by Lucas, Helen
“Kyle,
“I’m writing to let you know that Liana is coming by the Cape Cod house tomorrow to drop off her set of the keys. She’s not planning on entering the house or spending much time on the property. I had offered to make the drop off for her, but she insisted on doing it herself. If there are any issues, please give me a call right away.”
I sighed. I couldn’t stop her from going but at the very least there wasn’t much trouble she could get into there: no one was at the house right now and all Liana had to do was hurl the keys in the general direction of the mailbox. Hell, I could have a cleaning crew stop by before the weekend just to make sure she hadn’t thrown up on the lawn…
KAREN
The drive up to the Cape, even though winter was fast arriving, was still stunning. Long fields gave way to dark, primordial forests, the sunlight filtering through them desperately, casting long, spooky shadows as I sped up through Massachusetts, to the playground of the rich and famous.
It was an unusually warm weekend for the first weekend in December, and so I cracked my windows, letting the fresh, chilled ocean air invade the car. It seemed to wash over me. It seemed to revitalize me. It relaxed me, gave me time and space to breathe.
It gave me a place to think.
The fallout from the gossip about Kyle and myself was still developing. Anthony had called me into his office that morning, catching me as I ducked into the department to pick up my mail before leaving.
Anthony was looking tired, his handsome old face creased even more so than usual with wrinkles, the proof of his worrying, his exhausted thinking over what was happening to the department.
“So, you’ve probably heard by now…” I said slowly, uncertainly as I took a seat. He had a stack of ungraded student papers sitting on his desk, next to a stack of unread books, and more. He clearly had enough work to deal with without my relationship scandals taking up more of his time.
“The university is considering an investigation,” he said curtly.
“An investigation?!” I all but shrieked.
“Calm down, calm down,” he said with a sigh, shaking his head. “It doesn’t mean anything… Yet.”
“No, it does mean something, Anthony…” I sputtered. “It means we’re being investigated for impropriety… When it should be Towson…”
“That’s right. He’s being investigated too. The entire department. They think the atmosphere might be… Less than conducive to scholarship now.”
I knew what that meant. That meant that likely, it was Anthony who would lose his job, who would take the fall for the trouble his professors had gotten into.
“We have to fight this.”
“There’s nothing to fight yet. I doubt it’ll go anywhere but…” Anthony put his hands up in the air.
“I’m so, so, so sorry it came to this…” I said, my heart pounding. I couldn’t believe the pain this was causing my mentor, what this was putting him through.
“I don’t blame you for this, Karen,” Anthony said, shaking his head once more. “If anything, it’s Towson… You just did what you could for your career, for the department. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
An uneasy silence descended over the room.
“May I ask what the actual status of your relationship with Kyle is?” Anthony said finally, unable to make eye contact with me.
“What’s the facebook status? ‘It’s complicated.’”
“Of course. Of course it is.”
“We weren’t together when I approached him about the fund, and I don’t even know if we’re together now…”
“But you were… With him? Here, in the department?”
I hung my head.
“Yes.”
He chuckled.
“And you know, it was totally consensual, I’m sure, which is more than Towson can say… But regardless, you didn’t strictly do anything illegal, and neither did Kyle. Nor did you do anything that invalidated or broke your contract. You’re not the first professor to secure funding from a powerful relative and you won’t be the last.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“It just looks bad. It just looks like we’re a less a company of scholars and more a den of…”
“Sex-crazed maniacs?” I offered, surprising even myself. Anthony paused, stared at me, and then threw back his head, laughing.
“That’s right. That’s exactly right. Now that you phrase it like that…”
“Listen, Anthony, I’ll talk to Kyle. He can make all the trouble go away. He can… He’ll do anything for me. We’ll just throw money at the problem until it goes away.”
“You know, for all the troubles English professors face, deciding whether or not to throw money at a problem usually isn’t one.”
“But that’s something we could do.”
Anthony shrugged.
“Sure, it is. But someday, you’re going to learn that in this profession, your reputation is worth far more than money. That’s the reason Towson is still around: years of good scholarship have given him a pass for his more recent mistakes.”
Reputation. Career. It was all too much for me. I closed my eyes and sighed.
“It’ll all be fine,” Anthony said heavily, the exhaustion in his voice indicating that he didn’t really believe it would be.
“Really? Can you promise that?” I asked seriously.
“No,” he replied with a smile. “Worst case scenario, I’ll be dismissed. I’ll find a new job easily enough, I suppose—I still have a good reputation, after all.”
“And what about me?”
