*
Last night I thought about calling Evan. It was near midnight, and I was driving down the empty roads in our neighborhood, killing time, the changing colors of the stoplights cascading and reflecting like a beat on the wet surface of the pavement. I pulled over, the car idling askew in a parking lot while I dialed his number. My pulse skittered. I wanted so badly to hear his voice. My finger was hovering over the button when my mind flashed to him, two hundred miles south in New York, his phone vibrating on the surface of his desk or on some bar. Lifting it to check the caller and grimacing at the sight of my name, silencing it without a second thought.
What could I say? What could I ever say that would explain what I had done? I switched off my phone and turned back toward home.
*
I read the article on my computer through blurring vision. What stood out the most was the byline at the top of the story. Adam McCard.
It was so obvious. I was so stupid. Through confidential sources within the company. Everything I’d chosen to ignore or dismiss or rationalize through the fall—every sign had been pointing to this outcome. Adam had been playing me all along.
I called Adam over and over. It rang before going to voice mail, then eventually it went straight to voice mail. Why bother answering? He knew exactly why I was calling. And I had served my purpose. I sent him a string of texts, my hands shaking. Call me back. WTF?? What the hell is this? I felt a hot bellow of anger at him, but especially at myself. I had done this. This was my fault.
I stared at my phone from across the room, wanting to smash it into a hundred pieces. I couldn’t think straight. I needed to go somewhere, out, away. In my rush to leave, grabbing a raincoat and enough money to get myself a drink, I left my phone sitting on the coffee table. I realized my error belatedly, in a bar five blocks from home, halfway through my first drink. But I wonder now if I did it on purpose. Evan would have seen the article, would be searching for an explanation, wondering who the betrayer was. He deserved an answer. Maybe I wanted to give Evan the final pleasure of catching me in the act, and myself the punishment of finally being caught.
*
Yesterday Elizabeth waved good-bye through the open window of the taxi that was taking her to the station, for her train to New York. She insisted on taking a taxi, saying she was too old for a big scene at the train station. I was walking back up the stairs to the front porch when my phone rang.
I could picture Abby on the other end, taking a break from her usual Sunday run around the reservoir, hair pulled back in a ponytail, dodging strollers and dogs. I sank into the wicker chair that my parents’ interior designer had artfully placed in the corner of the porch, where it caught the summer breeze and a view of the blooming hydrangea. The yard was brilliantly green. Abby had only a few weeks of teaching left in the school year, then a summer of freedom. She and Jake, who had finally quit his job, were planning a trip to Spain, maybe Morocco, maybe Greece—a wandering months-long itinerary.
Abby cleared her throat. “I have to tell you something.”
I wondered for a flash if she and Jake were moving in together. I never would have predicted that she’d wind up with a preppy finance guy, but they just clicked. The rule book, as far as I could tell, had been thrown out the window. She was happy, and I was happy for her. I had decided, some months earlier, to bury the secret of me and Jake somewhere deep and unfindable. It was something I was glad to let go of.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Jake’s parents are getting a divorce.”
I wasn’t surprised. Perhaps a little that I was hearing this from her—surely my parents had known?—but the Fletchers hadn’t seemed happy for a long time.
“Oh, Abby, I’m sorry. That sucks. How’s Jake doing?”
“He’s okay. But that’s not really—it’s not just the divorce. It’s—well. Dot found out Henry has been cheating on her.”
Of course. He and Eleanor weren’t exactly subtle.
“What? Really? That’s…that’s horrible.”
“With your old coworker, actually. Eleanor. I guess it had been going on for a while. Apparently Dot always had her suspicions. There’s been a whole string of women from the foundation who Henry’s slept with.”
“That’s awful.”
Abby was silent on her end. I could hear honking and traffic in the background, a barking dog, a faraway siren. The sounds of the city.
“You there?” I said.
“Okay, Jules, this is going to sound really weird. But I feel like I have to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“Promise you’ll stay calm, okay? Deep breaths.”