I nodded, imagining their conversation—Kerry running me down, trying to convince Jason to marry her. Jason explaining that there were things about me she didn’t understand.
But he had stopped short of telling her everything.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now, I guess.” The cavalier words were overcompensation for the emotions I was fighting to control. “Maybe she has one ounce of decency and will keep it to herself.”
“I’d do anything to turn back the clock and change all this,” he said.
He had no idea how much I wanted that, too.
The room became quiet, and I stood up to get dressed. “I meant what I said before,” he said softly. “I would have never left you.”
Maybe not, I thought, but that’s not what you told Kerry.
When I left his building, I crossed Eighth Street. Inside the mobile store I bought a prepaid phone, the kind a European tourist might buy on a visit to New York City. In some circles, it would be called a burner. I was going to need it. I had made my decision weeks ago. I would never be Jason’s wife again, which meant I needed a longer-term plan.
55
Three Days Later
I remember when I used to think of the reserved cars at the front of the Cannonball as the equivalent of a private jet, the way the rich folks arrived to the Hamptons in the summer. A couple times a week, an express train ran between Manhattan and the Hamptons, shaving the ride down to about two hours. The big splurge was a booked seat during peak season, at double the price, with bar service and no anxiety about having to find room on a train carrying twice the number of people intended.
Now, our $51 tickets felt like slumming. The Audi had been sold, along with the carriage house, so driving was no longer an option. Last summer we had gotten into the habit of using the helicopter service to save time, because in Jason’s world, time was money. Now we were the kind of people who rode the train, springing for the reserved seats.
“You sure your mom’s okay with me staying there? Susanna offered me a guest room.”
I was too busy waving down a taxi in the crowd to have this discussion with him again.
“We’ve talked about this a hundred times. If I could get away with staying with Susanna instead of Mom’s, I would totally do that, but Mom would kill me. And Spencer wants you at home with us.”
The plan was for Jason and me to take the twin beds in my childhood room, because Spencer asked to sleep in the living room, where I knew he’d stay up all night watching YouTube. This was going to be our first weekend as a family under one roof in more than a month.
“Angela?”
The cabdriver was looking at me in the rearview mirror.
“Hey, yeah. Sorry, I can’t see you from back here.”
I leaned over the bench seat to get a better view of the driver. The man was probably about my age, but didn’t look great. Something about him seemed familiar.
“It’s Steve.”
Steve. Right, Steve.
“Yes, of course, it’s so great to see you.” I searched the recesses of my memory for the local Steves. Clerk at IGA. Bartender at Wolfie’s. Trisha’s cousin. Yep, Trisha’s cousin, that was the one. “How are your parents?”
Steve’s father was the least horrible brother among the Faulkner men. He was a mechanic at the shop on Springs Fireplace. His mother used to sew tablecloths and napkins to sell at the farmer’s market.
“Dad passed last year—a stroke. Same with yours, right?”
“Five years ago. I’m so sorry.”
“Mom, she’s okay. Needs a walker already because of swelling in her legs, but otherwise, she’s doing good.”
Jason was looking at me, obviously wishing we had taken Mom up on her offer to meet us at the train station.
“Well, it’s real nice seeing you. We’re only out for the weekend.” For some reason, I needed him to know we didn’t own a house here. “My son’s been out, staying with his grandmom. We’re here to pick him up.”
“Don’t suppose you heard from Trisha this summer?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t talked to her since—wow, high school, I guess.”
“I figured. I thought maybe with you being in the news and everything, she might have reached out—”
He was looking at Jason, not me, in the rearview mirror.
“Nope,” I said. “She may not even know I got married. How’s she doing?”
“No one knows. She always said she was going to get away from here and never speak to another member of the family. I guess she meant it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“The two of you were always the same—wanting to get as far away as possible. Hell, if she had stuck around, you probably wouldn’t give her a second thought, the way you’ve moved on.”
Next to me, Jason nudged my leg with his knee. Instead of ending the conversation, though, I leaned forward to make sure Steve could hear me. “That’s not true.”
“Yeah, well, I guess there’s no way to know.”
Jason rolled his eyes and began reciting a turn-by-turn guide to Mom’s place to fill the silence.
The house was empty, a note left on the laminate-topped breakfast table: “Went to IGA. Back soon. I’ll cook!”
“I thought you told her we wanted to take her to the Grill tonight.”
I had. She responded by saying she’d rather eat corn flakes than put up with the “crowds of summer sewage.”
“I figured she was less likely to give me the riot act in public,” Jason said.
This would be the first time my mother had seen Jason since I found out about his affair. “She promised to be on good behavior.” In reality, her only assurance was that she wouldn’t run Jason down in front of Spencer. “Do you still think about her?” I asked.
“Your mom?”
“No. About her.” Kerry, I thought. “I asked you once, in our room, if you loved her. You never answered me.”
The kitchen was so quiet, I didn’t want to breathe. The only sound was a lawn mower in the distance.
“Yes, but not the way I love you. And she obviously didn’t love me back, or she never could have done what she did.”
The next morning, I woke up thinking I had heard a phone ring.
I opened my eyes to see Jason in the twin bed three feet from mine, ear already to phone. I heard muffled voices and dishes clanking in the kitchen and fumbled to find my own phone in the blankets wrapped around my legs. It was nearly nine. Jason never slept in this late. I suspected he had been waiting for me to get up before venturing anywhere near my mother.
I listened to a series of “uh-huhs,” a “Where?,” and a “Do they know anything else?” before he hung up.
He was staring up at the ceiling, absolutely still.
“Is everything okay?”
“That was Olivia. A cop she knows called her. They found Kerry.”
“Where was—” I didn’t finish the question. He was covering his face with his hands.
“She’s dead. Kerry’s dead.”
I joined my mother and son in the kitchen, leaving Jason alone to cry for a woman he had once loved.
After breakfast I asked if anyone wanted to take a walk up to Gerard Point with me, knowing that Jason would want to go for a run, and that Spencer shared my mother’s view that walking was for people who didn’t have cars.
I waited until I had made the turn from Springs Fireplace Road onto Gerard Drive to remove my burner phone and a single Post-it note from my skirt pocket. Sitting on my favorite boulder, a few feet from the water, I called an international number and then used the keypad to follow the automated instructions. As a final step, I entered my eight-digit PIN, already committed to memory.
The computerized system on the other end of the line confirmed that I had a balance of $100. It was official: I had an offshore account. We’d be closing on the carriage house on Tuesday. Our lawyer was planning to take care of the checks for alimony and my half of Jason’s retirement account at the same time.
I looked out over Gardiners Bay, realizing this might be the last time I saw it. I was actually going to miss this place.
56