Chapter Twenty-One
She didn’t look away.
He gazed steadily back. Waiting her out. Watching a debate taking place behind her eyes.
She made a face. ‘I’ll need another beer. I hadn’t scheduled a Q and A.’
He got her two, so as not to invite a further interruption, and, conscious of the car keys in his pocket, chose water for himself.
She took a deep draught and licked her lips. ‘My husband’s name’s Stef. Stefan Sontag. His dad, Will Sontag, and my dad are partners in the same law firm in Hamilton Drives, which is where I’m from, a small town up on Route 7 in west Connecticut. When we were children, our dads joked that one day we’d get married because we were inseparable. But something happened to Stef at puberty — he turned into a hellraiser.
‘And a hellraiser can be an embarrassing member of the family for someone in the legal profession. His relationship with Will deteriorated, and my dad began to warn me off him. But, thing was, Stef was still my best friend.’ She smiled, her eyes warm with memories.
‘Define hellraiser.’
She lifted her brows. ‘For a long time, he didn’t do anything that was so bad. Well, OK, it was bad, like putting fireworks in mailboxes and dying someone’s white cat pink — I felt bad about the cat because it was in the paper and a lot of people wrote to say what a cruel trick it was — but his pranks were kid’s stuff. And all the other kids in town loved Stef because he was so funny and he always stuck up for underdogs. I never had any trouble in high school because he always watched over me, you know, and nobody messed with Stef. And on weekends he’d teach me how to ride a dirt bike or get everyone to the lakeside for a cook out. We played up, on those cook outs, but nothing other teenagers didn’t do; just strip poker or outrageous dares. Getting drunk, making out. Stef was always trying out new haircuts or getting a tattoo. Stef was fun.
‘And then he decided not to go to college. Just flat out refused. He didn’t really give any reason, just no. He had good brains but Dad used to say that they’d been wired wrong. I went off to college and he did a variety of jobs — car shops, delivery, making pizzas. My dad wrote that Stef was in more trouble, because he’d added joyriding to his repertoire. But when I came home, he seemed just the same old Stef. We dated. He was still my best friend as well as a date but we dated other people. After a while, I began not to like that and when I came home the summer I finished school, I told him. We’d been out to the lake and . . . Anyway, he said that if I wanted “exclusive” then we’d better get engaged. I wasn’t quite ready — but I did want to be exclusive. So we got engaged. Dad didn’t know what to think because he knew Stef could be off the wall but he did like him, and at least it made me plan to stay in Hamilton Drives. And, who knew, maybe Stef would settle down and put his wild years behind him. So Dad put in a word for me at VPV Finance and, over time, I took my exams to be a financial advisor — which meant years of night school. It took a while for us to get the money together to get married but that was OK. We were young.’
Other people had begun to drift into the room, late diners choosing the lounge for coffee. But Honor wasn’t paying attention to anyone else, now that she was into her story.
‘While I’d been away, two things happened. One was that Stef had found a job he liked, managing a diner. We used to hang out at the Drives Diner when we were kids and it always attracted a lot of oddballs. Well, you know,’ she laughed suddenly, eyes alight, ‘Stef is “oddballs R us” so he was happy. He stuck to the job. And if his dad was disappointed that Stef wasn’t a lawyer or a doctor, he didn’t go on about it too much. So their relationship improved.’
‘What was the other thing?’
Her smile slid off her face. ‘Some of his pranks got a little out of hand. I think it was the internet.’
He loved how she said that. Inner-net .
‘You know, if you search for “pranks” on the internet you find a whole bunch of stuff. Like how to make bombs or make people ill. Stef kind of gave our dads false hope by beginning a computer science course at night school. But he wasn’t looking to make a career, he was improving his skill set so that he could play better pranks. And, between the course and the pranks sites, he learned how to do stuff like sending emails that look like they’re from someone else. So, he’d send a guy an email, apparently from another guy, saying he’s always had the hots for him and what about it? Or send an email, apparently from the school, telling a lot of parents that school’s closed on Tuesday, when it’s not. Then he’d sit back and watch the fall out.’
Martyn nodded. Her frown kept flicking in, signalling that her memories were getting uncomfortable. ‘So was he still fun?’
