by KG MacGregor
* * *
“Okay honey, we’ll see you when you get here.” Bridget ended the call and laid her phone on the bar. “Luc’s running a little late. Said he had to drop off some papers for a client. He works so hard.”
It was good to see her so excited over a new boyfriend, Marleigh thought. Lord knows she deserved it after Rocky. “I thought day traders worked at home in their pajamas. He meets with clients too?”
“I don’t know about the others but Luc certainly does. Maybe it’s a Canadian thing. I guess here we’d call him a stockbroker.”
Too bad he was running late. Marleigh unexpectedly found herself anxious to get home. Zann had sounded so disappointed about her missing dinner. These days they hardly saw each other, since she was out half the night covering police scanner activity, anything she might sell to the papers in Burlington or Montpelier.
“How come you’re so down in the dumps lately?” Bridget asked. “And don’t give me that shrug. I know it’s something. You and Zann still fighting? I mean other than the fact that you’re working your ass off while she’s…what? Sitting on the couch playing video games all day?”
“Zann doesn’t play video games,” she replied, noting a faint streak of defensiveness. Just because she’d shared her frustrations with Bridget didn’t mean it was all right for her to pile on. “And besides, she’s been catching up on a lot of stuff that needed doing around the house. She sanded the floors, painted the garage. I get to walk in the door every night and put my feet up. No cooking, no laundry. Nothing.”
“Like having your own hausfrau.”
Zann would be humiliated to hear someone talk about her that way. The public guilt and shame of her suspension was enough, since practically everyone in town had heard about the incident with Miles Blake. Instead of seeing her as an honorable war hero, they saw a veteran with PTSD issues or just a garden-variety hothead who couldn’t control her aggressions.
“Be honest, Marleigh. It has to be getting to you. The least she could do is go out there and find a job—slinging hamburgers, picking up trash. Anything to help.”
Marleigh nursed her warming beer, needing to make it last. After months of venting her exasperation, it was her own fault Bridget had turned against Zann. “It’s more complicated than that. If she takes another job, the town will drop all her benefits. She loses her health insurance, her seniority and whatever she’s got vested in her pension. Once they settle this mess and call her back to work—assuming that’s what happens—she’d have to start over again at the bottom of the pay scale.”
“I’m just saying it’s not fair to you. Especially with all her lies. Did she ever ’fess up about where she went last summer?” Bridget had raised this issue repeatedly, making Marleigh wish she hadn’t told her about it.
“No, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with somebody she knew in Afghanistan. She still won’t talk about it.”
Using the tiny mirror of her compact, Bridget freshened her lipstick as she talked. “If you ask me, that’s just plain weird. I mean, you’re married. Who runs off like that and thinks they have the right not to say anything? Sounds like she needs to talk to a psychiatrist or something.”
Marleigh had suggested that only once. Zann’s reaction was over the top, mocking her for days by pretending to be deranged. “Things are a little better. At least we aren’t fighting anymore. It’s mostly the mortgage that’s stressing us out. The bank won’t even talk about refinancing as long as she’s out of work.”
“What about her parents? Can’t they help you out till this blows over?”
“Her dad retired in September after he got that blood clot. They’re living on his city pension and what little bit of Social Security her mom gets. Besides, we’re too old to be running to our parents to fix our problems.”
“Well, you can’t hold on forever. You need a plan.” If anyone knew that, it was Bridget. Rocky had left her with all the bills and an apartment lease she couldn’t afford.
“I know. If this drags on for another month, we could be looking at foreclosure.” All that said, commiserating over their debts wasn’t the relaxing time Marleigh had in mind when she’d agreed to stop in for a drink after work. If Luc didn’t show up soon, she was calling it a night.
“It’s only going to get worse, Marleigh. You need to call Pete back and tell him to put your house on the market now—like today. Get out from under it before they totally fuck you over. And you need to do something about Zann too. They don’t give prizes for going down with the ship.”
