The Good Widow_A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  Dylan smiled at Mr. Mimosa, noticing how his right dimple overshadowed his left one when he returned her grin. “Thanks. The kid wasn’t too bad.” Dylan deflected, as she often did. “All part of the job, right?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head, glancing at the table where the child and his parents had been sitting. “I get that kids can throw tantrums, but come on. Those parents didn’t do a thing to stop it. And I’m not sure how dealing with a child like that should be included in any job description. I hope they gave you a huge tip.” He smiled again, and Dylan laughed nervously. This wasn’t part of the game. Good-looking men with deep-olive skin and fluorescent-green eyes didn’t lament with her about the lack of discipline of today’s youth. Sure, they smiled suggestively at you when they thought their wife wasn’t looking (she usually was), or “accidentally” brushed your boob when you set down their omelet. (She got that too, by the way.) But talk to her like she was a real person? No, they never did that.

  “Beautiful ring,” he said, nodding toward the two-carat diamond that still felt like a foreign object. She had played with it so much since accepting it the night before that she was already developing a red indentation mark on her finger. It was just slightly too tight, something she was trying not to focus on.

  “Thank you,” she said, holding it up. “Just happened last night!” Dylan added as Mrs. Mimosa reappeared, stumbling slightly as she slid into the booth. Dylan glanced at the simple gold band on Mrs. Mimosa’s finger, something a lot more along the lines of what Dylan would have wanted, and suddenly felt silly about the size of her bauble. She buried her left hand into the pocket of her black apron.

  “Congratulations,” Mr. Mimosa said, his eyes wandering over to Mrs. Mimosa as if he were silently imploring her to speak.

  “When’s the big date?” Mrs. Mimosa asked, her words slightly slurred.

  “Oh, we don’t know yet.” Dylan waved her hand in the air. “Don’t people usually wait at least a year?”

  “Sometimes. But we didn’t,” she says, pointing at her husband and grimacing so slightly that Dylan almost didn’t notice it. Dylan wondered what the woman’s pinched face represented. Was she thinking they should have waited longer? Or not gotten married at all?

  “Everyone’s different, I suppose,” Dylan said.

  “Well, good luck to you,” Mrs. Mimosa said, holding Dylan’s gaze for a few beats longer than was comfortable.

  “Thank you,” Dylan said, thrown off by what felt like more like a warning than a sentiment. She started to clean the neighboring table, taking a napkin and scooping the ketchup onto a barely touched plate of pancakes, the red sauce dripping from the cloth and settling into the accent diamonds in her ring, dulling their sparkle slightly.

  Later, Dylan clocked out on the computer and caught her reflection in the small mirror hanging on the wall. She sighed. Her face had that bad kind of shimmer to it—a combination of sweat and grease.

  She grabbed her purse, a weathered Kate Spade that was older than the ketchup kid, one her mom had proudly announced she’d found on clearance at the outlet. She still loved the quaintness of the black-and-pink sunglasses print and refused to part with it, despite the frayed edges of the straps.

  She fumbled for her keys as she walked up the street to the employee lot. Parking was scarce in Laguna on the weekends, and the best spots were sold for upward of twenty-five dollars on a Sunday. But even after her worst shift, she didn’t mind the trek to her car. Laguna Beach had majestic views and a sea breeze that was addictive, and Dylan’s spirits would always rise the minute she exited the restaurant and turned right to take in the sweet, salty air and waves breaking below.

  “Excuse me,” a familiar voice called out, and she knew before looking that it was Mr. Mimosa. She turned and saw him gripping a twenty-dollar bill.

  Dylan froze. She’d never had a customer track her down. In her mind, she wasn’t the type of girl you went to great lengths for. Nick was the exception. He always found a way to do something extra when he didn’t have to, like carrying her trash down to the dumpster when the chute was broken or taking her Volkswagen to the car wash after she’d made a passing remark about how someone had scrawled wash me in the dirt on the back window.

