“Honey, I’m here!” she called, out of breath. “I’m home.”
For a moment, she forgot and expected the Captain to stumble out with his sweet hoarse bark. Poor doggy. They’d boxed up his dishes and toys and put them on a shelf in the garage, as she couldn’t bring herself to donate them yet. The house seemed so quiet now. Even though she wished Dani had handled things differently with the Captain, Rachel was relieved she hadn’t had to make the call to put him down. Almost seventeen years she’d had him, bless his heart. Such a little guy, but he’d filled up the emptiness. Maud had been the one to name him. Well, hello, Captain Barks-a-Lot, she’d said, giving him a pat. He hopped right in her lap.
Maud. Rachel had called and left a message, and then got caught up in the production, forgetting to try again. Jesus, what was wrong with her? When was she going to get her head on straight?
“Hugh! I’m here.” No answer. “Sweetheart, I forgot the olives,” she said. “Hugh?”
He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t in the bedrooms, or the garage, though his car was there, or up in the attic, or on the deck. The house smelled of garlic and onions, and the oven was on. She peered in. Veggie lasagna. Her favorite. Her stomach growled—what had she eaten today? O hell-kite, she couldn’t recall. She washed her hands and looked around for a note. Nothing.
She sat down at the dining table, which was set for two with unlit candles, a bottle of chilled white. “Hugh!” she yelled, irritated, half expecting him to pop out from a hiding place and surprise her. But he didn’t. He wasn’t there.
Well, didn’t that beat the band. She poured herself a glass of wine. He must have forgotten something at the store. He wouldn’t leave. She was only ten—well, fifteen—minutes late. She remembered his face at Dr. Steve’s, plaintive, lip quivering, and what was wrong with her that she felt not sympathy but irritation? She was busy. Staging a play took time. Not to mention she had classes to prep, and don’t get her started on committee work. She was in charge of new faculty orientation this year, and she was already behind. Thank god they had only two new faculty members, Laura Drennan in history and Wyatt What’s-His-Face in English. God, Laura Drennan. What a thing to have happened. New in town, and you find a body. Anyway, that was how it worked at the Syc, too much to do, not enough time to do it. At Dr. Steve’s, she had promised Hugh she would be more conscientious. Yes, she would make a plan to retire in the next few years—yes, it was time, yes, she wanted to spend time with him, yes, yes, yes. But now here she was, two days later, back to her old habits. What could she say? They were old habits for a reason.
She stared around the dining room, feeling disoriented. When she was in the theater, she tended to forget everything but the production—she was engrossed in making a story come to life onstage, guiding and correcting students, worrying about lighting and lines and timing. This demanded close observation, her full attention, and it was hard to return to this world from that one. When Dani was little, Rachel would come home and sit with a glass of wine at the kitchen table. Dani would say, “Mama, are you back yet?” And Adam would say, “Give her a minute, she’s right around the corner.” They turned it into a game, teasing her: She’s on the front lawn! No, no, she’s on the front porch! Now she’s at the front door! And then she would shout “Boo!” and grab Dani, who would shriek with delight. And Adam—he would smile. How he smiled at her then. She took a long sip of wine.
She got up and pulled the recycle bin from under the sink, digging out yesterday’s newspaper. Dani had left a message, telling her to read it, but she hadn’t. And then Iris and Esther had called, so she hadn’t needed to. She already knew the news. When Rachel got home, she’d picked up the paper and folded it, sticking it down beneath the milk jug and soup cans.
Now she opened it and looked at the article. At that girl’s photograph. Maud’s girl. Dani’s erstwhile best friend. As she read, her breath caught and her cheeks burned. In the aftermath of that Thanksgiving dinner, Rachel had wanted hell to rain down on the two of them. She’d wanted to go Greek tragedy on his ass. She’d wanted to spit blood from her eyes like a horned toad. She’d wanted to watch the two of them implode, watch that young, fresh-faced girl reject him, hear the crack and squish of his betrayer’s heart. She wanted to see his face then, for him to know what it was to be left behind.
But that changed when Maud’s girl went missing. Rachel wouldn’t speak with Adam, and Dani refused to talk about it, but oddly enough Rachel began to speak with Maud. Before Rachel met and married Hugh, she’d be sitting in her house, which once had been filled with her child and husband and now was a shell of itself, and she’d thought, if she was feeling this bad when Dani still lived down the street, what must Maud be feeling? And so out of the blue, she swung by to see her. They’d shared a number of comforting afternoon and evenings, drinking coffee and wine and swapping stories about their kids. About their ex-husbands. How she never would have believed it of him, never saw it coming, never in a million years. But over time, she saw more: how they buried themselves in work, away from each other, her at the theater, him in the attic. Her career fine, his stalled, a stew of resentment simmering on each side. The sudden death of his estranged mother, his increasing distance. It wasn’t surprising he’d looked elsewhere. What she couldn’t get past was who he’d turned to. A child. A girl their daughter’s age.
As she stared down now at Jess’s picture, her eyes so blurred she could hardly see the photo, Rachel pictured Maud sitting on her sofa, staring out her large front window with its view of the driveway and street, where she so often sat, waiting. She set down the article, choking off a sob. She never wanted that, even in her darkest hour.