“Please stay in the car,” the policeman said, returning to his vehicle and feeding her information to headquarters. “I’m afraid this is going to cost you,” he announced upon his return, handing back her license and registration along with a speeding ticket for three hundred dollars. “Mind telling me why you were in such a hurry?”
I was rushing to confront my ex-husband about his affair with the wife of his former business associate, a woman who was supposedly helping us celebrate our tenth anniversary when, all the while, she was actually fucking my husband. In fact, she was fucking him when he was supposed to be checking on our children, possibly even mounting him at the very moment that our youngest child was being lifted from her crib and spirited away. And I was in such a damn hurry because too much time has already been wasted as a result of his lies, lies he told me, lies he told the police, lies he’s been telling the world for fifteen fucking years. “Just taking a drive,” she said instead.
The officer sighed. “Well, slow down. You don’t want to kill someone.” Did you murder your child?
Caroline tossed the ticket, along with her license and registration, into her purse. She would return the license and registration to their proper compartments in her wallet when her hands stopped shaking. “Thank you,” she told the policeman when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He stepped back and she threw the car into drive and pulled back onto the road, watching the officer in her rearview mirror as he returned to his vehicle. Had he known who she was or was his scowl indiscriminate, the one he used on all reckless drivers?
“Damn you, Hunter Shipley,” she said as she pressed down on the accelerator, careful to keep within the posted speed limit as she continued toward Hunter’s new home. “This is all your fault. I should give you the fucking ticket.”
Torrey Pines Road twisted into Torrey Pines Drive, its magnificent mini-mansions overlooking the ocean. It had always been Hunter’s dream to own property here, in what the residents of La Jolla referred to as the “Jewel” of San Diego. And now, due to a combination of hard work and a rich young wife, here he was. Some dreams do come true, she thought ruefully, pulling her car into the driveway of the wood-and-glass, ultra-modern two-story home and shutting off the engine. “Damn you, Hunter,” she whispered as she got out of the car, repeating the words silently as she hurried up the stone walkway to the massive oak front door.
She rang the bell, then banged on it with the tail of its bronze dolphin knocker. “Hurry up, you miserable son of a bitch.”
The thought suddenly occurred to her that he might not be home. It was the weekend, after all. Maybe he and Diana had taken their two young children for a stroll along the beach, or a drive up the coast. Maybe she’d sped all this way, incurring a three-hundred-dollar ticket, for absolutely nothing.
The door opened. A young woman with flawless skin, long blond hair, and a baby on one slender hip stood before her, blue eyes wide with alarm. “Caroline?”
“Diana?” Caroline had actually never met the woman who was Hunter’s second wife. She’d seen pictures of her, heard Michelle casually extol her beauty, but nothing had prepared her for how lovely the young woman actually was. Like a little porcelain doll, she thought, feeling fleshy and oafish in her presence. In comparison, the baby in her arms was more Cabbage Patch doll than china, red-faced and wrinkly, although Caroline could see traces of Hunter, traces of Samantha, in her huge, almond-shaped eyes. She turned away, fighting the urge to grab the child from her mother’s arms and run.
“Is something wrong?”
“Where’s Hunter?”
“Has something happened to Michelle?” Diana’s soft voice resonated with concern.
“Michelle’s fine. I need to speak to Hunter.”
“What’s going on?” her ex-husband called from somewhere inside the house.
“Caroline’s here to see you,” Diana called back. “Come in,” she told Caroline, ushering her inside and closing the front door behind her.
“I need to talk to you, you son of a bitch,” Caroline yelled in his general direction. Her eyes swept across the huge circular front hall and up the winding staircase to where Hunter stood, looking down on them from the second-floor landing.
Within seconds he was at her side. “What the hell is going on? What are you doing here? Is Michelle…?”
“You were fucking Rain, you miserable son of a bitch?” she exploded as he took a step back. The baby in Diana’s arms began to whimper.
“Whoa. Hold on a minute. Lower your voice.”
“Don’t tell me to lower my voice…”
“Take the baby upstairs,” he directed his wife, who complied immediately and without question. “Calm down,” he said to Caroline.
“I will not calm down.”
“Then you’ll have to leave.”
“Oh, really? You gonna throw me out? You gonna call the cops? You really want the world to know you were fucking another man’s wife while someone was making off with your child?”