Page 19

Chapter 16

W hen Jamie’s truck turned the last corner and onto our long drive, I noticed the windows of Mere’s room were dark and Finch’s car was gone. The only lights that remained on were coming from the side of the house. Peter’s office. I wondered if he was at his desk, reviewing notes. Doing more research. Planning his strategy to get us back to New York.

“You okay?” Jamie asked.

I sighed. “I’m sure we set some tongues to wagging tonight. I kind of dread seeing everyone at the restaurant tomorrow.”

“Gossip’s part of the deal with Juliana. But trust me, in a few hours, somebody at Dixie’s party will have drunk-driven their golf cart into their neighbor’s mailbox, and there’ll be something else for everybody to talk about.”

I smiled. “I really appreciate the ride.”

“Do you want me to walk you in?”

“I’m fine.” But I didn’t move. I could feel his eyes on me, and I liked it. I liked Jamie Cleburne watching me with his steady, piercing blue-green eyes. I liked the way he talked to me. I liked that he’d taken notice of what had happened back at the party and come to my rescue.

So what did that make me? A damsel in distress? Maybe just a woman looking outside her currently frustrating marriage for something that would give her a little hit of attention-dopamine. I loved Peter—I did—I just couldn’t figure out how we were going to find our way back to each other. And Jamie was nothing but a distraction.

“Billie,” Jamie said. He was staring at me, the way he’d looked at me that night in the restaurant. The way a man looks at a woman when he is not hiding what he wants. I held his gaze, playing this tense little game of chicken with him, until he finally looked away.

“I’m sorry.” He propped his elbow on the open window.

“Are you?”

He laughed. “No. I’m not. I just said that because I don’t want you to stay away from me. I want to keep seeing you. As much as I can.”

I gave him a wry look.

“I didn’t say it was right.”

Everything inside the truck was quiet. The song had switched to a folk tune I didn’t recognize, wistful and spare. There was a fiddle and a banjo, just like in that damn hymn from Billie’s playlist. I felt a twinge of sadness and suddenly understood why I hated that song. Something about it—the melody or the plaintive voices or maybe the lyrics about death—filled me with a kind of haunting, indefinable kind of despair. That same way I’d felt death and despair envelop me back in New York after the pandemic. The way I felt now.

I guess it was the reality of life. There was no guarantee that Peter and I would stay together forever. I had always thought of our bond as unbreakable, but the last few months had proven that it was not. He was only human—and the perfect storm of circumstances could bring the whole life we’d built crashing to the ground.

“Peter and I have a good marriage,” I said, more to myself than to Jamie. “But he’s gone someplace out of reach.”

“I understand,” Jamie said. “I’m not going to get in the way of your marriage, Billie.”

I sighed. “You already are.”

Jamie was quiet for a moment, then he spoke. “Do you think he’s seeing someone?”

I stared at him. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of that.

“Billie?” Jamie asked.

“I’m just . . .” I shook my head. “That could be it, I guess.”

“I mean, I hate to suggest this, but could it be one of his patients? I don’t know what kind of oaths psychologists take, but I’m fairly certain that would be a breach of something pretty damn serious, wouldn’t it?”

I gazed up at the dark house, the light spilling from Peter’s office window. “He would lose his license.”

“Maybe it’s someone in town.”

I shook my head. “He rarely leaves the house. It would have to be one of his clients.”

“Are you serious?”

I couldn’t help but picture the lovely Alice Tilton. The way she’d said I’m seeing your husband and then blushed so furiously. I had misinterpreted it, but maybe I hadn’t been wrong. Maybe my intuition had been trying to tell me something.

“I don’t know if I’m serious or not. I don’t know anything.” I reached for the door handle. I needed to get out of Jamie’s truck. Needed to go in my house and find my husband and try to fix whatever was broken between us. I’d made mistakes and maybe he had, too, but that didn’t mean I had to let those mistakes destroy us. I didn’t have to sit by and watch our family disintegrate.

“Seriously,” he said in an even tone. “I will come in with you.” His meaning was all too clear. He was concerned that Peter might get physical with me again.

“No. I’ll be fine.” I heard the word in my head as I said it. Fine. Fine. I’d said it multiple times that night, but I wasn’t fine, not even close. Even so, Jamie wasn’t the one to help. This was something I had to do on my own. “Thanks for the ride.” I slammed the door.

