The Good Widow

“Jacks! Wait!”

I sprint away from the sound of Nick’s voice, my feet cutting through the sand, my sandals dangling precariously from my hand. The thing is, I can’t wait. I need to get as far away as possible from the news I’ve just heard. Maybe, if I keep moving, I can outrun the truth. Dylan had been pregnant. I can’t deny the possibility that James might have been the father. And my biggest fear has been confirmed: my own omission may have been the glue that bound their relationship.

I trip over a pile of flip-flops that lie in the sand awaiting their owners—the sunset booze cruises just docked on shore. My right knee slides into the sand, and I quickly manage to heave myself back up.

It’s amazing how agile desperation can make you.

I glance back to see Nick jogging behind me. There’s no doubt his pace is deliberately slow, that his strong legs barely feel the burn that mine already do. But, wisely, he keeps his distance as I barrel toward the black rocks on the north end of Ka‘anapali Beach. We both know I’m running myself into a corner. That he will catch up to me.

It’s hard to let go of who you thought you were. Take me, for instance. I’ve always considered myself a decent person. I teach the youth of America. I like animals and babies. I cheered when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. But I now realize that those were the easy choices. That just because you aren’t a complete asshole that hates kids and kittens, it doesn’t mean that you’re good. It simply means that you aren’t bad. And it’s that in-between area that gets tricky. I’d never thought James and I had a bad marriage. He didn’t verbally abuse me; I didn’t nag him. He’d only gotten physical once. But had it been good? Not really. We existed somewhere in between. In the middle of the screaming and the love.

I begin to slow down as I approach the black rocky peninsula that marks my dead end, unless I want to attempt to scale the wet, slippery, sharp rocks—which will definitely not end well. The sun has just set, and darkness begins to sweep the ocean. I take a left turn and walk into it, the waves lapping my calves. A few steps farther, and the water teases the hem of my yellow sundress, the one that James told me made my skin sparkle. If you really think about it, his compliment didn’t make sense. Eyes could sparkle, but skin? But James had a way of romancing his words, of making the false seem true.

I feel Nick’s hand grab mine when the water reaches my torso.

“Jacks.” He tugs me gently. I’m taking a postsunset swim in my perky dress after I discover my husband got his mistress pregnant, and Nick doesn’t know what to do. I don’t blame him. I don’t know what to do either. Do I keep moving into the deeper water, hoping the searing pain I’m feeling dissipates as my head goes under? That the silence under the sea will quiet my demons?

“Jacks! Come on!”

I shake my head as the first tears hit my chin. “I’m not ready.” And it’s true. I’m not. In my mind, the shore is where reality lives. Here, in the sea, I still have the choice to float away, to leave all this bullshit behind. I shake my hand free from his and take two steps toward the skyline—the lingering orange and red hues from the sunset muted. The sky will be completely black soon. I’m ready for the darkness to consume me.

Nick curls his arms tightly under my legs and pushes forcefully through the water toward the beach. I struggle, but I have no chance of breaking free; I’m no match for his strong grip.

Nick puts his mouth to my ear as he carries me. “Shh,” he whispers over and over, the same chant I used to calm my nephew when he was an infant. I’d pace the living room as my sister slept, her exhaustion finally forcing her to call and ask for my help. I’d rocked him back and forth until he calmed. In Nick’s hold, I’m much like my nephew, succumbing to the calming sounds, losing my will to struggle and becoming limp as he sets me gently on the sand.

I wrap my hands around my knees, licking my salty tears, and Nick and I sit side by side on the sand for quite a while, listening to the soft waves lapping onto the shore. Finally I work up the courage to ask Nick the one question I need an answer to. “How can you be so sure the baby wasn’t yours?” After the bartender told us Dylan had been pregnant, Nick assured me he wasn’t the father.

Nick takes a long pause, running his wet hand through his hair, leaving a trail of sand at his hairline. “We hadn’t had sex in at least two months.”

“Oh,” I say, thinking about my sex life with James. We used to have sex every few days, but it had slowed in the past two years. Still, we never went more than a few weeks, no matter how bad things were. It was that addiction we had to each other. That need to be physically intertwined even when we were emotionally fragmented. “I had no idea.”

“It’s not something you brag about.” Nick looked away.

“Does it make it any easier?” I ask gently, feeling terrible that I wish it had been his and not James’s. Because it would make things better for me.

“Because the baby wasn’t mine?”

I nod.

“I don’t know. I think I’m just numb at this point. And I’ve got to keep my shit together right now—especially when you’re out there pulling a Virginia Woolf.”

I laugh softly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t think you were a literary type.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me yet.” He offers me a sad smile, and I reach over and grab his hand, sand rubbing between our palms.

“So, tell me then.”

He thinks for a minute. “I make a mean Italian wedding soup. I broke my leg skiing when I was nineteen. And I do love to read—everything from Stephen King to Hemingway.”

“Well, for the record, I wasn’t trying to drown myself out there.” I stare out at the dark water. “I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to get away from this.” I wave my hand in the air, not sure what I’m pointing at. Him. Me. The hotel. Maui. All of it.

“I know,” Nick says, somehow understanding what I mean even when I’m not sure I do. “And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I convinced you to come. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t know these things. You wouldn’t have to go through this.”

“It’s not your fault. Maybe this is how it had to be. Maybe we needed to know.”

I let go of his hand and lie back on the sand, letting the cool granules overtake my wet skin. The stars are beginning to emerge, and I trace my finger around the Big Dipper, remembering when James and I lay on this beach on our honeymoon and did the same thing. “It’s right there,” he said, grabbing my hand and guiding it. “How can you not see it?”

“I do! I do!” I laughed and pointed up. But I hadn’t seen the stars connect the same way he had. I just didn’t want to disappoint him. I hated to do that. Disappoint people.

I close my eyes to turn the stars off. They know too much.

“Hey,” I hear Nick say.

I open my eyes and stare up at him.

“You look cold. Your arms are covered in goose bumps.”

Suddenly I realize how cold I am. I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees.

I feel Nick’s arm around my shoulder. “This okay? Or does it feel like that terrible hug?” he asks, and I want to laugh, to go back in time to when we were sitting on the deck of my hotel room with no clue about Dylan’s baby. But my sobs. They’re sitting so high up in my throat that it burns to push them down. So instead we sit in silence.

“It’s not our fault, you know,” he finally says. “This. Them. The pregnancy. These were choices they made, for whatever reason. This isn’t about you—or me.”

I could nod and pretend I agree. I could let Nick believe his own words. But I can’t. I have to tell someone.

“You’re right. It isn’t about you. But it is about me,” I say.

Nick shakes his head vehemently. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“Actually I can,” I say, and begin to tell him why.

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