The Other Mrs. Miller

by Allison Dickson

  She gives Wyatt a cool grin and lifts her coffee cup for a sip. “I’ll take that under advisement, Doc,” she says, her voice cool, smooth. “Oh wait, you can’t be a doctor without a doctorate.”

  It’s an extremely low blow, considering he flunked out of his master’s program after they lost Xavier, and though he went back eventually, he never mustered the gumption to go for his PhD. But they’re aiming for each other’s soft spots right now, and she can’t deny that it felt good, at least for a second, to hit him back. His face flushes a deep scarlet and his hands curl into tight fists, white knuckles and all. For a tense moment, Phoebe braces herself for an escalation and regrets that she has nothing more than a mug of lukewarm coffee to defend herself with if he decides to leap on her. Even her fingernails are too chewed to be of any use. But in all the years she’s known Wyatt, she’s never seen him react violently. It’s simply not in his nature.

  But it’s in everyone’s nature, she reminds herself. Everything that moves eventually breaks. That was one of her father’s sayings.

  Somewhere in the storm that must be swirling in his brain, Wyatt finds his calm again. He shrinks back a little, relaxing his fists, and then stalks off in the direction of his study. The door slams shut a few seconds later. Hard punctuation at the end of an ugly paragraph. Letting out a long, shaky breath, Phoebe gets up and goes to the front window and peeks through the blinds, expecting to see her companion the blue car sitting there like it was when she checked an hour ago, but it’s gone now, and in that moment, she’s never felt lonelier.

  A second later, the garage door at the Napier house opens, and Jake steps outside wearing black spandex running gear and a pair of white earbuds. He faces her house for a long moment, and it feels like he’s looking right at her. A low hum of dismay amps to an internal shriek. Look away now! Don’t let him think you’re spying! But a quick realization cuts that voice off, leaving a warm, titillated hum in its wake: isn’t he spying on her too? A moment later, he turns away to give his legs a few stretches, then glides off up the street in long strides.

  “I’m going into the office.”

  Phoebe startles and turns around to see Wyatt dressed for work. His eyes are red and watery. He only cries when he’s especially angry, as if the tears help to wash away his rage. It’s almost a relief to see them now after what nearly happened a minute ago.

  “Okay. Have a nice day.” Her pleasant tone clashes badly against the mood between them, enough to make them both wince a little, but her mind is somewhere else now. An idea is beginning to take shape. A really bad idea.

  Once he’s gone, the silence left in his wake, normally so comforting, is suddenly abrasive and smothering. Seeing Jake take off on his run unlocked something in her. His easy strides represented freedom at its most essential. She wants it. Not to actually go running, but to move nonetheless. She remembers when she could move through the world that way, unburdened.

  Something she’s never done before is cheat on her husband. There have been opportunities, especially in their earlier years when they were both getting out more, but she’s never done more than flirt a little. But this feeling she has right now isn’t about sex or even flirting. She just wants to be near someone fresh and new, even if it’s only to say hello and possibly see if the chemistry from the other day still holds. If she can seem interesting to someone like Jake, she might feel inspired to see what else is out there.

  But if she goes outside only to speak to Jake, his parents will probably have something to say about it. Phoebe knows a way around that problem. It requires a bit more work and a lot of nerve, but Wyatt’s words this morning have galvanized her, knocked her mousy self comatose. She also knows how ephemeral this feeling might be, so if she is going to do anything, she needs to move now.

  * * *

  ■■■

  IN THE KITCHEN, she flips on the radio. As she measures and mixes her ingredients, she catches herself singing along to the music. An hour later, the kitchen smells like caramelized sugar and berries, and a dozen of her famous jumbo-size blueberry muffins are cooling on a rack. Cooking was the one life lesson her mother taught her that actually stuck. Of course, Carol had taught it in the hopes that Phoebe could one day impress a man, and to that end, she supposes it was a success. Wyatt always loved her cooking. But it also helps that she enjoys doing it.

