Chapter Twenty-Five
The next morning, the refrigerator started rumbling again.
I heard the commotion from my bedroom. It actually woke me up, along with Binti, who trailed me down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“You stupid piece of crap.” I yawned at the chrome refrigerator, thinking back to that morning years ago when it last sounded like it was dying. Whatever Ali did to fix it that day, the noise had stopped permanently. Until now.
I pulled the door open. That killed the sound because the fan stopped whenever the door wasn’t closed. I shut it, and the rumbling restarted.
I sighed. My immediate instinct was to ask Ali what we should do about it. He’d say he’d fix the fan or that maybe the fridge wasn’t level, I’d grumble about how he was too cheap to buy a new one, and we’d go on about our day, with me confident that Ali would take care of everything.
But Ali wasn’t here to fix the refrigerator. Or anything else. Shit. Feeling sorry for myself, I swallowed the urge to cry.
Yawning, and muttering to myself about how much life sucked, I went to my office and powered up my laptop, intent on searching for how to stop the refrigerator commotion. But the screen seemed frozen. I checked the internet connection. There wasn’t any.
Great.
I looked at the tangle of wires and boxes on the floor by my desk.
It was pathetic, but I wasn’t even sure which one was the modem.
Whenever this happened, Ali or one of the kids would reset it.
But there was no one else here to do it.
So, feeling very inept and sorry for myself, I knelt down and investigated.
Once I was reasonably sure that I’d identified the modem, I tried turning it on and off. Nothing.
Resisting the instinct to scream about how everything was falling apart, I went upstairs to retrieve my phone. I searched for info on how to stop the stupid rumbling. If only I’d paid attention when Ali fixed the thing. I couldn’t stand the noise.
Then it hit me. Ali wasn’t here anymore. I could buy the new fridge I’d been wanting for years. I didn’t have to ask for anyone’s permission. There was nothing to stop me from ordering the appliance online and scheduling delivery.
How old was the fridge? I thought back to when Ali had fixed it. I remembered it was around our fifteenth anniversary. Then realization dawned, slamming into me with such force that I almost dropped my phone.
Eight years ago.
Our fifteenth wedding anniversary. The weekend he went away. The supposed golf trip to North Carolina. Lizzie Martins moved into her North Carolina house eight years ago. And there’d never been another golf trip after that.
“Seriously?” I muttered into the silence.
Had Ali missed our anniversary dinner in order to help move his ex-girlfriend into her house?
I choked on a breath. My chest felt like it was caving in.
I was such a sucker that I hadn’t been suspicious about his plans for that weekend.
I’d been more upset about a stupid refrigerator than Ali going away on the Saturday we were supposed to celebrate our anniversary.
I should have bought the new fridge when Ali left that weekend as I’d fake threatened to do.
Well, there was no time like the present.
I searched the word “refrigerator” on my phone.
Several came up. A world of possibilities laid out before me, with no one hovering over my shoulder telling me which one I could buy.
I picked the brand and model I liked best—stainless with French doors, a dual ice maker, and twin freezer drawers—without worrying about the price, which would make Ali roll in his grave. Punching in my address and payment information, I hit “Complete Order.”
There.
It was done. I’d have a new refrigerator within the week. Adrenaline surged through me. It was the most expensive thing I’d ever ordered on my own. I’d just made my first major purchasing decision at the age of forty-four. I really was a neophyte.
But as the buyer’s high wore off, thoughts of the weekend Ali went away consumed me. I couldn’t stand not knowing the truth. I was ready to burst out of my skin. There was only one person alive who could give me the answers, and I’d do whatever it took to get her talking.
I might not know much about Lizzie Martins, but I had learned one important thing. And I would use that information to force that woman into telling me what I needed to know.
I drove to Durham without telling anyone.
A major advantage of living alone was that people never knew your business.
As long as I answered my phone, no one would worry.
I made good time, stopping only once to use the restroom, buy some coffee, and take Binti for a quick walk at a rest area.
She’d happily hopped in the van when we left home.
She must have ridden in cars with her previous owner.
Dread slithered through me once I turned onto Cozy Glenn Lane. I had a passing moment of doubt. Intuitively, a part of me was afraid of the truth. What could have been so important to Ali that he was willing to lie to me? What was he hiding? Why hadn’t he trusted me with the truth?
