Unfaithful: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Natalie Barelli

  “Go to the studio if you have to work,” I say. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

  He takes my hand. “You sure?”

  “Of course. I want to visit June anyway.” I don’t add, While I still can.

  I leave another message then drive over to June’s house. I’m actually getting worried about her. It’s not like her to not return my calls. Also, I desperately want to apologize. I should never have asked her to lie for me. Maybe she’s angry about that, that I got her mixed up in this whole mess. I’ll explain that I just panicked. I thought if the police knew I was there that they would come for me. In the end they did anyway.

  I am thinking all this as I walk up to her porch, hugging a potted purple hyacinth because I read somewhere they signify Please forgive me. I ring the doorbell and after a moment I see her outline drawing near through the frosted glass pane. I quickly stand to the side with my arm extended so she’ll see the plant before she sees me.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt out as she opens the door, my head tilted, my eyebrows raised. “Please forgive me?”

  “God!” She slaps her hand on her chest. “You scared the bejesus out me!”

  I recoil in surprise. “I did? I’m sorry. I left you a bunch of messages. Well, three, anyway.”

  I wait, holding my pot plant against my chest, but she doesn’t move.

  “I’ve come bearing gifts—one gift anyway. And to say I’m sorry that I asked you to lie for me. That was wrong. You okay? They didn’t give you a hard time, I hope? I told them it was my fault.”

  She stands there, a little shakily, and takes the plant from me. “Thank you. It’s very nice.” She’s smiling but it looks forced and makes her lips twitch.

  I put one hand on my hip and tilt my head at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m kinda busy, that’s all.”

  I blink. I imagined myself coming here, moving piles of baking magazines from her couch and sitting down with a cup of that chai tea she makes, holding onto one of her flowery cushions. It never occurred to me she wouldn’t want to see me.

  “Can I come in?”

  She glances over her shoulder.

  “Oh? Sorry. You have guests?” Then it dawns on me, and I look around, try to pry through her front window. I lean forward and whisper. “Is it the police? They’re here?”

  “No. The police aren’t here. Nobody’s here. I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  I nod. “Of course. I should go. Oh god, June! I don’t want to go! I’m so sorry! I can’t say it enough. I’m probably going to be arrested, unless a miracle happens and I can’t imagine what that might be, so I might not see you again after this.” I pull out a used Kleenex from my coat pocket and wipe my nose.

  She tilts her head and she looks so sad suddenly. We both are. She sighs and moves out of the way.

  “Thank you,” I say in a small voice. “I won’t stay long.”

  She sets down the hyacinth plant on the small table and makes no move to unwrap it.

  “What happened, June? Is it because I asked you to lie for me? About the alibi? I’ll say anything you want me to say. I’ll tell them again, of course, that it’s my fault.”

  I want her to say something, to make it better, offer solutions, do the June thing, but she just stands there, her arms crossed over her chest. We’ve moved into the living room but she hasn’t invited me to sit down yet. I glance around the room. As always, her coffee table is messy, covered with homemaking magazines, opened recipe books, empty cups and glasses and small plates with a scattering of crumbs. June still hasn’t moved. And then it dawns on me.

  She’s afraid of me.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “I found the necklace, in my bag.”

  Both hands fly to my mouth. “Oh, no. Oh, please, let me explain.”

  “Did you plant it on me?”

  “No! I swear to god! On my children, never, ever.” I move to touch her but she jerks away. “You remember when Carla was riffling through my bag for my purse, the night you were looking after Matti? I had it in there, and I panicked, remember? I knocked the bag from your shoulder, and I put it in one of the pockets because I didn’t want Carla to find it. I didn’t want Luis to find it, either. I did it on the spur of the moment. I was going to tell you but with Ryan and Geoff I… I’m so sorry June, I just forgot.”

  “Then why did you have it?” she asks.

