She fed them. They sat to dinner like a family, big bowls of stew and fresh bread from the bakery. She had a glass of wine, felt herself go loose the way she did when Paul was around. Everyone was more relaxed when Paul was at the table, even Chad. It was like his stepbrother brought out everything that was good about him. And there was so much; there really was.
After dinner, Zoey had to go do her homework and Paul looked at his phone.
“He wants me to meet him in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Burgers and Brew, just like you said.”
“Should I be worried?” asked Heather.
He waved a hand at her. “Nah,” he said easily. “Just work stuff probably. Maybe he just wants to talk through a case.”
But there was a frown behind his eyes. He reached for her hand, and it lingered there too long. She let it. He seemed about to say something and then didn’t. She heard Zoey’s voice upstairs, on the phone, chattering happy and high pitched. At the sound of it, he got up and started clearing the dishes.
It was just one night. And it was so long ago, a million years ago it seemed. It was a mistake buried under the debris of years. It could have been so easily forgotten—if he’d ever married, had kids of his own—except that he didn’t and it wasn’t. She never forgot it. How could she?
“Leave it,” she said. “I’ll get it.”
He ignored her, helped her load the dishwasher, wipe down the table. She walked him out to his truck.
“I’m glad you came by,” she said.
He looked back up at the house, and then into the sky. Then he snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her close. She glanced back around her to Zoey’s window, which looked out onto the front of the house.
“Don’t.”
“I never stop thinking about you,” he said, his voice thick. Why this night? Was it just because they were never alone without Chad and Zoey?
“Paul,” she said. But she wasn’t resisting him. His thigh against hers, the strength of his arm around her back, her hand on his wide shoulder.
When Chad had been away, some fishing trip she hadn’t wanted him to take, a weekend of drunken stupidity that would leave him wrecked for a week, Paul had come. She’d seen his car pull up, watched him walk up the drive. She’d come out to stand on the porch. Neither of them said a word as they moved inside, locked the door. She dissolved into him, disappeared. He took her on the staircase, then on the landing in front of the bedroom. Later in the bed she shared with Chad. Again, downstairs in the kitchen. His scent, the feel of his lips, the gentle, powerful way he held her, the way he moaned, deep and desperate, as if he’d never known pleasure—God, it stayed with her. She’d never made love like that with Chad. Never once.
The thing was that Heather and Chad were never not going to be together. He was her first everything. They met in high school, were married before they graduated college. He went on to the police academy; she got her master’s in education. Paul was older, already gone to the city while they were still in high school. Paul, Chad’s stepbrother, best friend. To her, he was someone mysterious, just out of reach, like the coywolf she sometimes saw on their property lately. Eventually he became her friend, too, later their best man. When had it changed?
It was Christmas. She and Chad had been married a couple of years, they were trying to have a baby. Had been trying for over a year—and it was starting to become a thing. They were stressed about it (he didn’t really want kids, did he?) and arguing a lot. She was cooking that holiday. Again. For his family and hers, for friends who had been dropping by all day. The house was crowded, overwarm.
Finally, with the walls closing in on her and the sound of the television and everybody talking at once, she went out back and hid behind the shed where Chad snuck his cigarettes (did he think she didn’t know?). She just started crying. It was cold; she was shivering in the thin red cardigan, her breath pluming out with each sob. The sky threatened snow, gray-white above her. Even her feet were cold.
“Hey.” Paul came up behind her. “What’s up?”
She wiped her eyes, embarrassed. “Nothing,” she said. “Just. Everything.”
He held her. That was it. Chad would be talking, talking, talking, trying to help, to comfort, to explain why she shouldn’t be upset. He’d be telling her to relax, to not take so much on, everything didn’t have to be perfect. But Paul didn’t say anything, just let her cry until it passed, his arms tight around her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just—”
She couldn’t go on, and anyway he held up a hand. “That’s what I’m here for.”
His face, angular, icy eyes that were wrinkled with kindness. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
“Let’s go back into the fray.”
On the way back, his arm around her, they bumped into Chad, who had come out looking for her.
“Sneaking out behind the shed with my wife?” he said when he saw them.
“What can I say, brother?” said Paul. “Women just want me. And you’ve got to give the ladies what they want.”
Paul shifted away from her. But Chad wasn’t jealous, not in the least. He was so sure of her, of Paul.
“I hear you, man,” he said, dropping his arm around Heather. “You okay, babe?”
“Just—stressed.”
He squeezed her. “Everything’s perfect. Just relax.”
That was the day when she started thinking about Paul in ways that she shouldn’t. And then that night with Chad off fishing—barely a word spoken between them, just the blessed release of all the tension she’d barely acknowledged. Neither of them ever thought it could be more; there was no discussion about what happened next. There was no torrid affair. Just that one moment in time, separate from the rest of the universe, from who they were outside that moment. Chad’s wife, his best friend and brother. Those people didn’t exist.
Paul left about an hour before the sun came up, kissing her long at the door.
A month later, she was pregnant with Zoey.
? ? ?
“YOU’LL TELL ME,” HEATHER SAID to Paul now. “If there’s something I need to worry about.”
She glanced up at the window to Zoey’s room; the light inside glowed orange.
“I’ll make sure he tells you,” said Paul. “If there is. But I’m sure it’s nothing.”
It was still there, all these years later. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, then pulled away quickly and got in his truck.
twenty
Claudia sat and waited, hearing the horn of the train blowing mournfully in the distance.
I want to come home.
The text had come in from Raven at eleven, just as Claudia had finished her final stubborn attempt to get that goddamn wallpaper down.
I’m on the last train.
She hadn’t tracked Raven all night. When Raven was with Ayers, Claudia never worried. But there she was, her little blue dot floating on a faint purple line marked Erie Lackawanna.
She dialed Ayers but just got voicemail. She hung up and texted him.
What happened?