by Doug Walsh
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
“And you agreed to this?” Kara’s mouth fell open, her disbelief spilling out in an exasperated sigh.
“No. Not at first. I was flattered, sure, but when I told him how long the trip would take …” His voice softened. “He said he wouldn’t wait.”
“And?”
“I knew I’d never get an offer like that again. Hell, I’d be lucky to get another job in VC anywhere. And three years out of work would be too long, I’d be forgotten.” In his words, Edward heard the same rationale Tom used against him that night on the dock, and he shivered despite the Tuscan summer, feeling again the dread of an uncertain future.
“I don’t believe you said yes.” Kara rubbed her head as she spoke.
“I needed to be back in Seattle by October.”
Kara took a step backward, and though she looked toward her bicycle lying upside-down in the dirt, Edward could sense her recalling the flight to London, the train to Florence. He could almost hear the puzzle pieces clicking together in her mind.
“I thought it was possible. A compromise. Six months to travel the world,” he said, doling out excuses in a staccato that matched his rising pulse. “A dream house to come home to. Your own art studio. You wouldn’t have to work anymore—”
“You still don’t get it,” she said, cutting in, her voice wavering.
Edward turned his hands over, gesturing for her to fill him in as he struggled to ignore the nausea boiling in his stomach.
“Remember when I asked if you knew why I wanted to take this trip?”
He waited for her to continue, then realized he should say something. He took a guess. “You were bored with your job, wanted to shake things up—”
“I was sick of coming second.”
“But you were the best—”
“Oh, for chrissake. Not at my job. To yours!”
He didn’t understand, but tried to soothe her. “Kara, you were never second to anything—”
“You put everything before me! Your company. Your clients. They always came first. This trip was my dream. And what did you do? You ruined it the first chance you got.”
“The only reason I worked those hours was for you, for our future. Even the contest …” He tried explaining but stopped, hating how inadequate the words sounded.
Kara closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Know where I was today?”
A bird swooped down from a tree and landed briefly on the tent, drawing his attention, rescuing him from having to risk another guess. When he looked to Kara, he saw tears welling in her eyes.
“While you were fixing the bikes, trying to hurry us off to Siena or Rome, or, I don’t know, probably Tokyo if you got your way, I was at the museum.” She swallowed slowly, the movement drawing his attention to a single tear that had coursed its way over her cheek and down her neck. “With Alessio.”
Edward’s stomach clenched, absorbing the gut shot as he forced himself to stay quiet, to hear her out.
“I wasn’t in the mood for company—I was so upset about the phone and the bikes—but we started talking about art. And religion. Then, before I knew it, he was bribing a security guard to let us into an old Medici corridor.”
“Did he hurt you?” Edward asked, feeling his hair stand on end.
“What? No. He was a perfect gentleman. He wanted to show me a portrait of a Renaissance artist I hadn’t heard of. A woman,” she said sniffling.
The thought of Kara alone with the man he warned her about; the one he was certain had vandalized their bicycles; the one who threatened him, was almost too much to bear. “So, why are you crying?”
“Because I kissed him.”
Edward stumbled backward as his thoughts spun like a vortex, sucking up the ground beneath him, unbalancing his world. He grabbed a fistful of his shirt, trying to hold himself upright while processing what he heard.
“He initiated it. It was quick. I stopped him—”
“After I told you he was dangerous?”
Kara looked away. When she turned back, her face was stony, her breathing forceful. The sudden shift took Edward by surprise. Her lack of apparent remorse chilled him.
He rubbed his face, but there was no blocking the visions that formed in his mind, nor the scent of her perfume wafting toward him on a breeze laced with lawn clippings and fertilizer. Real or imagined, he couldn’t tell. Didn’t care. Every breath filled him with the thought of his wife kissing that groundskeeper. Yet it was the way she looked at him that concerned him most. She wouldn’t have hurried back to admit only to a simple kiss.
“What else?” he asked, his voice hard, suspecting whatever occurred was likely his fault. Even if he couldn’t forgive her for it.
Kara looked as if he slapped her. “I told you we only kissed. What are you—”
“No, not about him. What else do you have to say? You’ve been holding something back for months. I kept telling myself it was nothing, but …” he said, hoping he was wrong.
Kara took a deep breath and squeezed herself, rubbing her bare arms as she did. She had goose bumps despite the warmth of the late afternoon sun. Their shadows had seemed to double in length since she’d gotten back.
“I guess there’s no point in denying it, since you already had Hiromasa ask me,” she said.
Edward had no idea what she was talking about and told her as much. He hadn’t spoken to Hiromasa since last night’s dinner, and only then out of politeness.
“He asked me if I was going to divorce you in February. Why else would he have thought that if you didn’t put him up to it?”
Edward gasped. “What?”
“Please don’t make this harder than it is. You must have told him something.”
“No, I didn’t. And why would I think that? Sure, we went through a rough patch, but I never thought you were going to leave me.” His voice rose in pitch as he spoke, his vocal chords drawn tight.
