“Not really.”
The place is almost empty, so we take a table in the corner with a hazy view out over the water. She orders the fish and chips, and a Diet Coke. I get a BLT and a beer. When the drinks arrive, I gulp half of mine down in one sip.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” she says. “Don’t leave anything out.”
But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? All the things I’ve left out.
I’m still trying to figure out how to tell her, mentally editing and revising my story. I’m not sure how I got to this point; I wish I had just told her everything from the beginning. Of course, all of my small decisions made perfect sense in a vacuum, but now, in hindsight, the parts don’t entirely add up.
I tell her about how Chuck and I got separated after we arrived at Fernley. “They cuffed him and took him to a different building.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.” I tell her about my luxurious accommodations.
“So you really weren’t in trouble, then?” She sounds surprised.
The waitress brings our plates, and Alice digs into her fish and chips. Even though I’m still hungry, I pick at my food. “It’s complicated.”
“Were you or weren’t you?”
“They wanted to ask me about JoAnne.”
Alice’s relaxed demeanor changes instantly. I can see anxiety forming; her eyes change; that telltale worry line between her brows deepens. As I mentioned, Alice’s issues all fall into that complicated, dark area where insecurity, jealousy, and suspicion collide. When we first met, it would often come on swiftly and catch me off guard. It was a bad mixture. I would get angry or defensive, and my defensiveness would only heighten her suspicion. I told myself it was something we could get past once we were engaged, once she was certain of my love for her, my commitment. And since the engagement, and certainly the marriage, her episodes of jealousy have been less frequent. And when they do happen, I’ve been more intuitive. Usually, I see them coming, and I react in a way that deescalates the situation. Here, though, I’m not sure how to proceed.
“JoAnne from the dorm?” she says, setting her fork down beside her plate.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” I can sense her doing a million calculations in her head. The jealous Alice is so opposite from the regular, quirky, independent Alice. Even though I know both sides of her now, the transformation is always jarring. “The mousy one who cornered you at Draeger’s?”
I nod.
“Why would they ask you about her?” She seems baffled. As I mentioned, JoAnne isn’t the kind of person who stands out. Not the kind of person a wife would necessarily notice, or worry about.
“Later, at the second party, I talked to her again. She was obviously stressed about something. She was worried Neil or someone would see us talking, so I asked if we could talk later, somewhere else. I wanted to find a way out of The Pact for both of us. She finally agreed to meet me at the Hillsdale mall.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She was paranoid. She asked me not to bring you. She worried that if Neil found out that we were talking about The Pact, we’d all be in deep shit. She’d already spent time at Fernley; she didn’t want to go back. And I remembered that she had bruises on her legs at the party…She seemed so disturbed. Terrified. Why would I drag you into that?”
Alice pushes away from the table and folds her arms. “After you first introduced us, I asked if you’d slept with her. You said no. Was that the truth?”
I should have prepared an answer to this question. But really, there’s no way to make it look like I wasn’t hiding something from her. “We might have dated a little. Back in college. It didn’t work out, so after a few months we went back to just being friends.”
“A few months? So you lied to me. Deliberately.”
“I was so surprised to see her that night at the first party. It was all so out of context—”
“Sex is rarely out of context.” Alice is angry now, tears rolling down her face. And yes, I’ll admit it: Her tears make me angry.
“It was seventeen years ago, Alice! It was irrelevant.” I look up and realize that our server is watching. We shouldn’t even be talking here. We shouldn’t say anything in public. I lower my voice. “What were you doing seventeen years ago? Who were you sleeping with?”
As soon as I’ve said it, I regret it.
“First of all, you know exactly where I was and what I was doing, because I’ve told you. This is not about what happened seventeen years ago; I don’t give a shit about that. It’s about what happened in the past few weeks. It’s about you lying to me now, in the present.” Alice falls silent, and I can see that something has occurred to her. “That’s why Dave kept mentioning you and the Hillsdale mall.” She shakes her head. “When I told you about it, you didn’t say a word. You intentionally kept me in the dark.”
Something flickers in Alice’s eyes I’ve never seen before: disappointment.
“Look, I’m sorry. But I was desperate to see if there was a way out. And I knew that if I told you, you’d want to go, and it would be even more risky. You’d just gotten back from Fernley. I was trying to protect you.” When I hear the words, I realize how feeble they sound.
“Don’t you think that should have been my decision? Aren’t we supposed to be in this together?”
“Listen, when I saw JoAnne at the mall, she told me some things that scared me. She said that there was a couple in The Pact before us—Eli and Elaine. Just weeks before we joined, they disappeared. Their car was found at Stinson Beach, and they haven’t been seen since. JoAnne is certain they were murdered. By The Pact.”
Doubt passes over Alice’s face. “I’ll admit their tactics are extreme, but murder is a little far-fetched, don’t you think? Seriously.”
“Hear me out. She said the one thing no one ever mentions is that The Pact has an alarmingly high rate of marriages ending in early death.”
Alice is shaking her head.
“What about Dave?” I say. “He and Kerri were both married to other people when they joined the Pact.”
“Coincidence. You can’t base a huge conspiracy theory on one coincidence.”
“Here’s the important thing. JoAnne says we have to find a way to get off their radar. She thinks you’re in danger. She thinks they like you, but they feel you need to be corralled, controlled. She said they don’t know what to make of me.”
“Did you meet her again after that?” Alice has unfolded her arms and is facing me directly. I imagine that this is something she does during her more difficult depositions. It makes me uncomfortable.
“She agreed to meet me in the same spot three weeks later, but she didn’t show. When I left, I realized I was being followed.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?” Alice asks.