The Last September: A Novel

“It’s over,” he said. “I swear,” he added, his tone supplicating enough that I understood he meant him and Deirdre rather than our marriage.

“Over,” I said. “Over?” The worst word I’d ever heard. Absolute confirmation. There was something between Deirdre and Charlie, enough under way that now it could be declared over. While I had sunk all my inheritance into the restaurant that paid her salary. While I had, here in my arms, a baby, so that I couldn’t even yell.

“Brett,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Shut up.” If I hadn’t been holding Sarah, I would have put my hands over my ears. I would have screamed. As it was, my voice came out low and certain. “You need to leave.”

“Leave? Brett. Come on. I love you.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t. You never did.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Go,” I said. “And don’t come back. You can stay with her. You can move in with her.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t want to. Even if you never talk to me again, that wouldn’t happen.”

“That’s lovely,” I said. “That’s beautiful, Charlie.”

“I love you,” he said. “We’re a family.”

“How nice of you to remember.”

I looked down at Sarah, Charlie’s little replica. How could I even know which one of us he wanted to stay for? Charlie stood there, his face begging me to be reasonable. Reasonable! I could see the clock from where I sat. Dinner service would be starting. And what did it matter, anything he said? Despite every stupid thing I’d done since the day I’d met him, I was smart enough to know that someone who’d cheat on me would lie to me, too.

“Charlie,” I said. “Just go. Go cook. And don’t come back here. For once in your life, be a gentleman. Don’t make me leave my home with a baby. Find another place to stay.”

He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m leaving now, but I’m coming back. We’ll talk about this. It’ll be okay.”

I closed my eyes, felt his lips on my forehead. If I let myself cry he would stay, and I needed him to go. It didn’t escape me how soon he must have followed me out of the restaurant, prioritizing my meltdown over Deirdre’s, and I knew how pathetic it was to find comfort in that. Charlie would be coming back, and weak-minded, lovesick girl that I’d always been, I was in danger of listening to whatever he said.

THE HOUSE WHERE I’D grown up had been sold and was now inhabited by strangers, the locks changed, my mother’s concerned face existing—watching—only from memory. So I drove to the only other place I owned a key for, the only other place I knew how to get to without a map. I didn’t take anything with me other than a few days’ worth of clothes and a bag of diapers. As I drove toward the shore, the autumn light and leaves bowing through the windshield, betrayal thrummed through my body like a drug. I wondered if Deirdre would stay at the restaurant to work her shift. How had my gift, the pedicure, rearranged itself in Deirdre’s mind, during the walk between the podium and the kitchen? Maybe by the time she got to Charlie she had turned it into a calculated move, an attempt to flush them out. Maybe in the morning she would head over to the Amherst Day Spa and help herself to that peppermint pedicure, without remorse, even with a sense of deserving: the same way she’d helped herself to my husband.

When I got to the Moss house, Eli’s car was parked in the driveway and Lightfoot sat on the lawn, panting. It was dark by then, but the front lights had all been left on. The dog sat just within the bright circle cast on the grass. She looked thin, even for her breed, and agitated. I checked the rearview mirror. Sarah was still tiny enough to need a backward car seat, but even if I hadn’t had a baby mirror facing her, I would have known she was sleeping from the silence. I got out of the car and walked toward the dog, who stood up, very still, an intense look of assessment on her pointy little face, as if she’d been waiting for someone to help and couldn’t decide if I were a likely prospect.