The Cheater

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  She walked into the den and looked at him on the sofa. “Can we turn the television off? I want to talk.”

  John jumped up. “I just remembered. Shana has the cramps, poor baby, and I told her I’d bring her some Tylenol.” He headed to the kitchen cabinet.

  Lily grabbed the two pills out of his hand and snapped, “I’ll take her the Tylenol, then I’ll meet you in the backyard. I want to talk.” In the backyard, Shana wouldn’t be able to hear them. At least on one issue they agreed: not arguing in front of their daughter.

  Lily opened Shana’s door. She was still on the phone, sitting on the floor in a corner, so much junk on her bed there was nowhere else to sit. “Please get off the phone now and go to bed. You’ll never get up in the morning.”

  The phone was left on its side as Shana strode over to her mother. “I’ll get off in just a minute.”

  “I brought you a few Tylenol for the cramps.”

  “Did you bring me any water?”

  “The bathroom is just two feet away, Shana. Look. See, it’s still there.”

  “Dad, bring me a glass of water on your way,” she yelled.

  John entered the room as Lily was leaving. She stood with her back to the hall wall and listened to the two of them talking, discussing the game, her father bragging about how well she’d pitched. She could tell Shana was standing on her toes and hugging him around the neck as she did every night, kissing him tenderly on the cheek. He walked out the door and saw Lily standing there, her hands crossed over her chest. He waited for her to pass and followed her into the backyard.

  John took a seat in the lounger. Lily sat in a nylon chair across from him. The only light was from the neighboring house, the only noise their television heard through an open window. The amber end of his cigarette reminded her of the fireflies she used to chase as a child, sometimes capturing one in a jar.

  “Where were you last night?” he said.

  “I told Shana to tell you, but I guess you never woke up.” Lily was thankful for the darkness, that he couldn’t see her face. She’d always been a poor liar. He had once told her that whenever she lied, her nostrils flared.

  “I saw you,” he said, his voice a mixture of anger and sadness.

  Lily rubbed her arms in the damp night air, his words playing in her mind. She laughed nervously. Surely he didn’t mean what she thought he meant. “Oh, really,” she said, “and what exactly did you see?”

  He was silent, then he repeated himself. “I saw you.”

  “Look, John, don’t play games with me. What are you talking about?”

  “I want you to move out.” He stood and the voice now was all bitterness, the voice of a man to be reckoned with. “Did you hear me? I want you out of this house by tomorrow.”

  He was standing over Lily and she looked up in the dark, her eyes following the glowing end of his cigarette as he flicked it into the flower bed. She waited for it to explode like a firecracker, counting the seconds. She thought of spontaneous combustion, her body erupting into flames, burning from the inside out. His arm was flying toward her, a night bird, a bat, the sound of his shirt wings flapping, the slap across her face the dreaded collision. “Move in with your boyfriend, the guy you were making out with last night in the parking lot!”

  Lily caught his arm in an iron grip. In front of her she saw an enormous stack of white dishes crashing to the ground, the shattered pieces flying through the air. “You want me to move out?” she screamed. “You disgusting piece of shit. You think I want to spend the rest of my life with you, working my ass off while you lounge around in front of the television and turn my own daughter against me?”

  He yanked his arm away. “I never turned Shana against you. You’re just too busy with your cases and your career to pay attention to your child.” He was spitting the words out between clenched teeth, his chest heaving.

  “What do you suggest? That I quit my job? That we go on welfare so we can both be here every minute in case Shana needs a glass of water? You’ve spoiled her rotten, John. She was a beautiful girl and now she’s a disrespectful, demanding brat.” She stopped, regretting her last statement. “Now you’re probably going to run in there and tell Shana what I said. Don’t you realize that you hurt her, too, when you do this, repeat things I say to you in private? Go ahead. Tell her. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

  Lily stepped back and collided with one of the nylon lawn chairs. With one hand she seized the chair and threw it onto the dirt side of the yard. “Look at the yard, John. You don’t even see that one side is dirt. It doesn’t bother you at all that you were too lazy to finish it. You only see what you want to see.”

  “You’re a slut, a whore. You let that man use you like a prostitute.”

  Her voice lowered to a controlled level. “Like a receptacle, John? Is that what you meant to say? That I let him use me like a receptacle?” He didn’t answer. “Maybe if you were a man and treated me like a woman, a wife, then I wouldn’t have needed another man.” She stepped closer, inches from his face. “You know, John, people have sex, married people, and for more reasons than just making babies.” Her voice rose again and she yelled. “They have it because it feels good, because it’s normal.”

  He was shaking, moving back away from her. “You’re sick, Lily. You’re not fit to be a mother.” He turned and started walking toward the back door.

  “I want a husband, John, not a wife.”