  Finding she still has plenty of energy to carry out her plan, she dashes upstairs and takes a long bath, shaving and exfoliating every part of herself like she’s preparing for a date that might move beyond first base, even though there will be no such thing. But she retrieves another bit of her mother’s long-abandoned Good Wife wisdom: you only feel as good as you look. Maybe Carol was on to something there, because she’s feeling pretty great right now. But she won’t give Wyatt too much credit. She isn’t doing this for him.

  With her body and hair wrapped in thick towels, she crosses to her closet to begin the difficult process of picking the right outfit. If she puts on a dress, she might look like she’s trying too hard, or give off a fussy 1950s housewife vibe. But she also wants to show off her best assets while hiding the ones she’s neglected, and a dress is her best bet. She strikes a balance, choosing a soft pink jersey number that cinches above the waist and swings freely at her knees. After adding a pair of strappy sandals and some nude polish to her toenails, she’ll be the epitome of cute and casual.

  An hour later, she steps in front of the mirror one more time, fully dressed, her makeup light and sensible, her golden hair hanging loosely around her shoulders. After a moment’s deliberation, she decides to put it up. She’s aiming for “quickly thrown together but still managing to look rich and fabulous,” and nothing says that better than a sloppy ponytail. It will also conceal the grown-out cut.

  She still isn’t completely satisfied as she presses in on her growing pooch of a belly, wondering if she looks inadvertently pregnant, but if she starts cycling through outfits again, she’ll lose the last of her nerve and go right back to the leggings, and probably eat all those muffins by herself. She gives her head a shake. Not this time. Downstairs, she places the muffins into a reusable container that she intends to leave over there. Borrowed plastics are the perfect way to ensure future get-togethers. Maybe Jake will be a good boy and bring it back over here for his mom.

  Before going outside, she peeks out the window to see if the blue car has reappeared. The street is still deserted. “Please just stay gone, whoever you are,” she mutters. It’s as close to a prayer as she ever gets.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE NAPIER HOUSE looks quiet and dark, almost like it’s still vacant. Jake might be the only one awake, his parents no doubt exhausted after a long cross-country trip and all the unpacking. The short spread of blacktop separating their houses suddenly feels like a wide gulf, and for the first time since Wyatt left, she feels her nerve slipping. Then the front door opens, and a trim, petite woman in a black tank top and cut-off shorts steps outside and takes a seat on the bottom porch step. A red bandanna covers most of her dark brown hair, keeping it out of her face the way it might if she were busy dusting, scrubbing floors, and emptying boxes. This could be hired help, but it doesn’t seem likely at this hour. Phoebe is sure this is Jake’s mother, Vicki.

  Taking a furtive glance over her shoulder, the woman pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her bra and lights up. Phoebe raises a brow. She didn’t think people smoked actual cigarettes anymore, especially doctors’ wives.

  She sucks in a deep breath and sets off down her front porch steps, pulling together every resource she has in order to be the open, warm society girl she once was, or at least tried to be. Vicki looks up and sees her coming, and Phoebe’s nerves begin rattling like train tracks right before the locomotive bears down on them. She also feels vaguely nauseated, but when she’s most of the way there, she gives a final “fake it till you make it” push of sheer will and puts on her most brill
iant smile. “Hi there! I live across the street and wanted to introduce myself. I hope I’m not coming at a bad time.” Is she speaking too rapidly? Is she too shrill? She has lost her gauge for these things. It’s like trying to fly a plane without knowing where the horizon is.

  The woman quickly scrubs out her cigarette on the sidewalk and places the butt into her pack before standing up. Phoebe notices a bruise encircling her upper arm, deep purple fading to yellow around the edges. “Not a bad time at all. I’ve been meaning to come over and introduce myself, since I know you’ve already met my son, but I keep finding new fires to put out over here. You’re Phoebe, right?”

  So Jake has already spoken of her. Of course, his father already knew about the visit, but Phoebe lights up inside anyway. “Yep! And you must be Vicki.”

  “That’s me. The woman of the house, though I look more like the housekeeper I wish I had.” There are bags and purple rings under her eyes, sure signs of exhaustion. Why doesn’t she have anyone helping her?