  “Yes?” Dylan answered, trying to keep her voice neutral. Really good-looking (possibly older?) men like him had gleaming black Range Rovers and gorgeous brunette women like the one he’d been with earlier. They certainly didn’t need Dylan.

  “I wanted to give you this.” He waved the money at her.

  “You already tipped me,” she reminded him, thinking back to how she’d known Mr. Mimosa would be generous. It was the way he’d slowly given Dylan their order so she’d have time to write it down, how he said please and thank you whenever he asked her for something, how he’d made small talk about her personal life. A customer like that was always a good tipper. He’d given her almost 30 percent.

  “So maybe I thought you deserved more. Is that wrong?” He smiled sheepishly, and there were those beautiful eyes again.

  “That depends,” Dylan said, pressing her lips together in a failed attempt not to grin. But it was impossible, and she felt the corners of her mouth inch upward anyway. There was something about him. Dylan had never known anyone who shined from the inside out before. She found it intriguing, even though she really didn’t want to. What she really wanted to do was get home and soak her shirt before the ketchup stain became permanent.

  “Depends on what?” He said it like he already knew what her answer was going to be. She liked that too.

  “How much more you think I need.” She laughed.

  He joined her, his laugh low and strong. “Here.” He held out the money again.

  “I can’t,” Dylan said, fidgeting with her diamond.

  “Is it because you’re engaged?”

  Dylan absorbed his words, looking at his bare ring finger. “No. Well, yes,” she stuttered, flustered at his straightforwardness. “But more because you’re married. You are, right? That was your wife?”

  “Right,” he said simply.

  Dylan wanted to ask more questions about her. Why did her face tighten when she talked about her husband? And why had she drunk so much she’d be sure she wouldn’t remember the two-hundred-dollar brunch she had with her handsome, seemingly charming spouse? But instead Dylan just said, “I don’t even know your name.”

  “It’s James Morales. And it’s very nice to meet you.” He took her hand in his, slipping a business card and the twenty into it before she could refuse again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JACKS—AFTER

  I’m so tired of condolence cards. First off, they are ugly—like your-grandmother’s-curtains kind of unattractive. Second, they never say the right thing. I’m sorry for your loss. My thoughts are with you. You have my deepest sympathy. I stopped opening them last week, and they’re now stacked on the kitchen counter, where I add three more that have arrived today.

  I’m still waiting for the card that says, I’m sorry your husband careened off a cliff with his mistress in a Jeep he couldn’t be bothered to rent for you. I know, because he’s dead, that it’s bad form to write this, but fuck him!

  That’s a card that would speak to me.

  I’m clearly in the angry phase now. I’m all kinds of pissed. Like the seeing-red, flaring-nostrils type of mad. I took it out on someone who called the house this morning. I don’t even know why I answered the phone. Maybe I was looking for a fight. The unfortunate woman, who sounded like a teenager, was calling from the alumni office of my alma mater, San Diego State University, to update my information. I held it together until she asked if I was still married, and then I unleashed all the pent-up frustration that had been building. I told her off, then threw the cordless receiver across the room.

  I know I have misplaced aggression. Clearly it’s James I’m raging at. But I can’t tell him to go fuck himself and will never get the chance to yell at him for being a lying chea
t. To see his gorgeous green eyes shift to the side when I confront him as he decides which way he wants to go—deny it or come clean? To see him hang his head as I cry and ask him, Why? To feel the shame deep inside that I might already know the answer to that question.

  Naturally the cause of my rage, that little detail, is something that no one in my family besides Beth knows: James was in Maui because he was having an affair—with a girl so young she probably didn’t know who Debbie Gibson was. It’s obvious my mom suspects there’s more I’m not telling her, her eyes searching mine each time she asks why in the world James was in Hawaii without me, not quite accepting my answer that he had a very important client he was courting there. I hate to lie. Especially because it’s lies that have brought my world crashing down around me. But I remain tight lipped, knowing she’ll just add to the confusion.