  He slammed the door and left her there in the yard. The neighbor’s dog was barking at the commotion. Her breath was coming slower now. The tempest was over. She felt a lightness in her body, a floating sensation. She was finally going to be free. The only problem was Shana.

  Walking down the hall, she saw the light under the girl’s door. She opened it and saw Shana cramming papers from the top of her bed back into a spiral notebook. “Can I come in for a few minutes?”

  She saw the expression on her mother’s face and said, “Sure. Have you and Dad been fighting? I thought I heard yelling out there.”

  “Yes.” Lily turned her head, hoping Shana wouldn’t see the red handprint on her cheek. “Can we turn the light out and get in bed the way we used to when you were little?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Shana flicked off the light and climbed into bed on the side nearest the wall. “What’s going on?”

  “Your father and I are going to get a divorce, honey,” Lily said, sniffing in the darkness and feeling the wet tears run down her face. She had felt so good in the yard; it was what she wanted, but now she was terrified. “Things have been bad for a long time. You know that.”

  “Will we be poor now? Sally’s parents got divorced and she says they’re poor.”

  “I guarantee you won’t be poor, Shana, even if I have to work a second job. I love you, sweetheart. I’ll always provide for you, and I’ll always be here for you.”

  Shana sat up in the bed, her voice thin and cracking. “Where will we live if you and Dad get divorced? We won’t be a family anymore.”

  Lily sat up, too, and reached for her, but she pulled away. “We’ll always be a family, Shana. I’ll always be your mother, and Dad will always be your father. We both love you very much.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening to me. I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.” She began sobbing. “Today. You’re doing this today.”

  The fact that she’d started her period for the first time surfaced in Lily’s mind. She fell back onto the small bed. Shana would remember this day for the rest of her life. “Please, honey, try to understand. I know it’s hard. I just can’t live with your father anymore. I wanted to wait until you were out of high school, but—”

  Shana cut her off. “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because I can’t take it anymore. Because I’m too old to wait that long. If we do it now, we both have a chance to find something else in our life.”

  Shana leaned back next to Lily, still sniffling. “You mean another man? Find another man?”

 
; “Possibly, or your dad might find another woman who’ll make him happy.”

  Shana was silent, thinking. Lily continued, “One of us has to move out. Too many bad things were said tonight. Dad wants me to move out. I have a right to stay here, Shana, and things might be different if it was just the two of us. You know, sometimes when I go to my room or stay late at the office, it’s because I don’t want to be around your father. I mean, you stay in your room all the time and he sleeps on the couch. Try to see my side just once.”

  “I want to stay here with Dad.”

  Lily felt her heart sink. She should have known it would be this way. She got up and turned the light on, sat on the edge of the bed, and wiped a tear off her cheek. “Why? What is it I’ve done wrong, Shana? What haven’t I done? Tell me.”

  Shana reached for a tissue off the nightstand, blowing her nose. “Dad loves me more than you do.”

  Resentment rose in Lily’s throat. “That isn’t true. No matter what your father has told you, it simply isn’t true. You know what it is, it’s because he gives in to you more, waits on you more, never demands anything from you or disciplines you. Isn’t it?”

  Shana’s blue eyes drifted around the room before coming back to rest on her mother. “Maybe.”

  What could Lily say? The girl had answered honestly. She stood and was leaving when Shana spoke up. “You can sleep with me, Mom. Turn out the light.”

  Back in bed, Shana moved close and put her head on Lily’s shoulder. “I do love you, Mom. I just want to live with Dad. You know?”

  “I know,” Lily said. “I know.”

  NINE

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27

  VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

  Lily surfaced from the past. Judge Hennessey’s remarks had made her furious, but overall, he had spoken the truth. She could never show lenience to a violent sex offender. More importantly, she had stepped outside the boundaries of the law and taken a life. When she’d finally returned home the morning after the rape, two police cars had been parked in front. Without knowledge of the jeopardy he was putting her in, John had changed his mind and decided to report the rape.

  Lily’s height, at five-ten, and her makeshift disguise, coupled with the altered license plate, had kept the police from apprehending her. Bruce Cunningham, an Oxnard homicide detective, had finally closed in on her. But in the end, his disgust with the system, and his compassion for what Lily and Shana had been through, had led the detective to the decision that justice would not be served by sending Lily to prison. He would be robbing a child of her mother at a time when she needed her the most, something Cunningham could not bring himself to do.

  Bobby Hernandez, the man Lily had killed, had been one of the five men who’d committed the most heinous crime in the history of Ventura, the meaningless slaughter of a young high school couple. Nothing could justify a person taking the law into her own hands, and the awful fact that Lily had to live with was Hernandez had not been the rapist! She could have just as easily killed an innocent person.

