Chapter 31
amy
Somehow Amy held it together in front of Kate.
She and Iris calmly made the case that prom should go ahead on the Lady as planned, that it was safe, that the weather tomorrow was forecast to be bright and blue-skied and cloudless – look, the rain’s easing, it’s clearing up already!
– and that, with so much of Stowebury flooded and so many roads and fields under water, a boat on the lake was, in fact, the most sensible place to be.
After Kate had gone, Iris wanted to stay, but Amy was suddenly desperate for her to leave. If Mac came home while her sister was there, Iris would never be able to keep a lid on her feelings. She’d force a confrontation, whether Amy was ready for one or not.
And Amy needed to play the long game.
She knew too many women who’d reacted from the heart instead of the head, throwing out their cheating husbands and destroying good marriages – and yes, she believed such marriages could still be good, because people made mistakes, didn’t they?
– and driving their husbands into the arms of another woman, when the smarter thing to do, in the long run, was wait for the fire to burn itself out.
She wasn’t going to let anyone break up her family. Mac might be a cheating bastard, but he was her cheating bastard.
She wasn’t going to let him go without a fight.
So, once Iris had finally left, Amy sat down and texted her husband. It took her forty minutes to compose the eleven words needed to convey just the right note of casual concern.
Hey there. Just checking in. How are things at the marina?
She waited for a reply, the three grey dots that’d indicate Mac was texting his response, answering his wife, that it was business as usual; but the message remained not just unanswered but unread.
Amy slid her phone into her back pocket. Mercifully, she didn’t have time to dwell. Suddenly her phone was lighting up with messages, and she was busy fielding calls from faculty, staff and parents as Kate spread the word that prom was going ahead despite the storm.
Amy spent the next few hours discussing access to the marina – one of the two main roads through town was currently three feet under water – and reorganising catering logistics, reassuring anxious parents, issuing extra tickets, refunding those who’d decided to cancel.
She let herself get sucked into the minutiae of plastic cups and banned rap lyrics, grateful for the respite.
But when six o’clock came and Mac still hadn’t replied, she began to worry.
She texted him again, checking her phone repeatedly as the evening wore on.
She even asked Iris to touch base with Jesse, to see if he’d spoken to Mac or knew where he was, but Jesse had gone off grid, too, no doubt working out how to parlay the personal tragedies of those with inundated homes and businesses in town into a real estate development opportunity.
Nicky was still at Maggie’s, so Amy ate dinner alone, standing at the kitchen counter, forcing down a few bites of yesterday’s leftover lasagna. She poured herself a large glass of white wine instead of her usual camomile tea, but it barely touched the sides of her anxiety.
She didn’t want to face it, but she had to: maybe Mac wasn’t coming home.
Maybe he’d chosen . . . her.
Was this what it felt like to be the abandoned wife, sitting at home watching the clock, the last one to know?
At ten o’clock, when Mac still hadn’t returned, she sat straight-backed and tense on one of the Adirondack chairs out on the deck.
The air outside was cool and fresh, rinsed clean by the storm.
She decided she’d give Mac another five minutes, and then she’d call him.
She’d avoided speaking to him until now, afraid her voice would give her away, but she couldn’t put it off much longer.
She was simultaneously shocked and unsurprised when he didn’t answer.
At eleven, she finally went upstairs to bed.
She stared up at the tongue-and-groove wood-panelled ceiling Mac had built with such care, wishing she hadn’t drunk that second glass of wine, wishing she hadn’t thrown out all her mother’s sleeping pills, wishing she could switch off her mind.
Eventually, sheer exhaustion propelled her into an unsettled sleep, populated with disturbing images of Mac and a faceless woman who morphed into Helen as she tossed and turned.
Just before dawn, for the first time in their marriage, Amy woke alone.
She reached for her phone.
No messages, no texts. No missed calls.
A heaviness dragged at her pelvis, as if her period was coming.
She got up and made her side of the bed, neatly smoothing the white duvet into place, straightening the decorative pillows and hanging her robe on the back of the bathroom door.
She brushed her teeth and dressed, pulling on a pair of jeans and a classic navy and white Breton T-shirt, sliding her feet into a pair of periwinkle Birkenstocks before pulling a brush through her hair.
Her toes needed painting before prom tonight, she thought absently. She must make sure she didn’t forget.
Downstairs, Nicky’s trainers lay where he’d kicked them off by the front door, the tongues leering from the laces. Her son must have come in after she’d gone to bed; his bedroom door was closed.
She made herself a black coffee instead of her usual tea, trying to shake her tiredness so she could focus.
What would be going through her mind now if she hadn’t seen the doorbell footage?
Would she be frantic with worry, imagining Mac crushed by a tree, trapped in his pickup upside down in a ditch?
Or would she just assume his phone had died or he’d lost signal while he’d been spending the night desperately holding the storm at bay, defending the marina and his livelihood?
And then suddenly her phone beeped with a flurry of three text messages:
Staying here tonight to keep an eye.
Will text in the a.m.
Jesse’s boat minor damage but rest ok.
Coming home soon. Cd use some sleep! Love u.
He must have lost cell service overnight. Clearly he was now back in range, and the texts had all come through together.
The sun was rising now, throwing burnished rectangles of light across the hardwood kitchen floor. Amy slid open the doors to the deck, a cool morning breeze shivering the leaves on the trees around the house.
Last night’s shock and grief had been replaced by a cool, implacable resolve. Someone had threatened those she loved once before, and she’d dealt with it. She’d deal with it again.
She stepped out onto the deck.
She could tell already it was going to be a beautiful day.