  “Listen to me. When I went to see her, she had the necklace around her neck and I was so upset, I yanked it off her. That’s how I got this, see?” I show her my hand, the light pink line only barely visible. “That’s all. I put it in my pocket and I left.”

  She shakes her head slowly, her fingers on her lips.

  “You have to believe me. I didn’t put it in your bag to hurt you, I just needed a hiding place and I was going to tell you.”

  We stare at each other in silence for a moment. She looks like she’s going to cry.

  “I should go,” I say. She nods. As I pass the hyacinth, on impulse, I start to unwrap the cellophane.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” I say, my back to her.

  “Don’t,” she says quickly. I turn around. She has one hand up, reaching toward the table.

  “What?” I follow her gaze. Half sticking out from under the pot is a small square of paper on which she has scribbled something. I shift the plant and pick it up.

  “Give it to me,” she snaps.

  FlowersDirect, Purple lisianthus and daisies. Next to that is the address of the university and a date.

  “What’s this?” I’m still staring at it when she lunges, tries to grab it from me. I hold it up in the air. “What is it?” I ask again, more firmly this time, because Purple lisianthus and daisies are the flowers that my mother always sends me. Always the same.

  “Give it to me, Anna.”

  “This is the bouquet my mother sent me.” I tap the note with one finger. “And this is the online florist who delivered them, isn’t it? On the day of the dinner in the hall. What’s this about, June?”

  She’s silent for a long time, biting the inside of her cheek, rubbing her hands over her arms like there’s a draft in here.

  “June?”

  “I know you sent them to yourself.”

  “What?”

  She’s shaking all over now. “I was trying to help you. I really, really wanted to help you, because I liked you, Anna!” Her voice breaks and tears roll down her cheeks. She wipes them off with shaking fingers. “When they took you away yesterday, I wanted to find your mother,” she says.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I thought you needed her, I thought it would be good for you, and she owed you and she should be here for you right now, and I didn’t know her last name or where she lived, but I remembered the flowers she sent because I was the one who took delivery and I remembered the name of the store.”

  “Oh, June…”

  “But it wasn’t her who sent them,” she says.

  Her eyes grow wild suddenly, like she’s realized I’m standing here, barring her way, and she’s looking for an escape.

  “Of course she sent them,” I say gently.

  “No, she didn’t! You did.”

  I shake my head vigorously. “No, that’s not true, don’t say that!”

  “They told me who sent them, and it was you, Anna! And you’ve done it before! You’re a regular customer there, always the same bunch of flowers! You’re sending them to yourself!”

  “June, stop, please, you know how crazy you sound right now? Obviously there’s some mistake! The store got it wrong, they got it mixed up and gave you the recipient details, which is me! Don’t you see? Think about it, June! Why would I do that? It makes no sense! Why would I send myself flowers and pretend to everyone they’re from my mother?”

  “Because she’s dead!”

  “Luis?” I’m crying. Sobbing, really. Big wet sobs that bubble up and explode in a series of snotty eruptions.<
br />
  “What’s wrong, babe? Where are you?”

  “I’m in my car,” I say. I managed to drive away because I didn’t want to sit outside June’s house but I only made it two blocks and I had to get off the road before I caused an accident.

  “You have to help me, Luis,” I whisper.

  “Baby, I can’t hear you. I don’t understand what you’re saying. Have you been in an accident?”

  “No, it’s June. She said…”

  “She said what?”

  “Oh Luis… I did some bad things…”

  “What things, babe?”

  I put my hand over my mouth so that no one hears me, even though I’m alone in the car. “I killed my mother,” I whisper.

  His silence is long and distant and slices at my heart. I think he’s hung up. Out of the blue a thought pops into my head: Did he already know?

  What did you do?

  “Am I crazy?” I bring my hand over my eyes. I’m so frightened I can’t bear it.

  “Oh, Anna. Honey.”