  And his mother. I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth. Even though she’s never liked me much—she made that clear years ago—she does not deserve to think about her son that way. To realize you can love a person and not know them at all. To start to question everyone and everything in your life. What else do you not know? Who else is keeping things from you?

  Beth, for one. Turns out, she had an admission of her own. After she’d told me not to go to Maui with Nick, her left eye started twitching—the way it has since we were kids. It was her tell—that she’d done something I wasn’t going to like. The first time I noticed it, I was seven or eight. I couldn’t find my Malibu Barbie convertible. The twitching eye led me to her closet, where I not only located the bubblegum-pink plastic car, but Barbie and Ken in a compromising position in the backseat. So when her left eyelid started blinking uncontrollably in her living room yesterday, I pressed her for what she wasn’t saying. At first she denied there was anything. But I wouldn’t give up. You see, once you find out there are so many lies sitting right below the surface of your relationships, you want to know them all. Every single one. I used to think that some things were better left unsaid, like when my mom asked me if she was too old to wear that fedora at the pool a few months back. She was. But I told her she worked it because I knew she wanted to wear it. I had reasoned I was helping her feel confident. But now I realize that lies, even small, well-meaning ones, just pile up until they eventually topple over.

  Beth finally admitted there was something but that my knowing wouldn’t change anything. But I was sure whatever had her eyelid in spasms was important. So I kept at it until she told me.

  Apparently she’d once seen James and Dylan together.

  It was about a month before they’d died. She’d spotted them having lunch at a little sushi place not far from where we lived. Beth had seen them through the window as she’d been getting into her minivan after leaving the boutique next door. She hadn’t told me because she figured it was a business lunch.

  “Wouldn’t that be all the more reason to mention it? Like, ‘Hey, I saw James today at Sushi Time’?” I demanded, standing up and looking down at her, my hands pressed into my hips.

  “I figured he’d tell you.” Her eyelid was going full throttle as she said it.

  “What does that mean?”

  “He saw me see him and nodded his head, then turned back to her. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow! And I’d just had dinner with you guys the night before; it’s not like I felt compelled to run in there and say hi.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “No, at least I don’t think so.”

  “And you really didn’t think anything of it? You, who breaks into your husband’s email and texts every Sunday morning while he sleeps in?”

  She shook her head but wouldn’t look at me.

  “Bullshit, Beth. I know you. At this point, the salt is already in the wound, okay?”

  “Fine. I thought something. But it wasn’t enough of a something to tell you about it. Because what if I was wrong?”

  “Well you weren’t, now, were you?”

  I’m not proud of what I did next. I lost it. I might have even accused her of indirectly causing his death. Because maybe if she’d mentioned his little luncheon liaison, I would’ve confronted him and he would’ve come clean and broken it off with her and never would have gone to Maui. Right?

  It was twenty-four hours ago that I stormed out, and we haven’t spoken since. It’s the longest I can remember not talking to her, someone I usually call or see three or four times a day. Someone I’ve been accused of having a codependent relationship with by more than one boyfriend or friend.

  So obviously I need answers now more than ever. I need every scrap of information, whether it will hurt me or not. I feel like an alcoholic who knows she will feel like hell the next morning but pours herself another drink anyway. Because she can’t not pour it.

  I know now that I have to go find Nick. And then we have to go to Maui.

  CHAPTER NINE

  JACKS—BEFORE

  “I like this one, don’t you?” James’s mother, Isabella, held up a brick-red tablecloth covered in metallic gold leaves, the tasseled corners dangling precariously close to the polished linoleum floor of Crate and Barrel.

  The truth was, I hated it. If it were the last tablecloth on the planet, I wouldn’t buy it.

