by E. C. Diskin
After dinner, Kat cleaned up with Tori, Dee, and Evelyn, but Dee’s intoxication put her on edge. Dee seemed angry about something. Evelyn had asked if she was okay, and she’d swatted at her and said, “You don’t even know me.”
Lina was on the back deck sitting under a knit blanket, looking up at the stars. Kat took her glass of wine and joined her. As she relaxed into the seat beside her, Lina offered a drag of her joint, but Kat declined. Her brief college affair with pot led only to some missed assignments, too many Taco Bell visits, and disturbing paranoia.
“You doing okay?” Kat asked.
“Así, así, mi amiga. I’m hangin’ in there. And this,” she said, lifting her joint and offering a mischievous grin, “es muy bueno.”
“If you need anything,” Kat began to say, though she stopped herself. What could she do, really?
Lina put her hand on Kat’s knee. “Hey, we all die sometime. And I’m luckier than most. Worse case, I get to see Bill sooner than I planned.”
Lina’s husband, Bill, had suddenly died of heart failure two years earlier. Another life that ended too soon.
“What about you?” Lina asked. “You looked pretty pale back on the island. And that boat ride home was painfully quiet.”
“Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about Shea.”
Evelyn pulled open the sliding glass door, popping her head outside. “May I join you two?”
“Please,” Lina said. “Yes, sit.”
Evelyn took the open chair. “I figured I should get out of the line of fire.”
“Oh, boy. Well, you’re safe with us.”
Kat’s contact with Dee had always been limited to large group gatherings, so they weren’t close, but she had seen that Dee’s tone could turn as an evening wore on, that her good-natured teasing could become more like true insults depending on the number of drinks she’d consumed.
“Tori was telling us inside that you two spoke with the innkeeper and bartender on the island,” Evelyn said.
“That’s right.” Kat shared what they’d learned, what Shea had told Mary about expecting a friend. “So, she didn’t tell those guys at the memorial she was with a friend because she was nervous,” Kat said. “Someone was planning to come to the island with her. And she met up with a man at Rudolph’s, and they left the bar together.”
“So, I guess that man was the friend,” Evelyn said.
“That’s what I’m wondering. The bartender said the man mentioned that they were heading to the inn.”
“But the innkeeper never saw a friend?” Lina asked.
“Nope. The other guest at the inn helped Shea inside and went off to bed. Unless—maybe that man was the other guest at the inn? But that doesn’t make sense. When Mary put her to bed, Shea gave Mary the impression her friend wasn’t coming. So if the man at the bar was the friend, then maybe they argued or something, she went to the inn alone, and the other guest helped her inside. Mary seemed sure that Shea never left her room again. She figured Shea would be asleep within minutes, that she was very intoxicated.”
“But the bartender only gave her a couple of drinks?” Lina pressed.
“But the Vicodin . . . maybe that’s why she was such a mess,” Evelyn said. “Could the bartender give a name for the guy she was with?”
“No. I asked if he used a card. He paid cash.”
Lina took a drag from her joint and held the smoke in her lungs.
Kat let her head fall back against the cushion, gazing at the stars high in the sky. “Doesn’t it seem weird that whoever was supposed to join her never came forward to say anything?” she said to herself as much as to them. “And why in the world did she want to return to the island for the memorial of a stranger?” Blake’s death had brought her to the island, she’d intended to go with a friend, and, somehow, she’d ended up alone. Kat had to know more.
Lina blew the smoke into the sky, watching it dissipate. “You know,” she said, “you should talk to Georgia.”
“Why Georgia?”
“After Shea left the bar with Blake, Georgia told me she didn’t think it was safe. All his friends were still sitting around with our group, and he seemed nice enough, but Georgia thought she should go out and look for Shea. I didn’t really see any danger. Shea’s a grown woman, and I figured she could take care of herself. Besides, I thought perhaps Georgia was feeling jealous.”
“Why jealous?”
“Oh, she was the one who pointed out the group of men in the first place, commenting on how cute Blake was, but he only had eyes for Shea. I watched Georgia several times trying to get involved in their conversation, but it was like she was invisible. I mean, really, it’s Shea versus Georgia. Let’s be real.”