Inside, the house was quiet. Deathly quiet. It was an apt description. It felt like death inside my home. Death was in the air. I smelled it all around me. It seeped into my skin. Coursed through my veins, the same way it had that night in the woods.

I paused in the darkness, leaning against the console table. My eyes filled and I felt the tears choke my throat. It was too much. All this longing for things to be the way they used to be—all this regret for the ways I’d gone wrong—it was all going to break my heart.

My eyes adjusted somewhat to the darkness, and I brushed away the tears that had started to slide down my cheek. I could hear the ticking of the ancient fridge in the kitchen, the sighing of the wind around the old eaves, and the drone of the air conditioning. We were all safe inside this house. Mere, asleep upstairs in her bedroom. Peter, probably on the sofa in his office. And me, staring down this dark hall like a stranger in my own life.

I fumbled around, searching for the switch on the lamp, then checked all the downstairs rooms in case Ramsey had decided to grace us with his presence for the evening. The rooms were empty, so I locked the front door and mounted the stairs. I peeked into Mere’s room. Everything was in order—nightlight on, window cracked. There was Ramsey, too, curled at the foot of her bed. Meredith’s arms were flung wide, and her skin looked pink and dewy. I flipped on the rotary fan on her dresser and bent to kiss her, finding myself eye to eye with Rams.

“Catawampus,” I whispered at him. He didn’t blink, only flicked his orange tail. I wondered if he knew the word. If he did, he didn’t let on. But that would be just like a cat. “You like that, don’t you, everyone thinking you’re a demon-monster?”

He lifted his back leg and began to bathe himself. I pulled Mere’s door closed and went back up the hall to Peter’s office. Inside, only one lamp was on, and it cast a warm yellow glow in the room. Peter lay asleep, on his side, arms folded, knees drawn up, on the couch. It was the old brown corduroy sectional we’d thrifted in Queens when we’d first moved in together that neither of us wanted to let go of. One of the few pieces from our old life we’d brought with us.

He had two computers, one personal and one for work. The one open on his neat desk now was his work one. The screen was dark. Beside it lay a Ghirardelli chocolate square. Of course. He’d found my stash again. I shook my head, then checking to make sure he was truly asleep, crept toward his desk. Just as I did, the computer pinged and lit up. I froze, startled by the sound, but he didn’t stir. I stared at the computer screen. The desktop was lined with neatly organized files labeled with last names against a violet-blue background. There were dozens of them, columns of ten each.

I moved closer, scanning the files. I recognized some of the names of his New York clients. Aylsworth, Bennett, Drake, Edward, Frank, Helvig, Ingram, Jones, Letts, Martino . . . I never pushed for information or asked him to reveal what he shouldn’t have, but he wasn’t perfect. Sometimes he’d let a patient’s problem slip, tell me a story that shouldn’t be told. It didn’t matter. I kept it all to myself. I kept my husband’s secrets safe.

But maybe he had other secrets, ones beside his patients’ histories. Maybe he’d gotten himself into some kind of trouble, and it was eating away at him so he couldn’t sleep. What if there were drugs or gambling debts or some other kind of hole he couldn’t dig himself out of? Would he have any record of it here, on his computer?

I skimmed the neat columns of files. They were arranged alphabetically: Letts, Martino, Nance, Nicholas, Oscar, Settles, Tilton . . .

Tilton.

I touched the trackpad, positioning the arrow over Alice’s file. I couldn’t deny it, I wanted to open it. My finger was trembling the slightest bit and I held my breath. To hell with the laws and the rules. Jamie’s suggestion had triggered something in me, and I had to know what was going on. The welfare of my family might be at stake. I tapped on the file and surveyed the contents. Instead of the word files I expected to see, though, I only saw row after row of MP4 files. My heart skittered in my chest.

Video files.

Peter had videotaped all their sessions. Which was not typical. Not at all. He didn’t video his clients’ sessions, or even record them on audio. He took notes. Handwritten notes on a legal pad that he transcribed later into Word documents.

Behind me on the couch, Peter stirred. I nearly jumped out of my skin, backing away from the computer. He opened his eyes. Rubbed them.

