by Kaira Rouda
“Feel sick,” Sarah said. She was sweating, a trickle of water running down her back. She burped, fighting down the urge to throw up. She shouldn’t have confided in Melanie. She didn’t even like the woman. But now that she had, it was all too real. Everything she had suspected for the past two years, everything she’d been denying, was true. An acronym for denial that she’d heard once popped into her head: Don’t Even kNow I Am Lying. I’ve been lying to myself, she realized. No, it couldn’t be. Jud was supposed to be in Paris. He’d called last night, telling her how chilly it was in the City of Light. “He’s in Paris.”
“I’m sorry. It really seems like he’s not. At least not yet. Look, er, well, according to his Facebook page he’s been in Palm Springs since Monday. Here he is floating on a pink raft in a pool. Bastard,” Melanie said.
“I need air,” Sarah said, fumbling around for her purse. She wanted to leave, to go home, to avoid dealing with this. She was too numb to feel anything, too panicked to speak; the pit of sadness was pulling at her. She wanted to hide, run away to her perfect home behind the guarded gates. But who was Jud with in the desert? Why wasn’t she enough? What had happened to them? What would happen to her now? Sarah wondered.
As she slid out of the booth, Melanie lunged across the table and grabbed her wrist, fingernails digging into Sarah’s arm. Sarah stared at the woman in shock. She wanted to slap her, to tell the meddling, Googling woman to let go, that no one touched her anymore, but she’d lost her voice. “I know you don’t want to deal with this, but you must. You need to find out what’s going on. Did you know that in Hong Kong, a woman can kill her husband if she finds out he’s been cheating? It’s completely justified and legal. The only stipulation is she has to kill him with her bare hands. No weapons. At least that’s what I read.”
Sarah stared at the woman across the booth, this drunk stranger with unruly dark hair and in need of Botox between her brows, who was trying to give her advice, acting like she was her friend. Why didn’t she realize that Sarah didn’t want to kill Jud? She wanted him back. All she needed was his attention. They were college sweethearts. He was all she’d ever known.
“I’m kidding about killing him, Sarah, but you do need to confront him about this. It’s like he’s living a double life,” Melanie said. Sarah noticed she was well into her third glass of chardonnay, and her words were running together. “It’s really remarkable that you’re letting him get away with this.”
Sarah needed to defend herself and get away from this person. She popped a piece of pickled ginger into her mouth, remembering it was good for upset stomachs and it was anti-aging. “Me? Letting him?” Sarah said.
“Well, yes. If you’re in denial, which you clearly are, then he gets a free ticket to do whatever he wants, wherever he wants. In this case, in Palm Springs. It’s classic.”
Sarah didn’t think it was classic; she thought it was sad. All of it. Ashley and Jud, both of them leaving her at the same time. Ashley would be at college, Jud in the desert with his lover. Sarah would be alone, disease-ridden and broke. She wasn’t in denial. She just wanted time to stand still. At some point she had decided if she didn’t acknowledge it was happening, whatever it was, whoever it was, it would all go away, go back to normal.
“Any idea who the other woman is?” Melanie asked, slurring. “Thank goodness it’s not Zoe. She’s the hottest single mom in town.”
Sarah didn’t believe what she’d just heard. Jud and another woman? It couldn’t be true. He had her and she was perfect. Midwestern Melanie was trying to ruin her life. She’d ignore this meddler and go back to her perfect life. Sarah stood, smoothing her dress, enjoying the looks from the men who were waiting to be seated.
Melanie had turned around in the booth and was staring at Zoe and Collin who had stood up to leave. Collin seemed angry and didn’t acknowledge them, and Zoe gave a weak wave of her hand as they walked out the door.
“I need to get home,” Sarah said. “Thanks for listening, and please keep this quiet. Whatever you think you know, and especially what I told you about the disease. As for my husband, you’re wrong about whatever you saw online. I know it.”
My God, Sarah thought as she stood up and her privates throbbed, I have an incurable disease.
“Believe what you’d like, hon, but you need to confront him. About the herpes at least,” Melanie said.