“I imagine you’re secure—no one’s going to give back Kyle’s money, after all. But your reputation…”
“I was actually approached to write a book about my relationship with Kyle.”
“A book? What kind of book?”
“You know, a tell-all book… It sounds trashy but…”
“But if you wanted to be a serious, intellectual, nonfiction writer…” Anthony said carefully. “Well, that is a route you could take.”
My eyes widened.
“Really? You think so?”
“Not that I recommend it. If you care for Kyle, that is. But if I were you, and I were younger and I cared less about my friends and family… I might do it. Notoriety can be helpful, if it’s the right kind of notoriety—if you put the right spin on it.”
Of course. That’s what Lori had said too, essentially. The right kind of notoriety. The idea terrified me, not for itself, but because it was so seductive, sounded so easy…
“I… I couldn’t do that to Kyle. He’d hate it.”
“Well, then I think you have your answer,” Anthony said, a smile on his old lips, a true smile, a serious smile.
And there. I had my answer. He was right.
I found myself pulling off the winding forest road onto a private drive the wound intricately through trees and over streams. I could hear the ocean nearby and after a minute or two or driving, my car emerged from the trees onto a huge estate, situated on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. I could see beach in the distance; I knew from Kyle’s description that this was the house’s private beach, easily accessible via a path, a secret one, covered with brush, that led down from the house to the water’s edge.
I pulled up through the baroque gates and approached the house. I doubted Kyle would be here yet: he tended to arrive late when he had to come from work. Such was the life of a private equity billionaire, I supposed.
There was no staff at the house right now, which I personally found relieving. Kyle was happy to pay someone to wait on him, to take care of his every need, but I found it suffocating. I was used to doing things for myself, used to figuring out my own problems. The idea of having someone wait on me, of flaunting my wealth by paying someone to pamper me—it didn’t disgust me, but it did discomfort me, surely.
But that was the life that I would lead with Kyle. I knew it. I knew that’s what he would want, would want for me. He was fi
ne to rough things a bit, but he liked to see me pampered. He kept offering to buy me things: a new car, new clothes, a better condo, either closer to the university or in the city with him—or both, if I really wanted it.
But I had refused them all. I still didn’t know where this was going, whether we could stay together.
I didn’t know if I wanted that.
All right. That was a lie. I certainly wanted that. I just… I just didn’t know if that’s what we SHOULD do. I didn’t know if that’s what I should do.
Maybe it wouldn’t be good for either of us. Maybe it was best to just… Say goodbye.
No. No, I did care for him. I did… Love him.
As I digested these thoughts, I parked my car and hiked up the steep steps into the old, gorgeous Cape Cod mansion. Kyle had told me about the history of the house: owned by a wealthy old Boston Brahmin clan for generations, it had been there for nearly a hundred and fifty years, built shortly after the Civil War. The family had made a killing (literally!) selling munitions to the Union Army, as well as smuggling weapons from the British and French south to the Confederacy. It was certainly reprehensible, but their wealth had allowed them to build a truly gorgeous house…
And now, it stood, proud in the late autumn air, the sun glinting off its windows, reflections of forest and sea blazing in those very windows as I knocked at the door.
No answer. Kyle wasn’t there yet. But he had told me that he always hid a key to the house in a potted plant near the door. After a big of digging, I found it and unlocked the massive double doors, giving me access to the spectacular home.
Room after room of unparalleled luxury stretched out ahead of me. What was this wonderland? How could people live like this? It was chilly in the house, since no one had bothered to turn on the heat, and I found myself shivering as I picked my way through the massive, ornately decorated rooms.
I found my way upstairs, ascending to year another floor of unimaginable luxury. I knew the master bedroom was on this floor—that’s where Kyle had told me to drop my things.
I saw a door ajar at the end of the hallway, a hallway which ultimately led to the sea. That would be it: I knew the master bedroom had, among other things, incredible ocean views. Such had Kyle told me, of course.
I eased the door open and the scene that greeted me struck me like lightning: I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
A skinny young woman, almost a girl, was passed out in the huge king sized bed. She was naked, her thin, almost malnourished body glistening with clammy sweat. She seemed to be bruised in a few places and her breathing came in slow, gasping spurts. There were a few bottles of champagne scattered around the room, along with clothes, a strange white powder, and needles…
I felt the tears coming to my eyes only after my legs had turned and started charging down, out of the house, away from this scene—away from the scene of my betrayal.