“Then how did he know—”
“Hold on. Were you really going to divorce me?” Edward’s eyes widened with shock.
Kara looked everywhere but at her husband, and he could tell, in her silence, what her answer would be. “I was considering it,” she said.
Her words pierced his heart, sapping his strength and his breath. He felt himself collapsing inward, wondering what went wrong. He’d committed himself fully to their marriage, for six years he had chased every opportunity that crossed his periphery, taking on the most difficult clients, angling for every promotion, seizing every risk. He’d sacrificed time with friends, his hobbies, even his health on occasion, all so she’d never have to want for anything.
And it wasn’t good enough, he thought, unwilling to admit to a conclusion that was growing inescapable, that he may have been loving her wrong. He felt his face twist in confusion as he stared at her, clenching the pit in his stomach, silently demanding an explanation.
“What did you expect? How long did you think I’d sit around waiting for you? Alone. Forever? The constant late nights, the weekends with clients. Did you think I enjoyed fending for myself, having to ask friends to join me for dinner, or to go to parties with, or …”
As Kara’s words ran together, a cacophony of accusations, Edward moved across the campsite, in search of a chair, needing to sit down. As he walked, he bumped the cardboard with his foot. A solitary dirt-caked pedal lolled to the side as the crankset rolled a quarter turn. Behind him, Kara continued, counting off the litany of charges brought, the times he canceled their plans on account of work. Right then, something she said rang clear, penetrating the fog.
“What did you just say?” he asked, looking at her askance.
She mumbled something incomprehensible as she took a step back, stunned.
“Something about a camping trip.”
“No, I—”
“I heard it. You mentioned going camping without me.” He took a step closer. “That happened once. Why bring it up now?”
Ka
ra stuttered, backpedaling in her complaints, trying to shove off from the sandbar where she herself had run the conversation aground.
“It was last fall, when those investors came up from California on short notice. There was a mountain bike festival that weekend, right?”
Kara nodded slowly as the truth surfaced in her face.
“And you went alone.”
Her chest heaved with nervous breaths. He stared at her, not wanting to see her cry, hoping her venom would return, knowing he could shoulder enough guilt for the team, and learn from his mistakes, but unsure if he could forgive what he feared she had done.
Tears streamed down her face, yet she remained silent.
“That’s about the time you started mentioning this bike trip. Isn’t it?”
Kara didn’t move, didn’t look at him.
“Answer me!” he yelled.
She nodded.
Edward pumped his fists, squeezing them till his fingertips ached. He looked away, to the treetops, the tent, their bicycles, searching for an escape from his fate, but he couldn’t ignore the question scorching his heart.
He tried to ask what she had done, but his voice caught on the lump in his throat.
Kara shook her head, sobbing. “I was so lonely. And I was terrified of being unfaithful to you. It’s why I wanted to do the trip, why I thought of a divorce. I needed you to quit your job. I never wanted it to happen again.”
“Who was he?” The words hissed through his clenched teeth.
“I don’t know. Some guy. I’ve hated myself ever since.”
Edward felt his heart ripping in two, as if his insides had spilled across the ground, the years of their togetherness disassembled for all to see.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching for him, her bloodshot eyes as red as his panniers. “I love you so much. I’m so, so sorry,” she said, pleading.
He raised his hands to stop her, as if he could ward off her betrayal, then squeezed his eyes shut and bit down on his lip, screaming in his mind, wanting to kick and punch and destroy something, anything, so that he alone didn’t have to suffer the torture he was enduring. A thousand memories flooded his mind, dreams and recollections of their lives together, each of them feeling counterfeit, as if he were merely a stand-in for some faceless, nameless guy she’d fuck the minute he wasn’t around.
The taste of iron hit his tongue, salty droplets of blood pumped by his surging adrenaline, leaking from his shattered soul. Kara’s demands for forgiveness sounded distant, but too close. He needed to get away. Away from her. He raised his hands again, obscuring his view, blotting out the short-term memory of her face. “I need to be alone,” he said, backing away. “I can’t be around you.”
Chapter 27
Sunday, June 21 — Florence, Italy
Edward walked the streets of Florence for hours, losing himself in the pubs of the San Niccolò neighborhood. At each stop, he ordered a Negroni, embracing the perfect bitter companion to his jealousy, swallowing his grief drop by drop as he sucked the Campari from ice cubes that were slow to cool his seething anger.
The sting of Kara’s betrayal stuck with him through the night, a barb that worked itself deeper with every thought, splintering all notion of the life they had together.
He put off returning as long as he could, hoping to outlast her inevitable desire to wait up for him. It was past two in the morning when he finally dragged himself up the hill to the campground, spurred by the onset of rain and a desperate need to lie down. The campground disco had ceased its nightly racket, and even the cicadas had concluded it was too late to sing.
Isolated by the silence, he paused outside the campground gate, as the rainwater dripped from his hair, and wondered if they both wouldn’t be better off if he stayed away for good. He granted himself a moment of self-pity, then shrugged away the thought and made for bed.