“Shhhh,” Sarah said, mortified, as the waiter approached with the check. Sarah slipped her credit card onto the tray and waved him away.
“I can give you some cash,” Melanie said.
“No, my treat. I didn’t even ask about your boy, um,” Sarah said forgetting his name.
“Dane,” Melanie said. “No need to bring him up actually. Probably won’t even get into college at this rate. Will work in a print shop or something. Did you ever meet my oldest, Seth? Now he’s a guy your Ashley would like.”
Sarah considered defending the boy, but she didn’t know him. Sarah was out of energy and needed to get away. “Thanks for listening. Use your cash for a cab. You shouldn’t be driving. Is your husband home?”
“Of course he is,” Melanie said. “I might order a dessert or something first before I leave.”
Sarah signed the bill, added a huge tip, and walked to the sushi counter to hand it to Hapi.
“Okay, migi kuru!” Hapi said, and Sarah tried to give him a smile.
She walked back to their table, bent at the waist, her lips close to Melanie’s ear. “Remember, please don’t tell anyone, not even your husband.”
Melanie pushed her lips together and nodded. Sarah wasn’t sure what that meant, but she needed to get home to Ashley. She had a life to pretend to be living.
CHAPTER THREE
Wednesday, October 1
KEITH
Keith sat at the kitchen table enjoying the view of the ocean out the window, trying to avoid eye contact with Melanie while wondering why his wife had a sudden need to document their every moment together as a family with photography.
He watched as she photographed the dinner plates, brimming with a well-rounded meal Dane was sure to pick apart.
“Family dinners are so special,” she said, as she moved around the place setting at different angles while he watched. This new obsession was, like many things lately, getting annoying. She’d always been a bit of a nut, with an easy laugh and a warm smile. He adored her crazy curly hair and her intense love for her boys. She’d do anything to help them, he knew, but in the process she could be smothering. Seth always handled her well, achieving at school and sharing her warm, open demeanor at home. Melanie and Dane were so similar, but they didn’t see it that way. He had watched as the tension escalated between them with every year of high school. She kept pushing him for grades, and he pushed back by doing nothing. Keith loved coming home from work and hearing his son playing the guitar, singing his heart—and his anxiety—out.
Meanwhile, Melanie would be in the kitchen making dinner ready to dump her frustrations on him. “Dane didn’t do this.” “Dane wasn’t going to do that.” He’d never amount to anything. He wouldn’t ever get into college. Keith disagreed. He knew his younger son was smart, the IQ tests proved it; he just hadn’t been able to fit his passions into the structure of traditional high school. They’d find a path for him. Dane was handsome—God, was he good-looking—and talented. They’d pulled the rug out from under him by moving here, but he was getting his mojo back, Keith thought. The kid would be fine; in fact, he was more together than Keith was in high school—a fact he shared with Dane often, much to his wife’s chagrin.
“Dane, dinner is ready and getting cold,” Melanie yelled, her second bellow to their second son. Keith felt his shoulders tense. “Why can’t he just do this simple thing? Be down for dinner when expected. Why?”
Keith looked at her, her jaw clenched with anger and her brown eyes dark and sad, and thought, Chill out. “Why don’t we start without him?” he said. “It looks wonderful. How did the photos t
urn out?”
“Really?” she said in an exasperated voice, as if he’d punched her in the stomach and was the biggest idiot she’d ever been forced to spend time with. “I told you I’m trying to get a photo of the three of us and our dinner plates. I worked hard on the stuffed chicken and the kale salad. I need him down here. Is that too much to ask?”
“No,” he said, a simple answer meant to keep the peace, whatever peace still existed in the air around his wife. Keith put his napkin on his lap, hoping that was acceptable.
In fact, that was the problem with everything lately, he realized. His wife never laughed anymore. Everything was too serious, too intense. She needed to relax. He didn’t know if it was all because of Dane. It could be this neighborhood they’d moved into, full of overachieving, entitled parents. But she’d picked this house, picked this gated community when he would have rather been close to town, outside the gates. He knew, though, it would never be in his best interest to bring that up.
