Covet

Also by Tracey Garvis Graves

On the Island

DUTTON

Published by the Penguin Group

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New York, New York 10014, USA

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Copyright © 2013 by Tracey Garvis Graves

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Graves, Tracey Garvis.

Covet / Tracey Garvis Graves.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-101-62741-9

1. Husband and wife—Fiction. 2. Suburban life—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3607.A78296C68 2013

813'.6—dc23 2013016256

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To the girls of FP: Thank you for your light, your love, and your laughter. I couldn’t have done it without you.

claire

I’m on my way home from dropping off the kids at school when he pulls me over. I see the lights in my rearview mirror seconds before he hits the siren, giving it two short bursts. I’m not speeding, or in violation of any traffic laws that I know of, but I pull to the shoulder and the police car slows to a stop behind my bumper. When the officer walks up to the driver’s-side window, I hit the button to lower it.

“Did you know you have a taillight out, ma’am?” he asks.

“Really?” I crane my neck to look behind me—as if I could possibly see it from inside the car—and immediately feel foolish.

“Yes,” he says. “Passenger side. Can I see your license and registration and proof of insurance?”

I nod. “Sure.”

He doesn’t look like any cop I’ve ever seen. He looks like a model pretending to be a police officer for a photo shoot. Or maybe one of those cops who shows up at a bachelorette party and then strips down to his underwear.

Suddenly, I can’t remember where anything is.

He waits patiently while I locate the necessary documents in the console and pry my license out of my wallet. I hand everything to him and he takes it to his car, and when he returns he leans down by my window and hands it all back.

Up close, I notice that his eyes are green, the exact shade of a piece of sea glass I found on the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico two years ago when Chris and I took the kids to South Padre Island. He must be six two or three, and he’s lean but broad shouldered. He doesn’t look older than mid to late thirties, but there are a few flecks of gray in his dark hair, which only enhance his good looks. So unfair. He rips a piece of paper off the pad he’s holding, glances down at the name he’s written on it, and looks back up. “Claire?”

“Yes.”

He hands me the ticket. “It’s just a warning,” he says, reading my expression and smiling to dispel my worry that I’m about to get slapped with a fine. His teeth are white and perfectly straight. “Have it taken care of as soon as possible, okay? It isn’t safe.”

“I will,” I say, looking down at the ticket. It’s been signed by Officer Daniel Rush. “Thank you.”

He nods. “Have a nice day.”

When I return home, my husband, Chris, is standing in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand. He’s wearing jeans and a polo shirt in accordance with casual Friday, and he smells like the cologne I gave him for his birthday.

“Have you seen my watch?” he asks, in lieu of a proper greeting. I unearth it under a stack of mail on the counter, and he straps it on. “Did you drive the kids to school?”

“Yes,” I say, setting down my purse on the island. “Last day,” I add, because even though I mentioned it, there’s a fairly good chance Chris forgot; he’s got other things, important things, to focus on right now. “I wanted to hand deliver the gifts for their teachers. I wasn’t sure they’d arrive in one piece if they took them on the bus.”

The kids are a safe topic, and politely exchanging information regarding their whereabouts and well-being has become our fallback method of communication. Neither of us raises our voice. I once read an article in a women’s magazine that said it’s a really bad sign when you and your spouse stop arguing. It means that you’ve given up and no longer care about saving your marriage. I hope that’s not true, but I worry that it probably is. I walk to the dishwasher and start unloading it, not bothering to tell Chris about the taillight; I’ll take care of it myself.

He opens the cupboard, grabs the pill bottle, and shakes a capsule into his hand, swallowing it with water. He’s probably wondering if I’ll say something about the pills, but I won’t. I never do. He’s whistling and seems eager to head out the door this morning; I should just be grateful he has a job to go to, because the twelve months we spent at home together when he was out of work were almost our undoing. Still might be. He grabs his laptop and car keys, says good-bye, and walks out the door without kissing me.

I finish unloading the dishwasher. Tucker scratches and whines at the sliding glass door, and I open it. “Go, Tuck,” I say, watching as he takes off in hot pursuit of a squirrel. He never catches one because the squirrel will scamper to safety on top of our fence long before he reaches it, but that seldom stops him from trying.

It’s quiet now. I pour a cup of coffee and gaze out the window as summer beckons.