Georgia was attractive, but in a Betty Crocker kind of way. Shea oozed sexuality even in a pair of sweatpants. All she had to do was smile and expose that dimple, and men were mesmerized. “So, Georgia went after Shea. And you said they came back together, right?”
“Yep. Blake wasn’t with them, and they both seemed oddly quiet. I doubt the others even noticed, because everyone was involved in conversations and they’d all had several drinks by then, but of course I was sipping my water. Shea looked like she’d been crying. I leaned over and asked if she was okay, but they both brushed it off and said, ‘Of course—just tired.’ I figured she might have simply broken down outside with Georgia about her marriage falling apart.”
“And no one ever spoke of the guy—of Blake—again?”
“Not to me,” Lina said.
“Me, either,” Evelyn agreed.
Lina continued. “I didn’t give it much thought after we all got back home. It was Thanksgiving. The kids were home. Everyone went back to life as usual, and I think we all hoped that whatever was going on with Shea and Ryan would resolve itself.”
“Where is Georgia, anyway?” Kat asked. “Why didn’t she come this weekend?”
“She said something about her husband’s work schedule and kid issues,” Lina answered. “I don’t buy it, though—I don’t think she wanted to come back here. She’s taking Shea’s death pretty hard.”
CHAPTER 11
December 24
SHEA WAS IN THE KITCHEN making pancakes for the eighth time in two weeks while drafting a grocery list for the next store run, her fourth that week. Leigh and Stephen’s return home a couple of weeks earlier had brought the normalcy, smiles, and laughter she’d been desperately craving. The kids’ friends were back, too, bursting into her kitchen, raiding her fridge, entertaining her with college escapades, allowing her to ignore the mounting evidence that things were falling apart, despite Ryan’s statements to the contrary.
Their brief rekindling had faded fast, and for the last two weeks, his days had been spent in his home office or away visiting his sick father in Detroit. She’d later find the office trash can filled with empty beer bottles, or he’d come home with the glazed eyes of a few martinis. The kids were oblivious, and she wasn’t prepared to shatter illusions. It was easier to pretend, and Ryan was onto something: martinis helped. She’d successfully laughed and joked through three Christmas parties without anyone seeing the cracks.
When she popped into Ryan’s office before heading out to the store, he jumped, quickly shutting the laptop. She turned and walked out without a word. He didn’t try to stop her.
Later, when he left to do some last-minute shopping, she reviewed his search history. And there it was, two screens back from the more recent Netflix and sports news pages: a video of a woman in her bedroom, performing for the camera. Shea watched the woman’s moves, her melodramatic portrayal of arousal. It was almost laughable. What was so enticing? Suddenly, a pop-up ad appeared. The raw and sordid message hit her like a punch in the gut: fuck buddy: 3 miles away. call me. Other women were not just out there, somewhere in cyberspace, far from their real life. Their tentacles reached out to entice viewers from their homes. And now where was Ryan? Supposedly shopping for the family? Or with a prostitute just three miles away? It s
eemed both absurd and possible.
When Ryan came to bed, she pretended to read her book. She couldn’t look at him. He turned off his bedside lamp and climbed in, facing away from the dim of her light. “It doesn’t mean anything, you know.” She could hear his irritation. “It’s nothing, really.”
Shea shook her head and closed the book. “Where did you go this afternoon?”
He finally rolled over to face her. “I went shopping.”
She didn’t know what to believe. Was that pop-up some crazy advertisement that appeared during any pornographic content, or did it appear because the user of that particular computer had used that service or searched for that before? There seemed to be no way to know, but she was often struck by how anytime she was online in the days after searching for a product on the computer, pop-up ads would try to entice her back to those items, as if some unseen nefarious power always knew what she wanted and what ads were most effective.
She felt sick at the thought that Ryan could have done far more than watch videos, especially after her Herculean dedication to digging out of their rut, as he’d called it at Thanksgiving—bringing him coffee each morning, reaching for his hand when they watched television, and constantly initiating sex. It wasn’t like it used to be, of course, but she’d been trying, and what had he been doing? Getting drunk, watching porn, and who knew what else.
