The Woman in Our House

by Andrew Hart

  “Hey, so I have to go to New York,” he said without turning around. He heard her stir in the gloom.

  “Again?” she said. “OK. When?”

  “Thursday,” said Josh.

  “This week?”

  “Yeah,” Josh replied, trying to sound casual. More movement from the bed; then she was folding back the covers and clicking on her bedside lamp. The room was suddenly aglow, and feeling exposed, he fished his phone from his pocket to give his hands something to do. He glanced over his shoulder to find her sitting up, her hair spilling unevenly across her face. She pushed it aside, and he turned to his phone, saying, “Last-minute thing. Sorry.”

  “Two days’ notice? That’s crazy. What if I was traveling and we had child-care issues?”

  “You’re not,” said Josh. “And we don’t.”

  “But we could have.”

  “Let’s focus on actual problems, not hypotheticals, OK, Anna?”

  He hadn’t intended the hardness in his voice, and it clearly caught her off guard. He half turned to face her but only glanced up from his phone for a second.

  “What about Grace? I thought maybe this weekend we could give Oaklynn a day off, maybe drive down to Charleston, just the four of us . . .”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. It’s a last-minute thing. I let them know I was pissed about it, but apparently, it can’t be moved.”

  She blew out a sigh and looked at her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, turning his attention back to his phone.

  Coward, he thought. Liar.

  “It’s OK,” said Anna, backpedaling, watching him as he scrolled through his email, not really seeing any of it. “Is there one?”

  “One what?”

  “A nonhypothetical problem?”

  “What?” he said, eyes still fixed on his phone. “No. Just, you know, meetings.”

  He felt her hesitation, her dissatisfaction, but he didn’t know what to say to make them go away. In the end, he opted for minimizing the issue.

  “At least you have Oaklynn,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said, without her usual enthusiasm.

  “What?” he said, happy to change the subject, finally looking at her properly. “Did she do something to annoy you?”

  Anna shook her head, but she was frowning.

  “Not really,” she said. “I had a slightly weird moment with her is all. She was sitting up in Grace’s room after I’d gone to bed. I was . . . taken aback.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. It was nothing. Just . . . sometimes it seems like she’s more important to the girls than I am.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Veronica called her my other mommy.”

  He had been prepared for something else, for suspicion and accusation, so this, he was ashamed to admit, was almost a relief. It made him kind. He came to her and settled on the edge of the bed, taking her hand in his.

  “She doesn’t mean it,” he said. “Not really. Kids, you know. They just say things.”

  She nodded, but her face was set, and he thought there were tears in her eyes. He leaned in and hugged her.

  “I’m OK,” she said. Then, after a long pause, “Is this likely to happen more?”

  “What?” he said again, knowing how wooden he sounded but unable to do anything about it.

  “Sudden meetings in New York,” she replied. “You usually have advance notice. Is this some new thing, something that is going to happen more now?”

  He didn’t know what to say to that but squeezed her into his shoulder encouragingly.

  “For a little while,” he said. “Maybe. Sorry.” It was too much. Suddenly, he needed to be away from her. Her closeness, her warmth against him, made him feel guilty again, deceitful.

  He got up quickly. He held up the phone like a TV lawyer presenting Exhibit A. “Something I have to handle,” he said lightly. “Damn phone. No problem with the Wi-Fi, so I can’t escape my fucking email, but there’s zero cell service. I’ll be back in a few. Gotta make a quick call. Work,” he added stupidly, barely able to get the word out, his throat was so tight.

  He moved to her side of the bed and kissed her lightly on the forehead, pretending not to see the dissatisfaction on her face. “Get some rest.” He turned the light off so he wouldn’t feel her eyes on him and fled from the room.

  With the door closed behind him, he took a long breath.

  His first direct lie to his wife. There had been evasions and half-truths before, as there were in all relationships, but this was the first straight-out, barefaced lie he could remember ever telling Anna, and it stung with particular bitterness because he knew it would be the first of many.