  “I don’t want to get in your way, but I figured since your kitchen might not be all set up yet, you’d want something homemade for breakfast.” She holds out the container of muffins.

  “Oh my gosh, thank you. All the fast food, pizza, and Chinese takeout has taken its toll. I’m ballooning from the sodium.” Phoebe can’t see an ounce of fat or bloat on the woman’s body. If anything, she looks a bit underfed, but Phoebe knows how vanity works. “Why don’t you come in?” Vicki says. “It’s a mess, but I’ve already unpacked the most important thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The coffeepot, of course.”

  “Coffee sounds great. Thank you.” Phoebe is amazed at how easy this has been so far. It’s nice to play a well-adjusted human again, like stretching her legs after an overly long sit. Vicki makes it easy, though. She has the sort of rhythm anyone can fall in with. Inside the house, she’s immediately impressed with how wide open the place feels, thanks mostly to the high ceilings and light colors. The natural wood and floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room bring the outside in. There isn’t any substantial furniture or rugs in place yet, only boxes and a couple chairs, so their footsteps and voices echo off the hardwood floors. “It’s beautiful in here. I’ve never been inside.”

  “Unfortunately, it needs more work than I was anticipating. Plumbing, gutters, maybe even a roof, but given the market, we’re still quite lucky.”

  “The previous owners were pretty old, if I recall. I imagine they must have let a lot of things go.”

  Vicki gives a faint nod. “Boy, did they ever.”

  She escorts Phoebe into the kitchen, where a few boxes sit among not much else. It looks like they didn’t bring a lot of stuff, maybe enough to fill a small apartment or dorm room. She seems to notice Phoebe noticing. “We came only with the essentials. Moving across the country with everything you own is too much of a burden, so we had a big yard sale out there with the plan to fill this place with new things.”

  “Starting with a blank canvas sounds like a perk to me,” Phoebe says.

  “Most definitely.” Vicki gestures to a set of stools parked beneath the breakfast bar, and then quickly clears away the pizza boxes and empty soda cans. “Like I said, it’s a mess.”

  “It’s really okay. You should see my house, and unlike you, I have no excuse.” It’s a giant lie. She maintains a spotless house even now, without the help of the housekeeper who used to come by twice a week until Phoebe grew paranoid about prying eyes after the Daniel media fallout. But there was never much for the help to do anyway. Cleaning is Phoebe’s one major compulsion and remaining source of pride, but Vicki seems to need some reassurance. Taking a seat, Phoebe watches her prep an electric kettle. The coffeepot is actually a glass Chemex beaker. Points for being a coffee snob. “Where are the men?” Phoebe asks, knowing perfectly well where one of them is.

  “Jake is out for a run, and my husband, Ron, is entering the sixteenth hour of an eight-hour shift at the hospital. He’s going to be in a great mood when he gets home.” Her sarcasm is about as subtle as a neck tattoo. A few minutes later, they’re both sipping delicious cups of brew and starting in on the muffins after Vicki’s profuse apologies that she still hasn’t been to the store to buy any real groceries, including butter. Phoebe is taking small, delicate bites befitting what one does in new company, but Vicki doesn’t appear to value such conventions. She bites off half the muffin top and rolls her eyes in ecstasy. “Oh my God, these are perfect,” she says with her mouth still mostly full. “Adding butter would have been an insult.”

  Phoebe, both amused and relieved to cast the invisible corset of social decorum aside, follows suit and takes a real bite too.

  “So, Phoebe. That’s a cool name. Makes me think of the girl in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

  She grins. “If only I still looked like that in a bikini.”

  “That you ever did puts you several steps ahead of me. Tell me about yourself.”