As I drove up, the figure of a woman closed the gate in front of the house. I slowed, pulling over a couple of houses away. I was in luck. If you could call it that. Lizzie was actually home for once.
She got into a navy Volvo sedan and pulled out, driving slowly through the neighborhood.
I followed, my heart pounding, maintaining a reasonable distance but staying close enough to keep her in my sights.
Just when I started worrying about losing track of the Volvo, Lizzie pulled over. It was a cemetery.
I watched her park and cross through the grass amid the sea of gravestones. She had a canvas bag slung over her shoulder and wore a gray sweatshirt with dark leggings that showed off her legs. She still had good legs.
Lizzie stopped at one of the graves and knelt to pull some weeds.
Reaching into her bag, she withdrew a cloth and some sort of cleaner.
She sprayed and buffed the soft gray marble stone.
Then she sat for a while, legs crossed. It looked like she was talking to whoever was buried there.
After about twenty minutes, Lizzie grabbed her tote, got up, and strode back to her Volvo.
I’d make a lousy detective because I lost her in traffic a few minutes later, but it didn’t matter.
I knew where she lived. I’d catch up with her eventually.
Curiosity compelled me to circle back to the cemetery.
Whose grave had Lizzie so lovingly attended to?
Retracing her steps, I found the tidy, shiny headstone and read the name.
Caryl Daryus
1936–2013
Loving wife, mother and grandmother
I almost laughed when the meaning of what I was looking at hit me.
The reason I couldn’t find Carol Darius online was that I’d misspelled both her first and last names.
Not to mention that the woman lived most of her life before the internet, dying at the age of seventy-seven in 2013.
And yet, Carol Darius was the spelling the landscaper had given me when he wanted to be paid for mowing the lawn at Cozy Glenn Lane.
Pulling out my phone, I easily brought up the obituary. Caryl Daryus, mother of five, grandmother of fourteen, including Samantha Martins Price. Lizzie.
Why had Lizzie assumed her dead grandmother’s name? I still had so many questions. But at least now I knew that Lizzie Martins and Caryl Daryus were the same person.
I went back to Lizzie’s and parked a couple of houses down to wait for her to come home.
She showed up about forty-five minutes later, carrying a couple of overloaded grocery bags inside.
I sat in my van, forearms resting on the steering wheel, contemplating whether to knock on the door.
Before I had a chance to decide, she came back out, climbed into her car, and drove off again.
This time, I followed her more closely, determined not to lose her.
She eventually pulled into the parking lot of a state park.
She got out and headed toward a hiking trail.
I jumped out of my van and hurried to follow.
Binti barked after me in protest, unhappy about being left behind in the van.
I’d cracked the windows open so she’d have fresh air.
Plus, I didn’t plan to be gone for long.
Quickening my pace, I tried to catch up with Lizzie. There was no telling how long her hike would take, and I didn’t want to spend the night in Durham. Once I got what I came for, I’d get back on the road. I had every intention of sleeping in my bed that night.
Luckily, I was wearing tennis shoes. Not the sort for long trail hikes, but they’d do the job. Lizzie was a brisk walker; she moved in long, sure strides and was much faster and more agile than me. I hadn’t hit a real trail since before Ali died.
She looked back a couple of times, seeming hyperaware of her surroundings, but she didn’t recognize me from a distance. At least not at first. When I got close enough, she finally spotted me.
She shrank away. “What are you doing here? Please leave me alone.”
“I’m not here to hurt you or for anything bad.” I approached slowly so that she wouldn’t take off running into the woods. “I just need to know why Ali bought you a house.”
“You should trust him,” she said quietly. “He was a good man.”
I stopped about five feet from her, giving Lizzie her space so she wouldn’t feel cornered. “I just need to know about the house. Why did he buy it for you?”
“He didn’t. He was just trying to help me out.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” There was a desperate tone in her voice. “For old times’ sake, maybe.”
“I think you do know. Why won’t you just tell me the truth?”
“Because sometimes the truth is overrated. Believe me,” she pleaded. “You don’t want to hear the truth.”
“But I do. I can’t properly mourn Ali and move on until I find out.”
