by Mina Hardy
What happened to the car? I remember asking Jonathan.
I had it towed to the junkyard. It was totaled.
“Liar. You goddamned liar.” I want to spit the words, their sour taste coating my tongue.
Looking over the car now, I forcibly wince at the enormous dent in the hood and let out a low, mournful groan. It’s only a car, and I know it’s foolish to care this much about something material. The damage looks like it could have been repaired, though, and that’s what I don’t understand. Why would Jonathan have put it in the shed and lied to me about it? We could have fixed it.
Story of our marriage, I guess. We could have fixed it, but both of us threw it away before we could even try. A harsh, gagging gasp hisses out of me.
“He always hated you.” I give the car a long stroke against the cold metal.
Speaking to my car like it’s a person doesn’t make me crazy, but would hugging it? I want to. I shine the light upward and let out another cry at the sight of the windshield’s glass, cracked in a spiderweb pattern on the passenger side. The airbag looks like a crumpled bedsheet.
“Common in clavicle breaks sustained during car accidents. The seatbelt, you know, where it crosses over. You were the passenger?”
“No,” I say aloud. “I was driving myself.”
I’d been alone. Wasn’t I? I touch my right shoulder. I touch the car’s cold paint and let out a sob. Was someone else driving that night? What really happened?
I shine my light again.
A dry, rusty brown stain coats the bumper.
This time, I don’t gasp or mutter. I bark out a sharp cry and recoil, backing up so fast I knock into a bunch of tottering boxes. Some fall over. One hits my shoulder hard enough to shove me forward. I drop my phone.
The light goes out.
On my hands and knees, I struggle for breath. My throat and nose are closing. Tears scald my face. I’m whispering horrified prayers I can barely decipher for myself.
“Please, no.”
My hand sweeps in the direction I remember the phone landing. I find it. I swipe the cracked screen, wincing in anticipation of slicing of my thumb on the broken glass. The screen lights. I tap to bring up the flashlight, already knowing it won’t work. The battery is now at eight percent.
The flashlight does come on. I’m still on my knees in front of the car, inches from the bumper. I shine the light.
The blood is old and no longer red. Clumps of stiff brownish hair and gristle cling to the cracks and dents of the bumper. The light turns into a strobe from the shaking of my hands.
I turn off the light and stand in the darkness. I breathe. I count. I breathe again.
This time, Dr. Levitt’s tricks work. I am not panicking. My head aches, and I still feel unsteady, ready to fall over, but I know I’m awake. I know this all is real. I’m no longer even thinking about looking for the generator.
It was a deer.
The blood and hair and bone on the front of my car are not a dream. But what if it wasn’t a deer? What if my dreams are memories? I need to find out. Outside, more thunder rolls. The rain is coming down—if it’s possible, even harder than before.
A shovel leans against the wall next to my car. I grab it and go through the door before I can talk myself out of it. My phone is useless out here, and I shove it into the sweatshirt pocket. I round the shed and dig the shovel into the sodden earth of the hill behind it. I haul myself up it, three or four steps until I’m over the rise.
The split tree is bigger than the others around it, and in the faint light from the neighbor’s back porch, I head for its looming shadow. The hill isn’t as steep here, but I still slip in the wet leaves and dirt. Behind me, the floodlights of my own house come on, bathing me in just enough light for me to see the direction I need to head. The power’s back on.
It takes me several minutes to get to the tree. I’m here, in the place of my nightmares, and although I have no clear idea of exactly where to start digging, I stab the ground with the shovel. I grind my teeth at the pain in my sole when I use my foot to get the tool deeper into the dirt. I might as well be barefoot for all the protection my soft flats provide. The shoes will be ruined, but I don’t care.
I grunt and groan with pain as I throw aside a shovelful of dirt and leaves. I push it down again. The lightning and thunder have eased, and the rain seems to be slowing, although it’s still frigid as ice. My numb fingers slide off the shovel’s splintery wooden handle. A bright sting stabs the base of my thumb, but I ignore it. More agony, hot as fire, in both my shoulders. I toss aside another clump of dirt. This time, when the shovel sinks into the earth, it hits something solid.
I sink to my knees and use my hands. I claw at the ground, determined. Focused. I can’t see what I’m doing, but I will not stop until I’ve dug up whatever it was I buried there.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Valerie
“What do you mean, you told her?”
I’ve never heard Jonathan sound like this. Honestly, I’ve never even seen him so angry. My gaze drops to his clenching fists, and I tense. Rough sex is one thing, but I won’t tolerate a man who uses his fists. He notices, relaxing his fingers with an obvious effort.
“I told her about us,” I tell him. Why should he need more explanation than that? He’s not that stupid, even if he’s acting like it.
He drags his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair until it stands on end. “Why would you do that?”
“Because she was my best friend,” I snap, “and she deserved to know.”
“When?” he demands.
I draw my robe closer around my throat. “In August.”
That was when I told her that things had changed. That was when she’d promised to let him leave her without a fight. I am telling Jonathan only half the truth, but that’s all I will ever tell him. If he knew that she and I had set this up from the start, would he still love me? I’m not taking the chance.