Do something about Zann. There was nothing to do as long as she refused to help herself. They didn’t talk about their problems anymore. Marleigh feared letting loose her frustrations, and Zann…who knew what secrets she still was hiding? Her one fleeting admission—that she wasn’t the woman Marleigh thought she was—had vanished into the ether, never explained.
“There’s Luc!”
Finally, the elusive Luc Michaux. Wearing a slate-gray business suit with a crisp white shirt and yellow tie, he cut a handsome figure. His face lit up in a shimmering smile when he saw Bridget, a gesture Marleigh found encouraging given Bridget’s past luck with men.
Before he reached them, Bridget gripped her forearm and squeezed it almost hard enough to hurt. In a voice barely above a whisper, she hastily added, “I mean it, Marleigh. You can’t let Zann drag you down into the toilet too. You have to save yourself.”
She didn’t even know what that meant. Her emotions vacillated every hour between sorrow and anger, with each pointing her in a different direction. She ached over whatever had caused Zann to draw up into a knot, and her inclination as a wife was to try to help fix it. But then her fury over a months-long deception made her question if Zann was even the same woman she’d married. If she wasn’t, why should Marleigh lose everything to hold on to her?
* * *
The sound of crunching gravel signaled Marleigh’s car in the driveway, and Zann looked around the living room to make sure everything was in its place. Her guilt at work again. She’d become meticulous about taking care of the house so Marleigh wouldn’t have to lift a finger at home.
When, after several minutes, Marleigh hadn’t come inside, she peeked out the front window to find her sitting in the rocker on the porch going through the mail. How long had it been since they’d sat out there together laughing and talking about their day? Deep conversation was a thing of the past. Now Marleigh was the one keeping her feelings bottled up inside.
“Did you have a good time with Bridget?” She took her usual place on the porch swing, following Marleigh’s gaze to see if she was looking at anything in particular in the distance or just avoiding eye contact. The air was brisk, the edge of a cold front moving through overnight.
Marleigh bundled the mail in a neat stack and laid it aside. “It was okay, I guess. Luc seems like a nice guy, but anyone would be an improvement over Rocky.” Her faraway voice matched her overall demeanor.
“Good for Bridget. I’m happy for her. Tell her I said that, would you?” Her feeble efforts failed to spur additional conversation. Marleigh seemed to prefer the quiet. “You look like you want me to go back inside and leave you alone.”
After a measured silence, Marleigh heaved what sounded like a reluctant sigh but still wouldn’t even meet her eye.
“Hey, my check comes next week. That’ll help.” Though admittedly, her military pension was a pittance compared to the salary she’d lost, and a drop in the bucket to what they needed. She’d already sold everything of value, including her guns. To scrape together a house payment this month, they’d have to skip the utilities, or vice versa. “I’ll call Malcolm again on Monday and see where things stand. Last I heard, Miles Blake was still being a dick.”
She didn’t know what to make of Marleigh’s continued refusal to talk. It wasn’t like her to pout, but anything was possible given the stress they were under.
“Come on, Marleigh. Don’t keep shutting me out.”
“Sucks, doesn’
t it?” She abruptly pushed herself up and began pacing the porch, leaving her chair to rock hauntingly against the rippled boards. “You finally know how it feels.”
“Is that what this is about? You don’t think I’ve been punished enough?”
“For taking a gun to work? Yeah, but not for how you’ve been treating me since July. You’re all, ‘Hey, no big deal. I worked it out by myself.’ Never mind that I still get up every single day wondering what was so awful you couldn’t even tell me what it was. Now you know what it feels like to be talking to brick wall. So if you’re wondering why we hardly talk at all anymore, there’s your answer.”