 • • • 

I open the door to seven-year-old Jordan’s room, my arms full of clean laundry. She’s made her bed without being asked, and her stuffed animals are lined up neatly on her pillow. There’s nothing on the floor, not a stray sock, not her pajamas, not one of the hundreds of crayons and markers she’s always drawing with. Nothing. It used to bother me until my mom pointed out that I did the same thing when I was her age. “Don’t go looking for trouble where there is none, Claire. She relishes order the same way you do.” I never did grow out of it either, this need to have everything organized, my life segmented neatly into tidy little boxes. How karma must have had a field day with me last year.

I open nine-year-old Josh’s door next and immediately trip over a pile of Matchbox cars; it appears there’s been a pileup. Josh likes to crash things. He does not, however, share his sister’s fondness for neatness and order. I step around the cars and navigate my way across the room, dodging piles of clothes, sports equipment, shoes, and his guitar. His navy blue comforter hangs halfway off the bed, but the sheets are pulled up and both pillows are in the right spot. I’ll give him an A for effort. After I put away the clean clothes I pick up the dirty ones and reverse my steps.

In our bedroom only one side of the bed has been slept in. When he’s home, which from now on will be rare, Chris often sleeps on the couch in the family room, a habit he started when his insomnia was at its worst and he didn’t want to disturb me with his tossing and turning. In hindsight, I should have insisted that he stay because now I doubt he’ll ever return.

I scoop up his boxer shorts and damp towel from the bathroom floor and add them to the pile in my arms, wondering if there will ever be more to life than laundry and sleeping alone in a king-size bed.

My neighbor Elisa walks into my kitchen later that morning, her yoga mat in one hand and a giant bottle of water in the other. Her light brown hair is in a perfect ballerina bun, not a messy one like mine, and her gray yoga pants coordinate nicely with her pink tank top. “I almost got run over crossing the street,” she says. “What the
hell
is wrong with people? Do they not realize how many kids are in this neighborhood?” Elisa is a born and bred Texas girl whose husband, Skip, brought her back to his home state of Kansas after college, and when she’s riled up you can really hear the twang in her speech.

Elisa and I live in Rockland Hills, an exclusive neighborhood in a suburb of Kansas City. We’re on the Kansas side, and the single-family homes are large and stately, with a median price of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The architecture is a mix of styles, designed to lend a unique feel and keep the houses from looking too similar. Chris and I purchased our Tuscany-inspired four-bedroom home five years ago after we fell in love with the warm, earthy hues, expansive terra-cotta tile floors, and wrought-iron sconces. Our furniture is soft and oversize, chosen solely for comfort. We’ve been happy with this neighborhood except for the fact that the winding, tree-lined streets aren’t heavily patrolled and not everyone watches their speed the way they should; the most frequent offenders are the newly licensed offspring of the affluent residents.

I grab my own bottle of water from the fridge. “Maybe we can check into getting one of those speed limit signs. You know, the ones that blink?” I ask.

“We need something. I can’t believe how fast that car was going.”

I drive us to yoga. When we walk in the front door I feel instantly calmer, the way I always do when I hear the New Age music and smell the lingering scent of incense. A potted aloe vera plant sits on a low table and paintings from local artists adorn the sage-green walls. It’s all very soothing.

After we stow our gear in the locker room we stake out a spot in the back row of the studio, sitting cross-legged on our mats while we wait for the class to start. “I’ve got a taillight out. Can you pick me up after I drop off my car?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says, stretching her arms over her head. “When?”

I take a sip from my water bottle. “I don’t know. I’ll call and make an appointment when I get home. I need to take care of it as soon as possible.”

“Did you get pulled over?” she asks.

“Yes, this morning. By the most ridiculously good-looking cop I’ve ever seen.”

She raises an eyebrow and grins. “Do tell.”

“There’s not much to it,” I say, chuckling. “I was so flustered I couldn’t remember where I kept my registration. It was like my brain left the building. He was nice, though.” I don’t tell Elisa that my mind keeps flashing back to this morning. I don’t tell her that I keep thinking about the officer’s smile. Maybe it’s some kind of latent cop fantasy I didn’t know I had. Maybe it’s because it’s been so long since my husband paid any attention to me at all. Maybe it’s because I’m so damn lonely. It’s not like it matters, anyway. There are approximately twenty-two thousand residents in this town, and the odds of running into him again are not that great.

They’re not horrible, though.

