“How about an early dinner at the club?” she asked as they left the facility. “I think a steak’s in order after all that hard work.”
“Cool,” he said with a nod. He stretched and exercised the fingers of his left hand. “But I don’t need to be in a . . . hospital anymore.”
“You’re not, Nicky. The team there is just going to help you get to the best place you can.”
“I don’t want to keep doing step-ups and chest presses . . . and balance exercises. It’s not like that will college—get me into college.” The tone of his voice took on a familiar edge. “It’s not like lacrosse is going to happen again. Ever.”
When they pulled into the country club parking lot, she noticed lights on in the skate house and activity on the rink. She tried to distract Nick from the peewee hockey team on the ice, taking his hand in hers over the armrest. But he pulled away and opened the car door, stretching himself onto the pavement. She could see his face fighting to regain a neutral expression as they walked up the steps to the main entrance.
Inside the dining room Claire scanned the smattering of occupied tables for familiar faces. It was early, and only a few elderly couples were enjoying their evening cocktails. She hoped she and Nick could be done before the rush of hockey families. The maître d’ emerged from the kitchen, and Claire waved to him. He seemed to hesitate for a second before approaching them.
“Good evening, Mrs. Montgomery,” he said, guiding her away from Nicholas and toward the reservations desk. “May I have a word?”
“Of course, Eddie. How are you?”
He lowered his eyes and pulled a piece of paper from a leather folder. “I regret to have to say this, but your account is in arrears and we can’t allow you to dine until this has been taken care of.” He handed her a list of members not in good standing due to unpaid charges, and second from the top was Michael Montgomery. “I’ve tried to reach your husband about the matter, but I’ve, uh, not had any success. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Montgomery, I don’t want to turn you and your son away, but my hands are tied. Club policy.” He looked as mortified as she felt.
Claire faltered slightly, before placing her hand on his arm. “No, no, Eddie, I understand,” she said softly, folding the memo in half and handing it back to him. “It isn’t your fault. I’m sure there’s been some miscommunication. We’ll just straighten this out at home.”
Lack of lunch, combined with the ever-unfolding series of strange events, left Claire with a sense of hallucinatory wooziness. She didn’t understand what this latest surprise meant or how she should handle it, other than to tell Nick that the dining room was reserved for a private party and they could go to Larkburger instead. So she let the Nuggets basketball game on the radio fill the space between them during the drive and just focused on the present, got them to the restaurant, parked the car, and ordered food at the counter and sat down with her son.
“Mom, everyone keeps telling me I had this . . . this drug overdose,” Nicholas said, putting down his cheeseburger and making air quotations around the words that continued to confound him. “But I’m fine. I don’t need all these . . . people.”
And here we go again. “Yes, Nicky, you did have an overdose. You snorted some cocaine, you had a brain hemorrhage, and you do need these people to help you get better. These people are going to help you get to college. We’ve talked about this with Dr. Adamson, and with Sherry,” Claire said in an overwrought voice. “Honey, you have to—”
Nicholas pushed his chair back and swept his food onto the floor. “No,” he shouted. “It’s not true. I don’t remember any . . . of that.”
Claire cupped her shaking hands over her face. “Oh my God, Nicky, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have—” Snapping back to time and place, she looked up to see that he was already rushing out the door and into the parking lot. She chased after him, ignoring the stares of the other customers.
Claire found him pacing around the car and blocked him, containing his quaking body in her arms. She could feel his heat and his heart racing against her shoulder, and they nearly fell against the hood with his weight. She balanced her foot on the tire and held him tightly, whispering into his chest. “I know this is still hard to believe or understand. And because of the way our brains work, it may never make sense to you. It was a terrible night, Nicky.” She looked into his flushed face. “The most frightening night of my life. But you came through it, thank God, and I will do everything I can to help you get better.” She stopped to catch her breath and wipe her eyes.
“Why?” he asked, his body relaxing slightly.
“Because you’re the most important thing in the world to me, and I want you to heal and finish school and do everything you want with your life.”
“No.” His eyes bore into her. “Why did I . . . overdose?”
She fell back against the Jeep. “I—uh—there was someone,” she said, her throat catching, her fingers grasping the hood like some tenuous ledge. “A person who came to the house, and he had some cocaine with him. I don’t know why he would have brought it, and it must have fallen out of his pocket. And you found it,” she went on, hearing the Valium-like lethargy in her own voice. “It was all a terrible mistake. I never should have allowed him to—”
“Who?” he asked, looking desperate and confused. “Was it . . . Taylor?”
Claire shielded her eyes from the headlights of an approaching car. “No, Nicky, I don’t know who Taylor is. It was someone you don’t know. It was . . . no one,” she choked. “All that matters is that you came through and you’re getting better.”
“I don’t get this,” he said, balling his fists. “Why I can’t . . . remember?” He backed away and opened the passenger door. “I just want to go home.”
“Nicky,” she said, meeting him inside the car, “we’re going to get through this. I don’t know exactly what will happen with . . . everything, but you’ll get there. We’ll get there.”
