Clueless
After they took off in the Chris-Craft, I stayed put on the island a while longer to be sure they wouldn’t see me when I launched the canoe. On the way back to the house, I considered what I’d tell Regina about the event I’d witnessed that afternoon. It was more confusing than I’d thought.
On the one hand, I had irrefutable evidence that Forrest and Brenda were having sex. Not just notes of conversations. I had pictures now.
Then came the shocking part: Brenda’s suggestion to Forrest that the two of them cook up a plot that would make it appear that Regina had committed suicide.
She hadn’t used the word kill, but there was only one way to interpret her words.
As awful as it had seemed to me before that Forrest was cheating on Regina this way, Brenda’s plan to make it appear that Regina had killed herself took the situation to a whole other level, from infidelity to murder.
Forrest hadn’t said much when Brenda laid out her idea, but I had seen his face as he took in her words. He would never go along with a plan like the one she suggested.
You could look at this as a good news/bad news situation. Good news: Despite his unfaithfulness, Regina’s husband still cared about her. In the middle of a tryst with his lover, Forrest still hurried home to bring his wife to her doctor’s appointment.
Still, there was no getting past the bad news, which was the sex part. The betrayal had taken place—as Regina had guessed it might—on the very same patch of moss where she herself had once made love with her husband.
And as stunned as Forrest had appeared when Brenda laid out her idea of killing Regina, he had not come right out and told her he wouldn’t do it.
He was probably going to do what people always did, in my experience, when something truly uncomfortable came up: pretend it never happened.
Maybe this would even work, unless she brought it up again.
But if I was right about Brenda, she would.
Because the wind was up and I was paddling against it, the trip back to the house from the island took almost twice as long as it had taken getting there. It was late afternoon when I walked back into the house. My arms and shoulders hurt, but more so, my head.
The children were watching a show. Prudence was at the stove, making dinner.
Just as he’d told Brenda, after dropping her off at the rental house she shared with her husband, he’d swung by the house to pick up Regina and bring her to her doctor’s appointment.
Now he was over at the club—having a drink with his golfing buddies maybe, or maybe he’d just wanted to take a shower.
He’d need to get Brenda’s smell off his skin.
Regina was upstairs now. “Those doctor visits always wear her out,” Prudence told me.
“I need to talk to her,” I said.