“I read that e-mail you wrote last month,” she said. “It’s not just sex.” Ryan had opened up to that woman, like she was someone he knew, someone he cared about it. “I thought you were going to stop.”
“I was—I am,” he stammered. “I will.” He rolled onto his back then, looking up at the ceiling of their room, like he couldn’t face her anymore. “You’re the only woman I want to be with. I swear.”
“You’re drinking too much.”
“I know.”
Neither of them said another word. She put her book on the table, turned out the light, and remained with her back to him. He rolled toward her and put his hand on her thigh.
“I’m tired,” she said, her eyes wide open. He removed his hand and rolled away.
Was it all nonsense? Maybe she was making too much of the porn. Maybe lots of men did that. And was that all it had been? Or was she just desperate to believe him?
She stared at the dark wall, unable to calm the storm inside her mind, the fear, the anger, the sadness that they might not fix whatever was happening. And she was not perfect, either. She had her own secrets. She’d made some terrible mistakes. She thought back to that night on Put-in-Bay, the blood on Blake’s face, the moment he’d dropped to the ground.
She rolled toward Ryan, facing his back. “I don’t want us to fall apart,” she whispered.
He turned to her, and they looked at each other, though in the dark he probably couldn’t see the tears streaming onto her pillow. He reached for her again, pulling her close, and they kissed, tentatively at first, but then intensely, desperately. She frantically pulled at his clothes and removed her own.
The next morning, Shea set the table and put some cinnamon buns and a casserole in the oven while Ryan and the kids slept in. Ryan later shuffled into the kitchen and, as she stood at the island, folding napkins, with the scent of cinnamon in the air, he stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck with a “Good morning” and “Merry Christmas.” She lingered in his arms, relishing the illusion that everything was okay.
The snow was falling outside, a perfect backdrop to the perfect Christmas she was trying to create. Ryan built a fire in the living room and when the kids came down, everyone got coffee and sat around the tree to open presents. Shea had asked that they focus on sentiment more than stuff this year, assuring the kids that she and Ryan didn’t need anything. She’d challenged Ryan to give her something that money couldn’t buy. Leigh and Stephen, in a rare cooperative gesture, had conspired to gather years of bad photos—unintended double chins, red eyes, falls, and fails, rejects that would never be shared with the online world—and presented a picture book to Ryan and Shea, entitled The Real Walkers. Every photo brought laughter and vivid retellings of the captured moments.
Ryan gave Shea a new neon-green phone case. He said it glowed in the dark, which they both knew would come in handy because she so often misplaced her phone. It was a perfect gift—thoughtful, practical, and cheap. That would have been enough, but he passed her one more badly wrapped box.
Inside, she found a date book, the kind she hadn’t used in a decade, thanks to smartphones. She leafed through the pages and found dozens of notes written throughout the year in Ryan’s chicken scratch: January 4, drink some wine with Ryan by the fire, January 12, watch Ryan do all the laundry, March 7, foot massage, thx to manservant Ryan. She marveled at the time he’d spent coming up with all the entries, giggling and sharing only those rated PG and G with the kids. She finally stepped over and gave him a long hug, whispering, “Looks like it’s going to be a great year.”
Shea’s gift to Ryan was similarly aimed at romance. Kat had offered her three vouchers for all-expenses-paid hotel stays in Chicago, New Orleans, and Las Vegas. She said Shea could use them for a girls’ getaway or run off with Ryan for the weekend. But Kat insisted that if Shea used them, she had to order room service, eat at the hotel restaurants, use the spas, and report her findings on the in-room survey. It was part of Kat’s job to analyze and address customer feedback, and Shea was thrilled to oblige. “We’re booked downtown in three weeks,” she said with a wink after he’d opened the envelope.
She stuck to giving the kids the essentials they’d asked for, clothes and gift cards for some of their go-to spots near campus. Everyone seemed content, laughing about the fact that only at Christmas could someone wrap socks and sweatpants and call them gifts.
