CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
4:00 p.m.
Amy
From the bedroom, Amy had heard Andrew slam the door to the garage. He’d sped down Ocean Avenue, away from her, maybe for the last time. This house was her castle, her monument to the life she’d built—and it was all crumbling down.
She’d stayed awake most of the night imagining when, and how, she’d confront him. Should she go upstairs, wake him? Or sneak his phone from the nightstand, gather evidence?
She’d drifted off in the early-morning hours, then woken late, after noon, and decided to confront Andrew then. They were adults, she thought as she climbed the stairs. But their bed was vacant, and the audacity of Andrew’s behavior struck her. She’d been mistaken, she realized, mortified. He didn’t love her. He was the type of simple, dumb man who’d had the audacity to have an affair. He’d been out with her the night before, and he was out with her again?
What did this woman give him that she didn’t? Who was this woman who had the balls to pursue a married man?
Amy stopped herself. It was easy to hate the woman, but that took the blame off Andrew too easily.
He’d come home midafternoon, his eyes red, his energy like a live wire. It wasn’t the fight Amy had expected; it wasn’t like in the movies when characters confronted their cheating spouses and tossed their belongings from an upper window before weeping into a pint of Ben she’d tugged the curtains closed when she’d retreated to the bedroom after their fight, but sunlight peeked through a gap in the fabric, the final hours of a beautiful sunny Sunday. The beaches and restaurants were no doubt packed with people, oblivious that Amy was living the worst day of her life. She craved nightfall, for those people to retreat back to their homes, for the day to be over.
Amy glanced at the clock. She needed to check in at the hospital, needed to be ready to take control of the trauma ward, buzzing with fifty or so bodies all focused on one goal, all looking to her for direction. Somehow it seemed easier than the dissolution of her marriage.
Amy went into the bathroom, flicked on the light, appraised herself in the mirror. Her face was blotchy, eyes swollen. She blew her nose and ran cool water from the tap, then washed her face and smoothed cream onto her cheeks. After brushing her hair, she pulled it into a ponytail. There was work to be done, and she wasn’t going to let anyone get in her way.