Zann had noticed a string of little things ever since the day Marleigh picked her up at the jail. They’d talked it out for a day or two, both promising their love was strong enough to get through anything. Then gradually, Marleigh had started working late, hanging out with Bridget instead of coming home. They’d have superficial chats about nothing of consequence, as if afraid of where a serious conversation might lead. It was only now she realized these were deliberate paybacks. Bitterness boiling over.
“Marleigh, I know this is hard, but it’s just a rough patch. Everybody goes through it at one time or another.” They wouldn’t even be in this mess if she hadn’t been suspended. “Maybe I should see about taking on a part-time job or something. That would take some of the pressure off. So what if they cancel my health insurance? I can’t afford the copay anyway.”
“Did you even hear what I said? It’s not just the money. It’s all the lies and secrets. I can’t get over the fact that you don’t trust me anymore. That your secrets are so important you’re ready to throw our life away over it. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”
“I do trust you. It’s me…I don’t like myself very much right now. I haven’t for a long time. I’m still working on it, but there’s no point in dragging you down into my sewer.” It was perhaps the most revealing response she’d given, confirming that something was troubling her. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll apologize again for not telling you about the guns. I knew you wouldn’t like it but I needed to do it…to prove to myself that I still could.”
“The guns were just a symptom. I could live with you going out there with your friends. But this blowing me off every time I try to talk to you…do you seriously think what you do is none of my business?” Her voice had taken on a sharpness Zann had never heard before. She turned her back on Zann and stood at the rail, her voice rising. “Do you ever stop to wonder why I quit asking about it? I’ve stood by you through all this crap with your job, gave you all the time in the world to ’fess up on your own terms. You didn’t even try. Now every day that goes by is a day I have to tell myself that my wife doesn’t give a shit how it makes me feel.”
“Being married doesn’t entitle you to know everything in my head, Marleigh. What you call secret, I call private. Do you honestly think I need to confess all the mistakes I’ve ever made? All the bad thoughts I’ve ever had? You want me on my knees begging forgiveness?”
Marleigh whirled to face her, jabbing a finger in the air defiantly. “At least now I know you’ve done something that needs forgiving.”
“Good God! Do you hear yourself?” She slumped against the back of the swing, shaking her head. “I’ve been tried and convicted and you don’t even know if what I did was a crime.”
“I’m sick of this,” Marleigh snapped, her tone cold. She snatched an envelope from the stack on the floor and waved it in the air. “This just came from the bank. We’re going to lose the house—it’s just a matter of time. Everything we worked for down the drain. Years of busting our asses at work and nothing to show for it.”
“We can hold on. It won’t be much longer.”
Marleigh leaned against the banister and pinched the bridge of her nose. “There’s nothing to hold on to. The only money we have is what I’ve put in my IRA. That’s a huge tax penalty if I draw it out and it leaves me absolutely nothing for retirement. We need to sell the house now or the bank’s going to foreclose and it’ll ruin our credit forever.”
Zann had gamed out the possibilities too and knew they were running out of options. But losing the house…that was all they had.
“There’s no other way out of this, Zann. It’s only going to get worse.”
“What if we rented it out for a year or two while we got back on our feet? Where could we live in the meantime?”
Marleigh let several seconds pass before even attempting to speak, her reply interrupted with a brush of tears from her cheek. “I don’t want to deal with it anymore. Bridget said I could stay with her. You could move back in with your folks.”
The words hit her like a sledgehammer. “Oh, my God. Marleigh…you’re not serious.”
“I’m tired, Zann. All this time I’ve been trying to figure out what I could do to help you. How come you haven’t been trying to help me, huh?”
That they would actually separate…it was incomprehensible. “God, Marleigh…listen to yourself. This is insane.”
“You know what’s insane? The fact that I even let you back in the house after you ran off last summer. I should have had the locks changed. But no, I rolled over and let you get away with it. All this time I’ve been trying to be patient while you got your shit together, and you’ve been coasting along like you don’t have a care in the world.”
