Page 50 of Under the Stars

Audrey

New London, Connecticut

On the morning of my wedding day, Meredith walked into the hotel suite with a mimosa in each hand and said, Sit.

I’ll say this about Meredith: she didn’t stint.

She might have made her feelings clear about David from the first meeting—instant, profound dislike—but when I announced we were engaged, she pulled out her credit card and said we would do things right.

I said fine, so long as we held the wedding somewhere other than Los Angeles.

We settled on Santa Fe, not far from my old boarding school.

Ceremony at an old mission church, reception at La Fonda.

The guest list was small but select and focused on my friends, the people I cared about most. The fact that David summoned so few of his own to contribute should have been a red flag, I guess.

Anyway, morning of. Meredith and I sat down together with our mimosas.

She’d never been the kind of mother to fling wisdom at my head, but I knew this one was coming.

Her disdain for David at the rehearsal dinner the previous night had been palpable.

The WhatsApp messages had flurried for hours afterward.

Her face now bore all the hallmarks of a thunderous hangover, bravely borne.

She sipped her hair of the dog and said to me, I’ll give you a million bucks to pull out, no questions asked.

I was so stunned, I drained the entire mimosa in one long gulp. Stunned not that she didn’t want me to marry David—I mean, that was obvious from the beginning—or even that she was prepared to eat the cost of the wedding to achieve this goal. It was the million dollars that floored me.

I had no idea my happiness was worth that much to her.

—

But maybe she was just being canny. Maybe she had an instinct for the long game and foresaw this scene—me flying up Interstate 91 in the passenger seat of a Range Rover that reeks of weed and booze, priceless Henry Irving portrait lying flat in the back—and figured it would be cheaper to buy me off on the ground floor.

If only she’d been smart enough to offer the money to David instead. I’m pretty sure he would have taken it.

“So where are we headed?” I ask, as nonchalant as I can manage.

He shoots me this look like I’m an idiot. “Canada.”

“Canada. Cool. Any particular reason? Or you just like the hockey?”

“Good place to start fresh.” He checks the rearview mirror and turns to me with a wink. “Nicest people in the world, Canadians. That’s what they say, eh?”

“Except, you know, extradition treaties.”

“They don’t extradite you for a couple of debts, honey. Anyway, I have a friend. He can get us papers and shit.”

I know what you’re thinking. Why go along with him?

What woman is so stupid, so lacking in adult judgment, as to climb into a vehicle driven by her criminal ex-husband?

A probably stolen vehicle, I’m guessing.

It’s hard to imagine how David would have got his hands on a late-model Range Rover by any legitimate means, although I’m beginning to wonder if he could grift the arms off an octopus.

Yet here we are, thanks to that damn painting that lies in the back, covered by an old blanket.

You can imagine the shock when my deadbeat husband walked through the taproom door a few hours ago, just as I was lifting the Irving portrait of Providence Dare to carry upstairs to Mike’s office—one of the few rooms inside the Mohegan Inn with a working lock.

Hey babe, he said, like he’d just come back from a Starbucks run with a triple caramel macchiato for me and an iced hazelnut oatmilk latte for himself.

I said something like What the fuck and dropped the painting on my toe.

He said, Wow, this must be one of those paintings, right?

Shouldn’t you have a little more security around here?

I asked him what the hell he was doing here, where had he been for the past six months, and he screwed his face into this expression of heartfelt sorrow and said he’d had a few things to take care of, sweetie, but now he was back and ready to start fresh.

“I don’t want to start fresh,” I told him. “I want a divorce. I have the papers upstairs in my dad’s office right now. I want you to sign them.”

He looked shocked. “Divorce papers? You can’t divorce me.”

“I so can . My mom’s lawyer’s been working out the details.” I launched into all the legal procedural talking points and he held up his hand.

“But I don’t want a divorce, Audrey. I never wanted to leave you. Walking out that door was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I had to protect you—”

“ Protect me? You left me with one point two million dollars in uncollateralized loans, David. Another half million in unpaid taxes. And zero cash in the checking account.”