  “I killed my mother!” I can barely speak after that. Every word comes out chopped, lurching into the next. It’s like I’m speaking in morse code—everything has to be interpreted, linked into a sentence. “My mother has been dead for sixteen years. I’ve been sending myself flowers.”

  “No, Anna, no.”

  “Luis, I’m so sorry…” Again I drop my voice so low, so low that maybe even I can’t hear it.

  “Listen to me, Anna.” His tone makes me snap to attention. “I don’t know what June thinks she’s doing, but you did not kill your mother, do you hear me? That’s insane! Don’t you think we would know if your mother was dead?”

  “I don’t know,” I wail. “Would we?”

  “Yes! Of course! Don’t listen to June, Anna. Come home now. We’ll call your mother together, and then we’ll go and talk to June, okay?”

  “I haven’t spoken… to my mother… in such a long time, Luis.”

  He is silent for a moment. When he speaks again, his tone is different. Softer, but heavier. Weighted with pity. “It’s going to be okay, Anna. No matter what you did, baby, I love you. I will always love you. I’m here for you. No matter what.”

  A man with a dark beard knocks on my window. You all right? he mouths.

  I nod, raise my hand. Thank you, I wave. Please go, I’m all right. The man hesitates, then tips his hat and walks away. But I’m not all right, I’ll never be all right, and what is going to happen to my kids when I die? Because I’m going to die. People like me don’t get second chances. They’re going to put me in prison for a very long time for all the bad things I did.

  “Where are you?” I ask.

  “At the studio. But I’ll come home as soon as I can. I’ll see you there, okay, babe? We’ll call your mom together. And everything will be fine, you’ll see. No matter what happens, Anna, we’ll get you some help, I promise. No matter what. But it will be okay. You’ll see.”

  “How long… will you be?”

  “One hour max. Okay? Don’t go back to June’s on your own please, babe. Wait for me. We’ll find out exactly what’s going on together, you and me, then we’ll go back and tell June. Together. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  “Thank you, Luis. I’m sorry.”

  “I love you, Anna. No matter what, okay?”

  “I love you too. I’m so sorry.”

  Thirty-Nine

  I start the engine, then I sit there, letting it idle. I don’t know what to do. I can’t bear to go home and be on my own, so I drive to the studio because all I want right now is Luis. I desperately want him to hold me, to help me make it right even though I know nothing can ever be right again. The police will come for me soon. Hey, maybe they’re at the house already. I have so little time and all I want is to curl up on the sofa and maybe watch him work, just to pretend for a little while that none of this is happening.

  I let myself into the building and up the goods lift. I knock on the heavy door but he doesn’t hear me. I rest my forehead against the cold metal. I can faintly hear music inside. I pry the key loose from its trusted place and let myself in.

  “Luis?”

  His large sculpture, The Nest, is back. It’s bigger than I remembered. More somber, too, somehow. I walk around it and to the other end of the studio, and turn off the sound system.

  “Luis?”

  I check my cell but there’s no message.

  I stare at the sculpture. The Nest. His apogee. I think how much I wanted him to succeed, how much I supported him, loved him, trusted him, admired him. And that work? His grand masterpiece? It should have been about us. The Nest. It should have been for me. And I can’t stop crying as I think back to that night at the opening: Isabelle might have a shot at selling The Nest to the contemporary art museum for their permanent collection. I think of him crossing his fingers, his eyes closed, his face turned to the ceiling, and I remember the words that floated in my mind then, like a whisper.

  He’s in love.

  I don’t know what happens after that. I just feel all the pent-up pain and fury roar through me and before I can stop myself my hands have gripped the long metal rod that seconds ago was leaning by the window and I’m screaming as I raise the rod over my head and strike the sculpture as hard as I can. But the hook gets caught on something and I pull the rod up and blindly thrash into it again, and again and again until the cables snap and the whole structure falls with a loud crash and the creatures in their eggs roll out and I smash them too, I smash their faces and their eyes and the delicate shell around them and I’m screaming because they should have represented our children, shouldn’t they? This should have been our nest, shouldn’t it, Luis? Didn’t we deserve this homage to your genius, Luis? Weren’t we enough for you that you had to fall in love her?

