Third Degree (17 page)

“Someone could be dying back there!” she screamed. “Right now, while we drive away. I saw someone moving on the road!”

But Warren remained unmoved. She still remembered his quiet soliloquy as they fled the scene: “Listen to me. That’s probably some drunk black guy wrapped around that tree. Or white trash, take your pick. He probably never paid a dime for car insurance in his life. I, on the other hand, studied for twenty grueling years to become a doctor. I’m not risking everything I’ve built for you and the kids to try to help somebody who’ll repay me for my efforts by suing me.”

While Laurel gaped in disbelief, Warren went on, and his words were still engraved in her soul. “I’ve gone so far out of my way to help those people…and I don’t mean all of them, you know that. But I drove a blood sample to Jackson late one Friday so a family could find out as soon as possible whether their kid had leukemia or not—he didn’t—and did I get one word of thanks? No, ma’am. Just a blank stare, and they’re gone. No ‘Thank you,’ no payment, no nothing. So tonight, we drive on.”

Laurel had settled back in her seat and closed her eyes, but the flaming truck still burned behind her eyelids, and the broken body still crawled along the lightless road. The next morning, she read in the newspaper that two people had died in a one-car accident on Highway 24—no witnesses, according to the highway patrol. The couple had been traveling home from the funeral of their grandson. Laurel could tell by their names that they were black. She never looked at Warren the same way again after that night, and two weeks later, she’d begun her affair with Danny McDavitt. Danny, she knew, would never abandon someone in trouble on the side of a road. He had the medals to prove it.

“You don’t know half what you think you know,” Warren said with eerie certainty. “You think I’m a coward because of that night?”

“I don’t want to think about that night ever again.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s a luxury you have, I guess. You think I don’t have reasons to check out of this marriage?”

She shrugged. “If you do, then you should.”

He shook his head like a man amazed. “Is it really that easy for you? You can look at Grant and Beth, smile, and say, ‘Sayonara, kids? It was fun while it lasted?’ ”

“You know it’s not that simple.”

Warren clenched his jaw muscles, then got up and stood over her with the pistol in his hand. She watched it hanging beside her head, an efficient little machine of death, dangling like a child’s toy in his tanned hand.

He pressed the barrel against the crown of her skull. “This is how simple it is. I know you had an affair. I know because you won’t give me that password. You think you’re sparing me pain by keeping the truth from me, but you’re not. You’re making it worse. For me
and
for you. Be sure you understand that. You’re not leaving this house until I know who’s been fucking you. Do you understand that?”

Laurel wanted to be brave, but she felt herself trembling.

“DO—YOU—UN—DER—
STAND
?!”

She waited until she knew she could speak without sounding terrified. “I want you to listen to me, Warren. I want you to think about all the things that have frightened us through the years. Everything that could take us away from our children. Cancer. Car accidents. Child molesters. An intruder in the house. We’ve taken steps to prevent all those things. But right now”—the gun barrel scraped her scalp as she lifted her face to look at him—“right now
you
are the greatest threat to this family. What if I did have an affair? I understand you would feel hurt. But does
anything
justify this? Would you murder the mother of your children? Think about Grant and Beth for just ten seconds. Picture them in your mind. How innocent they are.”

The smell of gun oil entered her nose. After a few moments, Warren lowered the gun, bent his knees, and squatted before her. Seeing a change in his eyes, she was sure she had broken through the anger and pain to reach him. He still looked shell-shocked, but the tenderness in his gaze had not been there before, however wounded it might be.

“Do you know what a family is?” he whispered. “What makes a family?”

She nodded, but Warren shook his head.

“Trust,”
he said. “That’s what separates a family from the rest of the world. Blood isn’t enough. They say blood is thicker than water, but brothers betray each other all the time. Trust is the glue that protects a family from the chaos outside.”

She wanted to respond, but it was coming to her that Warren saw the world in a way that she did not, and never could.

“You,”
he said with quiet force, “have destroyed that. Irrevocably. The damage is done, and I can never take you at your word again. Grant and Beth can never trust you again.”