  He went downstairs to the little book-lined office that was a feature of so many of the houses they had looked at when they’d first moved to Charlotte, as if every family had a lawyer who needed something suitably stuffy at home. They were all the same: heavy desks and dark wood bookcases with a few leather-bound volumes aesthetically spaced out to give a sense of seriousness, a framed diploma or two on the wall. Most of the rooms had been open on one side and would therefore be continually full of the noise and distraction of the house, as if the purpose of the room was less about making a space for actual work than it was about signaling the prestige of the worker. Theirs at least had four walls and a door, though Josh had never really felt comfortable in it.

  Now he sat in the buttoned leather office chair, the door safely closed behind him, picked up the phone on the desk, and dialed a number. Mary Beth Wilson answered on the second ring.

  “It’s me,” said Josh, his voice low, his body hunched over the phone as if shielding it. “We need to talk about Thursday.”

  In the darkness of the basement, Oaklynn sat in the rocker she had moved from her bedroom suite to the foot of the stairs, where she could listen to the sounds of the house. Mr. Quietly pulsed softly in her lap. The children were asleep. She had baby monitors set up in both of their rooms. Though she had the receiver volume turned very low, her ears were sharp, and the little green lights rolled on when they so much as shifted in their slumber. She had considered putting another in Josh and Anna’s room—under the bed, perhaps—but the risk of it being discovered was too great.

  She had been doing nothing, thinking vaguely of times past, the tiny sliver of good weeks she had spent with Carl before he had shown her what he really was, who he was, before the bruises and the broken jaw, before she had fled. She rocked back and forth, trying to put the memories away again, when she heard the distinctive snap of the master bedroom door two floors up. It had been a careful, stealthy sound. She stopped rocking, listening to the bare feet on the hardwood hallway, then on the stairs down to the ground floor a dozen feet above her head.

  Anna?

  No. The steps were too heavy. Then came the distinctive creak of the office door.

  Josh, then.

  And what was he doing sneaking around at night only minutes after getting home?

  Oaklynn got up silently, spilling Mr. Quietly out of her lap so that he grumbled softly and padded away. She moved quickly, surprisingly light on her feet for someone of her build, and eased into her darkened bedroom, closing the door carefully behind her. She picked up the house phone on her nightstand and thumbed it into life so a faint glow flickered over the blue walls.

  She picked it up and pressed the phone to her ear, holding her breath.

  “It’s me,” said Josh, his voice low. “We need to talk about Thursday.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It had been a hell of a drive, thought Flanders, vaguely. Long but full of awesome scenery, something he noted almost grudgingly but that reminded him that the world had good things in it as well as bad. He mostly saw the bad, but out here on the road, he was reminded of some of the things he had once cared about. The last leg had taken him on I-40 right through Tennessee and then on I-26 through the wooded mountains of western North Carolina, near Asheville and Hen
dersonville, which was really pretty country, then through Shelby and Gastonia, which was less so. As he rolled into Charlotte proper, he stopped fiddling with the radio and checked the directions he had pulled up on his phone. A moment later, he pulled over at a Bojangles’, where he ordered chicken thighs and biscuits while he considered his next move.

  This had to be done carefully.

  If Nadine saw him or got wind that someone—anyone—was watching her, she’d bolt and might be in the wind for weeks or longer. He couldn’t risk that. He couldn’t move till everything was lined up just perfectly, but neither could he delay too long. The timing had to be just right, or all his driving and poking around would be for nothing.

  He tried the radio again and hummed along tunelessly while he ate his chicken. He was going to have to watch a while longer, he decided, but he was where he needed to be. The net he had been dragging behind him for weeks had found its prey, and it was tightening with each moment. Flanders considered his badge, wiping a smear of grease off the shield, and thought of Nadine, the things she had done.