  Lily turned into her driveway, then parked and stared out the window. Shana was doing remarkably well, considering the horrors she’d been forced to endure. At the age of twelve, just days after she’d reached puberty, the most sensitive time in a girl’s life, Marco Curazon had brutally raped her alongside her mother. But as Lily had feared all along, one of the reasons she’d decided to track down the rapist and kill him, was Shana’s nightmare had not ended with Curazon’s capture and imprisonment.

  John had made a very poor decision, refusing to pay for an unlisted number. He hadn’t known Shana was going to move back in with him again, though, nor could he fathom that the rapist might come for Shana when he was paroled from prison. Normal people had short memories. Imprisoned sex offenders did not, and were known to return and reenact their crimes with the same victims, sometimes on more than one occasion. Fortunately for Shana, she was not there the day Curazon found his way to her home. Instead, he had run into John in the garage and killed him.

  Now that Marco Curazon was on death row, Shana could finally make an attempt to put the past behind her. But getting to this point had not been easy, and Lily had struggled alongside her daughter.

  Although it might be no more than a figment of her imagination, Lily wanted to believe that she was exactly where she was supposed to be—in a position to punish the individuals who committed acts of violence and wreaked havoc on society. Should she be a judge? Obviously not, but who was better equipped to understand both criminals and victims?

  Lily’s stance on crime was simple—show lenience toward individuals who committed crimes against property: the thieves, burglars, addicts, prostitutes, and drug offenders. She had no choice, as there wasn’t enough room to warehouse them in the prison system. Criminals who murdered, raped, and physically abused children should be shown no mercy.

  And if any crime was serious enough to warrant the death penalty, Lily would do everything in her power to make certain it was imposed. Sentencing a man to death was a lot easier than tracking him down with a shotgun.

  She parked the Volvo in the garage and entered the house. Bryce and Lily resided in an older three-story home in the foothills of Ventura. The property had been constructed on the edge of a cliff to take advantage of the ocean views. The problem was they were directly above the 101 freeway, and commercial buildings had been erected that eliminated their view of the ocean from every room except the library. Surrounded by lush foliage, the lot was two-tiered, and Bryce wanted to put in a swimming pool on the lower level. Lily had finally knocked some sense into him. The area had flooded several years back, and a number of nearby homes had slid off the cliff, one of them with the occupants still inside.

  The house had previously belonged to Bryce’s father, an orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Collin Donnelly had used it as a weekend retreat from his primary home in Brentwood. Bryce’s mother had died when Bryce was a boy, and his father had never remarried. His father passed away six months before they met, and Lily regretted not being able to meet him.

  Since Bryce was an only child, he was the sole heir to his father’s estate. He had intended to sell the Ventura property, as he had Dr. Donnelly’s other real estate holdings. When Lily saw the house, she knew it was where she wanted to live.

  She had met Bryce at the Sea Shell, a casual seafood restaurant located on the pier in Santa Barbara. She was rebounding from her toxic affair with Richard Fowler, and Bryce claimed he fell in love with her the second he saw her, which she seriously doubted. Since Bryce was living in a condo in Century City and Lily was a prosecutor in Santa Barbara, it was amazing that their relationship had gotten off the ground. But Bryce had gone to extremes to win her over. Every chance he got, he would make the long drive from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. When he was pressed for time, he’d jump on a commuter plane out of LAX and Lily would pick him up at the Santa Barbara airport.

  Those were happy times. Bryce would be jumping out of his skin to be with Lily, and she was excited as well. They would drive straight to her house, where they’d make mad love until all hours of the night. He was gregarious, and Lily loved him for it. Bryce had given her back something she’d lost, the desire to live life to the fullest. He joyfully consumed everything: food, laughter, sex, booze, people, and money. They had occasionally gone on wild shopping sprees, buying thousands of dollars’ worth in a few short hours. But the seriousness of Lily’s new position as a judge had curbed their childlike behavior.

  Bryce had married right out of college and divorced a year later. He claimed he had enjoyed his bachelor status, dating whomever he wanted for as long as they held his interest. He kept his relationships short and ended them at any hint of trouble. Only one woman had ever left him, his first wife. Bryce didn’t like rejection.

  When Lily finally agreed to marry him and they settled on Ventura as a compromise between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, she wasn’t working and spent her days renovating their new home. The ceiling in the living room and
library had been elevated, the kitchens and baths modernized, and a beautiful winding staircase now led to the third floor. Instead of the four small bedrooms, they had built a spacious master suite and a new bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub. She had insisted on keeping most of his father’s furniture, and had lovingly refinished it herself.

  Hennessey’s heart attack had occurred at the most propitious time. The house was finished and Lily was eager to go back to work. She would have accepted the position regardless. All her life she had dreamed of becoming a judge.

  She headed to the bathroom, removing her clothes and depositing them in the laundry bin. She then leaned back against the counter, seeing Bryce watching her from the doorway. “Can I take a shower first? I showered at the club, but Hennessey had me sweating today.”