He hadn't been entirely comfortable with going out with Danielle. Until she had sensed that, maybe, and pointed out that they were just friends. No pressure. No expectations. And then she made some sort of veiled allusion to the few dates he'd taken her on before his reunion with Nancy, reminded him of how, at one time, there had been some history still left for them.
It was their third, again; a bad number for them, she joked, and he laughed along with her, over the bottle of wine he'd ordered. Remembered the way she had appeared to him, back then, during the time he had almost convinced himself that he would never see Nancy again, but now he was certain.
Danielle was wearing a navy dress, open-toed shoes, lips bright and laughing up at him. She was hanging on his every word, but he knew that, expected it, was almost nearly drinking it in. But he didn't order dessert to split with her, they paid their share on the check, and when they pulled up at his hotel room she did ask him, eyes bright, a grin across her lips, whether she could come in. Made some joke about it, in fact.
Much later he didn't remember exactly what they were doing. He was looking for something, standing between the twin beds, and Danielle was standing, laughing up into his eyes, on her heels, their bodies close together, her green eyes up into his, his face relaxing into an answering smile.
When she reached up, grabbed him by the collar, brought his face down to hers, and kissed him.
--
"Come on in."
She stepped back, her eyes down, away from his face, then walked toward the kitchen. He stared at the soles of her bare feet as he followed, afraid to look around and feel the darkness rush in, close over his head. The curtains he had chosen at her behest, the furniture that had been his and hers, the couch where they had watched television and kissed and touched each other like hormonal teenagers--
He cleared his throat. "Okay."
He couldn't pinpoint what about her was making him uneasy, but he felt on edge. Her hair was in a casual ponytail, her shirt untucked and falling to her thigh, her jeans' cuffs rolled up above her bare ankles.
Her eyes.
She looked so tired. She wrapped her too-slender fingers around a warm mug of tea standing on the kitchen bar and stared down at it, her gaze wide and unwavering. Then she looked up, startled.
"I'm sorry. Do you want something to drink?"
He directed his gaze at the lower right cabinet. The last time he had been there, a menagerie of glowing glass bottles would have met his need. But maybe those bottles weren't there anymore, maybe she had sipped cocktails while laughing at something her boyfriend had said, maybe his hands had been everywhere and had smudged Ned's fingerprints from every surface in their house.
"No. Thank you."
Nancy sniffed, swiped under her nose. Ned's eyes wandered up to hers, unwilling but unable to stop, to the dark pink rims.
"The--the babies are upstairs. I'll go get them."
At the foot of the stairs he paused, watching the movement of her hips as she climbed. The upstairs was shrouded in darkness, broken by the fading afternoon sunlight. The house, their house, her house, was so still, so quiet.
He followed her up without knowing why. Picturing another man's clothes discarded on the bathroom floor, on the floor of their--her--bedroom. Another man following her into the pale yellow nursery with its twin cribs, the nursery he had repainted the week before their wedding.
Ned felt something terrible and dark rising in him as he watched her bend over the crib, so so quiet, her fingertip sliding over their daughter's forehead in a touch soft as a whisper. She straightened and walked back into the hallway, beckoning him back, passing so close to him that he could feel her breathe.
"They're asleep right now," she whispered, and for the first time she met his gaze.
The darkness filled everything, every crack, every bit of breath in him, the space between his teeth, between his fingers. Everything. The center of his brain was dark red. His bones were hot.
His fingers closed around her shoulder and he slammed her into the wall.
Her gaze didn't waver from his. "Ned, I--"
"Shut up."
Obediently her mouth closed. She looked down at his mouth briefly, her eyes filling. Her lower lip trembled once, but she took a slow, audible breath and met his gaze, misery in her own.
"Tell me why you did it," he said, the darkness in his words, his voice trembling. "Tell me what happened, why you did this."
Nancy shook her head, her voice just below a whisper. "I can't."
Ned's rage rose, and as his frustration became an audible moan Nancy darted an anxious gaze at the cracked nursery door. He marched her down the hallway, to the next door, his grip iron on her unresisting arms.
"Why did you do this?" He slammed her into the wall again, momentarily satisfied by the solid sound of her body striking the unresisting surface, the twinge of pain across her face.
"Ned, I--"
His gaze caught silk gleaming in the darkness. Her cotton shirt covered a smooth camisole trimmed in lace, against her flushed skin.
She followed his gaze and he jerked open her shirt. "What, is he coming by later? Were you just getting ready for him?"
He could feel blood flooding his face. She squirmed under his grip and he redoubled it. "Please let me go," she whispered.
"I'll touch you anytime I want."
