I catch a tear on the tip of a finger. “He isn’t screwing around.”
“Maybe not screwing.” Claudette turns her back on me but only to preheat my oven. “But playing. Let me tell you something no one knows.” Now she’s straightening the papers on my island, organizing them into little piles. “A few years ago, right after Fendi was born, Brad had an affair. One of those skinny bitches—you know the type, willowy, like an underwear model, and with a name that sounds like one of those candles from Bathworks. Misty Morningside. Can you imagine?”
“I’m sorry to hear, Claudette, but Micah isn’t—”
“The moment I figured it out, I was hysterical. Just like you. But once I calmed down, I realized something. This wasn’t a statement about my shortcomings. It’s a message about his. Truthfully, it’s the best thing that could’ve happened to us. The guilt is nearly overwhelming for him, and he’s been a model husband ever since. The key is to make this work to your advantage. Don’t let him off too easy. Put him in purgatory for a while.”
I look at her for a few seconds, to make sure she’s done with her dissertation.
She’s not.
“So much depends on this consequence. I know you’re hurting, and the first thing you’re going to want to do is throw your arms around him—because you miss him, you love him, you’re worried about him—but what message does that send? It tells him you understand what he’s done! That all is forgiven. But you don’t, do you? And it isn’t, is it? If you welcome him home, by the time you’ve managed to send the right message, it will be too late. You must make it clear that this behavior is unacceptable.”
When she’s attentively staring back at me, one eyebrow peaked in an arc, lips pursed as if she’s just tasted something tart and can’t decide if she likes it, I speak: “Micah isn’t having an affair. He’s missing.”
She answers with a slow blink.
“He left to take some executive on a trip to New York, and I haven’t heard from him since.” My voice breaks a little, but I swallow my grief and continue. “The company he works for . . . they’re pretending they don’t know who he is, but I have proof. Pay stubs. The company policy handbook. If they don’t know who he is, why would they have been paying him every other week for six months?”
“That’s really what you think?” She crosses her arms over her chest and leans a thin hip against my island. “There’s something bigger going on here?”
“Yes.” I dab at my eyes with an already moist paper towel I find in my hand.
“Then why didn’t you call me? There’s no shame in Micah’s being in an accident.”
“I’m not ashamed. Something’s happened to my husband! Why would I be ashamed of that?”
“If that’s really what you think, you would’ve called me.” She pushes away from the island. “Where do you keep the glasses?”
I frown, which intensifies my constant headache.
Claudette is already opening doors in search of what she’s looking for. “Here we go!” She helps herself to ice and filtered water, filling two glasses. One she slides across the countertop to me; the other she sips herself.
“Look, honey.” She leans in closer. “I know we’re different people. But I’m the only friend you’ve got right now. Micah was your everything, right? Your lover, your partner, your best friend. You didn’t need anyone else. He was it.”
I nod and finally take a sip of water. It’s true. Since we found each other, Micah and I have been inseparable. We didn’t really have friends, so much as casual acquaintances we’d see occasionally, whenever we felt the need to prove to the world that we were capable of interacting.
“I’m going to go downstairs to the wine cellar and pull a dusty old bottle off the shelf, and you and I are going to toast to our strength, and—”
“I can’t drink.”
“And then you’re going to eat, take a hot shower, and start thinking rationally. Toss Elizabella in the tub and change her clothes, for Chrissake. She needs a sense of structure right now. Pull yourself together.”
A million words stir in my brain, and my tongue fights to form even a fraction of them. Nothing’s right. Micah’s gone. My world is spinning out of control, and it’s not because I’m being irrational.
Or is it?
As if she hears the question in my mind, Claudette sighs. “I never wanted to tell you this—how do you make accusations like this?—but you’ve been blind, Veronica. I’ve seen the signs. Half the neighborhood has seen him walking the streets in the middle of the night.”
An icy sensation rushes through me. I think of the figure I saw on the green the night Micah left. The one with the lit cigarette. Someone walking the course, I’d thought. Someone who’s being dishonest with his wife. Watching me in the window.
“He’s always on the phone.” Claudette is at the stairs that lead to the basement. With a toss of her head, she beckons me to join her in the wine cellar.
I stay planted.
“Now tell me. Why would he be on the phone at that hour? And who do you think he’s talking to? I overheard the name Gabrielle.”
I flinch. The name is a specific detail. It lends credence to Claudette’s theory.
She probes further: “Do you know a Gabrielle?”
I want nothing more than to scream at her to leave me alone. “You’re mistaken. It wasn’t Micah.” But I don’t sound convincing. I gravitate toward the basement stairs and, against my better judgment, follow her.
“I’d tell you to check the phone records, but you might not find anything. Brad had a second phone when he was screwing around. Men are very good at this—smart men, anyway—and they know how to cover their tracks. And a man like Micah? Traveling for his job? I’m sure it’s only made things easier for him. He wants to go see the tramp? Wants to spend the night with her? All he has to do is conjure some sort of business trip.”
I might throw up. Could he? Would he?
“I tell you”—Claudette raises a finger to illustrate she’s about to make a point—“the cell phone has made serial cheating possible. Our mothers didn’t find themselves in this position. And why? Because the little sluts had to call on the landline, and it was over with the first ring.”
By now, we’re in the wine cellar, which is more of a showcase, complete with a tasting table and carved moldings, than the hole in the wall its name suggests. A floor-to-ceiling wine rack graces the far wall for reds, and a full-size wine cooler for whites is built into a walk-behind bar. Leaded glass panes adorn the cabinetry doors, and when the light hits the glass, a spray of color splashes the wall.
I pause, feeling as if I’m back in Fourth Presbyterian, staring at the stained glass raining colors down on my mother’s casket. Never had I felt as alone as I did in that minute, and the feeling revisits me now, pulsing in my veins with every heartbeat.
And it’s happening again. The clouds of despair gather over my head.
My feet pad over the uneven, bricked floor to the wine rack, where I select a bottle of pinot noir.
“Oh. Red?” Claudette pauses on her way behind the bar, but after a second, she reaches for the door of the wine cooler.
I step between her and the appliance.
She blinks at me—“White really works better with poultry”—and reaches for it a second time.
Again, I interfere. “Are you joining me or not?”
I may have let her take charge of my kitchen the moment she set foot in it, but I’m not about to let her dictate the wine I drink, too. And I just might serve prepackaged snacks to her children to prove a point. Oreos maybe. Without another word, I turn out of the cellar and make my way upstairs.
She’s right that white pairs better with chicken, but I haven’t had a drink in years. If I’m going to drink, I’m going to sip on whatever I damn well please, whether it brings out the flavor of the food or not.
She’s right about something else, too: Micah has opportunities to have an affair, and he’s smart enough to pull it off.
Chapter 10
November 15