Susan had never loved him more.
He looked at her and winked. “They’re scared shitless,” he said.
Susan thought his face flushed with pride.
But it might have just been the whiskey.
CHAPTER
3
Archie stood at his front door, his keys in his hands. In the year and a half he and Debbie had been separated she’d never asked for the house key, and he’d never offered it. It had stayed on his key ring the whole time, a constant reminder of what he’d lost. He had been a mess when she had asked him to leave. He had only been out of the hospital a couple of months, and he was still in the blackest dregs of his recovery. He didn’t blame her. He had forced her into it. It was easier to be alone.
He pulled the brass pillbox out of his pocket, opened it, and extracted three white oval pills. He held them for a moment before he put them in his mouth, enjoying the familiar bitter taste before swallowing them. Then he pushed the key into the lock and pushed open the big door. The house was a low-slung, mid-century ranch that had been restored by the previous owners. Debbie had been pregnant with Sara when they bought it. It was far above his pay rate, but Debbie had just been hired as a designer at Nike, so they had splurged.
Debbie had left a lamp on, and it threw a warm half-circle of light across the dark hallway. Archie slipped his muddy shoes off at the door and walked over to the hall table and dropped his keys next to the lamp. A photograph of him and Debbie and the kids sat propped on the table in a silver frame. He looked happy, but he couldn’t remember when or where it had been taken.
He felt Debbie behind him a moment before her arms moved around his waist.
“Hi,” he said.
She leaned her cheek against his shoulder blade and held him. “Was it bad?”
“I’ve seen worse.” That hung in the air for a minute. Then Archie turned around and wrapped his arms around her. Debbie’s short brown hair was tousled and she was wearing a black tank top and red cotton underpants. Her body was toned and strong in his arms. It was a body he knew as well as his own. “Kids okay?” he asked.
She leaned in and kissed him lightly on the neck below his jawbone. “They’ve been asleep for hours,” she said.
Archie lifted a hand to Debbie’s cheek and looked at her face, kind and open, strong cheekbones, a long fine nose, a blush of freckles. And then, a flash of blond, the smell of lilacs, and there she was: Gretchen Lowell. Always at the periphery of his consciousness. Archie winced.
He could feel Debbie’s body tense under his hands.
“Is it her?” she asked.
He cleared his throat and shook the image from his head. His hand fell away from her cheek. “I should get some sleep.” He wanted to get the pills out of his pocket again, to take just one more, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Debbie. It hurt her too much.
“Is it hard not seeing her?” Debbie asked.
Archie wondered sometimes how much Debbie knew about his relationship with Gretchen. Debbie knew that Gretchen haunted him. She might have even used the word “obsessed.” But he didn’t think Debbie knew how far he had crossed the line.
“We said we wouldn’t talk about this,” Archie said gently.
Debbie turned Archie around to face the mirror that hung on the wall behind the table. “Look,” she said, and she slipped her hands under his shirttails and lifted his shirt up above his nipples and held it there. Archie hesitated and then looked at their reflection. His ex-wife was pressed beside him, her head resting against his shoulder, dark eyes shining. His face looked creased, half cast in the shadow thrown by the lamp, his long nose and lopsided mouth, thick hair and sad eyes, each a physical remnant of an ancestor, black Irish, Croatian, Jewish. He allowed himself a wry smile. Christ. Even his genotype was tragic.