But, no, I realize then. That can’t be. My father is far too practical of a man for this.
And that’s when the suggestion starts to gnaw at me, that Nick has somehow used my father’s credit card to purchase this necklace. Nick was in some sort of financial crisis, that much I now know. But was he in enough financial crisis that he had the nerve to steal my father’s credit card and buy a necklace for Kat with it? Had Nick been panhandling money from my father, or just outright stealing it? It’s the latter, to be sure. Nick was stealing from my aging parents. I fill to the brim with embarrassment and shame as well as anger. It reaches a boiling point and begins to overflow.
Not only has Nick wronged me, but he’s wronged my family, as well.
My father was right all along. Nick could only bring me down.
It’s nearing one in the morning when an inconspicuous knock comes on the kitchen window. At the sound of it, I leap from my skin, goose bumps forming on the flesh, the hairs of my arms standing on end.
The breakfast nook lines a bay window. It’s surrounded by glass on three sides. The noise is jarring like a shock of electricity jolting through my body. My first instinct is to blame my imagination for it, but then it comes again, far less inconspicuous and more pronounced this time, the heavy smite of knuckles on glass so that my heart picks up speed. Harriet’s heavy head rises from the floor, and her ears stand at attention. Harriet heard it, too.
Someone is here.
I turn apprehensively from the laptop and peer outside. My eyesight is diminished by the lights of the LED screen so that I can hardly see, my vision hindered by spots and blotches. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but as they do, I make out a light on in the Jorgensens’ home behind us, though the Jorgensen home is likely a hundred feet away and with windows closed to repel the heat, there’s no chance they’d hear me if I screamed.
And that’s when I make out a nebulous shape standing just outside, eight inches away or less, and at seeing it, I press my hand to my mouth and gasp.
Instinctively my hand reaches for the phone, thumb hovering above the nine until my eyes make out the shape, the brown eyes and the brown hair, the indulgent smile as the contour of a hand rises up to wave hello.
Connor.
And though I should feel many things—relief among others—it’s unease that I feel. Anxiety. What is Connor doing here at one in the morning? Butterflies pulsate in my stomach as I rise from the nook and move to the back door, pulling it to. There he stands on the back porch plucking the motorcycle gloves from his hands one finger at a time, and as I ask, “What are you doing here?” I see that his eyes have a drowsy look to them, glossed over. As he welcomes himself inside my home, he stumbles a bit, grabbing the door frame for support. Not much, for Connor is no stranger to drinking and his tolerance is high, but enough that I know he’s had a drink or two before he came here.
He steps from his shoes and into the kitchen. “Do you know what time it is?” I ask, and, “Why didn’t you call?”
“I saw a light on,” he whispers to me, his breath laced with the bitter smell of beer, which leads me to believe that Connor drove past the house for the sole purpose of seeing if I was awake, leaving his motorcycle in the drive and tiptoeing around the side of the house to see my silhouette through the kitchen window.
How long was he watching me?
He pulls me into him, an awkward hug, and instinctively I draw away. “You okay?” he asks, sensing the way I tense up at his touch, but I shake it off and tell him I’m fine, as good as to be expected anyway. Unable to maintain eye contact, my eyes drop to his shoes.
A pair of classic Dickies, the color of wheat. Heavy-duty work boots with a lug sole. Instantly my mind goes to the muddy footprints beneath the pergola the night of the storm. I think of Connor’s motorcycle helmet, his black leather gloves. A man in a hat and gloves, as Maisie had said. It was Connor, standing in the rain, watching me through the window, and at once I want to know why, though there’s a part of me too put off, too confused to ask. I feel my cheeks redden at the thought, Connor staring through the window, watching me.
“I wanted to see if you were okay,” he says as he leads the way unhesitatingly to the refrigerator, where he pulls on the door’s handle to help himself to one of Nick’s Labatt Blues. Thanks to Connor, they’re dwindling in number. Only four remain, and those will soon be gone, too. And then what will I do? Purchase another case to mislead myself into believing that Nick is still here?
