Nearlyweds (19 page)

“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? He could be dying here! Should I cover him with my coat or splash water on him or give him mouth-to-mouth or
what
?”

“Casey. It’s okay. Help is on the way, I promise. Just try to
keep him awake; the paramedics will be there before you know it,” she promised. “Now give me directions.”

Nick’s eyes fluttered open and he muttered something I couldn’t make out.

“Wait,” I told Erin. “He’s trying to say something.”

“Ask him if he can wiggle his toes,” she suggested. “Ask him if he knows what year it is.”

“Pr…” He wet his lips and gasped for air.

“What is it, honey?” I rested the back of my hand against his ashen cheek.

He looked at me as if he had never seen me before. His eyes absolutely caressed me. “Prom queen. You’re the prom queen.”

I dropped my hand from his cheek. “That’s Anna Delano, Nick. Not me.”

“Prom queen,” he insisted, before his eyes closed again.

“What’d he say?” Erin wanted to know. “I didn’t catch that.”

“You better tell that ambulance to hurry,” I said grimly. “He must have fallen right on his head.”

W
ho was it?” I asked as Erin snapped her cell phone shut. “Is everything okay?”

“Nick is semiconscious in the woods talking nonsense.” Erin stood up from the scratched metal folding chair in the courthouse corridor and pulled on her parka. “I have to call an ambulance and then I’m going to go meet Casey by Waronoke Pond.”

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

“Well, Casey has the dog with her, so I’m going to drop him off at your house on the way to the hospital, okay?”

I nodded, unzipping the inside pocket of my purse and handing over the spare key.

She clapped both hands on my shoulders. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Sure.” I tried to sound like I meant it. “Absolutely.”

“Because you know I’d stay with you, but…”

“Erin, go. Give me a call when you know how Nick’s doing.”

She was already halfway down the hall, barking orders into her phone. As she rounded the corner, I sank back down into my chair.

The warm-eyed administrative assistant stationed in the office across the hall threw me a sympathetic smile. “He’s still not here?”

I tilted my head back against the cool white wall. “Not yet.”

It had taken me three hours to reach that conclusion; three hours of forced laughter, cold cups of coffee, and increasingly stilted chit chat. Erin had put up a good front—she’d never mentioned that she had used half a sick day to meet me here, and she’d remained cheerful throughout the afternoon—but by hour two, we had run through our entire stock of hilarious child-care stories, and a dark undertow of dread had seeped through our forced enthusiasm.

Mark wasn’t going to marry me.

The man who loved me more than I ever thought possible, who had just last weekend convinced me to move back in with him, wasn’t going to come through. He was going to let me down when I needed him most, and I had no idea why.

He was the one who insisted we meet here to make our vows official. He was the one who said we owed it to ourselves
to fight through the rough patches and recommit to being happy. And we
were
happy—at least, I was. Just last night, the two of us had stayed up late baking gingerbread men and decorating them like doomed famous couples (Charles and Diana, Romeo and Juliet, even an emaciated Paris and Nicole). We’d kissed and flirted like we had on our first dates. I’d really felt like we were back on track.

So where the hell was he?

I tried to keep the faith. Something must have come up, right? Mark wouldn’t leave me hanging like this; he hated to disappoint me. (Hated it so much that he’d gloss over little details like ten-year-old vasectomies rather than deal with them head-on.)

This was different, I told myself firmly. I wouldn’t give up on him.

At quarter to five, the administrative assistant started making apologetic noises about needing to close up for the night. “I’m sorry, miss, but you might as well head home,” she said. “All the judges have already left for the weekend.”

“Okay,” I said. “I know.” But I didn’t want to leave. As long as I remained here on my uncomfortable little folding chair, I could stay in limbo between being married and single.

I took the long way home, stopping to get a pedicure at the new strip mall off Route 7. Then I hit the grocery store, the video store, and the gas station, where I topped off my car’s three-quarters-full tank. And still no word from Mark.

Should I drop by the hospital to see Casey? Or would I only be in the way?