  He swallowed and stared off at nothing, his jaw set. She wouldn’t get away this time.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ANNA

  Josh was out of sorts for the next two days. The girls seemed to sense it in some oblique way and kept to themselves, as if sheltering from an approaching storm, while he drifted aimlessly around the house, sullen and broody. It was unlike him. Josh was the most even-keeled man I had ever met: famously, almost comically, unflappable. I remember once shortly after we had gotten married when he was broiling a sandwich in the toaster oven and, alerted by the acrid smell of burning, he turned and remarked, in a tone that was almost bored in its exasperation, “The oven’s on fire.” It was a deadpan remark, a little weary that the world was letting him down, and he followed it up—as I shrieked and ran around, freaked out by the honest-to-God flames leaping from the front and back of the appliance—by methodically dealing with the problem: disconnecting the power cord and smothering the tray and greasy particles with a damp towel. It was so him, and I had recounted the tale several times since whenever I wanted to convey exactly who Josh was, always to awe and laughter.

  When he was angry, it was like lightning: here one moment and gone the next, utterly burned out so that it was hard to remember it had really flared at all. He didn’t gnaw on feelings for days. He didn’t hold grudges. He didn’t stew. If he had something to say, he’d say it, and then it was done, and he would go back to moving through life like a sleek boat in a brisk but even current, smooth and steady, always closing on a destination only he could see.

  So the relentless darkness of his mood, the sense that he was, for want of a better word, troubled, even anxious, alarmed me. I asked if he was OK, and he said he was, first changing the subject and then claiming he had work to do. This was worse. I was so used to being able to read him at a hundred paces that I didn’t know how to handle this new evasive version of my husband.

  Deceptive, you mean.

  I’d be lying if I said otherwise. Yes, I thought he was hiding something. I just had no idea what and whether I should be concerned. When I pressed him the night before his trip, interrupting him as he packed his case with his slim-fitting suits and shiny silk ties, he just frowned and said, “It’s just work stuff. Nothing to worry about. It will blow over.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  He shook his head dismissively, caught the stung look in my face, and tried to soften the look on his face, saying, “No. Don’t worry. I just feel a bit . . . unprepared for this slew of meetings. I’ll be OK, and when I get home, it should be fine.”

  He smiled as he said that last word, held my shoulders and kissed the top of my head so that I almost believed him.

  “I could come with you,” I said. “I need to go to New York soon. I’m sure I could get some editor lunches and evening drinks sessions together to make it worth my while. Then we could take in a show, maybe. Make a little holiday out of it. Oaklynn can handle the kids by herself for a couple of days.”

  I don’t know why I said it. I almost certainly couldn’t schedule any meaningful work for myself, and I didn’t really like the idea of leaving the girls at home. But I said it, and I watched him, and I saw, just for a second, the merest flicker of panic before he recovered enough to shake his head sadly and tell me he would be too busy for us to do anything together. In other circumstances, I might have pressed him, but I was more than worried now. I felt like something of myself—something physical like my heart, lungs, or stomach—had been scooped out of me, and I was left hollow and incapable of functioning. At last, I managed a nod, and he returned to his packing so that he didn’t see me finally leave the room with tears in my eyes.

  They weren’t tears of sadness, I don’t think. I’m not some waif in a romance novel who collapses speechless and useless when men treat her badly. Nor were they tears of anger. Not yet. They were more like the tears you get when you chop onions or turn your face into a high wind: a physical response without a clear emotional register. My body was responding before my mind had been able to make sense of what was happening.

  I didn’t get up with him in the morning, which was unlike me. I lay in bed, pretending to sleep till I heard the front door lock behind him. Then I slid out of bed and went to the window, parting the blinds just enough to watch him put his case into the back of the car, trying to read his unselfconscious body language for something, anything. He looked like . . . Josh. Same as ever. Another business trip, another few days away that would probably be more fun than he let on, so I wouldn’t feel jealous about having to stay home.

  Only this and nothing more.

