did this thing, this bad thing. And it’s going to catch up to me.
I can’t get away with it.
* * *
I wake screaming, this time not from the nightmare, but the pain in my shoulder as Jonathan shakes me. “Stop!”
“Sorry, babe. Jesus. What’s the matter with you?”
I struggle to sit and point at the sling. “What do you think’s the matter with me?”
“Why are you wearing the sling again?” He looks befuddled.
I can see this because he turned on the light. If I were coming home late to my sleeping spouse, I’d leave the light off so as not to wake him up, but I guess that’s just me. I work up the spit to say something nasty but swallow my words.
“I slipped this morning. Yesterday morning. Whatever,” I say. “Didn’t your mother call you to tell you she had to take me to the ER?”
Befuddled, now guilty. “I … ah, shit. I saw she called, but you know how she is. I just figured it was something I could hear about when I got home. Are you okay?”
“No. It hurts.” I run my tongue over my teeth. My mouth is gummy, sticky, gross. My eyes feel gritty.
“I’m sorry I shook you. I didn’t know. You were whimpering,” my husband says. “Another nightmare?”
I lean against the headboard and take a few deep breaths. “Yeah. A nightmare.”
“Same thing?” He sits on the edge of the bed.
“Yes. No. They’re all kind of the same, but different sometimes. It’s fine. It’s fading now. I can’t really recall it. Can you get me a drink?”
“Sure, babe. Sure.” He pats my leg gently through the covers and disappears into the bathroom.
I snag my phone up from where it’s charging on the nightstand and make sure to mute text notifications from Cole. I’m just setting the phone back when Jonathan brings me the glass of water from the bathroom. It’s cool and welcome, and I thank him.
“What time is it?” I ask, although I was literally just looking at my phone and should have noticed.
“Almost one.”
“You’re a little later than you said.” I don’t mean for this to sound accusatory, but it does.
He shrugs. “We got in a little late. The baggage didn’t show up right away. I needed gas on the way home.”
“It’s not an interrogation,” I tell him, although I guess maybe it was. A little.
“I’m wiped. I’m going to bed. Do you need anything else?” He pauses. “What did you slip on?”
“Wet patch in the kitchen.”
He nods but doesn’t ask anything else. Harriett will fill him in, I’m sure. I listen to him in the shower and try to doze back to sleep, but I’m still wide awake when he comes back. He turns off the light. Gets into bed. He doesn’t try to kiss me goodnight, thank God.
In minutes, the soft huff of his breathing tells me he’s asleep. I try but can’t manage to get back there myself. It’s not the dull, vibrating throb in my clavicle. It’s not the fear of nightmares either. I can’t sleep because with Jonathan in it, this bed feels more like a prison than a haven.
I don’t turn on the lights when I get up. Even now, I’m kinder to him than he is to me. I take my laptop and go downstairs to make myself a mug of hot herbal tea. My stomach is a little unsettled, maybe from hunger, maybe the pain, maybe just the looming fact that I’m more likely to be divorced by this time next year than I was last year at this time.
I spend some time hunting down and emailing anyone who I think can help me figure out where my money is. Then I set up the camera app again. It takes some fine tuning to get the system reconnected to the Wi-Fi and pulled up on my phone app, but at last I can scroll through every outside camera we have. The feed shows the front door, the side yard, the back yard, and deck. The detached garage and Harriett’s apartment.
Harriett is outside on her small porch, smoking. It’s one in the morning, and the lights inside her place are off, but the cameras have night vision. She has to be freezing, but she wears no coat. She smokes furiously, the plume a haze in the live video footage.