“Oh dear. Come in. Come in.” She stands aside to usher me in. I yelp when she puts an arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry!”
“Can you please help me?”
Harriett nods. “Of course. Yes. Come into the bathroom, and I’ll get you all set up.”
Her apartment has an open floor plan, lots of space, and the bathroom is set up specifically to accommodate someone with limited mobility, including a sink at the right height for hair washing. The place was clearly built for someone who needs assistance … or will. For someone who means to live there until the end of her life.
I close my eyes and lean back in the chair to let the back of my neck rest on the sink edge. It’s a little uncomfortable, but I’m willing to put up with it. Harriett tucks a rolled towel beneath me without a word. She runs the water warm and sluices it through my hair. Her fingers work in the shampoo. She uses a pitcher to help rinse. Then condition. Finally, she combs through it, apologizing every time she hits a snag. There are a lot. My scalp is stinging by the time she’s finished, but it feels so much better.
“It’s close to midnight,” Harriett says. “You should get some sleep.”
“Thank you, Harriett. So much.”
“You know I’m always here for you, Diana.” She walks me to the door. The outside lights are off next door. Jonathan’s finally home, but neither of us mention the late hour or where he might have been this whole time. She has to know he wasn’t at work.
“Goodnight, Diana. I’ll be over in the morning.”
You don’t have to rises to my lips, but I pinch off the words before they can escape. She doesn’t have to—that’s exactly it. But she will anyway.
In my kitchen an empty plate sits on the counter, smeared with gravy and mashed potatoes, a few strings of pot roast from the sandwich I’d had when I got home, tipsy from my night out with Trina. I thought I had put it in the dishwasher. Leaving it out is something that Jonathan would do, not me. I’m too tired to make the gymnastic effort required to clean it up now.
The sound of the television from the den tells me Jonathan hasn’t even made it upstairs, which would explain how it’s possible he has no idea I wasn’t home when he got there. I creep down the short hallway to the den and peek in at him. He’s in his recliner, remote in hand but head tipped back and mouth open. He’s snoring. After my mother left, my dad used to sleep in the living room on the couch with the television running constantly, but that had never been my husband’s habit … at least, not before he started needing a reason to hide what time he came home.
I should wake him up, encourage him to come to bed so he doesn’t have a sore back in the morning, but I don’t. Truth is, I don’t want him in the bed with me. Not even if he takes a shower, which it doesn’t look as though he’s done, which means he’s come back into this house with my former best friend’s touch still all over him. I want to wake him up then. I want to shout in his face. Accuse him. Let him know that I know the truth. Tell him to get out, go back to his mistress. I want to laugh in his surprised face when I tell him I know all about her.
But I don’t, do I?
I don’t know when or why it started. I don’t know my part in it. All I have is that yawning void in my memory, and my cowardice and inability to face any of it.
I do not confront my husband. Instead, I shake a few pain pills from the bottles in the kitchen cupboard. Harriett has helpfully left them all opened so I don’t have to fight with the childproof lid. I hope they will quiet the ache of my knitting bones and let me get back to sleep. I go back upstairs to bed and get under the covers. I situate myself against the pillow and, motionless, feel the pain in my bones ease enough that I should be able to sleep. There might be more nightmares if I do, but I close my eyes anyway. The dreams are better than staying up for hours thinking about all the ways someone who loves you can betray you … or how you can betray the one you love.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Valerie
LAST DECEMBER
Diana and Jonathan have had a holiday party every year for as long as they’ve been married. I’d made it to all of them, even when I still lived in Brooklyn. I never thought I’d come back to the town I grew up in, much less move back here, but my dad was dying. I was all he had. I didn’t want to be, but that’s how it worked out.
That night, I left him behind with the hospice worker. I could still smell the lingering stink of his sickness on me, beneath the soap and deodorant and perfume, but my sparkly red dress and matching heels made me feel better. I’d put my hair up. I wore a pair of my mother’s diamond earrings, the ones my father told me I’d never get to have because I was a “gold-plated little whore.”
“Don’t think I don’t know,” he said. “I know what you did, you and that girlfriend of yours.”
Joke’s on you, Dad. I took these earrings right from my mother’s jewelry box before I left home the first time. I’d had them for years. They sparkled for me as much as they ever did for her.
As always, when I pulled into my best friend’s driveway, I took a moment to look at her house and think how far we’d both come. Or at least how far I’d gone before coming back. I was living in the childhood home I’d run away from as soon as I turned eighteen, and Diana lived in a nineties-built mini-mansion her husband had been gifted by his mother. As soon as my dad died, I’d be out of this piece of shit little town again. Diana … well, she was stuck here for good.
Through the windows of the in-law apartment above the detached garage to the left of the main driveway, I saw Jonathan’s mother in her kitchen. Harriett Richmond made the cookie platter every year, and since I was a little early, I took a minute to stop at her door to see if she needed help. She must have ducked outside while I was locking my car, though, because before I could knock, we startled each other as she came around from the back of the building.
I caught sight of a scowl before her expression smoothed into confusion. “The catering should be delivered next door.”
“I’m Val,” I reminded her. “Diana’s friend.” We’d met a handful of times, for example, every year at this party. I tried not to be offended she didn’t remember. Or that she thought I was “the help.”
“Oh yes. Did she send you over to fetch me?” Another flash of a frown slid across the expertly applied crimson of her lips.
“No. I just saw you through the window, and I thought maybe you’d need some help with the cookies.”
Harriett blinked. “The cookies?”
“You make the cookies every year for the party … don’t you?”
“Oh. Yes. Well, yes, I do. From scratch. I was just getting them ready. But I don’t need any help, honey. You go on ahead to the party.” The older woman smiled, showing me a bit of lipstick on her teeth. She smelled of smoke. Cigarettes, not wood stove or campfire.
It had been a warm winter so far, but as I made my way across the driveway toward the main house, a few snowflakes skittered down from the dark skies and salted my bare arms. I hadn’t bothered with a coat.
Diana opened the door and looked past me for a moment, perhaps catching sight of her neighbor/mother-in-law. She greeted me with a grin and a long hug. I could smell the wine on her breath, pungent, fruity. I wanted some immediately.