The most sensible course of action was to put on my big-girl panties, go home, and deal with Mark and whatever he might have to say. No more avoidance. No more pretending. I put the car in gear and ten minutes later, I pulled up in the circular driveway.

As I climbed out of the car, I noticed that the front windows were completely dark. Erin had said she’d drop by with Cash, but I didn’t hear the usual barks and snufflings on the other side of the door.

“Hello?” I stepped into the foyer and hit the light switch. “Mark?”

No answer. The house was silent; my footsteps echoed off the high ceiling as I headed toward the family room.

“Cash?” I tried. “Here, doggie, doggie.”

The hush took on an ominous chill. I thought about what had just happened to Nick. Hurt, stranded, alone in the woods. What if something terrible had happened to Mark? An accident, a break-in?

My worry crested into hysteria as I reached the doorway to the kitchen. Glistening puddles of red liquid were smeared across the floor, tracked through with Cash’s huge paw prints. I pressed my fingers into one of the wet stains and recoiled as I confirmed my worst fear: blood.

Fresh blood coated the Travertine tiles, the upholstered
kitchen chairs, even the throw rug by the patio door. The sheer volume of gore made my stomach lurch. Someone must have hemorrhaged all over the kitchen, and very recently, so why was the house dark? Why wouldn’t anyone answer me?

“Mark?” My voice was barely a whisper. “Mark, please.”

I hadn’t realized how hard I was trembling until my purse fell off my shoulder and the keys clattered out of my hand.

If this were a horror movie, you could bet your buttered popcorn that a crazed serial killer would be lurking in the basement, just waiting for me to change into a see-through negligee and creep downstairs to check out the boiler room. Well. I hadn’t grown up watching Wes Craven marathons on cable for nothing. I was getting the hell out of here and calling 911 before some psycho leapt out of the shadows.

But Mark…The trembling resumed as I stared at all the blood.

You can’t help Mark if you’re dismembered under the floorboards. Run.
I hauled ass for the front door, grabbing the fireplace poker and brandishing it like a baseball bat.

I made it all the way to the foyer before I saw it: A clear plastic squeeze bottle nestled up against the first tread of the white carpeted staircase. The bottom of the vial had been chewed off, but the cap was still on. And it was red.

The visions of serial killers dancing in my head faded away and the poker dropped to the floor as I realized I was looking at a mangled bottle of red food coloring. Mark and I had sev
eral different shades of icing to frost the gingerbread cookies last night. We must have left the bottles out by the sink. Easy prey for an agile counter-surfer like Cash.

I raced back into the kitchen to reexamine the forensic evidence. The smears had started to dry, but I licked my index finger, ran it through the red, took a deep breath, and touched it to my tongue. No salty tang. No coppery aftertaste.

I threw the shredded plastic into the trash and set off to find the culprit. “Cash? I know you’re in here, dog, and I know what you did!”

After ten minutes of swearing and sweating, I found him cowering behind the laundry hamper in Mark’s closet. The red paw prints crisscrossed the upstairs hallway and the guest bedroom and bathroom, so he must have had quite a field day before I came home.

“You’re toast.” I shook my index finger at him. “Sit.” For once, he obeyed.

I grabbed one of his front feet and sure enough, the fringes of fur between his paw pads were still wet with red liquid.

“You’re in big trouble,” I scolded. “First of all, you scared the crap out of me. Second of all, this is a mohair blend carpet. It’s expensive to clean. Mark already doesn’t like you, and when he sees this, he’s going to…”

I trailed off as the implications sunk in. Mark hadn’t been murdered and left to die in our pantry. Mark wasn’t here at all.

So why hadn’t he shown up at the courthouse this afternoon?

The phone on the nightstand rang, and I checked the caller ID before picking up.

“I’m sorry,” he started, before I could say anything.

I sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

“Stella?”

My face felt like it had lost all muscle control. “I’m here.”

“I know I should have met you this afternoon. I wanted to. But every time I think about going to the urologist on Monday…I just can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice was raw. “I waited at the courthouse for hours.”

He swallowed audibly. “I couldn’t bear to disappoint you.”

