He checked what time sunset would be and figured it would take a while for the light to fade completely. The heater was doing its job, but his hands were still so cold. When it became too dark for him to read the credit card receipts, he found a flashlight. He knew he’d never fall asleep on the floor, not considering all the mouse traps he pulled from under the sink and behind the garbage, the squeals of the live ones giving him chills. So he pushed three chairs together so that he could sit up and have his legs supported when he stretched them across.
Up until Patrick and Siobhán’s visit to the bar on Friday, up until the moment they told him what they knew, it felt to him that as long as no one addressed whatever was happening, as long as they didn’t say the actual words, then it could go on the way it was forever, sort of stalled between spaces, like a hallway between rooms. Were they separated now? The word carried weight, had legal implications, so he’d never used it. But other people had. “You’ve been separated for months now,” his mother said not long ago, and he got unreasonably mad at her, as if she were forcing whatever was happening between him and Jess into a category where they didn’t fit.
He picked up his phone and searched the name Neil Bratton and got seven thousand results. The one that was relevant to him was at the bottom of the first page. There wasn’t much. Two professional photos. Senior partner. The website said his practice focused on civil litigation, government investigations, employer responsibility, and white-collar criminal matters. Impressive, Malcolm thought, though the words sort of washed over him, and then he thought about how smart Neil must be. Jess probably talked with him about things she could never talk to Malcolm about, things he couldn’t even guess because he didn’t know about them. He didn’t like the empty feeling that left him with. So he closed his eyes, pictured a rooftop full of customers, a three-piece band, a starry sky, people laughing, sitting close. He imagined himself at the center, surveying his small kingdom. How great it would be if he could make it happen, somehow.
He did quick calculations in his head, and when he didn’t like the answers, he searched Peru. Temperature highs and lows. The government. The price of real estate. His phone was at five percent. Four percent. He searched for a place like he remembered Tripp talking about. He searched for places where the water running off the Andes was so cold it would numb a person’s hand if he reached down to feel it flow.
seven
Azalea Estates, where Neil lived, was considered the posh section of Gillam, but to Jess it had no personality. The houses were different from one another but perfectly so, as if there’d been three models to choose from when the development was being planned and the builder made sure to never put two of the same next to each other. Stone, brick, shingle, repeat. Tan, gray, blue, repeat. Over in her neighborhood, the one she grew up in and the one where she and Malcolm bought a house and imagined they’d raise a family, every house was different because each generation that lived there tacked on an extension, or added a sunporch, or converted a garage to a bedroom. The Dunleavys recently painted their house a bold lilac color, the shutters eggplant, the front door and mailbox a pale pink. For weeks, cars slowed as they passed. Neighbors restrained dogs on leashes as they considered whether a purple house was cheerful or bizarre. Down the shore maybe, but here in Gillam? There was a broken-down RV in the Dunleavys’ potholed driveway and two rusted quads sitting on the lawn for so many years that most of the neighbors had stopped seeing them, until against a different backdrop they were suddenly obvious again. “A train wreck,” Malcolm called it when the paint job was complete. But Jess said at least the whole scene told you something about who they were.
There were no strip malls in Neil’s neighborhood. There were no pizza places or ice cream shops kids could walk to unless they crossed the four-lane parkway that at one time marked the boundary of Gillam, and then walked another mile into Gillam proper. The town border moved when Jess was in law school, something to do with the local utility, so a corner of Riverside became Gillam overnight. “Technically, Gillam,” people said. “But.” Even in March, when the rest of town was scalded with salt and coated in grit, the spruce trees and boxwoods over in Azalea Estates looked as welcoming as a Christmas movie.
She hadn’t set foot in Gillam in over four months on the day she left Cobie’s to stay at Neil’s for the first time. He drove his car to the city that morning instead of taking the train, just so he could pick her up after work. She brought her bag to the office, and all day she considered canceling. It was happening too fast, and she wasn’t ready. She’d lost control of the situation and needed to get it back. She could say something came up. She could say that Cobie and Astrid needed her to babysit. They’d been tense lately—disagreeing on everything from how to break down a box for recycling to where they should go on vacation—and Jess felt sure her presence was causing the strain, though Cobie insisted having her there had made things better, gave her and Astrid something to focus on aside from their kids and each other. Jess had offered to watch the boys for a few days if they wanted to get away somewhere together. “Go for a week!” she said. “Why not take advantage of me being there?” Astrid had looked at Cobie like she wanted Cobie to say yes, and Jess’s heart broke for her.
“It’s a bad time at work,” Cobie said, and all the hope on Astrid’s face disappeared in one instant. She didn’t say a word. She just loaded lunch boxes into backpacks and said she was taking the dog for a walk.
“You’re not always that nice to her,” Jess said one night when she and Cobie were alone, sipping wine on the terrace. The boys were inside playing Minecraft.
“Oh!” Cobie laughed. “You’re doling out relationship advice?”
“I’m just saying,” Jess said. “She’s a good one. Don’t forget.”
“Yours is a good one, too,” Cobie said. “Malcolm I mean,” she added, with a droll expression on her face.
“You’ve never said that before. Not once in all these years.”
“I’m saying it now.” Cobie shrugged. “I don’t like this new guy.”
“You’ve never even met Neil.”
“I don’t need to meet him to know. And another thing—”
“Oh boy.”
“It’s not one or the other. You know? There’s a third choice. You can just be alone for a while.”
She could say to Neil that she simply could not go to Gillam. That something in her had folded since he told Patrick what was going on. But he arrived at her building ten minutes earlier than planned and told her to hurry because he was in a bus lane. She jumped into his car so fast that she blinked and next thing they were ticking off miles along the West Side Highway. She thought of the mums she’d planted back in October. She wondered if Malcolm had gotten rid of them when they shriveled and went brown, or if they were still sitting on the front step, their pots full of damp leaves.
Once in Gillam, the lights of a car approaching from a side street lit up the interior of Neil’s, and she dipped her head, hoped she hadn’t been recognized. A moment later, they waited at the ludicrously long light on Dearborn while a car of the exact make and model as her mother’s waited on the other side. She arranged her hair in front of her face and asked Neil to please tell her if the plate of that red Camry started with HGX. It did not.
“Jess,” Neil said.
“I know,” she said.
“What am I supposed to do? You’ve barely said a word since Manhattan.”
“Honestly, maybe drop me at the train.”
He went to pull over, not at the train but so he could look at her. The streetlamps grew brighter as dusk settled in. She might as well have been onstage. She slid down in her seat.
“This is so dumb.”
“I know.”
“I gave the kids a talk. Even Ethan.” Ethan was only two. Jess was especially looking forward to spending time with him. Neil said Ethan seemed to miss his mother most at night, which was a little baffling. They’d split when he was an infant, and the kids were only with her two weekends a month.
“I’m sorry.”