Lies to start. Lies to end. Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? The end.
“Because of Punta Cana?” Understanding dawns in his eyes. He pivots on his heel, again dragging his hands through his hair and actually pressing fists to his forehead before whirling back around to look at me.
I’m losing a battle I’ve been ready to fight for a long time. “Yes. Because of that damned trip. You told me she was insisting that you take her, and you said you couldn’t think of a way to tell her no. She did insist, didn’t she?”
Jonathan lies, Diana had said. Well. Don’t we all? One of them had lied to me, and which is worse, the betrayal of a friend or of a lover? In the end, I was still losing someone I loved.
“Of course she did.” Jonathan doesn’t meet my eyes. This is a weakness in him, and I hate seeing it. “Jesus, Valerie, I can’t believe you’re bringing that up again. I didn’t even fucking take her. She changed her mind. Said she had some final thing come up with work, that she couldn’t make it. She even apologized for it being so last minute. We didn’t even go!”
“No, you didn’t go,” I reply from clenched jaws. “Because she wrecked her car, and you had to stay home. How convenient was that?”
Jonathan recoils from me. “You act like she did it on purpose.”
If I say it aloud, I will sound like a crazy, jealous bitch. I know there’s no way Diana could have forced herself to need emergency gallstone surgery, and I know, too, how unlikely it is that she caused her own car accident just so she could ruin Jonathan’s and my relationship. Still, that’s how it felt then and still feels now.
“She can’t remember August,” he says when I stay silent.
“So she says.”
Jonathan shakes his head. “She’s not pretending to have amnesia, Valerie. How many times do I have to tell you that? She’s been diagnosed by more than one doctor. She’s not faking it just to keep me with her.”
“And yet you haven’t left her,” I say.
Jonathan lets out a low, scraping groan and sinks i
nto the chair. He puts his head in his hands and says nothing else for a minute. He’s angry at me, but I’m furious too. Even months later, the memory of how it felt when he told me he was going to take her instead of me on the sexy resort vacation we’d worked so hard to plan still pushed my blood pressure high enough to start a throb of pain behind my eyes.
“Even if she really doesn’t remember,” I tell him, “I reminded her in October.” I spit the words, my lips twisting around them. I don’t care if this makes me ugly. I feel ugly about all of this, the way I did that day at the Blue Dove when Diana tried to smile at me and pretend like nothing had ever happened. Like she wasn’t going back on her word, trying to ruin my life.
Silence creeps into the space between us. I want to break it, but I don’t trust myself not to scream at him. I concentrate on my breathing, keeping it slow and steady.
“It’s not that easy—”
“Isn’t it?” I am not sympathetic to his hitching breath or the way he cuts his gaze from mine so he doesn’t have to look me in the eye.
I love Jonathan, but right now I am not impressed with him.
He looks up at me. “She needs me.”
At last, I know the truth. I see it written all over his face. Jonathan lies, she’d told me, but he’s not as good at as he thinks he is. Too bad both of us underestimated how smart he was, how good at playing the game we thought we’d set ourselves up to win.
“You never intended to take me on that trip,” I whisper. “It was an excuse to end things.”
He can’t possibly begin to guess the depths of what my ex–best friend and I have been through. He never will, because I don’t think Jonathan Richmond is capable of loving anyone enough to sacrifice for them.
That’s the terrible thing about loving someone. You know their flaws. You love them anyway.
I can’t tell him why this began.
All I can say to him is the truth of what this has become.
“I love you. I know this didn’t start off in any way that anyone would say is right, but … we are right, together. We are good together. We are happy. But I can’t wait forever for you to decide you want to be with me, Jonathan. I can’t be with you and break my own heart, over and over. Loving you this way is going to kill me.”
“What do you want me to do? Go home now, in the middle of the night, and tell my wife I’m leaving her? She’s still recovering …”
“There will never be a good time—don’t you get it? There’s always going to be something.” I turn my back to him. I don’t have to struggle now to keep my voice steady. Everything inside me has gone stone cold. “Figure it out. Tell her you’re leaving.”
“Valerie …”
“Give her both the houses, half the money—I don’t care whatever it is,” I tell him without turning around. I can’t bear to look at his face when I see him deciding he won’t do it. “I don’t care if you give her everything. I don’t care what I have to do, so long as I can have you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Diana
It’s a box.
An oversized cigar box of thin wood, with a tiny metal clasp, wrapped in layers of plastic. I can imagine the cedar scent of it, but all I can smell right now is dirt and rain and the thick, heavy odor of rotting leaves. With trembling hands, I pull it from the hole and shake it free of the clotted mud. The shovel put a split in the top. The box is heavy enough to contain something important … but not big enough for a body.
The first sob rips out of me like a bullet from a gun. I clutch the box to my chest, not caring that I’m getting my husband’s sweatshirt filthy, possibly ruining it. I rock, trying to bite back the tears and unable to. All of Dr. Levitt’s reassurances wash over me, but here is the proof that I can believe. Relief tastes like orange juice, sickly sweet but with a hint of sour on the back of my tongue. Twisted laughter ripples through my weeping. I am hysterical.