  And I can’t see anything anymore and it’s all his fault and everything I did, I did for us, and all there is now is noise and dust and splinters flying and bouncing against the walls and I’m still screaming and I can’t breathe but I don’t want to stop until it’s gone, until that thing that sits there like a monument to all that went wrong is gone.

  I am on my knees. I drop the rod with a clank. I can’t breathe. I don’t know how long I sit like that, in the middle of the wreckage, my arms wrapped tightly around my sides. I open my eyes and see the creatures at my feet, broken, eyes smashed, no longer pleading, like they were real and now they’re dead, and suddenly I have this overwhelming urge to put them back together. I scramble around the floor to find the right pieces and grab a chunk of the shell, then another, and I want to put them back together but they don’t fit. I stare at them in my hands, sobbing. Something catches my eye: Letters. Words. The shells were made of paper, glued together and shaped. I pull it apart gently and smooth the creases out as much I can, and I see now, what caught my eye. It’s my name, on an official document, or what’s left of it. It’s stained with dark spots, like it was kept somewhere damp for a long time.

  It’s a residential purchase agreement for the house I grew up in, in Youngstown. What I think of as my mother’s house, after my father died, before she moved to California. I know that my mother sold that house and moved years ago, but I don’t understand why Luis would have a copy of this purchase agreement. I look closer, and I know then that something isn’t right with me. That I’m doing things I have no memory of doing, because the seller on that document is not my mother, it’s me. It says it right there. In 2006, I owned, and sold, my mother’s house to a complete stranger.

  I gather the other pieces I can find, carefully separate layers of paper and smooth them out as much as I can, and now I’m wailing like an animal, because Luis said my mother was alive and of course she wasn’t dead, he said. Wouldn’t we know? But he must have known, because this, in my hand, is a piece of her death certificate. And when I look at it again it’s as if the light dims around me and the walls are closing in and I throw it to the floor and push myself away from it as far as
I can, and I hit the wall with my back and I’m stuck there, shaking, crying, calling his name and I’m so scared, I’m losing my mind, because the manner of death is Accidental fall on stairs.

  The floor is littered with debris and as I scurry around on my hands and knees, blood roaring in my ears, I catch sight of something long and strange and out of place. I pick it up. It’s some kind of tube, partly transparent, with a yellow and white sticker, and at first I think it’s a tube of solder wire, and it’s only when I read the label that I realize what it is.

  Epipen.

  I haven’t seen this exact type before. It’s different from the ones that you would see today, but that’s what it is, and my heart knocks around in my chest because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that this belonged to Monica. It falls out of my hand and disappears under the couch. I’m on my knees and I peer underneath. It’s been stopped by something small and shiny, like a button, and I have to extend my arm as far as I can to reach it. I feel it with my fingertips but accidentally nudge it away. I have to use the rod to drag it out, and it slides out, along with the shiny button. Except it’s not a button. It’s a ring. Silver, oddly shaped.

  He’s a very interesting metal artist. French.

  Forty

  My chest feels so tight, even drawing in a breath feels like a burn. I have to calm down. I make myself breathe but it hurts, like a stitch. I close my eyes, my forehead against the steering wheel, the phone pressed hard against my ear and I notice my hand is bleeding.

  I press my fingers between my eyes as the call goes to voicemail.

  “Luis?” My voice cracks and for a moment I think I can’t do it. I can’t summon the will to pretend that everything is as before, that nothing’s changed. I have discovered nothing. Then I think of my kids and I bend down at the waist, a hand over my mouth covering a silent wail. When I take a breath again, it’s like I’ve come out from under water.

  “Luis, it’s me. Are you home yet? I need to talk to you. Will you call me as soon as you get this?”