Chapter 28
Then
the day before the accident
amy
Amy felt a thick wave of nausea sweep through her from the bottom of her gut to the back of her throat. She slid down the kitchen wall until she was sitting on the cold tiles, her feet sticking straight out in front of her like a broken doll, her phone still clutched in her hand.
She had never, not in all their years together, suspected Mac might be the type of husband to pick up a woman in a bar and take her home.
She’d never considered for one moment his late nights might be anything other than the desperate attempts to keep the marina afloat he said they were.
She’d never, not once, not for a second, thought she’d be that wife.
The weight of what she’d just seen on the Ring camera pressed down on her. It was impossible. Unimaginable. But she’d just seen her husband kissing another woman with her own eyes.
She grew hot, sick with humiliation. She couldn’t stay married to him, not after this.
She thought of a life without Mac in it, and she couldn’t breathe.
The panic she’d somehow been holding at bay until now surged through her. She rubbed her tightening chest, shifted position on the floor. She felt a loosening in her bowels, and her palms prickled.
She felt diminished, shrunken.
She closed her eyes and opened them again.
She inhaled through her nose, exhaled through her mouth, trying to quell the rising tide of fear.
Her gaze slid around the kitchen, seeking something solid she could catch on to.
The kibble spilling from the cat’s bowl.
A phone charger beneath a pile of magazines.
The pencil marks on the doorjamb charting Nicky’s growth – 2 years old, 5 years old, 8 1/2, 13.
A dent in the floorboard in front of the sink.
Jesse, yes. She could see Jesse arranging a rendezvous at a hotel.
She could imagine Jesse holding his phone to his ear as a woman with loose hair and a tight ass slithered down his body and reached into his pants, smoothly telling his wife the board meeting had been delayed, no need to wait up, covering the mouthpiece as the woman took him in her sticky mouth, love you too, ending the call and tossing the phone across the bed, reaching for the woman, come here, I need to be inside you.
She could imagine Jesse between another woman’s legs, his face raised above another woman’s wide-open thighs.
But not Mac.
Never Mac.
Amy struggled to her feet, feeling ten years older than when she’d got up that morning. She had to get it together. She couldn’t let Nicky see her like this. She had to focus, to figure out what she was going to do.
She wasn’t like Iris: she didn’t do drama.
She liked to take herself out of the equation and look at a situation objectively, to make decisions based on reason and logic and the best possible outcome for all involved.
She couldn’t allow herself to put her short-term feelings before her long-term interests. She had too much to lose.
But she was in shock. She knew she wasn’t thinking straight. She couldn’t risk seeing Mac until she had herself firmly under control. If she saw him now she might fly at him. She might scream and cry and spew anger and pound on his shoulders and throw him from the house.
She might even kill him.
She dragged herself upstairs on legs that felt as if she’d run a marathon, leaned on the bathroom counter and looked at her reflection in the mirror.
How dare he make a fool of her like this? How dare he make a fool of their life together, of everything they’d built?
She and Mac had discussed partners who cheated, the way couples secure – all right, smug – in their marriage sometimes did.
They’d both agreed that if it ever came to it, if either of them ever felt the need to look outside their marriage for comfort or support or just sex, they’d sit down and have a conversation with each other, no matter how hard it might be.
She dropped to her knees and crawled into her small walk-in closet like a wounded animal seeking sanctuary, shutting out the daylight, her head full of sharp needles of anxiety and dread.
Like father, like son.
How could she not have seen it before?
She wrapped her arms round her knees. Her phone was vibrating and pinging with missed texts and calls, and she tossed it on the floor, watching the notifications pile up on screen.
She’d always thought of her phone as a little miracle, a magic portal through which she could access the world.
She’d dismissed poor Maggie Walker and told her to ignore the trolls and the insults.
It’s just a phone, she’d said. It can’t hurt you.
Another text from her sister. She needed to reply before Iris came looking for her. To cut through the fog and respond, to buy herself some time to think.
She opened the message screen and started to type.
I’m
I’m what?
I’m fine?
I’m crouched on the floor of my closet, because I’ve just seen my husband kissing someone else on my own doorstep and my heart is breaking and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to breathe again?
She dropped the phone and curled up on the carpet in a ball.
A part of her wanted to run from the house and leave Mac alone with Helen and Nicky, with the teenage angst and the breakfast dishes and the stack of bills and the empty fridge and the heaps of laundry.
She wanted him to know what it was like to drown in the sheer boredom of it all, to rip from him the protective ease with which she cushioned his life.
How could she stay now? How could she ever trust him again?
How could she leave the only man she’d ever loved?
Her brain felt like it was about to explode. How long has it been going on? When did it start? Was it just sex? Or – her heart clenched – was it love? Did he love her?
She heard someone calling her name. Outside, the storm lashed the house, rain drumming against the metal roof.
She pushed herself up from the floor, her tears drying on her cheeks.
Mac wasn’t the person she’d thought he was.
And now a part of her she’d thought she’d buried eighteen years ago was clawing its way back to the surface.
She wasn’t the person Mac thought she was either.