“Marleigh, I can’t—”
“You know what? If a million dollars fell out of the sky right now, it wouldn’t fix what’s broken between us.” She pounded her chest with her fist. “You broke it when you shut me out.”
Marleigh didn’t linger for a response.
And why should she? Zann had squandered her chance to explain herself last summer, and with each passing day the lie about who she really was grew bigger. It was an impossible ultimatum—continue her silence and see their home torn apart, or admit the truth and watch Marleigh’s respect for her crumble. Either way, she stood to lose everything that mattered.
Chapter Twenty
Connie Wagstaff typed with one hand while the other fanned her face. Hot flashes, probably, since her pale cheeks had gone up in flames three times while Zann sat waiting in her office at town hall. The scheduled meeting to determine her return to work was forty minutes overdue. Why were they dragging this out?
Today marked the beginning of the end of her long nightmare. Or so she hoped. For five months, she’d twisted in the wind while the town negotiated her fate. Whatever they decided—even if they fired her—at least it wouldn’t be hanging over her head anymore. When she walked out of here, she could get on with her life.
“Zann?” Ham Hammerick passed through the lobby and stopped. “You doing all right?”
She jumped to her feet and took his offered hand. As he squeezed it in a fatherly way, it struck her that he’d always stood by her with warmth and kindness. That was basically true for all the folks who worked at town hall, with the exception of the two that mattered most—Malcolm Shively and Jackie Patterson.
“I ran into your mom and dad the other day. They said you’re living back home again.” A pained look crossed his face. “I can’t tell you how sorry I was to hear that. You and Marleigh…I hope you work it out.”
“We’ll be okay, Ham. There’s been a lot of stress, what with me being out of work so long.”
“I’m sure that’s been tough on both of you.” He shook his head grimly. “I went over this situation with Malcolm and the council the other night at our meeting. Just so you know, that business with Miles Blake…nobody believes you did that on purpose.”
“I know. It was the gun…probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t think it through. I thought it would be safer locked up in the trunk than sitting in my car on the lot where some kid could have broken in.” Even to her own ear, the words sounded like an excuse. “I’m not blaming anyone but myself. If I had it to do over again, I’d have dropped it off at home before coming in to work.”
“I think they’ll come around, Zann…once they get all this righteous indignation out of their system. We all slip up now and then. You keep your chin up, and give Marleigh my best.”
She hoped he was right about the council coming around. And sooner rather than later, before her whole life went all to hell. But as for Marleigh…that was more than a simple mistake. They’d barely talked since she moved out, just a few emails to plead her case. Once she’d thought she was making headway only to have Marleigh abruptly retreat, shutting down any possibility of seeing her until she’d followed through with getting help. What would “help” accomplish? It wouldn’t change what had happened.
“Zann…” Holding up a finger, Connie signaled a message coming through her headset. “They’re ready for you now. Second door on the left.”
She proceeded down the hallway to the conference room, where Malcolm and Jackie were seated alone at the end of a long table. Jackie gathered several papers into a neat pile and pointed to an empty seat.
Malcolm’s chair squeaked in protest as he rocked back. “Zann, we met yesterday with Mr. Blake and his attorney. The council has agreed on a settlement that we hope will put this unfortunate incident behind us.”
Jackie twirled a sheet of paper and slid it across the table. “The town—our insurance company, that is—will cover his medical fees and pay him an additional twenty-five thousand dollars in damages for pain and suffering. His acceptance of these terms is contingent on a written apology from you, to be delivered in person along with the check. Malcolm and I have taken the liberty of drafting your statement. All you have to do is copy it by hand and present it to him.”
Zann had no problem at all with issuing a formal apology. In fact, she looked forward to the chance to accept responsibility for her actions. Blake’s over-the-top reaction notwithstanding, she was genuinely sorry for causing his injury.
There was a certain irony in the settlement figure though, which she estimated would fully cover the cost of construction for the new building in his backyard. Who wouldn’t take a broken collarbone for that?