Chapter 13
HOW DO YOU KNOW when you’ve fallen out of love?
There are entire songs, poems and greeting cards dedicated to the notion of falling in love. The power of the first glance across a crowded room. That moment right before the first kiss, when you’re still wondering will he or won’t he, while angling up your head in centuries-old invite.
The first giddy days, weeks, when you are consumed by thoughts of him. His touch, his taste, his feel. You invest in better lingerie, take more time with your hair, pick out a new form-fitting sweater because you can imagine his hands following the same lines as the soft knit and you want, more than anything, to invite those hands anywhere.
When the phone rings, you snatch it up in hopes of hearing his voice. When your lunch break arrives, you hastily calculate if you can make it to his office and back before the hour’s up. Wearing a trench coat and nothing else.
Planned dinners out become hastily scrambled eggs eaten out of bowls in the middle of his king-size bed, because your new sweater worked its magic and neither of you made it back out the door. And now he lounges around in his boxers and you lounge around in his button-up oxford and you think to yourself, admiring the hard expanse of his bare chest, the rippling muscles of his upper arms, my God, how did I get so lucky?
Then, his eyes darken, he reaches for you and you don’t think of anything else again.
I knew when I fell in love with Justin. Felt it like the proverbial lightning bolt.
And I thought, That Day, confronting him with the evidence, watching his face pale, then set, that I would feel my love for him die an equally thunderous death. Certainly, I caught my breath. Felt my stomach churn with growing nausea.
As he looked me in the eye and quietly said, “Yes, I’ve been sleeping with her…”
I yelled at him. Threw whatever was closest at hand. Raged and screamed with growing levels of hysteria. Ashlyn came racing down the hall to our room, but Justin turned and, in the sharpest voice I’d ever heard, ordered her back to her room right now. She literally spun around on one toe and went running for the sanctuary of her iPod.
He told me to calm down. I remember that.
I believe that’s when I went after him with the bedside lamp. He caught it, grabbed it with those strong arms I used to love and twisted me around until I was caught in his embrace, my back to his front, my arms locked by my sides where I could no longer hurt him. He held me. And he whispered, softly against the top of my head, that he was sorry. So sorry. So really, really sorry. I felt drops of moisture against my hair. My husband, moved to tears.
The fight left me.
I sagged against him.
He held me up. Supported me in his embrace, and for a while, we stood together, both of us breathing hard, our tears comingling. I cried for the loss of my marriage. For the trust I’d had in this man, and for the terrible, terrible feeling of not just betrayal, but failure. That I had loved my husband with my entire being, and it still hadn’t been enough.
And Justin? Those drops of moisture against the top of my head? Tears of shame? Pain at having caused me pain? Or simply regret at finally being caught?
I hated him then. With every fiber of my being.
But I don’t think I fell out of love with him. I only wished that I could.
Afterward, I kicked him out of the house. He didn’t argue, just quietly packed his bag. I told him not to come back. I told him he was a terrible man and he’d hurt me too much, and what kind of man ripped apart his own family, and what kind of father abandoned his own daughter? And then, for a while, I said things that didn’t even make sense but simply poured out, a raging flow of hurt and spite. He took it. Stood in front of me, holding his black duffel bag, and let me hate him.
Finally, I emptied myself of all words. We stared at each other across the silent space of our bedroom.
“I was an idiot,” he said.
I made a noise. It wasn’t kind.
“This is my fault, my mistake.”
Another noise.
“Can I call you?” he tried again. “In a few days, after you’ve caught your breath. Can we just…talk?”
I regarded him with pure, stony rage.
“You’re right, Libby,” he said quietly. “What kind of man hurts his wife and tears apart his family? I don’t want to be that man. I never wanted to be like…”
He hesitated, and I knew what he meant to say. He didn’t want to be like his own dad.
I don’t know why that should’ve made a difference. Justin’s father had been a hard, misogynistic 1950s man who’d idolized his only son while driving his wife to drink with his nearly legendary unfaithfulness. So the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. That’s all Justin’s unfinished statement should’ve meant to me.
Except…it made me remember other things, too. All those quiet moments of true confession during our dating years. The kinds of conversations that occur in the afterglow, sprawled naked on a bed, Justin stroking my bare arm, talking about the man he’d both worshipped and abhorred. Loved as a father, while being quietly appalled by the way he’d behaved as a husband.
Justin had wanted his father’s business sense, but he’d vowed even then to be a better husband, a better man.
