Chapter 38
The weekend over, such a relief. To think how I used to look forward to Friday night, to Saturday and Sunday. My free time. Now I count down the hours to Monday, when I can again have the house I hate all to myself.
I’m still in bed when the doorbell rings. Not asleep, but I haven’t yet steeled myself to commence the day.
It rings once. A pause. Then it rings again.
“What?” I ask no one, throwing the sheets off my body. My nausea roils, but I press it down, press a palm to my mouth.
I hurry along the hall, into one of the spare bedrooms where the windows overlook the front yard and driveway. I have no intention of answering the door, but I do want to know who would ring a person’s doorbell at eight in the morning.
But when I look out the front windows and down, I see a familiar car in my driveway. My heart lifts.
I don’t bother with changing into clothes, with finding a bra, because that’s the beauty of being with your best friend.
I hurry down the stairs and pull the front door open just as she rings the doorbell again, and I’m smiling, but she’s not.
“Klara,” she says, arms out. She reaches for me and pulls me against her, and I can’t comprehend the relief in her voice.
“What?” I ask as she releases me. “What happened?”
“What happened? I’ve been trying to text you and call you for a week. You haven’t responded to anything, and my texts haven’t gone through. I left you, like, fifteen voicemails.”
“What?” I ask again, shaking my head.
“You didn’t get them.” She’s laughing now, that giddy sort of laughter that accompanies a rush of relief.
“Come in,” I tell her. “I’ll make us a coffee, check my phone.”
Zoe follows me into the kitchen, a gorgeous designer bag that looks crisp and new slung over her arm, orange pumps peeking out from the hems of her navy trousers.
“Are you going to work?” I ask her, reaching for mugs, for coffee pods. “My house isn’t exactly on the way.” Zoe has lived and worked in Northern Virginia ever since we graduated from college. She must have spent an hour and a half in her car this morning.
“Klara, I was so worried. I left my house early and came straight here. I’m supposed to be at work. I mean, I’ll go after.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell her. “I didn’t have any missed calls from you. Or any texts.”
“After I visited you, things got so crazy at work. And Daphne wasn’t sleeping great. Then I had to go to New York for a few days. That’s no excuse; I should have been checking in on you, but I wasn’t.”
“Zoe, it’s fine,” I tell her and tap the start button, hear the machine’s first gulps. “I wasn’t exactly checking in with you, either. I’ve been leaning in to my seclusion here, I guess.” And I like how that makes everything sound so harmless, so voluntary.
“But then I did text you, last week. I asked you how you were feeling or something, but my text didn’t go through. I tried calling and leaving a message. But you didn’t reply. So I kept trying for days.”
I open a drawer, remove a spoon. “I didn’t get anything from you.”
“I know,” says Zoe soothingly. “I see that now. But for a day, I convinced myself you were mad at me and giving me the silent treatment. Then I thought there might be something wrong with your phone. I didn’t have Troy’s number, so I couldn’t try him.
I texted a few college friends, but none of them had heard from you. I worked myself into such a panic.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, bewildered. “I had no idea.”
“I said to Garrett last night, if I don’t hear from her by the morning, I’m just going over there. So I did. I couldn’t take it anymore, Klara. I thought you were dead.”
We blink at each other, the coffee machine hissing with finality.
“I emailed you,” she adds insistently as I remove her a cup of coffee from the machine, pour cream.
“All right,” I say. “Let me figure this out.”
I leave her mug on the table and retrieve my phone from its overnight resting place, on my nightstand, plugged into the charger.
I look through my texts as I walk. Then my missed calls. My voicemail.
Zoe is sitting at my kitchen table, right leg tossed over the left, her left pump tapping against the hardwood floor.
“Seventeen new voicemails,” I tell her, holding up the phone. “All from you. But I didn’t get a notification. Not for any of them. I had no idea they were there.”
Zoe shakes her head, extends her hand, silver bracelets coasting down her arm. Her chicness feels like an affront in the face of my sleep-rumpled hair, my wrinkled pajamas, cotton and striped.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she says, fingers wiggling.
I pass my phone to her, then settle onto a chair across the table from her. “No, it doesn’t,” I agree, even as my stomach sinks, a sloth-like creep.
A minute later, Zoe raises her eyes. “Klara,” she says, tone accusatory, “you blocked me.” She waves the screen toward me.
“I didn’t block you,” I say, automatically defensive. “Why would I block you?”
“See, these messages are in the voicemails from the blocked-numbers category. That’s why you didn’t get a notification.
And that’s why you didn’t get my calls or texts.
” There’s a divot between her brows. She taps at the screen, lips tugging downward, parentheses surrounding her mouth. “And all my emails are in spam.”
She puts the phone on the table and slides it tentatively toward me, expression hurt now.
“I didn’t do that,” I promise her. “I don’t understand.”
But I do understand. It’s textbook, really. I wish I could throw that in your face, how very unoriginal you are.
“Did you do it yourself, do you think? By accident?” Zoe asks hopefully. “You’ve never been very good with technology.”
I feel my eyes narrowing, still staring at my phone, as rage simmers in my chest so hotly, threatening to scream.
Zoe lays a palm on my forearm. “Sorry,” she says. “No offense. I just thought—”
“No,” I say, cutting her off. “It’s not that. I didn’t do it by accident. I didn’t do it at all.”
Zoe lifts her hand, brushes hair away from her face, distractedly runs her fingers down a section of it. “Then what?” she asks. “What happened?”
“Something,” I begin, my reluctance drawing my voice soft and low, “is very wrong with my relationship.”
Her hand finds mine this time, across the table.
She squeezes it, which tells me that whatever it is, I can tell her, and that she’s sorry I haven’t already.
And I should have. I should have said more months ago, after I first told her about you, after she first met you, after she watched me try on my wedding dress.
Instead, I’ve been marching along, pulled on a leash, obedient, listless. In peril.
I shake my head, words rattling. What I said, it wasn’t quite right. “Something,” I say, trying again, “is wrong with my husband.”