My car is wrecked, and it’s obvious I hit something, yes. Something that once was alive. But my nightmares have not come true. It was not a person. I did not bury a body beneath this old split tree.
I’ve killed someone, yes, but I didn’t bury her in my back yard.
This box, though. I shouldn’t want to face what’s inside it, except I do. It has to have answers, and even if I don’t like them, I’m so damned sick of not knowing that I’m willing to risk any upsetting truths I might reveal.
I leave the shovel behind and take the box with me as I slide my way down the sloping hill, then the steeper part behind the shed. I’m covered in muck, and not even the rain still pounding down will clean me.
Back inside, with the box still clutched tight against me, I sidle my way to the fridge and pull out the soup and sandwich from earlier. My head has cleared, and I’m starving. I need a hot shower and warm clothes and food before I can think about opening this box. I’m going to need all my strength.
I tear into the sandwich, adding swigs of soup right from the plastic container. I don’t even care that it’s cold. I’m ravenous. I finish it all within minutes. Belly full, a warm glow rises inside me. A sense of calm.
Whatever’s coming, I’ll be able to face it.
Upstairs, I toss my phone, totally dead, onto my side of the bed and lock the bedroom door. I take the box with me into the bathroom. I lock that door too. I put the box on the counter next to the sink. I don’t recognize it. I lift the box and hold it, testing the weight. Something heavy slides inside it again. My fingers feel numb enough that I could drop it, so I put it back on the counter and take a few steps back.
I see myself in the mirror. Straggling, soaked hair. Filth spattered on my face. My lips are blue. Circles beneath my eyes. I look worse even than I feel, and that’s saying a lot, because a bone-deep exhaustion has sunk in, turning my limbs to lead. I want so much to simply drag myself into bed and pull the blankets over my head.
I want to sleep, even if I might have nightmares.
I strip out of my filthy, sopping clothes and leave them in a pile on the floor. Naked and chilled, I shiver as water slides down my spine. I scrub myself clean as fast as I can, then wrap my hair in a towel and slip into my robe, moving slowly because of course my old injuries are now singing a new song. I take the box with me into the bedroom and make sure the door is still locked.
I need to open this box, but my hands are shaking too much. I hadn’t noticed how ripped up my fingers got when they were covered with mud, but now the scratches and gouges are clearly outlined in red. I’ve lost a nail nearly down to the quick. My body is looking for every excuse to stop me from discovering what is in this box, but I peel away the plastic so I can tear off the lid and toss it onto the bed.
Inside is a cellphone I don’t recognize. It’s not even the brand I prefer. The case is clear, with an imprinted photo of a white rose with a barbed wire stem. I don’t know this case, but it feels like … me.
New phone. Another item from the list I found has been explained but has given no answers. Only more questions.
The phone’s dead, but there’s a charging cord in the box. I plug it in. First, nothing but a black screen. It will take another few seconds for the phone to power up enough to be able to turn it on, so I set it aside and sort through the rest of the box.
A pressed flower, a white rose to match the back of the phone case. A couple of movie ticket stubs for films I can’t remember seeing. A brochure for a state park campground. A keychain with a unicorn on it. A USB drive. A small packet of papers, printed with small type and tight lines.
The prenup.
As I flip through the papers, the phone comes to life.
The background art is blank. There’s the keypad for a passcode. I try mine, but it’s wrong. I try an old passcode. Also wrong. I try a third, fourth, and fifth time, but I have the sense to stop and take a breath before I get locked out.
If this is my phone, I have to know the passcode. I think hard. I’ve tried every combination of my birthday, my husband’s birthday, and ou
r street address that I can think of. I close my eyes. Wrap both hands around the phone. The passcode is locked up as tight in my mind as this phone, but if it’s mine, and I know instinctively it is, even if I can’t figure out yet how or why, then I also have to know the passcode.
I look at the back of the case again. I look at the pressed flower. My fingers type, hesitantly, ready for the phone to flash that it’s been locked for the first minimum of one minute. Four numbers, each corresponding to a letter.
7673
ROSE
The phone unlocks.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Valerie
LAST AUGUST
I’d started this affair not knowing what it would lead to, but there we were in late August. Ten weeks seemed like an eternity when I looked into Jonathan’s eyes.
If I’d ever been in love before, it had never hit this hard or fast. I’d never felt it this deep. Logic told me we shouldn’t count on this as real, but logic can fuck itself sideways, without lube. Love is never about logic.
It was the trip that did me in. Our sexy trip to Punta Cana, derailed by a jealous wife. I no longer cared what she and I had agreed to. I was going to end this one way or another.
When I pulled into Diana’s driveway, the garage door was up. Her car was parked inside. It was brand-new when she’d bought it a year ago, and she kept it so pristine it might as well still be new. For a moment, I remembered how we’d joked about what she was going to spend that inheritance on. I’d been the one to suggest she might want to off her husband, the man who, at the time, I didn’t love. Didn’t even really know.
A year ago, everything was different.
Before I went into her house through the garage, I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I wondered how Diana felt about Jonathan’s mother watching every coming and going, the way she peeked at me through the window blinds. No matter how close Diana and Harriett were, that had to be annoying.