“I believed in you, Mark. I trusted you. And when you didn’t show, I thought…I kept thinking you were hurt. Or dead.
Something.
Because for you to just leave me there…”

“This is hard for me, too.” He did sound agonized.

“Well, why didn’t you call me? Why couldn’t you just say—”

“I hate that I can’t give you what you need, Stella. I never want you to look at me the way you did on our wedding night.”

“But you’re torturing me.” I flopped sideways onto the comforter. Cash nudged my knee with his warm, wet nose. “I feel like I’m being punished.”

“I never meant for this to happen. I thought—”

“The whole time I was waiting this afternoon, I was in pain,” I said. “Physical pain. I love you so much, but you just…you just…”

“I love you, too,” he vowed.

“No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you doing this to me?” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

The connection crackled.

“Mark?”

“I don’t want this to be over.”

I buried my face in the pillow for a moment, then said, “But it is over.”

“Sweetheart, no.”

“You lied to me. And you’re still lying.”

I waited for him to protest, to fight for me. But all he said was, “I’m sorry.”

Cash, who had been nuzzling my face with great concern, hit the telephone keypad with his paw and disconnected the call. I curled up into a ball in the middle of the bed and waited for Mark to call me back. But the phone never rang.

D
o you want me to stay with you until he’s ready to go?” I asked Casey, glancing at the luminous digital clock by the nurses’ station.

“No.” Casey, still caked in dried mud, with bits of leaves and twigs clinging to her red fleece jacket, shifted on the Naugahyde-upholstered chair outside Nick’s room. “You must be starving. Why don’t you go back to the apartment and have dinner? I left salmon fillets marinating in the fridge this morning. Just squeeze some lemon on them and throw them in the oven at three fifty.”

“Can’t.” I put on my jacket. “My friend Jonathan’s in town for the weekend and I promised to meet him for dinner.”

“Erin! Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“Because Nick’s concussion is more important than my so
cial life? I told you, Jonathan’s like my brother. We’re just going to go get burgers and bitch about work.”

“What about David?” Casey asked.

“Well, he’s not invited, obviously.”

“No, I mean, what are you going to do about David?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “That’s the other thing I have to talk to Jonathan about. I need a guy’s perspective on the whole situation.”

“Have you talked to David since you left the house?”

“Only briefly. He’s still refusing to ask his mother to move out, and I’m still refusing to move back until he does, so we’re at an impasse.”

Casey shook her head. “Do you think you’re really going to move back to Boston?”

I didn’t have an answer for that yet, so I gave her a pointed look and asked, “Do you think you’re really going to let Nick stay over with you tonight? He keeps asking.”

Casey snorted. “Yeah, he’s not above playing the invalid card. No shame.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Nick called from the exam room, where a haggard ER resident was concluding a final check for neurological damage. As Casey had reported, he’d lost his balance while attempting to kneel in the tree stand and had discharged his gun into the trees right before he’d landed directly on his head. Though he’d spent the ambulance ride to the ER fading in and out of consciousness, he’d been
awake and alert for the last few hours. A head CT hadn’t shown any evidence of a skull fracture or brain injury, and despite his doctor’s recommendation that he remain overnight in the hospital for observation, Nick insisted on going home tonight.

As long as he got to go home with Casey.

“Stop eavesdropping,” Casey called back to him. “No one likes a sneak.”

“I’m not eavesdropping, I’m defending my manly honor.”

“So what do you think?” Casey murmured. “Should I let him stay at the apartment or not?”

I gave her a look. “You’re asking
me
? You must really be desperate.”

“Not desperate,” she corrected. “Just confused.”

“That makes two of us.”

“So what’s your story?” Dr. Jonathan Witkowski, my longtime friend and one-time fellow intern, put down his glass of beer and commenced his interrogation across the wobbly table at the Blue Hills Tavern. From the moment we’d walked through the door, women had been ogling Jonathan—with his unruly black hair, classic features and fanatic devotion to the gym, he kind of looked like Clive Owen—but he’d given up flirting since he’d started dating Simone. “You move out to the sticks and everything goes to hell in a handbasket?”

