“Yes,” Peter said. “You did.”
The waitress arrived with their food, announcing each item as she placed it on the table. Fried clams. Grilled corn muffin. Hot dog. Claire saw that she wore a wedding ring, a thin gold band with a small diamond ring above it.
The greasy smell of the clams made Claire queasy. She took a quick bite of her muffin, hoping it would settle her stomach.
“We never got our coffee,” Peter said. He had already begun to eat his clams, dipping them in the tartar sauce and splashing ketchup on the French fries.
The waitress sighed.
“Busy day, huh?” Claire said to her.
“I’m working a double,” the waitress said. “Some of the girls couldn’t get in ’cause of the snow.”
Claire wondered how late the woman would have to be here working. By the matter-of-fact way she had helped get Kathy in the high chair, Claire thought she must also have a child. Or children. And a husband at home while she served cranky people food all day. And then drove home through this blizzard.
“Sorry,” Claire said as the waitress went for the coffee.
“You just did it again,” Peter said. “Why should you be sorry because she can’t get the order right?”
Suddenly, all Claire wanted to do was sleep. She wanted to be in her own bed back in Alexandria with its layers of warm blankets and the familiar pattern of violets on the wallpaper, the curtains drawn against the snow.
“I don’t know, Peter,” Claire said wearily. “I just am.”
He looked confused. “You’re sorry because she’s not good at her job?”
“I’m sorry she’s working in this storm instead of being home with her husband.”
The waitress returned. “Two coffees,” she said, placing the cups on the table.
“Thank you,” Claire said. Steam rose from them, and the bitter smell comforted her. She wrapped her hands around the cup to warm them.
Peter added milk to his coffee, then to Claire’s. A small gesture of kindness that she appreciated since he was so rarely kind to her anymore. She smiled to let him know that and, for an instant, his face softened.
“Peter,” Claire said. “Look.”
The waitress was standing across the aisle from them, taking orders from new customers who had just come in, noisily shaking snow from their coats and stomping their boots. At this angle, Claire saw clearly that the waitress was pregnant. As far along as Claire, maybe more.
Peter followed her gaze. “Jesus,” he said.
“Poor thing. Working two shifts.”
“People do what they have to,” he said.
“Still.”
“It’s not right,” he said.
Claire reached across the table and took his hand, oddly grateful for her own easy life. Instinctively, he recoiled at her touch. She almost apologized, but stopped herself.
The afternoon that Peter discovered them, after Miles left, after she’d dressed and gone into the living room where her husband sat on the turquoise Danish sofa they had argued over buying, she sat across from him in the square pink chair. He had thought that modern furniture wasn’t comfortable or inviting enough, and sitting there that afternoon, Claire understood what he meant. It was all angles and wood, this Danish contemporary.
Peter had demanded details. Not when or where they had met, but what they had done. “How many times?” Peter asked her. “Did he come inside of you?”
Out of spite or fear or something else, Claire told him. “I have lost track of how many times,” she said. “And he does come inside me. Yes.”
Peter jumped off the sofa, his eyes wild. As he loomed in front of her, she thought for a moment he might hit her. But he just stood with that scary look on his face, a look that told her he was capable of anything.
The clock, the one she thought looked like a sunburst and he thought looked like a spider, ticked into the silence.
“I have to pick up Kathy at the sitter’s,” Claire said finally.
She stood. He didn’t move. She put on her white car coat, not because the weather had turned cool but for protection. From the pocket, she took a tube of lipstick, Rio Red, and smeared it across her lips. She took the car keys from the little ring where they hung.
When she reached the door, Peter said, “If you see him again I’ll kill you.”
Claire turned to her husband. “No you won’t. You’re not a murderer,” she said.