“Which I’m going to pay you back for, Audrey. I swear it. I was never going to leave you for good. You have to believe that. I just needed a break, to find a way out of this mess. I love you. You know that. More than anything in the world.”

“You know what? I might have believed that, once. I did believe that. My bad. I fell for it all, because I wanted so badly to believe in it, to believe in you. But now I get it. My eyes are wide open, thank God, to what my mother saw right from the beginning. You give exactly zero fucks about me, David. You left me without a single word. You deserted me.”

David gave me his best pained face. “I did not desert you, Audrey. Why would I desert you? I love you more than anything, babe. I was always going to come back to you, as soon as I could. You have to believe me. And now I’ve found you again, and I don’t ever want to let you go.”

“David. Seriously. Cut the shit and listen to me. I will never in a million years go back to that marriage.”

“We can start fresh. Look at you, you’re loaded now. Those paintings—”

I tightened my grip around the portrait frame, one hand at each corner. “Hold on a second. Where did you hear about the paintings ?”

He held up his phone. “Audrey. Babe. I’ve had your name on my Google Alerts since the moment I walked out of that house.

Your name, your mother’s name. I’ve been watching over you, the whole time.

Trying to make sure you were okay. And this story popped up a couple of days ago, this amazing story.

Henry fucking Irving ? Right here in your basement ?

I mean, holy shit. You’re sitting on a gold mine .

You realize that, don’t you? I jumped in the car and drove here as fast as I could.

Figured the whole thing out on the way. Listen.

I can manage all this for you, hold these auction houses by the balls until they—”

“Whoa. David. What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“The paintings. Your paintings. You have no idea, babe, no idea all the ways these assholes take advantage in situations like this, women like you who don’t—”

“David, hold on. They aren’t my paintings. They belong to my dad . I don’t know where you heard they were mine —”

“It was on the news. The Daily Beast or some shit. I don’t know. I don’t remember the exact words.”

“It’s my dad’s basement, David. His basement, his paintings. His deal, not mine. All I have is some divorce papers, which you can sign, and we can both walk out of here free to start fresh. Just not with each other. That’s not happening.”

He locked me with his eyes. “Is there someone else, Audrey?”

“Yes,” I said.

We stared at each other for several long seconds that felt like an hour or so.

You know how it is with stares. But I didn’t back down.

In the back of my mind, I thought, Sedge, I’m a fucking idiot.

I take it all back. I was hurt, that’s all.

I was scared. But you’re not him, you’re nothing like him. I see that now.

Now that I finally see him, I see you.

“All right,” said David. “I can respect that. Go get the papers and I’ll sign them right here.”

All right, so I shouldn’t have gone to get the papers.

In my defense, I was in shock. I was reeling from the sight of David, the sound of his voice, after six months of imagining him living his best life on a beach in Mexico, or possibly dead in a ditch.

I wasn’t thinking straight. I challenge anybody to think straight in a situation like that.

I heard Go get the papers and I turned on my heel and marched up the stairs to Mike’s office to fetch the manila envelope that had arrived last week from Meredith’s lawyers, who are (as you might imagine) experts in the thorny field of complex matrimonial dissolutions, and when I came back downstairs he was gone.

And so was the painting.

I made it to the ferry just in time, panting so hard I thought my lungs were going to explode.

They’d already untied the ropes. I leaped onboard and wove around the cars, not even sure what I was looking for, what car he drove, until I saw a familiar silhouette behind the steering wheel of a steel-gray Range Rover.

I banged on the window. He shrugged. I mimed a phone to my ear and started walking away, and he opened the door and said Wait.

“I’m going to tell the crew,” I said. “The police are going to be waiting on the dock in New London.”

“Hold on, Audrey. I’m sorry. I panicked.”

We were the only two people on the car deck. The other passengers had gone upstairs. The engines ground the ferry into the turn that would point us toward New London, just a few short miles away.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “I’ll give you what you want, Audrey. Fresh start with your new guy. But I need something in return. A stake.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“Maybe not, but I hold the cards, don’t I? Get in this car with me, don’t say anything, and when we get where we’re going, you give me that painting and I’ll sign your fucking papers. Deal?”

“No way. I’m not letting you get away with this. I’m calling for help.”