“Okay,” I say skeptically. “Not sure how you could help. I’ve tried, like, everything.”
“I’m gonna need you to be open-minded here,” Paige says, with a look like she’s about to deliver bad news. I raise my eyebrows at her.
“Okay...” I say, waiting to hear more.
“I could follow him. I mean, instead of you hiring some stranger you don’t know if you can trust, I could...sort of set a trap.”
“Like, what do you mean? How would you do that?”
“Well, first I’ll follow him—see if I can catch him. If I can’t find anything, then...I try to, you know, make a pass—seduce him. See if he bites,” she says, as if she didn’t just say something shocking. My hand flutters to my mouth, and I feel a surge of nervous energy rush through me.
“Are you kidding?” I ask.
“You want proof? I’ll have a camera and a firsthand account. Bam!” she says, a little too into this idea. I think about it for a moment. Paige, with her Pilates body and sweep of long chestnut hair, could probably seduce anyone. I haven’t consciously felt jealous of her beauty until this very minute, while I’m forced to think of her in bed with Finn. My Finn.
“I won’t actually let it go too far,” she adds, as if reading my mind. “Just enough to get you what you need.” I don’t ask where those lines lie, exactly. I just sit in stunned silence for a few minutes. I want this. I need to know. Would he go as far as to cheat with one of my closest friends? Would it only take a few drinks and one sexual advance to just throw away everything we have? If so, yeah, I guess I want to know.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s...crazy.”
“Yep,” she says. Spoken like a woman with nothing left to lose in life, which is exactly what she is. “Think about it,” she says, pouring another glass.
We drop the subject and talk about the squirrels stealing from the birdfeeder and how she hopes the sod she laid isn’t too shaded by the oak tree.
I think about how she was so crippled with grief she had to stop working. She and Grant had a chain of restaurants once upon a time. They paid for this house in cash and had a cabin in Puget Sound. They vacationed in Thailand and Fiji. And now? The one restaurant they kept is keeping them afloat, probably only because the house is long paid off, but the property taxes alone have to be a struggle. Maybe there’s money I don’t know about, but still, I’d rather pay her than a stranger. It feels less dangerous somehow—more of an act of solidarity. And then out of nowhere I blurt, “Okay! Yes!” and she chuckles and takes another sip. “I’ll pay you the same if you can get proof.”
“You only pay meifI get it, though,” she says.
“Okay,” I agree. I’d have it to spare if this all goes down the way I pray it won’t. My hands are trembling, and I should tell her no, that this is absolutely insane, but I think it might be my only shot. So I shakily raise my glass and clink it against hers.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m in.”
5
GEORGIA
Sometimes, I completely forget I’m in this prison I’ve made for myself. Right now, as I peel the brittle paper on a bag of English breakfast tea and put the kettle on the stovetop, I forget and feel, just for a moment, like a normal, very lucky woman with a handsome, caring husband and the gift of a new baby. I live in an enormous house and should be nothing but happy and completely untroubled. But that only lasts for seconds, usually. Or sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, I get to hang on to the wisps of a dream and stay suspended in that place between sleep and wakefulness, and I get to forget a little bit longer than I would if I were fully conscious.
I try to remember who I was before I deteriorated into whatever this version of myself is. Flashes of long-ago happiness comes in disjointed bursts. I remember a much-anticipated birthday party at Skateville when I was twelve: lace-up tan skates when I wanted the white ones, personal pepperoni pizzas and Dr. Peppers at the concession stand, the dizzying dots of light moving across the skate floor. I remember the sneaking out of the house for nights on the beach in Cornwall with friends, sitting around firepits, drinking peach wine coolers, and laughing. My parents’ house in the city and the last Christmas there before they passed. We drank ginger wine and watchedIt’s a Wonderful Life. The day I sold my beloved 1997 VW Jetta because I was off to take on the world. My BA in hospitality and tourism would first take me to a six-month contract in Cordillera and then who knew where.
I push the memories away and sit on a kitchen chair to take a deep, mindful breath and keep it together. This is interrupted by my growl of frustration when I see the dirty-laundry basket sitting outside the door to the basement. I planned to have it done now so Avery would have her favorite blanket clean, the one that she puked up on earlier. She won’t go down easily without it.
She smiles at me from her playpen set up in front of the TV, where aTeletubbiesrerun plays a song that sounds like the moment in a horror movie before an evil doll comes to life and slaughters everyone. I want to turn it off, but she squeals at it in delight and pumps her little chubby fists in the air, trying to dance along. I tell her I’ll be right back and go to the laundry basket, hesitantly. I fling open the door to the basement and peer down the steep staircase into the darkness. I feel for the chain that turns on the overhead light and pull it. These old houses are all renovated and pristine, from the open floor plans to the white quartz kitchen islands, but the basements are still dungeonesque. I’m sure the only reason Lucas never bothered to move the laundry to the main floor the way every HGTV home-makeover show does is because he doesn’t actually do the laundry, so why would it be on his radar?
I tread carefully, the laundry basket bouncing on each step behind me as I inch my way down. It’s just laundry. It’s just fucking laundry. I’ll dump it in the washer, push Start, and go. I pause at the bottom of the stairs. There are rickety wooden shelves on the wall to the right, probably original to the house, filled with rusted paint gallons and ancient oil cans, among other neglected clutter. The washer and dryer are at the end of the cement room under an egress window that doesn’t contribute much light to the basement, as it’s masked by a huckleberry bush outside of it. I eye the open washer, then look back up the staircase. It’s not an irrational fear of ghosts or even rapists hiding in the shadows. I’m not an unreasonable person. But when that sour-basement, dirty-mop-water smell hits me, I’m in that room again. I am in that room, screaming. I’m pleading to get out. I...
There is something backed up in the utility sink near the dryer. I can see the brown water, sitting stagnant. Some has spilled over the sides, and the cement floor is damp where it streamed down the sloped floor to the metal drain in the middle of the room. I gag. Then it comes, completely out of my control. I can’t catch my breath. I’m gasping for air. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. Then, when the tears start without my permission, the sobs follow in uncontrollable hiccups at the top of each panicked hitch. I run, almost crawling up the steep staircase. I hear the teakettle squealing on the stovetop, which has made Avery cry, and I can only focus on catching my breath before I’m able to even stand up and go to her. On my hands and knees at the top of the stairs, I try to stop the panic attack. I try to inhale.
Just then, Lucas opens the door from the attached garage and is met with the screeching sounds of the baby, the kettle, and me on the floor, gasping for air.
“Jesus!” He drops his things and rushes to me and puts his arm around me, helping me to sit. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says. “Are you okay? Breathe. It’s okay, you’re okay.” He stays with me a few moments until he sees I’m calming down. Then he runs to turn off the screeching kettle and picks Avery up out of her playpen and comes back to sit on the floor next to me.
“See? It’s okay,” he says to her in a baby voice she likes. “Everything is just fine, right?” He bounces her on his knee, and she stops crying and grabs for his nose, smiling. “Yes, it is.” He gives her cheek a raspberry, and she giggles.
“What happened?” he asks. I can’t tell him what happened because nothing exactly did happen.
“I don’t know,” I say, getting to my feet and shakily going to sit on a dining-room chair. He is accustomed to this answer, and he knows there is nothing else he’ll get out of me. I open my arms for him to give Avery to me.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Maybe you should take a few minutes.” He puts her back in her playpen, and she is immediately engrossed in her show again.