“No, no, no, Kyle, you bastard…” I growled, my eyes already leaking, my sobs already ripping out of my mouth as I stumbled down the stairs, whimpering, now gasping and weeping as I doubled over my car, over the hood, feeling sick.
I remembered that Kyle had fantasized about bending me over the hood of his car and fucking me. Well, now he was, in a way. He had had his ex-wife at the house, and then invited me over. What was wrong with him?
I hated him. This was it, I knew it. This was the last straw, the final offense.
I climbed back into the car, giving myself a few moments to steady my breathing. Finally, I took a single deep breath and reached for my cell phone. I called Lori.
I got her voicemail but that was fine. What I needed to tell her could be related via voicemail just as easily, because it was on me to start the work on it.
“This is Karen,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady, surprisingly stable for what had just happened.
“I’ll write the book. The tell-all book about Kyle. And let me tell you… It’s going to be juicy.”
KYLE
Karen wasn’t answering her phone. I was briefly concerned but I figured she had just arrived at the house and maybe taken a nap—no need for concern.
I arrived later that evening. I tried calling her once more as I drove up the drive to the house, winding my way effortlessly through the ocean side forest as I had done so many times before.
Vaguely in the back of my mind, I hoped that Liana hadn’t left things too much a mess. I pay a man from one of the local villagers to check up on the property once a week and he had reported that the exterior of the house seemed perfectly fine: no vomit, no bottles, no needles, no crashed cars.
I hoped against hope that this would be it, that this was Liana leaving my life, and that I would find Karen in my house, ready for me, waiting for a weekend of making love as we listened to the early winter ocean crashing against the beach, as the waves soothed us to sleep after our hours of impassioned love-making.
Karen’s car wasn’t parked outside. That, in and of itself, was no cause for concern. After all, there were innumerable places to park on the property: there was an entire devoted parking lot shielded from view of the house by a patch of trees; maybe she had found her way over there, or to one of the other car ports on either side of the building.
The door was unlocked—so she had found the key.
“Karen?” I called out. No answer. That began to concern me.
I walked through the first floor at a quick pace, calling out for her, hunting for her: there was no indication that anyone was here, much less my ex-step sister.
I went upstairs and saw the door to the master bedroom from down the hall very slightly ajar. There, that’s probably where she was, I figured.
But no.
When I flung over the door, ready to tear my clothes off and leap on Karen, I found a much different scene.
Liana had gone on a bender and from the looks of it, it had been one hell of a ride.
She was barely breathing when I ran to her, cradled her in my arms.
“What the hell… What the hell…” I muttered as I reached for the phone, already dialing 911. Her eyes, bloodshot and unfocused, tried to look at me but ended up looking past me.
“Kyle…” she murmured.
“Damn it, why did you have to do this here?!” I demanded. Liana’s hand reached up for my face and I batted it away.
“No… Kyle…” she whimpered. The 911 operator assured me than an ambulance was on its way, that it would be at the house in five or ten minutes.
I slammed the phone down and turned my attention to my naked, gasping ex-wife.
“I really made a mess of things, didn’t I…” she murmured, though it was impossible to tell if she knew where she was or what she was even talking about. I just scowled.
“You sure did, you idiot…” I growled, stepping over to the balcony.
And then the cold realization of what must have happened descended on me. I turned back to Liana.
“Liana, Liana, Liana, did anyone come here? Did you see anyone?”
She just stared at me, unable to say anything, apparently unable to process what I was saying.
“Liana, listen to me… Did a woman come here? Did a woman come up here? Did a woman come up and see you? See you like this?”
Liana turned her head to the side slowly, her eyes still unfocused.
“A woman…”
I sighed and sank into a chair. I undid my tie and then my collar, folding my leg and looking out the window as I planned my next move. I still didn’t know if Karen had seen Liana—but if she had—and if she had left then—and then that was why she wasn’t returning my calls…
I needed to talk to Karen. I grabbed for my cell phone and called her for the fourth time that day. It rung once and then went straight to voicemail. That had to mean that she was refusing my calls. I sighed.
“Karen, this is Kyle… I need to talk to you right away. I don’t know if you saw what happened at the house but it’s… it’s not what it looks like. I nee
d to talk to you right away. I need to explain. Just… Just call me back when you can.”
I paused, unable to get anything else out. Then, I forced myself to speak once more before finally hanging up and ending the message.
“Karen, I love you. Please, believe me. Believe me.”
I sighed and hung up, the words ringing in my eyes, only to slowly be replaced by the distant waves and, after a few moments, the even more distant sirens of the arriving ambulance.