Her mouth fell open and a tear slid down her face, down her throat, to the opening of her torn shirt. "Don't hurt me."
"Because he doesn't like bruises, does he. You told me that." He looked over, at the unmade bed, and swung her with him. "Were you with him there, in our bed?"
And his voice was trembling. And his face was hot and wet with sudden treacherous tears.
Nancy reached down and finished unbuttoning her shirt, and he watched, the darkness pounding with his heart but holding his tongue still. She drew a trembling breath and then touched his shirt, hesitant, then steady as she unbuttoned his.
"No," she murmured. Her tongue peeked out as she licked a tear from her lips.
He tasted the salt as he kissed her, pressing his mouth hard against hers, and she didn't resist. She reached down and tugged his shirt out of his pants, but when she started to unbutton them he grabbed her hands and forced them to her sides, still kissing her.
"No, no," he whispered, his face wet with their mingled tears. "No, this shouldn't be happening."
She tilted her head. "But I want you. I don't deserve you, I know, I know how much you want to hurt me."
He grabbed her again and held her hands behind her back, and her mouth opened, her head tilted back. A fresh wave of tears slipped down her cheeks.
"Nancy, God--"
He released her and was silent as she stripped, her wrists still bearing the red marks from his fingers, her upper arms glowing with warm, fresh bruises, all from him. He breathed through his mouth as she took his clothes off, and then she pulled back the covers.
"He's never touched me here."
Ned didn't lift his feet, but slid them over the carpet until he was facing her, standing over her as she sat on the bed, her face tilted back to see his. "We shouldn't."
She grasped his hands, her touch light, and slowly leaned back, pulling him on top of her, surrounding her body with his. "It's always been you," she whispered. "You've always been the only one I wanted. Don't leave me right now. Don't leave me alone. Don't hurt me again."
He kissed her, her face wet under his, her body shaking with sobs under him. The darkness dispersed as night fell, as she forgave the bruises, as his body found its way into hers.
And Ned woke in his cold bed, alone, shaking, his face wet with tears, unable to sleep.
--
The nightmare stayed with him. When he woke, he thought it would be to her face. During the day he found himself reaching for his cell phone, unconsciously, an unsteady sense of peace in him that he hadn't felt for nearly half a year now. When his group met for a round-table discussion he could still feel it in the back of his head, like a blurred memory.
But they had never made up from a fight like that. Not after the children had been born.
And even when Danielle spoke to him, the words seemed to be coming from far away.
--
Her husband's name was on her lips when Nancy woke. She turned her head and expected him to be beside her. She could remember him there, so clearly. He had been so angry, angry at her for betraying him, and she had told him over and over that she hadn't, she never would, but in her head it was all bound up with Jean and the way she had expected and known he had wanted to react to her admission. But he couldn't. And there had been evidence, proof, backing up what he'd halfway believed and expected to happen all along, but somehow, in the dream, she had diffused his anger again, had convinced him to stay with her, if only for a little while. She had known that if he left, again, she would be exposed and vulnerable to it.
And now he was gone. She was in the same pajamas she'd worn to bed. The babies weren't in the nursery, they were in the crib beside her bed.
Nancy threw her arm back over her eyes and wished for dreamless sleep. Hana, noticing her movement, cried out in hunger, and Nancy stifled a groan as she tossed back the covers.
Amy was at the table downstairs, her hair plaited into two brown braids on either shoulder, a pair of denim shorts pulled over her purple and green swimsuit. She was eating a bowl of sweetened cereal, her legs kicking at the rungs of her chair. After breakfast they were all to set off for a day at the local water park. Amy had been looking forward to the trip for the week since Hannah had had the bright idea to go there.
Nancy glanced at her cell phone. The screen was dim. It blinked back at her, strong signal, network secure, no new messages, text or voice.
She sighed, inwardly.
Amy liked the minivan. She liked riding in the front seat, adjusting the air conditioning so it blew the hair which had escaped her braid off her forehead. She liked holding the map and announcing turns, holding the overpriced bottle of soda Nancy bought at a gas station in the cupholder instead of between her bare thighs. She liked that she was able to see the towering signs of the waterpark before Hannah, and could shriek and gasp with excitement. She liked making tugging motions at the truck drivers, getting them to blow their horns.
She didn't know that Nancy knew the turns to the waterpark as well as the back of her own hand. That Nancy had been there with Ned before, with Bess and George, in string bikinis and ludicrous floppy hats and thonged sandals, buying overpriced nachos and sharing threadbare towels, their hair stiff with chlorene. She didn't know that Nancy was often smiling along with Amy at the truck drivers, and the sight of the two of them was what caused the prolonged horn blasts over the sounds of traffic. That, and the triangle bikini top, bright and filled to capacity.