“Warren—”

“Don’t speak!” he commanded, standing suddenly. He looked down at her like some kind of Old Testament judge. “You chose to place your selfish desires over the welfare of your children. And you must pay the price for that. All of us will have to, I’m afraid.”

“Warren, you’re not yourself,” she said, starting to rise.

He slapped her with his left hand, driving her down to the floor. His palm had struck her right ear, which was now ringing like the three-o’clock bell at school. It hurt, but the shock of being hit far outweighed the pain. She held up her hands to prevent another blow.

“Do you think I haven’t been tempted?”
Warren shouted. “Do you think I haven’t had nurses offer me any damn thing I wanted, no strings attached?”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Not only nurses. Wives of friends, teachers at the school,
friends of yours!
The signs are always up: ‘Pussy for rent’! Nobody has any honor anymore. Nobody keeps their promises.”

Laurel stayed on the floor, trying to recall a dark religious strain in Warren’s childhood, but she didn’t remember one. But the way he was talking…it was like he’d been possessed by some wild-eyed minister from another age. Or by her father on his worst day. But not even her father would have resorted to violence. He would have gotten her down on the floor to pray until God sent some sign that forgiveness was at hand. But Warren wasn’t waiting for a sign. He saw himself as the instrument of God’s punishment.

“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” she said. “But there’s no reason for it. I wish you’d believe me. I would never do anything to hurt our children. Never.”

“Get up!”
he yelled, almost jerking her arm out of joint.

She scrambled to her feet. Warren seemed about to drag her somewhere, but then he shoved her back down on the sofa.

“I’m so
stupid,
” he said. “How could it take me so long to see it? My blood sugar must be in the basement.” He sat on the ottoman and started pecking at the computer again. “You can buy just about anything on the Web these days. I read an article in
USA Today
about identity theft and computers. Apparently, hackers have these programs called password crackers that will crank away for fifty hours in a row, if necessary, trying every possible combination of numbers and letters until they break into your e-mail account, or whatever. I’ll bet for the right price, I can download one of those cracker programs right into your little Sony.”

Laurel had mistakenly invested in the idea that the gun was the greatest danger in the room. This new digital wrinkle destroyed that illusion. Her computer was the real weapon, or rather the detonator that could trigger the use of the gun in earnest. If Warren actually got into her Hotmail account, he would have Danny’s name almost instantly. Soon after, he would read every piece of e-mail that had passed between her and Danny during the eleven months they had been together. There were even
photos
embedded in some of those messages! Some were intimate, others not, but every one had the power to shatter what remained of her husband’s sanity.

“Here we go,” said Warren, a note of triumph in his voice. “Merlin’s Magic. Sounds like just the ticket. Two hundred eighty-nine bucks, and they won’t even let you download a trial version. That means they know their program works, and they know the kind of situation someone’s likely to be in when they need it. A one-shot deal, with a lot riding on the outcome.”

Just as she began to hope that Warren would have to get up to retrieve a credit card, he said, “I’m going to use your PayPal account to buy this. Isn’t that sweet? One click, and we’re in business.”

Laurel closed her eyes while his fingertips clicked the keys. How many minutes until the kids got home? If she jumped up and raced for one of the house phones to call 911, would Warren shoot her? Even if he didn’t, had things deteriorated to the point that an armed siege was the best solution?
They have,
she said silently.
As long as the kids aren’t in the house—

“All done!” Warren said brightly. He cut his eyes at her. “You might want to rethink your denial. It’s only a matter of time until I read those e-mails. And remember, confession is good for the soul.”

My soul is my own business, thank you,
she thought, looking past him to the heavy vase lying against the wall.
But if you turn your back on me before the kids get home, adultery might end up being one of the lesser sins marked against my name.

“I have to tell you something, Vi,” Nell whispered. “I don’t want to, but I think you need to know. You deserve to know.”

She and Vida were sitting in the reception area of the office, and Nell had rolled her chair over next to her sister’s, away from the big patient window. JaNel, the lab tech, had passed by in the hall a couple of times, so Nell kept her voice low.

“Well, don’t take all day,” Vida said. “There’s work to do. I’m listening.”

Nell felt her lower lip quivering.

“Go on, baby girl. Whatever it is, I can take it.”