  But I kept a smile plastered across my face and tried to imagine the gaudy fabric in my mother-in-law’s thin hands covering the nicked-up country table I loved so much. It might have seemed odd, but it was always the imperfections that made me like that table more—the gouge in the side of the leg where James had banged it against the doorframe when he’d moved it in; the paint I’d splattered on it when I was changing the wall color in the kitchen from ivory to taupe; and the deep and long scratches—from God only knows what—that covered it. Its wood had always been sensitive; even sliding a plate across the soft pine would make a mark. I worried I’d be betraying my table by covering its blemishes. Like I was agreeing with Isabella that they needed to be hidden. I often wondered if she was somehow trying to cover up my flaws as well.

  As she waited for me to sign off, her piercing green eyes identical to James’s, I fantasized saying to her, The table and I are flawed, and that’s okay! But of course, I didn’t. Some things are just better left alone.

  It was December. Two and a half years before James and his secret girlfriend would careen off a cliff together. We were planning to host James’s family for Christmas brunch for the first time, and Isabella was helping me prepare. Step one, she’d said, was sprucing up my unsophisticated dining room table. But in true Isabella style, which gave a whole new meaning to the term passive-aggressive, she hadn’t used the word unsophisticated. She’d said rustic. But I knew what she meant.

  It was a miracle I’d finally been awarded this brunch, a ritual in the Morales family. Isabella usually hosted everyone in the sprawling home she owned with James’s father, Carlos, on the coveted Balboa Peninsula. Carlos was the salt-and-pepper version of his son, and could be just as smooth. But for as sweet and accommodating as he always seemed, I’d always felt like he was hard to know. Like there was an invisible barrier between the words he spoke aloud and the ones that danced inside his head.

  But I’d seen others given the opportunity to host. Her sister once. James’s cousin another time. I’d been asking for my turn to play hostess for several years, wanting to prove that I could fit into their tight Costa Rican clan, and my mother-in-law had finally acquiesced. I’d received an email from her informing me it was finally my turn, but quickly clarifying that she wanted to stay involved. I asked James if he had been the one responsible for her decision, and he’d denied it. But there was something in the way his lip curved a little bit higher on the right as he’d said he didn’t know anything about it that had made me wonder if he was lying. I’d seen that look before, and would again. I ignored it, as I always did.

  James’s parents, plus a few of his aunts, uncles, and cousins and their children, were all set to attend with their large broods and had graciously agreed to sit at
my unacceptable kitchen table while I attempted to make gallo pinto, a traditional Costa Rican breakfast.

  I knew by the tone of Isabella’s voice when I mentioned I’d be making the customary dish that she was afraid I’d butcher it. But I had plans to practice until I got it right. Determined to win her over by making her family’s favorite foods. Something I later realized was naive of me to think. But back then I was blissfully naive. And still hopeful.

  So, there we were in Crate and Barrel, my mother-in-law and I, standing in the aisle overflowing with holiday-themed tablecloths, napkins, and placemats. I wanted to please Isabella by being agreeable and letting her buy the tasseled one in her hand. But I also wished we had the kind of relationship where I could tell her that it just wasn’t me. That if it were my choice, I’d just put a few candles in the middle of my table and call it a day. Then I realized by her smug expression that she already knew I wasn’t going speak up, that I’d take the easy way out. So I surprised her—and myself—when I did something uncustomary for us. I pushed back.

  “I’m thinking maybe no tablecloth.”

  She glanced at me like she’d smelled something rotten and pinched the red fabric between her fingers, ignoring my statement. “This will be a lovely pop of color in your kitchen, against those beige walls.” She said beige like just looking at the color was an insult to her sensibilities.

  “What if we compromised and got a runner?” I offered, feeling my confidence rise as I pointed one out that was white with a simple gold trim.

  She gave me a look then. One I never forgot. One I later realized had nothing to do with the tablecloth or the runner or any of it. Then she’d let out a stilted sound—like a cross between a scoff and a laugh. “So you’re suggesting a runner? And that’s it?”