He looks at me with incredulity through red, swollen eyes. And I can see that he believes this. That I ruined his lover’s life by capturing evidence of their affair.
“She didn’t have to tell him. I just wanted it to stop. And I wanted to see...” I can’t finish. I choke on the words and the emotions, new and old. All of them devastating. He had the affair. And now he’s upset that I was the one who unearthed it.
Mitch finishes my thought. “You wanted to see if I would tell you. If the fear of being found out would make me come clean. And all this time you let me pretend I did the honorable thing. That I came forward on my own, out of guilt and shame...”
“And respect for our marriage!” Where is this consideration? How can he not understand that I did what I had to do to be sure of him? Of us? “What would have happened if I had been the good wife who came out and asked you? Or maybe said nothing? Would it have just died out after I got back on my feet? After Fran started sleeping through the night and I could see straight enough to meet your needs? Or would you have lied about it and kept it going? Lied about it and stopped? Do you even know?”
Mitch shakes his head. He still hasn’t lifted his gaze. “Maybe I don’t know. But the way you frame it, that you were exhausted from the baby and up all night, that you couldn’t even see straight. And yet you saw straight enough to investigate us. To stalk us and take photos...”
“Us? Now you and Briana are ‘us’?”
A raw, bitter silence comes between the “us” that exists in this room. This kitchen where we had gone on living our lives until that day at Nichols.
I can’t undo the things I did. I was trained to do them. I had the skills and knowledge, and I found the strength because my life depended on it. And Mitch—he can’t undo what he did, desperate for something I wasn’t giving him. Finding it with someone else.
I think of saying more, about how I resented him for needing things from me, new things he hadn’t needed before. Things that scared me, especially when I felt so vulnerable. But when the words form, the sentences come together, I realize how horrible they are. There is no reframing them to make them better. I hated that he needed things from me when I needed things from him. So I withdrew into myself. And he turned to Briana. Then I stalked them and planted evidence that ruined her marriage.
We should never have allowed these revelations to rise to the surface. They should have stayed buried with everything else we hold inside—big things and small things, a million things every day and over fifteen years.
But it’s too late. I wipe my eyes and take a breath. “I’m asking you now what you wanted me to ask you that day I confronted you after work. Was that the first time you saw her again—when she thought I’d slashed her tires and keyed that word into her car door?”
Mitch looks up finally. His face is empty. Spent. Like he’s felt everything he can tolerate.
“Mitch...” I prod as he gets up from the table.
I reach for his arms as he passes by, and he stops long enough to peel my fingers off of him.
With every step he takes away from me, down the hall, and up the stairs, I examine the regret he wants me to feel. The shame at what I’ve done. And I see it for what it is and have no regret and feel no shame. The thoughts return—I am an investigator. I have these skills and this knowledge, and asking me not to use them to find an answer to a question that involves my marriage, my family, my heart—well, that’s simply too much to ask.
For four years I’ve stayed and worked and worked and stayed. I’ve swallowed down the thought of her touching him, knowing about that place on the inside of his ear, the sound of his moan, the feel of his hands, his body. I have done it because I accepted my role in making him vulnerable. My neglect of him. I’ve done it because I knew that I loved him and our family and because the moments of happiness have far outweighed the pain I’ve had to swallow. I’ve done it because he’s human and worthy of forgiveness.
Now, I imagine, he will have the same journey to forgive me. He will have his own pain to swallow, the images of me invading his privacy in every possible way. Of ruining his lover’s life. Of forcing him to stop being with her. I can’t take that journey for him. I can’t make him want to take it.
And if that journey isn’t hard enough, I add to it with my new list of crimes.
And yet I am not deterred.
I wipe away tears and drink some coffee. Then I open the laptop and resume my secret hunt for Wade Austin.
ChapterTwenty-Two
The morning is still. Not so much as a hint of a breeze as I walk back from the bus stop. A neighbor is beside me and remarks about this weather phenomenon I would not have noticed otherwise.
“The calm before the storm,” she says.
I look at her then because this expression hits a nerve. I haven’t heard from Wade intwenty-eighthours. Over a full day with nothing. It doesn’t feel right. Just like she said. It feels like a premonition.
My neighbor turns her gaze to the sky. “They said late morning, but I don’t see any clouds.”
I do the same. “Nope. Not a one.”
“Storm season’s here, and the leaves are still turning. Suppose it’s climate change.”
We pass the detail, the gray SUV. Both of us hold up a hand and give a quick wave. Two officers, rookies as usual, nod back at us. It’s almost comical. A parody.
“Sorry about the trouble,” I say because I like this woman, whose name is Sunny and who used to invite me over for a glass of wine now and again. I suppose I could count her as a friend. She moved in next door three years ago with her husband. They have twin boys in fourth grade.
I feel a hand on my shoulder and then a quick squeeze before it leaves.