“Yeah.” He pulled the hood down over his face. “Right.”
Looking up to the moon, Claire searched for that old convincing fiction that everything really could be fine.
Michael had been delayed for about an hour according to Berna, who was standing sentry in the kitchen when they returned to the house. The counters were spotless, but his ever-efficient capo continued to wipe them in spite of Claire’s insistence that she would wait for Michael with Nicholas. Berna then began to clean out the refrigerator, checking expiration dates on yogurt and milk cartons, and arranging them like soldiers in rank order. The woman clearly had instructions, and Claire clearly didn’t have the authority to override them. She gazed slack-jawed around her kitchen, deciding it wasn’t big enough for the two of them.
“Nick, do you want to play some checkers in the study?” she asked, hoping this would have the relaxing effect on him it usually did.
He shook his head. “I’m going to bed.”
Claire followed him into his room. They both sat—he at his desk, and she on the bed—with the dog-tired relief of boot campers at lights-out. She wanted to close her eyes and fall asleep right there, but she watched Nick log into Facebook on his computer. He stared at the screen and, as before, skimmed the keyboard but didn’t type anything.
“Can I help?” she asked cautiously.
“I don’t know what I want to—” Nicholas said before abruptly powering off the computer. “No. Just . . . leave me alone. I’m tired of talking.” He didn’t turn around when she put her hands on his shoulders, wouldn’t look at her when she tried to turn his chin toward her.
“It’s been a long day. And I’m sorry for being short. But anytime you do want to talk, Nicky,” she said open-endedly, trying to imagine what was really going through his mind, what he was processing, and what his brain was purposefully keeping in the shadows. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll think of something fun to do.”
“I’m going to the mall with Ray to work on some . . . stuff,” he said, taking off his sweatshirt.
Ray had mentioned to Claire that they would be doing an outing where he would observe Nick’s ability to perform certain tasks and behave appropriately in a public setting. The idea left Claire queasier than she already had been, given the last hour. But she reminded herself that they’d likely be dealing with Nick’s confusion, disbelief, and outbursts for a good long while. Like their own shadow-filled Groundhog Day.
“Okay, buddy. Why don’t you brush your teeth and we can check your blood—”
“I know . . . what to do. I’m taking a shower,” he snapped, leaving the room and heading for the bathroom. He dragged his hand against the wall for balance.
Claire wandered into the study and stared at the partners’ desk she should have crawled under all those months ago. Sitting down in the Herman Miller desk chair, she wondered how long it would take for Berna to appear and start dusting the bookshelves. But she noticed the light on in the garage beyond the patio, and assumed Frau Rommel was now rearranging the soda cans in the garage fridge into alphabetical order. As if on cue, the phone rang, distracting her from an imminent spiral into her mire of “if onlys.” She picked it up without thought.
“Mrs. Montgomery?”
“Yes?”
“I need to speak to your husband, please.”
“You might try him at his office,” she said, annoyed in the role of helpful secretary.
“I’ve been trying him everywhere.” The man’s voice was tense and urgent. “Tell him that if I don’t receive the Janus information from him this week, things could get very serious. We’re running out of time. Please.” The caller left a name she didn’t recognize and hung up.
Claire set the phone down and twisted her wedding band up and down her finger. Where once the ring wouldn’t move above her knuckle, now it slid easily back and forth. Janus? Mac Kessler? The mysteries of her husband’s pursuits, it seemed, were endless. She hit the space bar on the keyboard, waking the computer. And instead of both of their login and password prompts, Michael’s desktop appeared—unprotected. Surprised and inspired by this uncharacteristic gap in security, Claire tentatively navigated the mouse around various folders on the screen. Hoping for illumination. “Manhattan Beach Fund,” “Rancho Los Amigos,” “Net-Jets.” Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at her. She clicked on the e-mail icon and scanned Michael’s Inbox for “Janus” or the cryptic Mac Kessler, fighting the sense of utter sliminess such snooping would normally elicit in her. But as she scrolled down the long list of messages going into the previous week with no luck, she abruptly changed tracks. “Taylor,” she typed into the search box.
Numerous messages containing that name appeared: from Eric Taylor, a frequent real estate investor; from a Taylor Technologies; from a Post story on Steamboat Springs’ Taylor Gold bowing out of the Olympic half-pipe; documents To Eric Taylor; trash with various news outlet stories about various Taylors. The list went on extensively and unremarkably, until an older message from Michael’s drafts box caught her attention. It was to Nicholas, with a subject line that read “I’m sorry,” and dated the day before his accident. Uneasily, she clicked the mouse.
Nick,
I’m sorry I was so hard on you about the choices you made with Chazz’s sister last week, in light of the choices I made surrounding Taylor. Very different circumstances, of course, but you were right to be angry and shocked. Obviously I didn’t know you’d found out about Taylor, and I just want to tell you again how much I regret not doing the right thing, like I’ve always encouraged you to do. You are my happiest, proudest accomplishment, and the last thing I want is for you to be disappointed in me. I am devastated more than you know, and I hope you can understand that this situation really is more complicated than what you might have overheard. I trust that we can keep this between us for now, and when I get back from London, let’s please
The draft stopped there, unfinished.