Just as I looked back at my own parents and swore never to smoke and to always wear helmets.
That’s the problem, you see. It’s so much easier to fall in love, and so much more complicated to fall out of it. Because I couldn’t just see this moment. I had eighteen years of memories of this man, including our younger days, and the hopes and dreams we’d both nurtured. When we’d magically assumed we could do better than our own parents, because we hadn’t walked in their shoes yet. We didn’t realize just how complicated and lonely even a good marriage can get.
“I don’t want to lose you,” my husband had said That Day. “I’m willing to try harder. I want to do better. Libby… I love you.”
I made him leave. But I did let him call. And later, he settled into the basement bedroom, as we officially moved into the “working on it” phase of our marriage. Which meant he traveled just as much but brought me flowers more often. And I fixed his favorite meals, while withdrawing deeper and deeper inside myself. Both of us waiting for our marriage to magically feel normal again.
Time heals all wounds, right? Or if not, what the hell, six months later, you can always try date night.
I told myself I stayed in the marriage for Ashlyn. I told myself you just don’t walk away from eighteen years together.
But the truth?
I still loved him. My husband had cheated on me. My husband had lied to me. He’d sent texts to another woman using the kind of endearments I thought were once reserved only for me. He’d slept with her. Then, based on what I could piece together, returned home and, on several occasions, made love to me.
And yet, my heart still skipped a beat when he walked into the room. The sound of his laugh filled an ache in my chest. The feel of his long, strong fingers retained the power to make me shiver.
And I hated him for that. For hurting me and then being decent about it. I didn’t want him kind or gentle or remorseful. I wanted him to be the bad guy. Then I could’ve just left him. Changed the locks on the doors and never looked back. But dammit, he kept trying. He ended the relationship as I asked. He moved out of our bedroom into the basement as I asked. He suggested marriage counseling, though in the end, I was the one who proved resistant. But he kept at it, dozens of tiny little gestures, trying to reassure me of his love, and that he was sorry and he really did want me back. Except, instead of making me feel better, all of his outreaches simply made me feel worse.
I wondered, did he spoon with her afterward? Feed her oranges? Watch her lounge around in nothing but his favorite dress shirt? Did he whisper to her the kind of innermost dreams he once used to share with me?
I couldn’t let her go. She had entered our marriage, some pretty young thing, and I didn’t know how to get her back out again. So I’d pop open the orange prescription bottle, shaking out two, then four, then six chalky white pills. Trying to halt the endless stream of painful imagery running through my head.
But even I understood it wasn’t the memory of That Day I was trying to dull with the pills. Not even the pain of betrayal that I needed to go away.
It was my love for my husband I was desperately trying to let go.
Because if I could love him less, then maybe I could forgive him more.
And it had amazed even me, how many pills it was taking to get the job done.
ASHLYN HAD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM. She whispered her need in my ear as we were ushered into a single cell, her trembling body pressed to my side. I nodded once, half listening to her and half hearing the clang of the steel door slamming shut behind us.
We were together, a pathetic party of three, now garbed in identical prison orange jumpsuits. The smallest size was still too large for Ashlyn, rolled up at the ankles and still swimming on her slight frame. The jumpsuits all had short sleeves, which I thought would be cold, except the cell was hot, the whole wing almost oppressive with its stale, overheated air.
Z had informed us the thermostat was set at a fixed seventy-six degrees. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Didn’t matter in a prison. Likewise, the overhead lights were on 24/7. Morning, noon or night, also irrelevant for life behind bars.
Our dingy white cinder-block cell was narrow and deep, with a set of cream-painted steel bunks on either side, topped by what appeared to be a few inches of foam covered in a vinyl I could only describe as Smurf blue. The end of the cell featured a tall, narrow window bisected by a single steel bar. The door, comprised mostly of twelve-gauge steel, also boasted a thin viewing window, probably for a guard to check on the inmates. The window in the far wall overlooked bare, brown earth. The window in the door overlooked the cell block’s cavernous dayroom, where prisoners could commune at hard metal tables, or tend to hygiene in exposed showers. In the middle of the space sat a lone command post, most likely where one corrections officer supervised an entire two-story wing of stacked cells.
I checked for Z, Radar or the one called Mick. Best I could tell, all three had disappeared. The dayroom was empty. We were finally alone, shuttered up with a mere seven locked doors between us and freedom.
I relayed Ashlyn’s need to Justin. He nodded once, jaw clenched, eyes hard with equal parts rage and helplessness. When he turned to our daughter, however, his face softened and he sounded almost normal.