I dipped a gloriously greasy French fry into a puddle of
ketchup. “Don’t be a snob; it’s not ‘the sticks.’ But otherwise, yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

“And you’re
sure
you and David can’t work this out?” he asked for the hundredth time. The peppy pop music blaring from the bar’s speakers didn’t match our somber tones, but dining options in Alden were pretty much limited to the White Birch or the Blue Hills Tavern, and I was in no mood for the White Birch crowd tonight. With my luck, I’d run into Renée.

I increased my pace of French fry consumption. Nothing like saturated fats to dull the pain. “I’ve done everything I can, but ultimately it’s his call. And with the marriage license screwup, I feel like this is the time to make a change. No messy divorce, no ugly legal proceedings…”

“Except you own a house together,” Jonathan pointed out.

“Except for that.”

“And you love him.”

“That, too,” I conceded.

He narrowed his eyes. “You look exhausted—have you been sleeping?”

“Of course. Three solid hours a night.”

“Just like residency.”

I nodded. “But now, instead of racing around trying to save lives, I just lie in the dark and think about what could have been if only I hadn’t agreed to move out here. And I’d said no when Renée offered to give us a down payment. And I’d been a better wife.”

“Very productive.” Jonathan kicked me under the table as I helped myself to a sip of his beer. “Well, the hospital would be glad to have you. As soon as you’re ready to come back, just say the word. You could drive back with me tomorrow if you want. Simone’s condo is ready and waiting.”

I rested my chin on my hand, suddenly feeling the effects of the week’s insomnia. “Hey, thanks for coming out this weekend. I really needed someone to talk to.”

“No problem. I can’t believe you and David are breaking up, though. He must be really—” Jonathan broke off and craned his neck to look at the door. “Oh man, here we go.”

I whipped around and saw David march past the jukebox and the dartboard. His eyes blazed as he approached our table.

“What is he doing here?” David demanded.

I smiled weakly at our fellow diners, who had put down their burgers and were watching us intently. “Could you please lower your voice, David? You’re making a—”

“I should have known! The minute we have turbulence, you go right back to him.”

“Please don’t start with that again,” I said. “We’re friends and that’s all and you know it.”

“Hey, Dave, how you doing?” Jonathan said mildly.

David ignored him and stared at my ring finger, which was now naked. “You didn’t even wait a week to hook up with someone else?”

I shoved back my chair and slapped down my napkin. “I
am not going to sit here and listen to this.” I made a beeline for the ladies’ room, but David stayed hot on my heels, and we ended up locked in the closet-sized, wood-paneled bathroom together.

“Why is he here?” David’s face was flushed. “This is
our
town.”

I started pacing the tiny room like a caged tiger. “Stop talking like that. Hate me if you must, but leave Jonathan out of this.”

David paused. “I don’t hate you.”

Someone knocked on the door. “Hello?” called a high, feminine voice.

“In a minute!” I yelled, then resumed arguing. “What are you really upset about?”

He looked incredulous. “Why do you think? I’m upset because my wife left me.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” I flung out my arms.

“How about not move to Boston, for starters?”

“I wouldn’t be moving to Boston if you would get your mother out of our house.”

“Easier said than done.”

“It’s not, actually. She has plenty of money, plenty of friends…”

“And only one son,” he finished. “So don’t ask me to cut her out of my life.”

“I’m
not;
all I’m asking is for you to cut her out of our house! That’s totally reasonable, David. Haven’t you ever
thought about how much easier everything would be if she weren’t constantly breathing down our necks?”

“I’ve thought about it,” he said grimly. “
Believe me,
I’ve thought about it.”

“So?”

“So it’s not that simple. Family’s important.”

“Yeah, and
I’m
your family!” I exploded.

“Family doesn’t walk out the minute things get tough,” he accused. “Family doesn’t give impossible, split-second ultimatums.”

“Ha! Your mother does all that and more.”

“That’s right, and I don’t need you stepping up to do her job.”

My ears started ringing.
“What?”