But even in the haze of his drunk, he could hear the tent’s vestibule door flapping in the breeze, a snapping accompaniment to the patter of raindrops on nylon.
Edward stiffened, realizing Kara had probably gone to the bathroom—it was the only reason they ever left the door unzipped without rolling it. He’d have to talk to her, after all. But before he could corral his emotions into words, the faint light of a distant campground street lamp revealed their campsite in a state of disarray.
Their camp chairs lay upside down and their bikes were once again knocked on their sides. The clothesline had fallen on one end, their towels now lying limp and wet in an expanding puddle of mud, the map case drowning nearby.
Edward’s head ached as he grasped for possible explanations. Maybe a storm had blown through. Or perhaps they were robbed by whoever had damaged their bikes. Or maybe, he thought, Kara threw a fit on account of his walking off.
Then he noticed the footprints. They were too numerous, their size too large to be Kara’s alone. The prints went this way and that, revealing a trail of chaos in the damp dirt. Slicing through them were two narrow streaks, as if someone petite had been dragged by the heels.
Edward called his wife’s name and stood stock-still, listening, hoping she was nearby, and straining to hear over the sound of his breathing and the rain.
Nothing.
Near one of the chairs he found a piece of crinkled paper that appeared to be from Kara’s journal, the dirty tread of a boot print stamped across the message.
He bent to lift it and swayed as a rush of blood flooded his throbbing head. The letter was addressed to him, written in Kara’s unique blend of block printed vowels and looping consonants. He broke out in a cold sweat.
Edward backed toward the tent as he struggled to read the soggy paper in his hands, and fell onto the floor of the vestibule, having tripped over a tent stake. The tent’s inner door, the last barrier to their home, was also unzipped. Kara’s sleeping bag lay untouched, her pajamas folded atop the pillow, just as she left them every morning.
He pulled his headlamp from the pocket near his pillow, flicked on the light, and read.
Dear Edward,
I know nothing I can write will ever undo the pain I caused you. But you must understand that I’ve been hurting for some time. You’ve strayed too. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but I’ve been backseat to your career since the day you got hired on at Madsen. All I ever wanted was to spend time with you, my best friend. It was the reason I chose to get married so young. But your time was the one thing you could never give.
I thought this trip would bring us closer. That it would make up for all the time we missed. I was wrong. I don’t know where we go from here, but
The letter ended unfinished, the pen having been dragged askew. Interrupted. Edward’s heart raced as the stray line and the muddy boot print on the letter coalesced in a terrifying scene.
Kara needed him.
Edward sprinted straight to the campground office, the light of his headlamp bobbing back and forth across the path, reflecting from tents, cars, and travel trailers. She must have yelled for help. Why didn’t anyone call the police?
The office lights were out and the doors locked, but a campground map taped to the door showed an unnumbered collection of cabins circled with the words “For Emergency” written in multiple languages.
The circled area was just past the restaurant. Four canvas cabins squared off in pairs, their lights out, the doors to three of them sealed tight. The landscaper’s cart was parked in front of the fourth, one whose screen door stood ajar, creaking in the wind. Were Alessio and Hiromasa involved? Edward poked his head into their cabin and called Kara’s name. The space was empty except for some clothing piled neatly on a shelf, winter sweaters by the looks of it, along with several blue uniform shirts.
“Kara!” he yelled into the night. “Kara!” he shouted, praying she’d answer, receiving only a chorus of drowsy Italian grousing in response, the other campers no doubt telling him to shut up.
Edward considered banging on the other cabin doors, but was gripped by the though
t of Kara returning to the campsite, only to find him not there. He knew it was unlikely, but he had to hope. He raced back to the tent, his belief in her being there rising with each step.
Alone.
He decided to call the police, and even got as far as dialing 112, the European emergency number, but quickly hung up when the operator answered in incomprehensible Italian. He froze on the spot, too nervous to ask if she spoke English. Besides, he thought, excusing himself after the fact, they wouldn’t do anything for twenty-four hours anyway. Especially once he admitted that they’d been arguing. That he had walked off fuming.
Could she have left me?
No. The letter, the footprints and mess …
“At least then I’d know she was safe.”
He sighed, hating his helplessness, his guilt in all of this. He took to pacing the path past the adjacent campsites, ignoring the snoring emanating from the other tents. On each pass, he’d reach the lamppost, check his watch, then return the other way, only to look over his shoulder, convinced Kara would be there.
But he was alone.
“I couldn’t protect her.”
Edward pressed his knuckles against his head as he walked, trying to imagine where she could be, inventing reasons why this was all perfectly ordinary and he was overreacting. He brought his hands down, slamming his fists against his legs for lack of anything more solid to hit.
His right fist struck hard against something in his pocket. But not just a thing, the thing. The root of his problem. The phone. If only the phone hadn’t rung in the plaza, he would have had time to explain himself, to get them out of Florence. “Damn it,” he said, cursing his luck.
But that wasn’t true and he knew it. The problem was him. The contest. It was his decision to sabotage Kara’s dream, his willingness to prioritize Tom’s ridiculous schedule over his own wife’s desires.