“So, here’s the first part of prison life.” He spoke briskly, as if describing a strange, new adventure. “One toilet, one sink for all of us to share—”
“Daddy—”
“Think of it as summer camp—”
“I can’t—”
“Ashlyn, stop. I need you to hold strong. We’re going to get through this.”
Her lower lip trembled. She was on the verge of tears.
I wanted to reach out to my daughter, but I didn’t. Because what would be the point? Don’t cry, darling, we’ll all be okay?
We’d been abducted by madmen out of our own home. We were clad in thin orange jumpsuits with slippers on our feet, shoved into a white eight-by-ten cell where there was barely enough room to stand and the only places to sit were prison bunks topped by the world’s thinnest vinyl mattresses. Things were not all right. Things were wrong, very, very wrong, and probably going to get worse.
Justin moved to stand at the far window, his back to the toilet, his broad shoulders covering the exposed window. I moved to block the window in the doorway, my back also to my daughter, who’d begun demanding privacy at age eight, and by age fifteen, found anything involving the human body totally mortifying if not completely shameful.
The quiet was unbearable. The rustle of Ashlyn awkwardly struggling with her oversize jumpsuit ricocheting around the hard-edged space.
I started humming. Thought of Justin’s tone, as if this were nothing but a camping adventure, and found myself singing: I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. Which led Justin to adding, raspy and off-key, I loke to ote, ote, ote opples and bononos.
I filled in with the I verse, Justin handled the letter A, then we combined for E and U. We had just wrapped up, when I heard, right behind me, Ashlyn break down into total, body-heaving sobs. I turned, caught my daughter as she collapsed and held her against me. Justin moved away from the window, wrapping his larger arms around us, and we stood together, nobody speaking a word.
First family hug we’d shared in months.
I wanted to cry with my daughter, but I didn’t.
EVENTUALLY, I tucked Ashlyn into bed on one of the lower prison bunks. No blanket to cover her. No words to comfort her. I sat on the edge of the squeaky blue vinyl and stroked her hair.
Justin paced. He roamed the tiny cell like a caged beast, running his fingers around the dull edges of the bunk beds, top and bottom. Then inspected the far window, the door, the strangely built stainless steel contraption with a lower half that formed the toilet, while the top half jutted out sideways to serve as the sink.
I turned to give him privacy as he used the facilities. The advantage of years spent sharing a master bath; I didn’t have to sing. When he was done, I peed as well, then rinsed out my mouth with a dribble of water from the sink. I still tasted bile and rust. What I would give for a toothbrush and toothpaste, but apparently, our captors weren’t concerned about such amenities.
When I finished, Justin moved from the far window and sat on the lower bunk across from Ashlyn, his back to the door. He indicated for me to do the same, so I returned to my seat next to Ashlyn, this time turning away from the door and staring at the narrow window.
“No bugs,” Justin said, as if this were great news. I stared at him blankly. He continued, “That means they can see us—there are video cameras everywhere—but not hear us. So as long as we keep our backs to the electronic eyes, we can speak privately.”
The subtleties of this were lost on me, but I nodded, encouraged if he was encouraged.
“This is a state facility. Means our cell door is operated electronically, from the control room. Bad news is that this means there’s no chance of a manual override, or for us to escape by stealing someone’s keys. But it also means they have to split up each time they want to retrieve us. While one or two may come to our cell door, the third has to remain in the control room to work the touch screen.”
I turned my head just enough to stare at my husband. “How do you know all this?”
He turned to regard me curiously. “Libby, the project we wrapped last year in northern New Hampshire? The prison? I built this.”
I blinked my eyes, honestly startled. I knew Justin’s firm had constructed a number of prisons over the years. New Hampshire, West Virginia, Georgia. But somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me…
“Then you know this facility. The whole facility. You can get us out!”
Justin didn’t speak right away. Instead, his expression turned sober. “I do know this facility, honey. Including all the reasons we probably aren’t going to get out. Z was telling the truth. This prison’s state-of-the-art, with all of the state and all of the art designed to keep people wearing these jumpsuits trapped in these cells.”
My shoulders slumped. I leaned against the metal pillar supporting the top bunk. My hands were shaking. I could watch them tremble on my lap, almost like two separate entities, pale, dehydrated, claw-like fingers that belonged to anyone but me.
“Ashlyn,” I whispered, a single word that said enough.