“You got mad and stormed out and now you’re pretending that our marriage never existed because you didn’t get your way! You’re trying to manipulate me, just like my—”

“Do not say it,” I hissed. “Because if you do—”

Knock, knock, knock.
“Excuse me. Could you please hurry up in there?”

“
In a minute!”
David and I screamed in unison.

I opened my mouth to enumerate the ways in which Renée and I were polar opposites, but David didn’t give me a chance.

“Nothing I do makes you happy,” he said. “You said you wanted to buy a house, you said Boston real estate prices were out of control—”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to move all the way out there!”

“Then why did you say yes when I asked you to move? Why did you say yes when my mother offered to help buy the house? You agreed to this, Erin. And now we’re here, in the house you picked out, and all you can talk about is how much you hate it. So I give up. If moving back to Boston is going to make you happy, then go ahead.”

The knocking on the door intensified to pounding. “I really have to pee!”

“Fine.” I elbowed David aside, jerked open the door, and glared at the petite blonde waiting in the hallway. “We’re done here.”

While she waited for David to clear out, she regarded me with gentle reproach. “He has a point, you know. He did buy you that house to make you happy.”

I put up my dukes. “Do I even know you?”

She slammed the door in my face. I heard the lock click.

David turned his back on me and stalked toward the bar, where I heard him ask the bartender, “Do you have any single-malt scotch?”

Jonathan had already paid our bill and gathered up our coats. “I figured it was time to go,” he said. “Rumor has it you guys were brawling in the bathroom?”

I glared back over my shoulder toward the bar. “I made up my mind—I’m moving back to Boston. I’m packing tonight.”

Jonathan’s eyes widened. “Right now?”

“Once Renée gets word of this, she’ll probably pile all my stuff on the front lawn and torch it. I better hurry. Do you think the U-Haul place is still open?”

I dropped Jonathan off at his hotel after we picked up the rental van—he’d offered to help me pack, but this was a one-woman job. I needed some time alone in the house I’d shared with David. To say good-bye to everything I thought I’d had with him.

After backing the U-Haul into the driveway (no easy feat, given my limited spatial skills), I grabbed a stack of disassembled cardboard boxes from the stack in the trailer and trudged up the front walk. The second I opened the front door, the living room lights blazed on and a clipped, arctic voice said, “Well, well, well. Look who’s back.”

Blinded by the sudden explosion of light, I dropped the boxes to rub my eyes. “What the…
Renée
?”

“That’s right.”

When my eyes adjusted, I saw her curled up like a cat in the tall blue wingback chair.

“I thought you were at bridge club tonight,” I sputtered.

“Trudie Fischer’s husband called from the Blue Hills Tavern. Are you here for your things?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Good.” She uncoiled herself from the chair and started across the room. “I’ve had everything packed and ready to go since you deserted my son.”

“You went through my things? My private things?”
Of course
she had gone through my private things. Had I learned nothing?

“You broke David’s heart.” She tucked her brown bob back behind her ear. “I want you out.”

“Oh no, you don’t.” I held up a hand. “Let’s get one thing straight, lady.
I
didn’t break David’s heart. You did. You’re the one who moved in here and pried this marriage apart with a crowbar.”

“Nothing can tear apart a strong marriage.”

“You sabotaged me from day one!” I ranted. “You tried to kill me! And maybe I could have gotten past that, but you went through my mail! You threw out my job offer from Boston!”

“I did no such thing.” But her eyes gave her away.

“Save the martyr routine for David. I know what you did. The dog dragged the evidence out of the trash.”

“The dog.” She sniffed.

“That’s right, Renée—the dog busted you.”

She pointed imperiously toward the den, where I could see a tower of stacked cartons and suitcases. “Your boxes are ready and waiting.”

“Well, you finally got rid of me. Congratulations.” I grabbed two small boxes—books, I was guessing, from the weight of them—and staggered toward the front door.

“You never loved him enough.” She said this almost to herself. “If you did, you would have stayed.”

“You never loved him enough,” I countered. “If you did, you would want him to be happy.”