I realize that these are not the thoughts of a happily married woman, but at the moment I am not very happily married.

After we return from yoga I take a shower and work on my laptop for a few hours, then cross the street to take a plate of cookies and a bowl of fruit salad over to Elisa’s. Her and Skip’s contemporary two-story is the polar opposite of mine: It boasts sleek, modern furniture and clean lines, and the color palette features icy blues and soft grays.

Elisa’s the consummate entertainer, and her end-of-the-school-year party has become a tradition on our street with the adults looking forward to it almost as much as the kids do. I help her set up a long table on her covered patio, and we stack paper plates and sort plastic utensils. Elisa fans out a pile of brightly colored napkins.

It’s barely June, but a fluke heat wave has stalled over the Midwest, and the record-breaking temperature hovers near eighty-seven. The heat and humidity make it feel as if my neighborhood has been relocated to a tropical island.

“What time are you coming over?” Elisa asks.

“Five thirty. Chris said he’d be home on time.”

My guess is that Chris will still be the last one to leave the office today. If past behavior is any indication, it won’t take long for Chris’s workaholic tendencies to kick in, weekends and holidays be damned.

We stand back and survey our work. “I think I’m all set,” Elisa says. “Thanks for helping.”

“Sure. See you in a little while.”

She waves. “Bye, Claire.”

I’m waiting on the sidewalk an hour later when the school bus pulls up. Jordan is the first child off, and she flies down the steps and into my arms, her backpack bulging with all the treasures that used to live in her desk. She cradles a figurine in her hands; it looks like a turtle. Or maybe it’s a swan. I don’t dare ask. “I made you a peacock, Mommy,” she says, proudly handing it over. Her expression turns somber. “Please don’t break this one.”

I examine the peacock and kiss her on the forehead. “It’s beautiful, honey. I’ll be more careful. I promise.”

Jordan looks like me, except her hair is a mass of short, sunshiny-blonde ringlets. My hair is longer, the curls stretching into waves that reach my shoulder blades, and at thirty-four I need a boost from quarterly highlights to help brighten the shade. My daughter and I share the same small nose and full lips, but she has dimples and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks. She takes my breath away.

Josh, who follows sedately behind his sister, takes after Chris. He has the same golden-boy good looks that attracted me to his father twelve years ago when we were twenty-two and fresh out of college, the ink barely dry on our degrees, Chris’s in business and marketing and mine in graphic design. They’re the kind of features—distinct, symmetrical, strong—that make people listen to what you have to say, buy what you’re selling. When Mindy, my best friend from college, received our Christmas card and family photo a few years ago, she jokingly asked, “Has anyone ever mentioned you all look a little Stepfordish?”

I suppose we do. I’m the anomaly, though. We all have blond hair, but only Chris and the kids have blue eyes. Mine are brown.

“How was the last day of school?” I ask, taking Jordan’s hand and reaching over to ruffle Josh’s hair.

“Awesome!” they answer in unison. We sing a few lines of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” at the top of our lungs and walk into the house. “Who wants a snack?” I ask.

While they’re eating peanut butter crackers and sipping juice I go through their backpacks, sorting the contents into piles. “Find a place in your rooms for everything you want to keep, okay?” I put Jordan’s peacock on the counter.

Chris walks in the door at 5:29 and sets down his laptop and cell phone. “Daddy!” The kids barrel toward him, and he gathers them in his arms. “Do I have time to change?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. “We can wait.”

He runs upstairs and returns two minutes later wearing a faded T-shirt and cargo shorts. “All right,” he says, scooping up Jordan and placing her on his shoulders. She beams, liking this happy Daddy. “Let’s go.”

We cross the street and walk around to the back of the house. “Greetings, Canton family,” Skip says as we enter his yard and approach the patio. He scoops me up in a bear hug and kisses me on the cheek. Josh and Jordan scatter, off to join the kids jumping on the trampoline.

Elisa’s husband is one of my favorite people. He played football at Baylor, and he’s a big strapping guy with broad shoulders and a belly that’s just beginning to show the effects of too much beer and barbecue, but he’s a teddy bear. I once watched him dodge traffic to rescue a turtle so it wouldn’t get run over, and I saw him wipe away tears when ten-year-old Travis—his and Elisa’s only child—accepted an award for collecting donations for a family who lost all their possessions in a house fire. And boy does he love his wife.