I hope so,
Nell thought.
I dearly hope so.
“I think Kyle is cheating on you, Vi.”

Vida stared back in silence. “With who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you see? Or hear?”

“I heard him talking on his cell phone.”

Vida glanced over her shoulder at the hall door, then leaned closer. “When was this?”

“Day before yesterday. Back in the surgery room.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the conversation was pretty intimate. He had that tone, you know?”

“Lovey-dovey?”

“Mm-hm. It seemed obvious that he’s involved with whoever it was. And I—”

“Listen, honey,” Vida cut in. “I don’t doubt you. I’m sure Kyle’s poking God knows who all, and I wish he wasn’t. But let me tell you something you’re gonna learn one way or the other someday.
They all do it.
Every damn one of ’em. That’s the way men are. They live for tail, and they’re gonna chase it whether they’re married or single or whatever. It’s a natural law, like freakin’ gravity. Like the sun rising in the east. Soon as they get their ashes hauled, they’re trying to figure out how to get away from whoever did the haulin’. Unless they need you for something else. And
that’s
why I’m not worried.”

Nell sat quietly, working through her sister’s logic. She’d known Vida was hard, but she hadn’t thought her sister would be willing to put up with infidelity to keep a man at her side. Most of all, she hoped Vida was wrong about men—at least a few of them. She considered keeping back the rest of what she’d heard, but if she did, she’d regret it later. She could see Vida standing outside her apartment one night waiting for Dr. Auster’s Jaguar to swing by and pick her up, like a black carriage come to sweep her off to a castle. But that Jaguar would never arrive. It would be long gone, to pick up some princess who fit more smoothly into the castles of the rich and conscienceless.

“Let me finish, Vi,” she said, louder than she’d intended. “Please.”

Vida laid a comforting hand on her knee. “Go on, baby.”

“It wasn’t just sex talk, okay? He apologized to the person, and then he said he had to keep putting up with—with
somebody
—for a while longer, before he could leave and be with whoever was on the phone.”

Something changed in Vida’s face. She had the look of someone walking along a path as night fell, one moment sure she knew the way home, the next knowing she was lost. “Keep going,” she said in a flat voice that told Nell her walls had gone up.

“Dr. Auster said, ‘I hate servicing that little…’ ”

“That little what?” asked Vida, her eyes as dead as marbles. “You can say it.”

“ ‘That little
redneck,
’ ” Nell whispered, and Vida flinched. “Then he said, ‘But she scares me.’ Next was something else I couldn’t hear, but then he said, “ ‘But by then it’ll be too late for her to retaliate.’ Or something like that.”

Vida’s face had lost its color. “And you think he was talking about me?”

Nell couldn’t bring herself to drive the last nail home. She shrugged. “I can’t say for sure.”

“I will
castrate
his sorry ass,” Vida hissed. “That no-count son of a bitch. After all I’ve—oh, never mind. Serves me right for believing a man about anything.”

“Was I wrong to tell you?” Nell asked anxiously.

“You had to tell me, baby. Blood’s thicker’n water. Thicker than anything. It’s sure thicker than what comes out of a man. Christ almighty.”

Nell watched her sister adjusting to this new reality. Vida usually projected an air of coarse vitality, but at this moment she looked like a road-weary woman from a Depression-era photograph. Nell had tried—subtly—to suggest a few things to soften her older sister’s appearance. Skin lotion, for one thing, which Nell applied religiously every night before bed, and all during the day on her face. Decades of smoking had turned Vida’s face into a hard carapace with a yellowish tint, and her hair, once a lustrous brown, had become dry and frizzy and always stank of cigarettes. When she went out at night, she dressed one notch up from white trash: halter tops and blue eye shadow worn like some sort of mask—not to mention the line of mascara under her lower eyelid, circa 1985. Vida’s great claim to fame was winning a televised wet T-shirt contest in Destin—she’d beaten 150 other competitors—but two children and ten thousand cheeseburgers had deflated her prized assets and hidden her waist in a roll of hard fat. It was testament to her black sense of humor and lively personality that Dr. Auster—who had his pick of twentysomething nurses—had looked past her obvious flaws.