Maybe he’d buy her a spa retreat for Christmas, he thought, picking up his water glass and taking a big drink. Hell, maybe he’d send her away sooner if it would tamp down the level of tension in their home. He loved her but he was fairly certain she was experiencing a midlife crisis, or what she told him was called empty-nest syndrome, or worse. When he thought of Dane’s departure in the fall, he panicked a little imagining their empty table, night after night, photos of just the two of them.
“Don’t move, this is just perfect,” Melanie said to him as Dane walked into the room. She leaped from her chair at the table and assumed the now too common crazy photographer position while Keith and Dane stared at each other. She positioned herself as always behind the empty chair, Where Seth should be, Keith thought, missing his oldest. “I wish we could all three be in the shot, but then we’d lose the whole scene. I need the whole plate showing.”
Keith looked to his right and saw Dane grimace.
“Look, Dane, if it’s too hard for you to smile and be thankful for your dinner, well then, you take the photo,” Melanie said, extending her arm with the phone in it toward their youngest son. Dane appeared ready to swat the phone out of his mom’s hand, but finally stood and took her former position in front of them as Melanie hurried and sat down, tilting her head in that way she always did for photos.
“Mom, the head,” Dane said.
“Right,” Melanie said, and Keith watched his wife flop her head to the other side. Still awkward, but so Melanie.
“Take the photo, Champ,” Keith said to Dane.
“Already did,” Dane said, sitting back down at his spot.
Keith had insisted on a round kitchen table, just like he’d had growing up in his family’s happy home back in Ohio. They hadn’t had all the wealth his family now enjoyed, but they’d had so much more joy, he thought. He again looked at Seth’s chair and shook his head. He still had Dane home, and he’d relish this guy for as long as he could. He knew senior year would be over quickly and then he’d be off. They’d have to sell the table he decided suddenly, maybe the house, too. Everything was going to be so different with both of his sons gone.
“Who are you asking to Homecoming?” Melanie asked Dane as he shoved dinner into his mouth. His youngest ate so quickly.
“No one. It’s lame, no one goes to the dance,” Dane said between gargantuan bites. Keith felt a chill cross in front of him but tried to ignore it.
“Your brother didn’t think it was lame. He was Homecoming King,” Melanie said. Her plate of food was untouched, Keith noted. He would not enter this dance conversation again, and quickly shoved a bite of his dinner into his mouth. He hated butternut squash he realized as he chewed his bite, the mushy stuff trapped in his mouth. He fought his gag reflex.
“I’ve decided to rebrand us, Keith,” Melanie said. Keith was thankful she had focused her attention away from Dane. Unfortunately, that would mean onto him. He watched as she used her finger and thumb to enlarge the photo on her phone’s screen. He knew she was checking her own image before looking at the overall photo.
“Rebranding us, huh?” Keith said, stuffing a too big bite of white fish into his mouth as he heard Dane exhale loudly.
“Too many people think you golf all the time, or work all the time, and I, well, they have the impression I’m a golf widow. With both of the kids gone soon, we need to remind them I’m not all alone. I do have a loving husband. From now on, every Facebook photo I post will be of us, as a couple,” Melanie said, finally putting the telephone face down on the table. Keith decided that she had lost her mind. It wasn’t something anyone outside the family would realize, he knew. But this solidified it. She had lost her mind to appearances. And, she was breaking every family rule in the process. They had a rule about technology at dinner, a rule she’d created and a rule she was the most likely to break now that Seth was in college.
“Facebook is lame, Mom,” Dane said. With that statement, he dropped his napkin on his plate, and started to stand up as Melanie shot him the look. Keith hated that withering, commanding look almost as much as he loathed the letter in his pocket, the one she’d forced him to “handle.”
“You are not excused. Sit down.” It had come out more sternly than he’d intended, but his command had the effect he’d desired. Dane sat. Melanie was giving Keith an encouraging stare, but he ignored her, pulling out the letter from Crystal Beach High School. “This came in the mail today. You already have a D in a class and a detention to serve. I thought we were going to try harder this year?” Keith’s dark brown eyes stared into replicas of his own. His son, everyone said, was a carbon copy of his dad. Tall, thin, a smattering of freckles across the bridge of their noses and cheeks, dark hair. Their defining feature was their large chocolate brown eyes. But that’s where the similarities ended. When Keith was in high school, he tried. He hadn’t been a straight A student like Seth, but he was an athlete, starting lineman on the football team. And he didn’t get into trouble at school. He was smarter than that. So was his son. What have we done to ruin our youngest son? he wondered again.