She didn't stay away from her cell phone too long that day. After a brief tour of the more exciting rides, Amy spent most of the day splashing happily in an inner tube around the slow-moving river ride. Even Hannah joined her for a few cycles. Nancy and Hannah had erected a large opaque umbrella over the babies, and Nancy lay beside it, sunning herself, ignoring all the appreciative glances thrown her way. The wedding ring on her finger turned the skin to comparatively pale gold beneath, against her tan.
Despite the dream she felt peaceful. She'd resisted the idea at first, but maybe this was what she had needed. A day to lay back and relax and forget
(but she couldn't, not with her silent phone on a corner of her blanket, out of the sunlight and the reach of their children)
for a little while. But that wasn't it, that wasn't right. She felt like she did when she'd just hung up the phone with him after a pleasant conversation, one that had ended in the promise of a bottle of wine with dinner and more afterwards. The kind of conversation they hadn't had in months.
Maybe they would never be friends again.
Nancy turned over, onto her stomach, palms flat on the blanket and her chin against them. The idea of that, an old idea now, but one that had not yet stopped hurting. In a very basic way she and Ned had never been friends; in another, he'd been the best friend she'd ever had. He'd been attracted to her from the first, and she to him, and it was more than physical, more than mental or emotional or anything so simple to explain. He knew her inside out, in ways Bess and George never would, and that intimacy had been missing long before he had left her with an empty house and an accusation even her memory could not fully disprove. It was an echo of that, of the shared familiarity, that kept her glancing at her cell phone, waiting for a call or message that, in the end, didn't come.
So she fed the babies, her skin warm and dark to the touch, as Hannah and Amy made some concoction out of banana pudding and grated vanilla wafers and banana slices. Hannah even, with a wink, served her a drink with a paper umbrella skewering a pineapple and cherry. Amy was delighted to receive one as well, and finished her shirley temple in record time.
By bedtime she was angry at herself for believing, even for a moment, that he was going to call. That she would have been weak enough to pick up the phone and read the message or hear his voice, if he had.
And that the thought of it was enough to set her heart pounding.
--
Ned bunched the pillow under his head, unable to sleep and unaware that on the other side of Chicago his wife felt the same.
If it were true...
He had put off Danielle for the evening, barely noticing her disappointed pout, the pit of his stomach still unsteady when he remembered the sudden startled moment when she had pulled him down and pressed her lips to his. And even though he had told Danielle that he never wanted to see Nancy again
he doesn't like bruises does he
he could still see her in that darkened bedroom, camisole glowing under her shirt, tears staining her cheeks. Could remember her pleading with him not to leave her.
Bruises. That wasn't Michael, that was Jean.
i know you want to hurt me
He did want to hurt her. Impossibly badly. But it also scared him, how much he wanted this patently impossible thing to be true.
That night was when he called Strathman. That night was when he found out that Nancy hadn't been back to see him since just after Christmas.
But the rage at that discovery was soon replaced with the persistent sensation that there was a string around his finger, reminding him of something important. Something he hadn't done.
don't leave me
He still couldn't sleep.
He was in a meeting on Monday, while the girls were with her, he was bored and drawing a line of alternately shaded triangles on the very important looking pad of legal foolscap on the table before him.
His pulse rushed in his ears as he found himself writing, She said she would be too busy but she was always gone.
She had always been gone. And even after he had started suspecting her of infidelity, she had kept up the fiction, saying her sessions with Strathman had gone well.
Ned sat up straighter, and Brad across the table noticed, shot him a look.
Thursdays.
He remembered Thursdays when Nancy had clung to him, overaffectionate, brushing off any concern about missing her appointment.
He remembered to look in her eyes when she had said that her sessions had gone well.
That hadn't been subterfuge. That had been fear.
He pushed himself back from the table before he thought, and Brad's already concerned look turned to one of alarm.
He stared at his watch, waiting for the break.
--
She was in the grocery store when her cell phone emitted a sharp tone, indicating that someone had left her voicemail.
Her stomach began a slow flip as she looked down at the tiny screen.
She held off until she was in the car, afraid that if she listened while in the store that she would burst into tears. She fiddled with the radio, adjusted the air conditioning, then grabbed her phone and called up her voicemail.
"Nancy."
His recorded voice was solemn. Her heart sank. She thought about hanging up, her sight blurring as she gasped in a breath.
"I want to see you," he continued, and she heard the same tremble in his voice as she felt in her breath. "This afternoon. Let me... let me know." He cleared his throat. "I need to see you."
She pressed her fist to her mouth as his message ended.
