A Life Well-Hidden

by Emily Nealis

  “But, seriously, you need to keep it quiet until we get those offers in writing.”

  Jenna waved his hand away from her.

  “Don’t worry, there’s no way I’m wasting this opportunity to hang her out to dry.” Jenna was referring to one of the PI’s, Kathleen Bentley, who was notorious for executing projects with only a skeleton crew to save money on the budget. However, she usually only succeeded in burning people out and blowing deadlines due to overloading her staff. Jenna smirked, “I can’t wait to see her face when I dump all those files on her desk and tell her I’m leaving.” Jenna disappeared into the women’s restroom next to the elevator. Sam and I continued down the hall toward the stairs. Sam glanced around, making sure there was no one around to overhear us.

  “Some offer, huh? What do you think?” Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of spearmint gum. After popping a stick into his mouth, he extended the pack to me. I took one and began unwrapping it.

  “25% is a significant raise.” I paused, knowing that in any other situation, I would have immediately accepted the offer right there in Scott’s office. However, this time I hesitated. The only thing I could think about was the possibility of leaving Lexington, and who I would be leaving in the process, “I really need to think about it.”

  Sam shrugged, tossing both his and my empty gum wrappers in the garbage can next to the stairwell. He opened the door and motioned for me to go ahead of him. We walked down one flight of stairs in silence, arriving back at our block of offices moments later.

  “Well,” Sam began, stopping at his office door, “You have some time to think about it. There are always a million reasons not to do something.” He leaned against the doorframe of his office and shrugged, “But that’s a big price to pay to say no.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but realized I was standing in the middle of an office hallway, full of people who would rather eavesdrop on someone else’s personal conversation than do any sort of work. Considering the meeting we’d just had with Scott, I motioned for Sam to go inside his office. I followed him and shut the door, sitting down in the chair in front of his desk. Sam sat down across from me in his desk chair.

  “Normally, I would take the job…” I trailed off, unsure how to continue my thought without sounding like a complete idiot. Fortunately, Sam picked up on the direction of my thought.

  “But that would mean you’d have to leave him.” Sam leaned back in his chair and raised his eyebrows in understanding. I gazed around Sam’s office, studying the photos tacked to the corkboard behind his desk. One picture was of a brown and white pit bull with a pink collar and a wide, goofy smile. Next to it was one of a group of people on a mountaintop somewhere. Above that one, a couple on a beach was kneeling behind a baby as a wave washed over the sand.

  “I don’t know,” Sam paused, swiveling back and forth in his chair, “It doesn’t seem like he’d have any qualms with kicking you to the curb.”

  I jerked my head up, furrowing my brow in offense.

  “That’s a shitty thing to say.” I snapped at him, rolling my eyes. Sam shrugged, pursing his lips.

  “I’m not your boyfriend, I’m not afraid to hurt your feelings. I’m just going off what you’ve told me about him—none of which sounds very promising.”

  I couldn’t argue with Sam, and I was starting to believe the same thing. It was possible I’d been blinded by my desire to have things work out exactly how I wanted. However, the truth was exponentially more complicated. Something still tugged at the back of my mind. The truth was that I loved Adam. The truth was also that I wasn’t just in a relationship with Adam—I was in a relationship with Adam, Haley, their children, and the rest of his life. Sam continued swiveling in his chair.

  “I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou, here. The only reason I met Scott and he hired me was because I spent four summers in college, in the blazing sun, getting trampled by cattle, shooting up his cows with vaccines. But that led to a job, which led to another job, and eventually this job. What if this is your ‘big break’, so to speak?” He raised his hands, motioning air quotations with his fingers. He had a point.

  Why was I the one beholden to the changing winds of Adam’s life? There was one thing that, if nothing else, distinguished me from his wife.

  I had my own career.

  I had my own career and I was beginning to feel my own breeze.

  I had just exited the freeway onto Versailles Road when my phone rang, Adam’s number flashed across my screen. At 3:30PM, like clockwork, he called me on his way home from work. I knew Adam was smiling on the other end of the phone, a far cry from where we left things that morning. Something had obviously changed in the eight hours since I last spoke to him. He sounded excited and asked me if I had any plans the weekend of the 20th, in two weeks.

  “I have to meet with a client in Nashville that weekend. Will you meet me there and stay Saturday night? I’ll take you out and we’ll make a weekend of it. Just you and me.”

  I felt a rush of adrenaline. In five months, we’d never gone anywhere together for anything besides coffee or lunch, not counting my own house. In the midst of the news I received at work and the implications it carried, I still felt like a future existed with Adam. Part of me thought his invitation was a sign that there was still a chance that things would work out between us, that he was trying to prove that I was important to him. I still had time to decide whether to take the job in Tampa, and I planned on using Adam’s invitation to Nashville to help me make that decision. I did not have any plans for the weekend of the 20th, so I said I would meet him in Nashville. Two weeks later, I packed a bag, got in my car on Saturday at noon, and drove three hours southwest to Nashville, Tennessee.