“Ya, well, Mrs. McCoy’s a bitch. That’s why I have a D. I’ll fix it, suck up, whatever. I have the stupid detention because I was late coming back from lunch. They only give us half an hour,” Dane said. Keith sensed his son’s anger and frustration just below the surface. School was prison to him, for some reason. They’d had him tested and he was perfectly neurotypical according to the psychiatrist. That was back in middle school. Maybe we should try testing again, Keith thought, examining Dane’s frown. Or maybe they should just give up? He was bound for community college. He’d dug a grade point average hole so deep he’d never be able to recover, no matter what the helpful and optimistic school counselor had told them. Dane had his heart set on music school, Keith knew. They’d need to find one that admitted on talent, not GPA.
“Your father and I just want you to be able to get into a good school,” Melanie said, tapping her fingernails on the table, making Keith’s skin crawl. It was nights like this he wished he had stayed and played cards in the stag room after his round. He placed his hand on his wife’s, stilling her drumming fingers.
“I am not Seth,” Dane said, eyes flashing dark with anger.
“Obviously,” Melanie said.
Keith looked at Dane, and then at his wife. The tension between them was a force field so strong he felt his head being compressed, his jaws clenched.
“Have another glass of wine, Mom,” Dane said.
“Stop trying to change the subject from your failure, as usual,” Melanie said, pulling her hand from beneath Keith’s, reaching for her glass of wine.
“Okay, enough,” Keith said, exhaling to keep his head from exploding. “Son, we’re just trying to support you. We’re proud of you, of your music—”
“Oh, you are? Both of you?” Dane said, shooting Melanie a look.
“Of course we are,” Keith said. He loved talking classic rock and roll with his son, loved that they shared that passio
n. And the kid was a great guitar player. Maybe he would make it as a studio musician? He would go to music school for college and after he graduated, he’d finally get a band together. That would be cool. Keith could be his manager. They’d travel the world, playing gigs. Keith smiled, forgetting his anger for a moment. “You see, though, even though we believe in your guitar-playing future, you have to go to college.”
“I made you that list,” Dane said, referring to the list he had written of all the famous guitarists and musicians of all types who had made it big with only a high school diploma. Sometimes, not even that much education.
“Nonnegotiable,” Melanie said, playing her role in their never-ending dinner drama to perfection. “We can discuss the music school list, as long as they are degree granting. But I’m just not sure anyone will take you with the grades you have.”
“Thanks, Mom. You don’t even appreciate what I do, what I can become,” Dane said. “Are we finished?”
“I am,” Melanie said, standing and clearing her plate, walking to the kitchen.
“I’ll get your dishes, Dane. Why don’t you start your homework,” Keith said, standing and walking over to his son for a quick hug.
“I don’t have any,” Dane said. Keith knew that was impossible. Today’s schools fed copious amounts of homework starting in kindergarten. Dane was simply choosing not to do any of it. If Melanie had heard his response, she’d have gone off. Again. “Want to hear the new riff I made up? I think it’s really good.”
“I’ll be up as soon as I help your mom with the dishes,” Keith said, looking over toward the kitchen sink just as Melanie gave him the look and Dane hurried out of the room. Keith knew he’d handled things wrong again. Knew he’d made his wife mad and barely had his son’s respect. Melanie was just so hard to live with these days. Constantly worrying about Dane, sharp with him, and sex? Ha. Forget about it. She always told him she was too tired, had a headache, or she passed out before he even came to bed. Dane thought she had a drinking problem, but Keith didn’t agree. She drank far less than any of the guys at the stag bar. She was never out of control. She just had her nightly glass of wine. Dane had just found something to pick on her about, and it did bother her, Keith noticed.