“What’s there to know?”
“I mean, it’s so mysterious, isn’t it? He’s like—Clint Eastwood in those old westerns, a stranger who just shows up. A great cook, someone who’s traveled a lot. How was he supporting himself before he took the job cooking?”
“I don’t know.” Cath shrugs, but Polly can tell her incuriosity is feigned. She longs to talk about him. She’s been denied that basic female right, the relationship postmortem. Polly doesn’t usually indulge this kind of talk, either. But then—no man has ever left her. She leaves, one way or another.
“I think he has secrets,” she continues. “If I were you, I’d poke around.”
“What’s it to me?”
“Oh, come on. I know you still like him.”
Cath wants to deny it, but can’t. “Yeah, but, it’s like that song from a few years ago, right? I can’t make him love me.”
Polly has to be careful. She doesn’t want to point Cath in her own direction. “Well, I’d start with his license plates. Check to see if they lead to a different name, or an address. And you’re a local. I bet the motel people would tell you anything they know.”
“Mainly wetbacks over there these days, doing the cleaning.”
Ugh. She really is a terrible person. If she had ever said anything like that in front of Adam, he would have dumped her on his own. “What about the front desk? That nosy guy, Marvin, can’t help knowing some things. Like—I bet Adam pays his bills in cash.”
“So? From what I hear, you do, too.”
Oh, it is a gossipy little town. She’s been as careful as possible to keep the relationship with Adam a secret and, so far, so good. But it will get out if it keeps on. She’s going to have to break things off with him, leave town as she planned. The thought saddens her more than she thought possible.
Fuck it, she’s in love. She can’t afford love. No matter how much money she ends up with, it won’t be enough to have love, too.
“You’re right,” she says. “I’m just making trouble. Let it go. You’ve handled this whole thing with a lot of dignity. Do you have a mixer for the vodka?”
Cath rummages inside her little refrigerator. “Only Coke, and that’s gross.”
“I can drink it on ice if you can.”
They sit outside with sweating tumblers of vodka, swap stories. Polly’s are all made up. Maybe Cath’s are, too, although they’re certainly boring enough to be true. Younger sister was the pretty one, made the good marriage. I made some mistakes when I was a teen and my family never lets me forget it. Blah, blah, blah.
Maybe everybody lies, all the time.
18
On her next day off, Cath goes up to Dover to see her younger sister. She loves June, but she wouldn’t wish a sister like her on her worst enemy. June is a little prettier, a lot more accomplished, everyone’s favorite. She has a career as a court stenographer, while Cath’s still trying to figure things out. June has a nice house, too, and it’s the house that Cath envies the most. Not the husband, who is the reason that June could afford a house. Cath thinks she can do better than the husband and is secretly pleased that her sister has settled.
But she loves their house, which was brand spanking new when they moved in a year ago. The kitchen is huge, with a family room alcove and one of those big islands with a marble top. Everything is white. It’s like something out of a magazine. June even has white roses in a milk-glass vase. Cath sits on a white wooden stool, watching June cut up vegetables for a salad while they both sip white wine.
“Be careful,” June’s husband, Jim, warns. “You could blow a .01 with even one glass of wine in you. And there’s only so much that I—”
“I know my capacity,” Cath says, but not too pertly. He did her a favor, after all. That’s why she’s here, to find out what her brother-in-law, a state trooper, can tell her about Polly and Adam.
She knows they’re together. She’s not dumb. She’s confused why Polly is pretending to be her friend, though. And when Polly showed up at her place with no explanation, then tried to plant the idea that Cath should be checking out Adam, Cath realized it was Polly she needed to research.
“So how do you know this person?”
Some instinct tells her to lie. “She’s looking at a lot in the trailer park.” God, I hate that place, she thinks, glancing covetously around her sister’s gleaming kitchen. So Martha Stewart. “She seemed—off to me.”
“Your instincts are good,” Jim says. “She killed her husband.”
Oh, this is even better than she dreamed. Cath takes a big swig of wine.
“Then what is she doing running around loose?”
“Sentence commuted four years ago. Governor wanted to show women some mercy in his final term, I think. Picked thirteen inmates he was told were victims of abuse. But the nonprofit he worked with didn’t vet them well. There were some straight-up killers in that group. She was one of them.”
“Huh. When was this?”
“Been almost ten years since she killed him. She stabbed her husband in the heart while he slept. While he slept.” Jim brings his arms up, miming the thrust of a knife into his own heart. “Do you know how cold-blooded you have to be to do that? Then she tried to claim he was killed by a burglar while she was sleeping in her kid’s room.”
“Are you sure?” She wants to believe it, but it doesn’t jibe with the woman she knows. A man-eater, sure. A man killer? No way. “I mean, if he did beat her and she had a kid, maybe she couldn’t imagine any other way.” Cath has read everything she can about the OJ case. Of course, if any man ever raised a hand to her, she’d be out the door—or he’d be out the door—the next minute. But some women aren’t strong the way she is.
“There’s more,” Jim says.
*
By the time Cath heads south on Route 13, she figures she has had almost three glasses of wine, but that’s because June kept topping her off. Sabotaging her again. June is more invested in being the good sister than even she realizes. Aware that she’s a little affected, Cath drives supercarefully. Almost too carefully at times—her speed drops and brights flash in her rearview mirror, warning her that she’s driving erratically. But she doesn’t think it’s the alcohol, not really. She’s trying to take in everything that Jim told her. A lot of it is gossip, he says, not written down anywhere, but he knows a cop who knows a cop who knew Polly’s ex and this cop swears by his info. Polly-Pauline spun it as if she were selfless, putting her kid above everything. So why isn’t she with that kid now? Why is the state paying the kid’s bills if she inherited all this money?
Cath knows some people would think she’s a hypocrite, dragging up a person’s past. But she was only seventeen when she got in trouble, a kid. And it was an accident, awful as it was. If that railing hadn’t given way, no one would have been hurt seriously. Her parents found a good-enough lawyer, she did anger management, and the records were sealed because she was a juvenile. That’s totally different.
When she gets to Belleville, it’s almost eleven. Over at the High-Ho, everybody will be heading home soon. Polly to her apartment above the old Ben Franklin, Adam to his motel room. Cath’s torn about where to go. She wants to tell Adam first, see the look on his face, but it won’t matter, she thinks. Even if he gives up Polly, he won’t choose Cath. Especially if she’s the one who tells him.
No, she’ll go to Polly’s apartment.
“What’s up?” Polly says, opening her door to her, but not wide enough to let her in.
“Just thought I’d pay you a visit. Sauce for the goose, right?”
“So am I the gander in this situation, or are you?”