Time stopped, and her feelings of deviousness vanished. Claire reread the message, experiencing the visceral sideswipe of her husband’s deceit. Suddenly, every extended business trip, every late night at the office and early morning text from the previous year came into a new and disturbing focus. As did Michael’s contempt over her transgression with Andrew. Carolyn had been right. He really was having an affair with this Taylor whom he claimed not to know, and Nicholas had found him out. Her gut was telling her this loudly and clearly, there was no denying the message. And she could neither stop herself nor drag herself away from the mess, like the truest of train wrecks. Clearly the marriage was over—evidently for longer than she’d imagined—but to ask their son to keep such a secret and to spend the last months punishing her without a hint of remorse? That was beyond hypocritical. Feeling as if she’d just polished off a fifth of vodka, Claire struggled to maintain her focus. Sara Lee Clinton, she whispered aloud until she managed to calm down and take a mental step back. Sara Lee Clinton. There was so much she didn’t know. And knowledge was power.
She took a deep breath and typed “Janus” into the search box—just before the kitchen door slammed open with a sobering thud. Claire could hear either Berna or Michael in there. She glanced back at the screen and saw at least a dozen e-mails in the trash with the subject “Janus,” many from Mac Kessler, and most marked urgent, but there was no time to read them. Her mind spun with questions as she quit Michael’s e-mail and logged out so he would assume he’d left things inaccessible, as he normally did, the last time he’d sat in that chair. She was on autopilot, her only concern, getting out of there with no one noticing that she’d even been in the study. But as she stood, it hit her that she hadn’t checked to see whether Michael might have sent a different version of his note to Nick, whether Nick had actually received any e-mails from his dad before his overdose. Flouting her nerves and better judgment, she typed Michael’s password into the log-in prompt. The search would only take another second, and then she would bolt. But the prompt didn’t accept Nicky’s initials and lacrosse jersey number. She could hear the faucet turn on in the kitchen. Hastily, she reentered what had been Michael’s password since Nick started at Andover. But again, the prompt just blinked back at her its silent but clear pronouncement that things were definitely not as they had once been. You guilty, hypocritical bastard! She grabbed the piece of paper she’d written Mac Kessler’s name on and crumbled it into her pocket.
Peeking her head into Nick’s darkened room, Claire listened to the reassuring cadence of his snoring. Berna—and not Michael—appeared in the hallway, much to her relief. The ironies seemed never-ending. “He’s gone to sleep,” she said protectively, before shutting the bedroom door and slipping past her.
She didn’t remember the drive home or the number of times she washed her face before feeling the water on her skin, or taking off her wedding ring and listening to it drop to the bathroom floor and roll into a corner. And only later, upon waking from a sweat-filled dream and staring dead-eyed into the shadows, did she focus on the fact that she had no shot of getting back into Michael’s new password-protected files.
CHAPTER 36
“This is unbelievable,” Jackie said for the second time, repositioning herself on the couch next to Claire and covering the fringe on the cushion to protect it from the further unraveling her sister’s busy hands were trying to inflict. Claire had gathered her support system to the apartment and, driven by an unhealthy amount of caffeine, relayed the previous night’s events.
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” Carolyn said. “Nuh—thing.”
“This is crazy, right? How did I not know this was going on? And what the hell else is going on with this Kessler person?”
“Whatever it is, it’s not kosher,” Gail said, biting into a scone. “What are your instincts saying about all of the financial weirdness?”
Claire fiddled with a Kleenex, tying the tissue into several small knots. “Well, I called Neiman’s accounting this morning. Are you ready for this? The account had been shut down not due to disuse, but for nonpayment
of an old balance. They’re sending it to collections.” She looked at the group incredulously. “He leases a jet and we have a charitable trust. And the country club has put us on the shit list and our bills are going to collections? What the hell?!”
“Not good,” Carolyn sniffed. “The market’s bad, but this smells worse.”
“All I can guess is that a couple of his deals didn’t perform and he’s distracted.” Claire smirked and stared up at the ceiling, but the dam broke. “Because of his girlfriend, no doubt.” The pain of it all was so surprising, so impressive in its heft that it might as well have been physical. “Taylor’s obviously why he’s refused to try to work through our issues, why he was so cut and dried in his decision to separate.” She looked from Jackie’s grim face to the jaded expressions of her two friends. And as her thoughts careered toward illumination, anger displaced the sadness in her eyes. “Oh my God,” she said after a long moment.
“What is it?” Jackie asked.
“What if he’s had one foot out the door for . . . however long, and I provided him with the ‘convenient’ excuse? I had the affair. I practically killed our son. He’s trying to put the failure of our marriage all on me so he can slither out of whatever mess he’s made, and into the comforting arms of his girlfriend without blame,” Claire said, pulling the tissue knots until they flayed under the pressure and fell like snowflakes into her lap. “Introduce her around as his new companion after the dust settles, and who would possibly blame him?”
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