  I didn’t tell Adam about the meeting with Scott or the job offer with Colt Research. I didn’t tell anyone, for that matter. I think I was hoping the answer would just come to me if I waited long enough. Much like Adam—if I waited long enough, something might happen. I could have told Adam about the job with the hope he would ask me to stay and finally make some sort of solid commitment to me, but I didn’t. I knew that wasn’t the kind of person he was. He would never explicitly ask me to stay or forego any type of professional opportunity. If I told him about the job, I knew he would be supportive; he would tell me I had to do what was best for me, and this would have infuriated me even more. Even though he would appear selfless, I would interpret this response as opportunistic—a way to conveniently end his predicament without causing him to make any kind of decision.

  Although Adam told me he loved me, told me to be patient, and that he wanted to be with me, the rational part of my mind would not be silenced. It was much more convenient for him if I made the decision for him. I had many of these conversations with myself, evaluating the futility of staying with Adam, but not really being with him. However, each rational thought I had disappeared as soon as I saw him leaning against one of the concrete pillars next to the entrance of his hotel. Immediately, I pushed our arguments, my doubts, and my cynicism deep into my subconscious. Even though I’d seen Adam less than 48 hours prior to that moment, it felt like I hadn’t seen him for a week. When I approached him, he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me just high enough so that my toes touched the concrete, like he did the first time he invited me to lunch. Except, this time, we didn’t part ways afterward.

  Adam didn’t tell me our destination, all I knew was that I was speeding down I-40 in the cab of his truck, not even caring where we were going. When he placed his hand at the top of the steering wheel, I noticed he was no longer wearing his wedding band. He was still married, of course. Perhaps this trip to a city where neither of us knew a soul served the same purpose for him as it did me. For twenty-four hours, we were able to try on a fraction of a life with one another. We could stroll through the Country Music Hall of Fame, hands clasped, and blend in as any other couple. We could walk a couple of blocks, still holding hands, and stand together in front of a glass case c
ontaining Johnny Cash’s boots and a mannequin fitted with June Carter’s vintage lace dresses without checking the time.

  Hours later, we were sitting in a booth inside a bar I never knew the name of. We wound through the lights and the music and the humidity and ended up in a bar blaring George Strait from the speakers and an empty booth against the back wall under a black and white framed photo of George Jones. I almost forgot that Adam and I were 200 miles away from our real lives. Neither of us had anywhere to be, and when we spoke to one another, it was from inches away rather than a phone call from across town. We sat in that booth for hours, snickering over our drinks, and acting like we were the only two people left on the planet. Inside some bar in Nashville that I didn’t know the name of, Adam Hunt and Diana Sanderson could kiss one another without a second thought and forget the time of day.

  Finally, he turned his head to me. I leaned against him, tucked beneath his arm. His face softened and he lowered his voice.

  “This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.” Adam glanced out into the bustle of the bar, running his fingers up and down my arm, “I know you’ve put up with a lot, and done things I have no right to ask of you. You may not be able to see it, but there are things I’m doing right now to make sure that it happens. I can’t give you an exact date, but it won’t be too long, because I want to hurry up and start my life with you.” He pulled me close, pressing his forehead against mine, “Just please don’t give up on me?”

  I told him I would not give up on him. At the time, I meant it. I didn’t want that moment to end. For less than a day, we lived how I imagined our life would be if we were together—really together. In the process, I was finding out I wasn’t someone who could live a life full of secrets. I knew I couldn’t live in the shadows, on the periphery of someone else’s existence. If I was going to share my time and my life with anyone, it was going to occur in the open for everyone to see. That evening in Nashville, I believed him. That evening in Nashville, I told him I would not give up on him, and I meant it. The question was whether placing my faith in him was a calculated risk or a fool’s errand.

  Paula Deen had an affair with a married man for 10 years before finally deciding to cut him loose when she realized he was never going to leave his wife. That was even after all his kids were grown and out of the house. But she also stayed busy. In the meantime, she had two sons and started a business that turned into a successful restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. I didn’t have children or a successful business.

  June Carter, on the other hand, ended up marrying Johnny Cash, 12 years and 2 husbands later. Johnny and June travelled the world, singing together and spending Christmases at their beach house in Jamaica until they crooned their way up to heaven. Maybe I thought I was more of a June Carter than a Paula Deen.

  But I also wasn’t a country music star and I hadn’t even been married once. I rationalized that June Carter wanted to murder Johnny Cash sometimes. But even that was a stretch, as Johnny also fought for June for over a decade. The primary difference between Paula Deen, June Carter, and I was that I didn’t have 10 or 12 years to spend waiting on a man. They probably didn’t either, but maybe they didn’t know any better. I, however, had things to do and places to go.