Ryan suddenly excused himself and returned with more wrapped boxes. Shea tried to remind herself that this was a good sign—he obviously had been shopping yesterday. But the looming financial unknowns pulled at the smile she had painted. Her stomach tied itself in knots again as Stephen opened his gift, a MacBook, and Leigh opened hers, a fancy new camera. Both kids squealed with delight, but Shea’s heart began pounding, and heat rose into her cheeks. It was insane, an illusion. He was unemployed! Still keeping secrets and pretending that nothing had changed.
“I’ll get a bag for the trash,” she said flatly, trying not to spoil the moment for the kids. She stood to leave, but Ryan jumped up, grabbing her hand. “Babe, don’t worry. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s fine. I swear. Here, I have a little something for you, too.” Before she could say another word, he presented her with a small box, the trademark Tiffany blue with white ribbon.
Leigh jumped up. “Oh, Dad, what did you do? Mom, open it!”
Shea opened the box to reveal a diamond infinity ring set in platinum. It was identical to the wedding ring she already owned. She’d joked once about the fact that she should have another one, to sandwich the engagement ring on her finger, though she never meant it and never even cared about jewelry. But Leigh swooned at the sight of it and Stephen patted his dad on the back. “Way to go, Pops.”
Ryan took the ring from the box, slipping it onto Shea’s finger, and said, “This is because I wish I could marry you all over again. Here’s to another twenty-five years.”
Ryan and Stephen spent the afternoon watching football and drinking beer, and Leigh hung out with her friends most of the day. Shea tried to let her anger wash away, focusing on the good in the house, but she’d finally gone upstairs to bed, exhausted by the effort.
She looked out the window, and she could see Kat and Mack in their living room, cuddled up on the couch. They were probably watching a movie. She was tempted to knock on their door, to break up their relaxing evening and unload on Kat over a bottle of wine, to finally tell her about Ryan’s job loss, and her fears, and his drinking, and the porn, but it was Christmas.
Kat would soon be gone, anyway.
Shea stood in the bathroo
m, brushing her teeth, wondering if she and Ryan were strong enough to weather whatever was happening between them. She smiled and frowned at her reflection, at the wrinkles that appeared with each expression, reminding her that nothing lasted, not her looks, maybe not even their marriage. She searched the medicine cabinet for eye cream, something to help stave off the outward signs of her slow march toward decline. She couldn’t find it. Instead, she found her Vicodin prescription from last spring. Those magic pills had taken away the shoulder pain, made her a little loopy, maybe too relaxed. She opened the bottle—still half-full. Perfect.
She lay in bed with a book but was soon rereading the same pages several times. The Vicodin was kicking in. When Ryan came up soon after, she could see the buzz in his eyes. It wasn’t the time to talk, but as he climbed into bed, she couldn’t stay quiet. “What are you doing?”
“Going to sleep,” he said, grinning, refusing to match her tone.
“How can you spend all that money—”
“Stop,” he said, his anger sudden and sharp. “Haven’t I always taken care of us?”
She didn’t respond.
“Do you see the lights? Do you feel the heat? Do you see any reason to panic?”
“Ryan . . .”
“Please, Shea, just trust me. I’m not an idiot.”
“But how can I when—”
“Jesus,” he yelled. “It’s Christmas. Can’t you just be happy?”
Before she could answer, he pulled off the covers. “I’m going to watch some TV.”
CHAPTER 12
April 10
ON MONDAY MORNING, KAT, EVELYN, and Lina left in the first car to return to the real world. Evelyn was driving, and Kat took the backseat. Tori needed to stay behind to deal with some maintenance guy, and Dee volunteered to stay with her. Dee was undoubtedly hungover and probably still sleeping after last night’s record-breaking, college-level intoxication.
Everything about Dee during the weekend felt off. She’d suggested dares and outrageous stunts for laughs last night, but she’d seemed angry. It was hard to know if her behavior was entirely about Shea or not. Dee was another recent empty nester, and Kat wondered if that was its own struggle. For two decades, Dee’s world had centered on her kids and volunteering at schools, and suddenly it was over. Kat’s job had often made her feel like a bad mother—the missed games, the unmade lunches, those days when Peter was sick and she was out of town. But after Peter headed off to college, she’d become thankful for the escape from their suddenly quiet home.