  Her stomach flip-flops. Why does meeting new people always begin like a job interview? Then again, she’s lucky Vicki doesn’t appear to know who Phoebe really is. She sifts through her collection of canned responses and finds one that puts her as far away from her father and family name as possible. “I’m a Chicago girl, born and raised. I’ve lived in Lake Forest for ten years, since I got married. Wyatt and I met while we went to Northwestern. No kids.” The last two words turn bitter on her palate, her latest argument with Wyatt still fresh in her mind. Vicki seems to be waiting for her to say more, and Phoebe realizes she has nothing even remotely interesting to say about herself that wouldn’t invoke her father in some way. “Um, I also like sunsets and long walks by the lake. My favorite flower is the orchid.”

  Vicki laughs. “Sorry for putting you on the spot. It’s a bad habit of mine. You went to Northwestern, huh? That’s great. Ron is working at the hospital there. What was your major?”

  “Communications. After I graduated, I worked for my father doing marketing and research for his company. That was fun.” They were actually the worst years of her life, at least until recently. Most of her coworkers either hated or feared her, thinking she would be promoted ahead of them or snitch on them for the old man. None of them knew that he’d been gunning for Phoebe to fail. She didn’t understand it then, but she now knows that Daniel didn’t have much use for women in the workplace if he couldn’t coerce them into banging him.

  “It sounds like you don’t work for him anymore.”

  “No, I didn’t last long at that, actually.”

  “So what did you do next?”

  She draws a blank. The answer is precisely nothing, but she can’t say that. “I’ve dabbled in writing.” There she goes with the goddamn book lie again. It’s hard not to wince, especially given her fight this morning with Wyatt.

  Vicki’s eyebrows predictably raise with interest. “Writing books?”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to use a plural. I got maybe thirty pages down before I realized no trees deserved to die for my lack of talent.”

  “Ouch. You’re being a little hard on yourself, don’t you think?”

  Phoebe shrugs. “Maybe. But it wasn’t my calling. I guess I haven’t really had one yet. My father was an engineer, but I wanted nothing to do with that, and he never pushed me one way or another.”

  Vicki’s jaw drops open. “How cool! My mother was also an engineer. A great one too. But I agree, it can be boring if it isn’t your thing. It wasn’t really mine, either. I always wanted to go into law, take on the big bad corporations Erin Brockovich style.”

  Phoebe is suddenly glad she hasn’t revealed who her father was. “Is that what you do? Practice law?”

  Vicki shakes her head and looks down. “I was only ever a humble domestic provider, I’m afraid. The way life shook out for me, I didn’t have much opportunity to follow in my mother’s educated footstep
s. So I was married and a mother myself by the time I was twenty, and I focused on that while Ron completed med school and all his residencies.”

  “Sounds to me like you did the right thing. After my mom died, I was basically raised by staff. Heck, even before she died, really.”

  “Well, I don’t think I would have done it differently, but my only child is nearly all grown up and about to fly the coop, which feels like the equivalent of being laid off without severance.” Her tone is light enough, but Phoebe can sense an ocean of discontent just under this woman’s cheerful façade. Their circumstances couldn’t be more different, but Phoebe can relate to the feeling that somewhere along the way, life sort of left her behind, and now she has to figure out the directions on her own.

  “I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to get a dog,” Phoebe says.

  “I was more in the mind of starting an affair with a much younger man.”

  Phoebe is glad she wasn’t sipping her coffee just then, or she might have choked. Instead, she offers a crooked grin. “That’s always an option too, I guess.”

  They sit for a minute, drinking their coffee, thinking their thoughts. The silence doesn’t feel as awkward as it should for two people who’ve known each other for less than an hour. In fact, it’s almost companionable. Phoebe wishes she didn’t like her so much. Is this really the best time in her life to make friends with someone? Then again, when has she ever thought it a good time? That’s probably half her problem right there. It helps that Vicki isn’t like the other women around here. She doesn’t seem uptight enough to crack walnuts with her pelvic muscles. Just the fact that she stepped outside without being in full makeup puts her in a different league. Hell, she even smokes something that isn’t battery powered. Maybe it’s because she’s a few years older than Phoebe, but Vicki is . . . authentic. She could be the kind of friend Phoebe has been needing most of her adult life. Why does she have to have such a hot son?