  I almost grinned at the phrase, stupid and melodramatic as it was, but the thought of Poe’s raven made me shudder in spite of myself, and I crawled back under the covers for another half hour before showering and facing the world. When I did shower, I stood there for a long moment after I had shut the water off, my hair dripping, watching the grout lines between the tiles become distinct as the water drained.

  “You OK?” asked Oaklynn when I finally made it downstairs. “You look right down in the flipping dumps.”

  I gave her a look, but she was immune, and with the girls there having breakfast, I didn’t want to get into a fight.

  “Cripes, Anna,” she said bracingly. “You are too strong a person to get down just because Hubby is out of town.”

  I almost laughed at the absurdity of her phrasing, almost told her to keep her nose out of my personal life, but she was giving me that wheat-field-wide Sunday schoolteacher smile, and I relented. And besides, she was right. I was too strong to let Josh’s absence—and whatever it was truly about—ambush my day. I had work to do.

  “You made pancakes?” I said. “I didn’t think we had the stuff.”

  “I slipped out early,” Oaklynn admitted. “We were low on milk, and I couldn’t sleep, so I went to the store. Josh didn’t say? He was leaving just as I got back.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him since he left,” I said, very slightly defensive. “Why would I?”

  “No reason,” said Oaklynn, shrinking back very slightly like a scolded dog. “Thought he might check in from the airport or something.”

  He usually does, I thought, feeling a twist in my stomach.

  “You know what would be fun?” Oaklynn announced, deliberately changing the subject.

  “What?” I said, humoring her, but still in a coffee-deprived state, which I knew might make me spiky if I didn’t work at it.

  “We’ll go to the park, all of us together. Veronica loves the monkey bars and the slide and that big old train . . .”

  “Yes!” said Veronica. “Please, Mommy, can we?”

  “Train?” I said.

  “The old steam loco by the soccer fields. You know! At Freedom Park.”

  “Oh,” I said, pretending I knew what she meant. “Right.” I had taken Veronica to parks before but never that one. It was so
big. So full of people. “Won’t it be really crowded?”

  “Not at this time,” Oaklynn said with a conspiratorial wink, like she was sharing secret insights. “Get there now and we’ll have the place to ourselves for at least a half hour.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I really have to work.”

  “Bring it with you!” said Oaklynn. “I mean it, missy. I’m not leaving you at home to be a grumpy boots.”

  Veronica looked up and laughed.

  “Grumpy boots,” she echoed, delighted. “Witchy shoes and grumpy boots. Cripes!”

  I met my daughter’s gleeful face, the slight hint of mockery in her use of Oaklynn’s favorite exclamation, and it was impossible to say no. Twenty minutes later, the car was loaded, and we were driving up past Queens University and across Kings Drive to East Boulevard. It was cold, though it would warm up some in the course of the morning, but the prospect of trying to use my laptop in the glare of the almost wintry sun was demoralizing. Still, I had a couple of new chapters of Hell Is Empty printed off in my backpack. I guessed I would read those, maybe in the shade of some great willow . . .

  In fact, though the park did have trees and an artificial lake, the children’s playground wasn’t really near either. It was exposed and sun bleached, sitting beside the great rusting steam engine Oaklynn had mentioned, a network of metal walkways with climbing apparatus and slides with sand beneath, one of them a twirly plastic-tube thing. Veronica confided that she had worked up the courage to go down just a week ago but was going to do it again today if I would watch. The walkways around the edge of the playground radiated heat in the summer, but now they seemed dead, the grass on either side patchy and yellowing. I settled on a hard bench with my laptop, already convinced this had been a bad idea, while Veronica went whooping toward the swings, screaming for Oaklynn to push her “higher than a house.” It struck me that this was a phrase they had used before, and I watched them, again feeling left out of the private rapport they had built over the last couple of months. Oaklynn set Grace in a sandbox in which some simple toys were fixed, and she amused herself lifting little scoops of sand, moving them from one side to the other, and dropping them with great concentration, committed to some project only she could understand.