Amy was in the backyard running around in the sprinkler, screaming, a thin blonde-haired girl running around with her. Nancy watched them through the glass doors to the backyard, as she stepped into the kitchen.
Hannah was sitting at the kitchen table going through a cookbook with paper and pencil at her hand. She looked up as Nancy pushed the door open. "What's wrong," she said immediately.
"Ned wants to see me," she said, then took a breath.
--
She drove too fast and arrived fifteen minutes early, then sat motionless in her car and thought about turning back. She ran her fingers through her hair and put the top up on her convertible.
Once she actually forced herself to leave the car, she found it nearly impossible to lift her feet or even look over at the park. She felt angry, afraid, and the slightest, the slightest bit hopeful. Mostly angry, though, angry at what he had done, angry that she had come running at his call. But the hope was enough to bring her there.
She drew a deep breath, all the way down to her toes, and started walking into the park. Ned was already there, his hands shoved in his pockets, and she drank him in despite herself, her anger draining away.
He was pacing. But when he caught sight of her, time seemed to stop. Everything seemed to stop. Her steps shortened until she was still, staring at the man whose ring she still wore.
She could see new, fine lines on his face. His hair was a bit longer. Faded jeans and a dark t-shirt. The expression on his face was the one she had imagined he would have when he came to their door and said he was sorry for all he had put her through and wanted her to take him back: the slight rise in his eyebrows, the warmth of his eyes, the hesitant curve of his smile at seeing her. The almost hungry way he looked at her, after spending a month apart, memorizing her again. But his left hand was ringless, for the first time in a long time.
Ned, she thought, and there was agony in the single syllable, but she could not force herself to speak it. It lay on her lips heavy, and as he stared at her, his own silent lips parted.
She looked almost the same as she had in his dream. But she had dressed carefully for him this time, no frayed cuffs or loose button-down on this version of his wife. Smooth form-fitting brushed cotton sleeveless top, tailored straight-cut pants ending in sensible thick-heeled shoes. No necklace gleaming around her neck, but the rings, the all-important rings that he'd believed would keep it from ever happening again, still glowed serenly around the ring finger of her left hand. Hair pulled back, black leather purse bouncing lightly against her hip. The usual summer tan gleaming on her skin. But her face looked thinner, and even her makeup could not hide the smudged shadows just above her cheeks.
Nancy let herself imagine for a moment how it would feel to throw herself into his arms, to let him hold her. And then she remembered how he had told his attorney to treat her, the mateless ring on her finger, and she found the strength to still her legs.
"Nan," he said.
"Hey," she said softly. She felt the same weak-kneed sensation he'd been able to create in her since they had met, ten years before. "Thought you said you never wanted to see me again."
He half-smiled at his feet. "Yeah, well," he said.
"No, really," she said. "I thought our children would never see us in the same room and we'd have to divide up funerals and graduations until one of us died."
He looked up at her. "Did you really think that?"
She closed her eyes briefly as he stepped close to her. "It's not like that's how I wanted it. But your lawyer was very clear."
"I was hurt," he said.
"Now I am," she said, amazed at the steady tone of her voice.
"Why should you be? You're the one who gave up on us."
"I told your mouthpiece, and I'll tell you, I never slept with Michael. I don't care what Danielle made you see..."
"I didn't mean that," Ned replied, though his eyes had softened slightly. "You stopped going to counseling."
She laughed. "Right. Yeah, well, after you left it seemed a little pointless."
"You haven't been since January."
"What kind of joke is this?"
"I've talked to the doctor. He hasn't seen you."
Nancy flushed. "He's lying," she said.
"Why would he lie?"
"I don't know," she burst out, frustrated. "You thought I gave up on us?"
"You didn't act like it was much fun to be married to me, there at the end."
She shrugged and half-turned away from him. "That didn't mean I didn't want you there," she replied quietly. "I didn't give up on us. I didn't start seeing Michael, I didn't sleep with him, I didn't..." She felt tears of rage and frustration well up in her eyes, and covered her face from his sight before he could see them.
"Come with me," he said softly.
"What?" she asked, wiping at her eyes.
"Come with me to see the doctor. Prove to me that he's lying, and I'll believe you."
She glared at him, hard, her eyes still gleaming. "You believe him over me?"
"What was I supposed to think?"
"Maybe that one of us could actually be faithful to this relationship."
"What good is faithful when I can't even breathe without you yelling at me?"
"Look, I'm sorry, is that what you want to hear? Because I am, I'm sorry if whatever I did drove you away, I never wanted that to happen. My God, Ned... is this why you're with her now, because I yelled at you for not taking out the trash?"
"And for not... wait, with who?"
