He sighs, ties the laces. “I don’t know, haven’t really thought about it. They probably asked some questions at the hospital and were satisfied it was an innocent accident. It doesn’t do us any good to be speculating, does it?”
Blair opens the card and reads Chloe’s message. I love you Xavi. I want to be friends forever. “But if you had to speculate. If you had to guess.”
He rests his forearms on his knees and keeps his face down. A subtle nod as he thinks. “You’re suggesting that Whitney lost her temper with him.”
Blair is quiet. If Aiden was having an affair with Whitney, he’d want to disassociate right about now, when her world is on the brink of chaos. She can’t be trusted to remain discreet, not in her state of crisis. The affair would need to end. Maybe he was rattled by seeing the key. Maybe he’s decided to start protecting himself. And maybe that could work in their family’s favor.
Blair wants him to keep talking, to start a narrative they can build and build until it begins to feel like the truth. They need a different theory than the one involving Chloe. Something for Blair to plant, inconspicuously, delicately, with everyone who will ask. The flood of messages will surely start soon, she’s waiting. She pushes him: “I mean, accidents happen. But it doesn’t really add up. And Jacob wasn’t there, and Louisa would have gone home already. So if he woke up and wouldn’t go back to sleep . . . if he was being difficult with her. Pushing her buttons. Making her angry. She might have just . . . snapped.”
She could mention the smashed cup of coffee in Xavier’s room, but then she’d have to tell him she was over there. She waits to read his reaction, but he keeps his eyes on the floor.
“It’s a pretty serious assumption to make.”
She keeps silent. He looks thoughtful, like he’s trying on an idea. And then:
“I guess you know her better than almost anyone,” he says. He thinks some more. “It’s certainly possible. But if something along those lines did happen that night, Whitney isn’t going to admit it to anyone, that much we know. She’ll lie her way through it.”
Blair’s head pulses as he speaks, the tension growing in her temples. She closes her eyes. He has his own motivation for her to run with this, she can feel it. The implication makes her sick, but this is what she needs. Something they can mention to Rebecca, with concern. And the women at school who want to know more. Inquiring neighbors. “Why do you say that?”
“Look, I don’t want to speak badly about her, especially not right now. But she always puts herself first, doesn’t she? Why would this be any different?” He shrugs. “And if Xavier doesn’t make it, then . . . she’s got nobody to challenge her.”
“Aiden.” It’s unlike him, this cold pointedness. He used to think Whitney could do no wrong. Something has changed. And although she needs this, their disloyalty feels disturbing. She thinks of how lifeless Xavier looked in the hospital bed. The disability he might face if he lives.
“I’m sorry, I know it’s harsh. But you asked. I’d take her version of most things with a grain of salt. That’s all I’m saying.” He bends again and ties the other shoe. He picks up his briefcase. He’s about to walk out the door, when he turns. “Do you really think you should be going to the hospital today? Seems like yesterday was tough on you. Stay home and try to get your mind off this for a bit.”
She can see it in his face. Yesterday he’d urged her to go to Whitney’s side right away, but now he doesn’t want her anywhere near her. He wants her to think Whitney is a liar. A bad person. His cheeks are unusually red. His forehead is damp. She looks down at the vent blowing cool air into the foyer, at the hair raising on her chilled arms. She knows she has to see her again.
48
Mara
The way Blair’s tires peeled away makes Mara wonder if there’s bad news. If she’s going to the hospital, she might be surprised to see who else is there. Although like most things worth knowing about these days, that’s supposed to be none of her business. And those women certainly don’t make it their business to know hers.
She crosses her ankles and folds her arms. She’s chilly on the porch this morning, but she can’t bring herself to get dressed, to brush her teeth, to eat. She hasn’t focused on a thing since yesterday. She wonders how long it will take for them to notice her husband is gone. They didn’t know Albert any better than they know her, but if they did, they’d have thought him as nice a man as everyone else. Hardworking. Asked all the right questions in a conversation. Sixty-two years of marriage, they’d say in disbelief. They’d say that number over and over, trying to grasp how long it would feel; Mara would be surprised if any of them ever finds out for themselves.
Everyone will want to think she was left with her own broken heart the minute his gave out on her kitchen floor.
His cruelty was covert.
People are rarely who they seem.
But sometimes it’s the good ones who do the very worst things.
* * *
? ? ?
Yesterday, as she’d sat on the basement sofa about to fold the last pile of laundry, she’d heard Albert call for her from the kitchen.
“For heaven’s sakes, can he not wait a few minutes?” she’d muttered to herself.
She’d told him twice she was going to do the laundry. She could not walk all the way up the stairs to see what he wanted, and then all the way back down to finish the folding, and then all the way back up again with the basket. He’d have to wait for whatever he needed.
He’d called for her again. Twice. Three times. She’d stopped folding, held his yellowing undershirt in her hands. And then she’d heard something slam into the kitchen table, and then clang off the chair’s metal leg, and then a thud on the floor.
Her heart jumped. She’d sat still and stared at the pile of his clothes. There was another noise, a groan, a moan, and then maybe her name. And then definitely her name. And maybe a mumble of prayer. In her periphery, she’d thought she saw the shape of Marcus, near his old kitchen chair in the corner; Albert had insisted they didn’t need it at the table anymore. Ethereal, like smoke. She’d whipped her head toward the bottom of the basement staircase and listened.
She’d picked up the undershirt from her lap and folded it in half. And then into quarters. She’d heard something stomp against the floor, his foot maybe. She’d placed the shirt in the teetering pile with shaking arms. And then reached for Albert’s navy sweatpants. She’d smoothed them. She’d swallowed. She’d folded them. An ambulance. She would need to call an ambulance. She would fold just one more thing. She would not look for the shape of Marcus again, she wouldn’t let her mind tease her like that.
She’d held up another one of Albert’s undershirts, stained at the armpits, stained at the collar. Her mouth went dry, she couldn’t swallow anymore as she stared at the dingy ribbed cotton. She’d thought about the possibility of this over the years, of what it would feel like. She’d even fantasized. She’d folded the undershirt. Reached for the next. And then the next. And then the next. And then the next.
“I’ll go upstairs now. I will,” she’d whispered eventually, when she was sure the noises had ceased from above. When she was certain it would be too late. Her legs were weak when she stood. She’d put the basket on her hip, and she walked slowly across the basement to the bottom of the stairs. She could have sworn she’d felt Marcus in the room.
* * *
? ? ?
I don’t know what happened, I came up and was shocked to see him there on the floor,” is the lie she told the paramedics. “He has a heart condition.”
When they’d given her a minute alone in the kitchen to say good-bye to him on the stretcher, she’d put her lips right up to his ear, the way Marcus used to do to her before Albert took his whispers away. She’d said the only thing she had wanted to say to him for decades:
“I hate you for how you treated him. I always wished you were the one who was dead.”
49
Blair
She shows her visitor’s pass as she walks by the ward’s reception and down the hall to Xavier’s room. The nurse from yesterday tells her Jacob has just left—he’s gone to spend time with the twins for a couple of hours. She’s more nervous than she’d been on the drive over, when she’d felt determined to figure out what was really going on. All the whispers she so masterfully ignores, they are screaming at her now, and she’d felt a moment of confidence in the car. She did know something. She could trust herself. The key, how Whitney had treated her yesterday, the way Aiden had wanted her convinced that Whitney is a liar.