  Haley

  I didn’t hear from Travis again until one weekend at the end of September, while Adam was out of town, meeting with a client in Nashville. He called me on my way home from Lexington, after taking the girls to lunch with my parents. I ignored his call at first, not wanting to be on the phone while driving. After we arrived back at the house, the take-out boxes put away and the girls already dragging their bikes out of the garage, I called Travis back. I thought it odd that he’d called, rather than texted. Normally, I would have just responded with a text, but I was curious.

  When Travis answered the phone, he was in his car, driving. I rolled my eyes, asking if he wanted to call me back. He said, no, of course. I was about to suggest he call me back, but I knew that would be useless.

  “I would have just texted you, but I’d rather be more discrete about this.” Travis didn’t sound like Travis. He sounded more serious, as though he was trying to be professional. I wondered if this was how he spoke to people that weren’t his close friends or family. I had no idea what he was about to say. I couldn’t imagine what he needed to tell me that required speaking on the phone. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d spoken to him on the phone. Our communication primarily involved texting or being in the same room with one another.

  “What are you talking about? What do you need to be discrete about?” My interest hadn’t been piqued yet. Although strange, I figured it was just Travis being Travis. I anticipated it was either a joke or he was going to say something that seemed important to him but turned out to be insignificant to everyone else.

  “I thought about what you asked me a few weeks ago at mom and dad’s.”

  “OK.” I still wasn’t sure what Travis was getting at. I said a lot of things to him, and it was possible he was just going to tell me I was wrong about God-knows-what and to stay out of his life and blah, blah, blah…

  “I did talk to Tara-Lynn last summer.”

  Ah-ha! Liar! But I was silent, waiting for him to continue.

  “We talked a few times, just over text message. We just caught up, not much else.” Travis paused, thoughtful, as though he was carefully considering his words. He spoke slowly, but not in a nervous way, “Maybe I needed closure. Everything ended so suddenly—you remember what happened.”

  “Yeah, I do.” Maybe I was losing my nerve, but I believed him. Travis doesn’t have the intelligence of a psychopath, so I didn’t doubt the tone in his voice. He sounded tired, like he wanted to come clean and move on.

  “We talked a couple of times, and that was it. After catching up, there wasn’t much else to talk about. I guess,” Travis trailed off for a moment, “I guess I just wanted to make sure I was where I was supposed to be. Like, make sure everything was over and I could move on. You know?”

  I didn’t know if I believed him. It sounded more likely that Tara-Lynn shot Travis down, like Adam said. But regardless, it was apparent that nothing ever transpired with Tara-Lynn. Even if Travis was a lying snake, I didn’t know any more about it, and I stopped caring at that point. I could accept his explanation and, honestly, I wanted that one to be true more than I wanted Travis to have a forked tongue. I’m not a nasty person, I would rather look for the good in my brother than seek out and dissect his past transgressions.

  “I can understand that. I won’t say anything. If it really happened like you say it did, then it doesn’t matter.” I remembered the conversation with Carolyn at my house, “But maybe you should make some extra effort to convey your commitment to Carolyn. She thinks you’ve been distant and she seems insecure about it.”

  I could throw him a bone. Travis didn’t need to know that Carolyn had descended into a blubbering mess, convinced her husband was off galivanting with his ex-girlfriend, who she’d been stalking on social media.

  “OK, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I expected Travis to end the conversation at that, secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t about to run off and tell Carolyn some story about his lecherous ways. However, Travis wasn’t finished.

  “I also thought more about what you asked me.”

  My heart began to beat faster. I’d almost forgotten what I asked him at the barbecue. I was preoccupied by his worry that I would tell Carolyn some story about Tara-Lynn. I took a breath.

  “What about it?” I asked, my voice remained steady and calm.

  “I don’t have an answer because I don’t know, but I remember something that might help.” Travis paused again, “Last year, when I was at your house, I saw the password to Adam’s laptop. It was set to show the characters by mistake and I remember it because I had no idea what it meant. It wasn’t important to me at the time, but maybe it’ll help you now. You just have to promise me you won’t ever say that
I told you about it.”

  I stood in the middle of my kitchen in silence, holding the phone to my ear. I didn’t know what to say. Travis was offering me a glimpse into a tiny piece of Adam’s life I did not have access to. However, there might not even be anything there to see. There could be absolutely nothing. I could access Adam’s laptop, scour it for incriminating evidence, but what if I didn’t find anything? Would that be enough to dispel my fears and return my life back to normal? Then again, I would be crossing a line I couldn’t come back from, whether Adam knew about it or not.