I find a bottle of Chardonnay on the wine rack and pour myself a glass. Felix is no longer nursing, and so there’s no longer a need to abstain. I press the glass to my lips and sip, letting the anesthetic fill my veins, trying hard to forget the events of the day, from the discovery of the black Chevrolet, to meeting Kat, to Nick’s many indiscretions. It’s all too much to handle—my mind bounding back and forth at all the possibilities, confusing me, making me feel crazed—and at seeing tears fill my eyes, Connor asks, “What is it, Clara?” while setting his beer on the countertop and again pulling me into his arms, his hands locked around the small of my back. There’s an awkwardness in the way he latches his hands together behind me, so that for a brief moment I think I couldn’t get away if I wanted to, and I feel instantly suffocated. Smothered. It’s too much. He holds too tightly and for too long, and my first instinct is to blame the alcohol. He’s had too much to drink. His hands stroke the small of my back in a way that’s far too close, far too intimate for me.
Memories return to me then. We’ve done this before, Connor and me.
“He was having an affair,” I say, and this time Connor nods his head and affirms that it’s true.
“I saw them together,” he says as I draw away to look him in the eye. “At the office. I don’t know for certain, but it looked suspect to me.”
“He was going to leave me?” I ask.
Connor shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe,” he says, and my mind leaps instantly to the notion of divorce lawyers and divorce proceedings, alimony, child custody, irreconcilable differences. Nick and I didn’t fight, hardly ever. Our differences were slim, irreconcilable or not. We were never truly at odds, and yet, in the final days and weeks of my pregnancy with Felix, as I pushed a nearly nine-pound baby from my body, were these the thoughts that occupied my husband’s mind? Leaving me so he could be with another woman? The worddissolutionflits around in my mind, a marriage dissolving like instant coffee.
He comes for me again, trying to wrap his arms around me, to comfort and console me, but I step away, out of his reach, and his hands come up with nothing but air. “What is it?” he asks, this time meaning my avoidance, and as my eyes move again to his shoes, I say that it’s been a long day. There’s only so much one person can take.
“I just need to be alone,” I tell him, wanting more than anything for Connor to leave. The discomfort is overwhelming, a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something isn’t right. And it’s not just the alcohol this time. It’s something more. The closeness of Connor to me, the presumption of his hands. Knowing it was Connor who watched me through the window, staring, saying nothing. What did he see?
Connor doesn’t take to this well. He shakes his head; he tells me no. “You can’t be alone now, Clara,” he says. “You and me, we’re all we have left. We have to stick together,” he says, reaching out again to clamp my hand, squeezing tightly so that I can’t let go. “We shouldn’t be alone at a time like this,” and as he runs a hand along my hair, he whispers, “You were always too good for him anyway,” and though it’s meant to appease me—comfort me in the wake of Nick’s affair—it strikes me as an odd comment to make. Connor is Nick’s best friend. We don’t say bad things about our best friends, least of all when they’re dead.
The thought that comes to me then is that summer when I was expectant with Maisie, in those early days when only Nick and I knew, too terrified still to share the news and jinx it. It was early in the pregnancy, though the merciless morning sickness had finally relented as I crossed that viaduct between trimesters one and two. I was feeling good for the first time in a long time, no longer bilious and green, and yet consumed with fears that I had yet to share with Nick. I’d become pregnant sooner than expected; Nick and I planned to wait until after our thirtieth birthdays to conceive. And yet here we were, in our early and midtwenties with a baby on the way. To call Maisie a mistake seems cruel, and yet that’s what she was, a miscalculation of dates, a forgotten birth control pill, a romantic night with an expensive bottle of red wine. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be a mother, though I never told this to Nick, who was so excited to be a father he could practically burst with pride.
Instead I told Connor one summer evening at an outdoor gathering at the home of a mutual friend, a garden party where I was the only one who hadn’t been drinking, and Connor stumbled upon me in the kitchen, drinking tap water and trying not to cry. I confessed to him about the pregnancy, that I was terrified to be a mother, that I was consumed with all the things that likely could and would go wrong. Being responsible for another human life was a formidable task. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
But Connor’s words were rational.Nobody knows what they’re doing the first time around, he said.You’re a smart woman, Clara. You’ll figure it out.And then he held me while I cried. He stroked my hair and comforted me. He told me I would be the best mother, that there wasn’t anything in the world I couldn’t do.
