“We’ll think of something,” I promise her, “we will. We’ll think of something soon,” and my eyes travel to Maisie’s, which are also staring at me, listening to the entire conversation. “Put your thinking cap on, ladies,” I say. “It’s Operation Baby Name,” and at this Maisie giggles, but Clara doesn’t seem so sure. Having a name for the baby would make the experience more real, would bring the unborn child to life.
That night as I tuck Maisie into bed, going through my standard snug as a bug in a rug routine, slipping the edges of the sheet beneath her torso and legs, she sits upright at once, undoing what I’ve just done. “Maisie,” I groan as the sheet gets pulled from under her limbs and kicked to the end of the bed, not realizing yet that her eyes are locked out the bedroom window where the sun is in the slow, painful process of setting. This time of year it’s harder and harder to get Maisie to go to bed because, as she likes to point out, it’s not dark outside, even if the digital clock beside her head reads 7:53 p.m. Lights-out is 7:30. She’s already spent twenty-three minutes procrastinating, and it seems she’s not yet through.
“Daddy!” Maisie yelps, but before I can scold her I see that she looks scared. I rise from the edge of the bed and follow her gaze out the open window, eyes scanning up and down the street, seeing nothing. Nothing important at least. A boy playing basketball two doors down. The Thompsons walking their dog. A squirrel on the bird feeder.
“What is it, Maisie?” I ask as I turn the handle on the blinds and draw the curtains closed. “What did you see?”
“The scumbag, Daddy,” she grumbles. “The scumbag’s outside,” and though there’s a part of me that wants to laugh, there’s a part of me that fills with shame. The scumbag. Theo Hart. Maisie heard Clara and me when we were talking about Theo after work. We have to be far more careful about what we say in front of Maisie. She’s listening. All the time, she’s listening even when spinning dizzy circles around the room, pretending she can’t hear.
I draw the blinds open one more time and look outside. Theo isn’t there. The blinds are closed throughout the Hart home; the house is dark. I turn back to Maisie. First I tell her that she shouldn’t use words like scumbag, and neither should Mommy or me. They’re not nice.
But then I look her in the eye and say sternly, “Secondly, Maisie, you know better than to lie. We just talked about this tonight. Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?” I ask, and she nods her head, mouth open, ready to argue. I see the words forming in her mind: But he was there, she thinks, though I press a finger to her lips and whisper, “Shhh,” before she can say them aloud. He’s not there now. He wasn’t there before.
And even if he was, he lives there. Theo Hart outside is nothing out of the ordinary, unfortunately. Maisie just wanted to try the word scumbag on for size. She wanted to delay bedtime, to get a reaction.
And so I put my poker face on and say that it’s time for bed.
Knowing she has a tendency for dramatics when she’s four, Clara and I better be at the top of our game by the time she turns sixteen, or we’re going to be in trouble.
CLARA
In the parking lot of the police department, I pull up a search engine on my smartphone and type in the woman’s name that the detective has given me, the accuser who filed an Emergency Order of Protection against Nick. The need to know is eating away at me; I can’t wait until I get home. In the back seat Felix fusses, but this time my own urgency and desperation prevail. I search the name the detective has given me. Melinda Grey.
All the usual social media sites load, Facebook and Twitter, the woman’s Pinterest boards. Her profile photo is hardly of herself, but rather a crystal-blue coastline with a palm tree set to the side, Hawaii or Puerto Rico maybe, the Virgin Islands. A woman stands at the center in a bikini top and a sarong, though she’s at such a distance she’s near impossible to see, an afterthought to the palm tree and the sea. Her Tweets are protected; her Facebook page is set to private. Only her Pinterest boards are public, but all I find there is an obsession with chocolate and handmade crafts. The White Pages online list an address on Parkshore, which I scribble quickly onto the back of my hand, but before I can investigate further, my phone rings.
“Hello?” I ask, agitated by the untimely phone call that pulled me away from Melinda Grey, from zooming in on her profile photo to see if I could catch a smidgen of eye color, a snippet of hair. Melinda Grey filed a restraining order against Nick. This woman, with her white bikini top and her splashy sarong, filed a restraining order against my husband. I couldn’t even begin to estimate an age, and I can’t say whether or not she’s pretty, but my mind wonders why. Why did she file a restraining order against Nick? Was he sleeping with her? Were they having an affair?
I think of Nick’s late nights, when he came home from work after Maisie and I were both in bed. Was he not at work at all, but rather with Melinda Grey? Maisie’s words come to me, The bad man is after us, and I have to wonder if Maisie was certain it was a bad man, or if by chance it could have been a bad woman who was after her and Nick. The sunlight was so bright the day of the crash. How likely is it that in the heat of the moment, with the sunlight glaring into her eyes, Maisie saw the driver of the car that pushed her and Nick from the road—if some driver pushed her and Nick from the road?
“Clara,” says a kind voice, pulling me away from my thoughts of Melinda Grey. “It’s Connor,” he says, and I feel a great relief wash over me that for the moment I am not alone. That these questions, these uncertainties, are not all mine to manage. Connor is here.
And so I can’t help myself. I just come out and say it.
“Was Nick having an affair?” I ask, tears already piercing my eyes, and the lack of a response is more than enough to say for certain that he was. Nick was having an affair. Silence lingers in the space between Connor and me for a full thirty seconds or more, and even then all he can muster is an unassertive I don’t know, and I find myself apologizing. “I shouldn’t have asked you that. I shouldn’t have put you in that position,” I say, reminding myself that Connor was Nick’s best friend, not mine. Of course Connor would never betray Nick’s trust.
“Clara,” he says regretfully, but I dismiss him.
“No,” I say. “Please. Forget about it,” as I watch a train of mallard ducks waddle across the police station parking lot and toward a pond on the other side of the road. “Forget I said anything. Forget I asked. What did you call for?” I ask then, remembering it was Connor who called me and not the other way around.
“I wanted to see if you were okay,” he says, and I curtly answer, “I’m fine,” while wiping the tears from my eyes.