A sigh. She sipped at her beer. ‘Mostly. Because he didn’t do that kind of thing all the time. He did get in trouble for riding his dirt bike around inside a rival diner, though, putting tyre tracks on the wall and breaking things up. That was one night when he was off and I was at night school and he got bored. He said it was a dare and a joke but the police said it was a crime and he got community service.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Yeah. That was just after we got married. We had an apartment in town and some of the time it was great because wherever Stef goes, there’s something happening. I remember coming home just before Christmas and he’d trimmed a Christmas tree with ornaments he’d made himself by cutting up Budweiser cans. It was a work of art — kind of. I don’t think he got the hang of letting go of his childhood so the rest of us got more responsible and he got less, which seemed to make him mad at everyone and more determined than ever to act like a juvenile. His pranks got more and the fun got less. By then, I was unhappy with his personal code.’
The frown had become permanent now and the second beer was on its way down. Her hand lay on the sofa and he reached out and took it, feeling the length of her fingers and the smoothness of her fingernails, still neat and pretty, even though she was working in a kitchen and waiting on tables. ‘Am I asking too many questions?’ he said softly. ‘You can stop, if you’d rather.’
After a moment, she shook her head. ‘I’m so mad at him. I’ve never been this mad at him before. I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad at anybody, ever. He took our whole life and threw it in the trash. He got out of control. That’s not the way I want things to be.’
He squeezed her hand.
‘He got more community service for taking a car,’ she continued, looking at their linked hands as if she wasn’t seeing them. ‘He said he was hiding it, to pay a woman back who dumped his friend, and it’s true he only moved it a block away. But that’s when our relationship began circling the drain.
‘Then he did something so stupid.’ She shook her head and drained the last of her beer. The hand that held the glass was shaking. ‘One of his staff, Billie, she’s a lovely person. I liked her a lot. And she was getting a whole load of grief from her boyfriend. Stef got into an argument with him because the boyfriend got the idea that Stef was having a thing with Billie and it all got ugly. The boyfriend is a dumbass, spending all his money and most of Billie’s on junk from the internet and from shopping channels. Anyway, the boyfriend began sitting in the diner on Billie’s late evenings, so that there was no chance of her going anywhere with Stef.’
‘Is that what was happening?’
Slowly, she shook her head, eyes troubled, the frown now a furrow. ‘I don’t think so. Stef just seemed to feel really protective of Billie. She’s one of those pretty, dainty little things, you know, that bring out a man’s protective streak.’
He smiled. ‘You’re a pretty, dainty little thing yourself.’
She looked surprised. ‘Oh.’ Then continued, ‘Anyway, the boyfriend used to sit there, just in case, and Stef couldn’t do a damned thing because the boyfriend was a paying customer. The boyfriend even used to ask for the diner TV to be turned to the shopping channels, if not many people were in.
‘Then, one night, when all the other customers were gone and Stef and Billie were just finishing up, the boyfriend called the shopping channel to buy something. And he gave all his credit card and security details right over the phone. Stef was writing up work sheets or something so he had a pen in his hand and he took those numbers down. Next time he heard the boyfriend being mean to Billie, he rang the shopping channel and used the information to order ten portable commodes. Then because he always gets carried away with his stupid ideas, he went on to the internet and ordered a ship load of viagra, incontinence pants, penis extenders, blow up dolls — you name it. They all arrived at the boyfriend’s house.’
Martyn tried to hide his smile.
‘It’s OK. You can laugh.’ Her own smile was only a twist of the lips. ‘We were all meant to laugh. But there were thousands of dollars involved and you know what? The police said it was a felony.’ She blinked, hard. ‘That was how I stopped wearing my wedding ring. I took it off and I threw it at him.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He held her hand tighter.
She looked surprised, as if noticing for the first time that their hands were joined. ‘So,’ she ended, resignedly. ‘Hamilton Drives is a small town. People don’t like it if their financial advisor’s husband is charged with identity theft. They start taking their business elsewhere. I knew that my boss was going to have to make somebody redundant so I volunteered. I wasn’t making commission worth a damn, anyway, with my client list shrinking like cheap socks.’
‘So you left your husband to think things over while you were away?’
She lifted her eyes to his. ‘He’s away, too. He was away before I even came out here. He got 180 days in county jail. He’s in Bridgeport Correctional.’