“You don’t understand. This has nothing to do with you. At all.”
“Of course it does. Surely you can see that.”
“I can’t see anything except that you’re asking for trouble. Just let it go.” She turned to walk away.
I followed. “It’s not that easy.”
She picked up speed. “I paid you a lot of money so that I wouldn’t have to talk about it.”
“Why?” I demanded, trying to catch my breath. “What are you hiding?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It is if it involves my husband.”
“None of this has anything to do with Ali. Go away and leave me alone.”
I hurried after her. “Just tell me why he bought you a house and I’ll disappear forever.”
“He didn’t.”
Did she think I was a complete idiot? “I saw the payments. They came out of our joint bank account.”
She waved me off. “I don’t know anything about that. Just go away. Please.”
I struggled to keep up. “I’ll tell everyone. I’ll call the TV station where Ali worked.”
Halting abruptly, she faced me. “Ali always said you are very smart. And that would be a stupid thing to do. That’s why you signed the NDA.”
“Why do you think I took the one hundred thousand dollars from you?” She frowned when I answered my own question. “So I can violate the NDA and give back what you paid me.”
Lizzie paled. “You won’t do that.”
“I just want the truth,” I said gently.
I could see her struggling, sizing me up, both fear and panic emanating from her. “You would tell the world that your husband died and left a house to his old girlfriend.”
“That’s right,” I said with a firm shake of my chin. “The Washington gossip columns will have a field day.”
“You would subject your children to that?”
She caught me off guard with that, and she knew it.
“That’s what I thought.” She turned to stride off, veering from the trail. “If I were you, I’d take the trail back to the parking lot. You don’t want to get lost.”
“I hiked all the time with Ali.”
“So did I,” she said, disappearing into the brush. “I’m the one who introduced him to hiking in the first place. When we first met, it was a struggle to coax him outside, but he eventually took to it.”
Stunned, I stared dumbly after her. Lizzie Martins had put her stamp on my family without my even knowing it.
The Ali I knew was an avid outdoorsman who got me and the children into hiking.
To discover that it all started with Lizzie, to know her likes were so firmly implanted in the family I made with Ali, made me sick. And livid.
After Ali died, I naturally assumed I’d always think of him whenever I wandered into nature. Now I knew I’d never hike again without thinking of Lizzie Martins.
I made my way back to the van, and took an indignant Binti for a quick walk before heading home. I called Nasser while Binti sniffed her way down a park path, being picky about where to relieve herself.
“Was Ali always an outdoorsy guy?” I asked when he picked up. “You grew up with him.”
He paused. “Uh, hello to you too.”
“Sorry, I just saw Lizzie, and she told me that she’s the one who got Ali into hiking.”
“Wait. Back up. Where did you see Lizzie?”
“In Durham. I needed to talk to her. But as usual, I came away with more questions than answers.”
“You drove to Durham?”
“Yes, and I’m on my way back now. Was Ali outdoorsy?”
“Technically, I didn’t grow up with him. I grew up in Youngstown, but we saw each other for weeks at a time during the summer. We played outside like most kids. But by the time we got to college, he was more of a city lights guy.”
“Not a hiker, then. I guess Lizzie was telling the truth.”
“So what? Why does that upset you?”
Emotion welled in my throat. “It’s hard to explain. It’s like another thing I thought I knew about Ali that’s not exactly the whole truth. I thought he was this outdoorsy guy—”
“He was by the time you met him. That was real. He loved hiking and camping. You knew that.”
“But he got it from her. He passed that love on to our children. It’s like Lizzie was a bigger part of his life than I ever realized. In a way, she asserted herself in our lives without my knowing it.”
“We’re all the products of our life experiences,” he said. “Lots of different things influenced who Ali was by the time you met him.”
“Ali got a clean slate in me, because he was my first and only romantic relationship.”
“Hiking is a good habit, a healthy habit,” he pointed out. “It made Ali happy. He would probably have discovered his love for nature at some point along the way. It’s not like Lizzie forced him. She simply introduced him to the natural world.”
“You’re right, I guess.”
“I am,” he said. “Now please be careful driving home.”
“I will.”
As I walked Binti back to the van, I couldn’t help wondering what else I didn’t know.