Justin’s jaw hardened. His face took on a fierce expression I knew so well. And because we’d been married eighteen years, years where I’d seen the look in his eyes when he’d held our baby daughter for the first time, watched him patiently balance her tiny hands in his when she was learning how to walk, still caught him standing in her doorway late at night just to check on her, I knew how much pain was behind that rage.
“They’ll demand money,” he said roughly. “I don’t give a fuck what Z says to terrorize us. This is about money. Sooner or later, they’ll issue a ransom demand. Denbe will pay it. And we’ll go home. All of us.”
“Why bring us here?” I asked. “If this is just about money, why bring us this far north, lock us up…”
“Where better to hide an entire family? This place is deserted for now. State’s too busy cutting costs to fund the operating budget of a whole new prison. It’s also remote, with nothing around for fifteen, twenty miles. Local PD probably does an occasional perimeter check, such as what happened when we were first dropped off, then moves along.”
“They’ll see the lights on,” I spoke up hopefully. “Investigate further.”
Justin shook his head. “The whole property is wired with motion sensors. Every time a cop approaches, this place lights up like the Fourth of July. Nothing unusual there.”
“There’s three of them,” I whispered. “A whole…commando team. They have Tasers, weapons, obviously spent some time planning this. If this is about money, they’re going to want a lot of it. And tomorrow’s Sunday, so even if the company is willing to pay…”
Justin thinned his lips. “We’re probably looking at least a couple of days’ internment,” he granted.
I brushed our daughter’s hair. Ashlyn still slept soundly, exhaustion and shock having caught up with her. “How long have we been gone?” I asked now. “Fourteen, sixteen hours? They haven’t even offered food or water.”
“Sink has water. As for food, we can make it a couple of days.”
I watched my hands tremble again. Felt my stomach churn, my headache build. Things I should probably tell him. But I didn’t. Because while we had eighteen years together, we also had the past six months. And that had changed things.
“I don’t want her alone with them,” I said, turning the matter back to Ashlyn.
Justin shrugged away my concern. “They’ve put us together in a single cell. Nicer of them than I would’ve thought, actually.”
He was right. Three separate cells would’ve been worse. Each of us trapped in a separate cage, helpless to assist the others. In that scenario, if they’d come for Ashlyn… What would Justin do? What would I do? Stand by powerlessly while they led our daughter away…
“Whatever happens,” I reiterated, my own thoughts starting to run away with me. “I don’t want Ashlyn alone with them. Especially that one with the checkerboard hair… Mick? Did you see his eyes? Something’s not right there.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Really? Because we’re so in control of the situation? In case you haven’t noticed, they’re the predators, and we’re the prey. And what kind of prey ever gets to choose its own fate?”
I wish I hadn’t spoken the words the second I said them. My voice was too high, verging on hysterical. I fisted my hands on my lap, bit into my lower lip as if that would keep the panic at bay.
“Libby.” Justin’s voice was serious. I looked up, found him studying me. He didn’t speak right away. Instead, he regarded me with a fierceness I hadn’t seen in years, but still remembered well.
“I know things are challenging for us right now. I know I’ve hurt you. If I could go back in time…” He paused, squared his shoulders, soldiered on. “I want you to know, Libby, somehow, someway, I’ll keep you and Ashlyn safe. Nothing and no one is going to harm my family. You can trust me on this.”
And I believed him. Because my husband was that kind of guy. The modern caveman, I’d often called him. He would lay down his life for his daughter, just not remember her favorite foods. And he would slay dragons for me, just not, apparently, remain faithful.
Ironically enough, his alpha male tendencies were one of the things that had first attracted him to me.
Justin held out his hand. His palm was large, ridged with callouses. His nails were short, his skin rough. I’d spent so much of my life admiring those hands. It made it easy for me to place my fingers upon his and make my one request.
“Keep our daughter safe, Justin. That’s all I want. Keep Ashlyn safe.”
His fingers closed around mine. He leaned forward. I could see his eyes, somber and resolute, and then, his head angled down, and my head angled up…
Clanging, from the steel door. So loud both of us startled, jerked back, then turned around.
The crazy blue-eyed one stood in front of the window, leering at us. Clearly, he’d been watching for a bit. Clearly, he’d liked what he saw.
I couldn’t help myself; I recoiled, reaching for my daughter, as if holding her arm would somehow keep her safe.
“Get up,” Mick barked from the other side of the door. “Think this is some kind of vacay? Come on. Time to work.”