“Hey,” I said in a soft voice, clasping my hands behind me.

He looked disoriented, groggy. “I fell asleep.”

I quickly sat on the edge of the couch and brushed a lock of hair back. “You okay?”

He rubbed his eyes and winced. “Ugh. More nightmares.”

“What about?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He swung his legs around, planting his feet on the floor and his elbows on his knees. “Sorry about tonight.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, Billie. It was shitty of me. Really shitty.” He stared morosely at his feet.

“Peter, it’s fine. I just . . . Why didn’t you tell me about what you found at city hall about the well?”

He mopped his face. “I wanted to get all my ducks in a row before I presented all the information to you.”

I was right. He was building a case. “All what information?”

“All the reasons I think we should move back home.”

I sat very still.

“I know you don’t want to leave, Billie. But I just can’t reconcile all this false information the people in this town have fed us. It doesn’t make sense, and the truth is I don’t think I even care to make it make sense. I just want to wash my hands of the whole place.”

I said nothing. I had no words. I didn’t even know how I felt. Was it empty? Utterly lost? I couldn’t say.

“How did you get home?” he asked.

“Jamie Cleburne gave me a ride.”

“Ah.” He studied his hands thoughtfully. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How do you feel about him?”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at me. “I know you guys are friends. I know you kissed him. I would like to know how you feel about him.”

“I . . .” My mind had gone blank, my heart hammering in my chest. “How do you know I kissed him?”

“That’s not really the part that matters here, Billie.”

For a moment, I considered countering his question with one of my own: Why did you record your sessions with Alice Tilton? Was it really therapy she was coming to you for?

I shut the thoughts down. I was just projecting, grasping for an excuse for my behavior. The fact was I’d gone too far with Jamie. Betrayed my husband and broken his trust. And now I had to face up to what it meant . . . for us both.

“I’m sorry, Peter. It was wrong. I was wrong.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to be with him?”

“No.” I hesitated. “I’m just . . . I was lonely. Sad about you.”

He crossed and uncrossed his thumbs over each other. “So it’s my fault.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m responsible for my actions.”

“But maybe it was not all that unexpected. I know I’ve been hard to live with lately.”

“I just want you to get some answers, Peter. Some help for whatever is going on with you.” I moved toward him. “It was a terrible thing to do, and I regret it. All I can do is tell you it will never happen again.”

He seemed to turn this over in his mind. “I just never expected. . .” He didn’t finish the sentence. “We came here for our family, Billie.”

“We did, but—”

“But what?”

“Something’s not right here. And I’m not talking about the well. It’s you. You’re not yourself.”

“I’m not the one who kissed someone else.”

“Peter—”

“In sickness and in health, Billie.”

Shame flooded me. “I know. I said I was wrong. I meant it, and I’m sorry.”

“I’m to blame, too, I know.” He sounded so defeated, I wanted to take him in my arms, but I didn’t dare. “I just don’t know why I . . .” He went silent, shaking his head.

“Peter, I love you. I do.” I wanted him to look at me the way he used to, with that warm, wry expression that told me it was him and me, that we were a team no matter what. But his face was a blank. His eyes devoid of any sort of connectedness. I felt like a part of my soul had been ripped away.

“I know you love me. I love you, too. I have a headache and it’s late. We should go to bed.” He paused. “I’m not crazy, Billie. I don’t care what it looks like or what anybody is telling you—”

I opened my mouth to object.

“—I’m not crazy.”

“I know.” I cleared my throat. “Can I ask . . .”

“What?”

“Why are you videotaping your sessions with Alice Tilton?”

“I can’t tell you. You know that.”

“Are you sleeping with her?”

He gave me a warning look, a glance that told me in no uncertain terms that I was treading on dangerous ground. “Don’t go there, Billie. Not tonight.”

My heart felt like it was being squeezed. “Just tell me. Give me some explanation that will make sense.”

His laugh was harsh. “I can’t violate her privacy, Billie.”

“But—”

“Why can’t you trust me, Billie? You trust him, a stranger.”

“That’s not fair, Peter. This has been really difficult.”

“And you’re not making it any easier.”

I felt so overcome with sadness, I couldn’t speak.

He stood. “I think I should say good night now. Go to bed.”

He patted me on the knee, and then he was gone.