"You're with Danielle. And don't bother denying it."
"I'm not..." He shook his head, feeling the ice water in his veins, certain she could see through it. "I'm not with Danielle. Now just, please, Nancy, come with me right now. Come with me to see the doctor."
She stayed rooted to the spot. "Why are you lying to me," she said softly, unable to stop another tear from streaking down her cheek.
"I'm not lying. And if you don't come with me right now and get this settled tonight, I am going to throw you over my shoulder and drag you there."
--
"You weren't here."
Nancy looked down at his appointment book, disbelief on her face. She took the page between her fingers, felt the weight of it. "You fabricated this." She looked up at Dr Strathman. "Why would you do this?"
Ned's mouth was a line, and her gaze at him was desperate. "Get inside my head," she said to Strathman. "Prove it to him. Prove that I was here with you and not cheating on my husband."
Once she was under she told it immediately, like a confession that could not leave her fast enough. Under the doctor's guidance she described to him and her husband Michael's seduction, the unwilling but total succumbing to him. She hadn't been anywhere near Strathman's office when she'd told Ned she would be. The notation Strathman had made when Nancy called in January to cancel the rest of her appointments until further notice, Nancy confirmed. She hadn't been able to tell Ned, but she had, on occasion, been able to resist the pull, and those were the nights she had spent with Ned instead of going to Michael.
The string Ned had imagined loosed, but he felt a sinking in his stomach as he and the doctor exchanged glances.
"He said he'd kill the baby."
Nancy was crying and Ned was watching her, his heart beating uncomfortably hard, his face flushed and warm.
"Who said he'd kill the baby?" the doctor asked.
"Michael," Nancy replied.
His voice came out harsher than he had intended; he had been silent during the abbreviated interrogation, because Nancy didn't trust him quite yet, not enough to be the one poking around with the flashlight. "Michael said who would kill the baby?" Ned asked.
Nancy visibly shrank in front of them, into her clothes, into the seam of the couch, drawing her limbs in tight, pulling her head down. She was cowering, and her lips trembled forming words neither of them could read.
Strathman glanced over at Ned, warning him from speaking again, then took her through a relaxation technique until she wasn't shaking. She took longer to answer the question, though, her fingers tracing meaningless patterns on the couch cushions, and Ned's hands gripped the armrests of his chair in white-knuckled dread.
"Is Michael friends with Jean?"
Ned could feel his skin crawling at the sound of that name, and Nancy responded the same way, shrinking slightly back again. But she nodded, lazily, like a child. "Michael is keeping me for him," she said, simply, and would not elaborate.
Knowing the session was almost over, Ned held up three fingers, and Strathman nodded.
"Did you ever sleep with Michael?"
"No," Nancy replied.
"Did you sleep with Jean?"
"Not since last time, not since Ned came and found me." The doctor had damped her response to what she was saying so fully that she said the words with almost no emotion.
"Have you slept with anyone else while you've been married to Ned?"
She shook her head, a tear slipping down her cheek. "Not this time. No one else."
Ned left the room as Strathman began to bring her out of it, flipping his cell phone open. He hadn't bothered to have the doctor ask the fourth question, the big one, bonus round, because he already knew the answer but he didn't want to hear it from her lips.
Jean used Michael to get to you this time, could he do it again?
Oh yes; of course, with anyone, anywhere, anytime, they say the word and I fall.
--
"Come back with me."
They hadn't touched, had barely spoken since leaving the doctor's office. He had prescribed some pills to help her relax, and Ned had taken the scrip to the pharmacy, paid for it, and the clear orange bottle lay in the valley between her knees as she stared out the passenger window of his Jaguar.
She had also been crying the entire time, with her gaze locked out the window, as though he didn't know the sound of it and wouldn't be aware as long as she didn't look at him. Hurriedly she brushed at her face, aware of the swelled red skin around her eyes, and glanced in his direction.
"Why?"
They had pulled up at the park, next to her car. Her hand was on the door handle. She was already fumbling for her purse.
"I don't want you to be alone tonight."
"You mean you don't want to be alone tonight," she shot back, but she hadn't opened the door.
"I mean that based on what you said in there, you're in danger. I don't want you to be alone. There are already people watching our parents, and Hannah and Amy."
"Oh, and you'll be the one watching me?"
"Yeah." He had caught the expression in her eyes as she asked the question, and his heart sank. "Got a problem with that?"
She scowled, but was still considering. "If that's true why don't you just..." She didn't continue.
He trailed a fingertip down the back of her hand. "It's too soon."
She nodded. She picked up the bottle of pills and shook them absently. "Too soon," she repeated. "Okay."
