Folly Cove (13 page)

“Maybe. My point is, you have nothing to worry about,” Elly had said. “Anne isn't after Jake.”

“You could have fooled me,” Laura said.

Elly had argued with her then, had told Laura that same old horror story from Anne's point of view. Lies about Jake leering at her and touching himself while Anne was sleeping! As if Jake would do something that perverted! Jake would barely do anything beyond the missionary position. With his own wife. In the
dark
.

“I don't trust Anne. I never will,” Laura had reminded Elly.

Elly had shrugged. “Whatever. I'm just saying that Anne might not be the only one at fault.”

So the sides were drawn. And Laura, as usual, was standing alone on hers.

She didn't blame Elly. Anne could be extremely persuasive. Laura patted the pocket of her jeans, reassuring herself that the phone was still there. At least she had Tom.

For now.

By the end of the lesson, three of the six students had nearly mastered the posting trot. The others were still as floppy as rag dolls on the backs of their horses; Laura didn't hold out much hope that they'd improve, either. She'd been teaching these girls since summer camp.

But at least they were doing something active after school. Her own daughter was sitting on a hay bale, oblivious to everyone, her nose in a book.

“Kennedy, put that book away and come help with the horses,” Laura yelled, more sharply than she'd intended, making her daughter jump.

She crosstied two of the horses inside the barn for Kennedy to groom, then asked Melanie and Cara to lead the other four out front and hitch them to the rail. The girls offered to help her untack and curry the horses, chatting while they worked.

Melanie reminded Laura of herself: driven, competitive. A perfectionist. Laura had competed in the top horse shows for years and even made an equestrienne drill team in college. She would have gone further if it hadn't been for Jake.

When she'd gotten pregnant in college, Jake had proposed marriage and said he'd go to dental school. “I want to provide for you,” he'd declared. “You should stay home with our kids.” Both of them were shaky but brave, determined to do the right thing. Then she'd lost the baby.

Only Jake shared the depth of her grief over that loss. How could she
not
have married him?

Melanie's mother, Sandra, arrived to pick up her daughter. Laura knew Sandra from the club. Her husband was a doctor of some kind, the kind that kept regular hours and drove a car with heavily tinted windows that looked bulletproof. The license plate read
WINNING
.

Sandra didn't work outside the home, but when she saw Laura, she often made a point of ticking off the tasks crammed into her harried days: getting the boys to soccer and Melanie to dance or riding lessons, plus fitting in her massage / hair appointment / tennis lesson / pedicure / yoga class / church work / charity benefits for the hospital. Sandra was a trustee at the school where their girls went, too, and effective at corralling everyone into voting for things like improvements to the field house.

Every town needed a Sandra. She was a model citizen and could hold a nut-free bake sale like nobody else.

Sandra was what Laura had imagined she'd become after she stopped riding competitively. Instead, Laura had transformed into a woman she didn't recognize: an unhappy wife and uncertain mother. A woman on the edge.

Like her daughter, Sandra was whippet slim and blond. Today she was dressed for yoga in electric blue leggings and a fitted yellow hoodie with purple piping. Her outfit probably cost two weeks' worth of groceries. That's how Laura measured everything these days.

Sandra was smiling at her daughter. “How'd it go, honey?” she asked Melanie.

Melanie scowled. “
Fine
. Can I have the keys? And did you bring me a snack?” She stomped off, car keys in hand, after her mother assured her there was a nonfat yogurt and fruit smoothie waiting for her in the car.

Sandra shot Laura an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

“Don't worry about it,” Laura said. “Melanie's always perfectly pleasant with me.”

“I think she's being bullied at school,” Sandra said.

Laura was startled. “Really? Why? She's so smart and pretty. A talented rider, too.”

“Riding is saving her life,” Sandra said. “I have you to thank for that. The thing is, Melanie's
too
pretty. If she were less so, she could just be ordinary instead of competitive. Happy, you know? Nobody would bother her if she was just average.”

Like your own invisible lumpy daughter
. Was that what Sandra meant?

“Well, they all grow up eventually,” Laura said. “There's no point in worrying too much.” As the words came out, Laura realized how lame they sounded. It wasn't even how she felt: it was how she
wanted
to feel. She worried every minute about Kennedy.

“I know,” Sandra agreed. “Anyway, listen: I've been meaning to invite you and Jake to join Wayne and me for dinner at the club. How about next Friday night? We don't get to see enough of you!”

“Oh, I don't know. Things are kind of crazy at the moment.”

“I know, right? Life is insane!” Sandra said. “But when isn't it?
Especially for working moms like you? Gosh, I admire you for working. But you need a break, girlfriend! This would be perfect! Melanie babysits on Fridays, and Hunter and Tyler both have hockey, so we use Friday nights as date night. I'm sure you and Jake must need to schedule romance, too?”

Laura cast around for an excuse. Dinners at the club weren't cheap. Just one cocktail each and they'd be out a hundred bucks, even without dessert.

“Just say yes!” Sandra said. “When was the last time you had
fun
with your husband?”

When, indeed?
Laura thought. And shouldn't they be having fun now, since Anne was home? “All right,” she said.

“Great! Seven o'clock okay?”

When Laura nodded, Sandra waggled her fingers over one shoulder as she walked to the car, ponytail bouncing. In the passenger seat, Melanie's blond head was bent forward over her phone, her thumbs jabbing at the keypad.

Watching Melanie on her phone led Laura back to the barn, where she glanced furtively over her shoulder before taking her own phone out of her pocket. She was ending things now before it was too late.
We need to stop,
she texted Tom.

Then, almost immediately, she sent another:
But I don't know how. You are my joy.

Laura leaned against the windowsill, willing herself to go inside and make dinner. But she felt paralyzed, waiting for Tom's response.

She smiled when it came:
And you are mine. Please don't leave me. Not yet. Even if we never meet, we have so much more to say.

Still,
she replied,
I'm not kidding. We need to stop. Soon. I hope you understand.
Then she pocketed the phone and walked back to the house.

Jake balked at the idea of dinner at the club, of course. “We hardly know those people,” he said when she presented the idea to him after Kennedy went upstairs. “And with what money? We can barely pay the electric bill and it's not even November. I swear those horses are taking showers.”

“I have to run the lights in the barn now. It gets dark before I finish teaching,” Laura said. “Look, I know the club's expensive. But aren't you the one who says we should socialize more because it's good for business?”

“Yeah, sure, but only when we can afford it. Have you looked at the latest credit card bill? No, of course you haven't,” he said.

“I always offer to do the bills,” Laura said. “You won't let me!”

Jake sighed. “I know. I'm sorry. Look, it's fine, honey. Let's go out. Lord knows you deserve it.” He kissed her forehead and went upstairs.

Laura folded laundry in the utility room off the kitchen before following, heaving the third load of the day onto the counter and sorting it, then folding shirts and pants and balling socks into pairs. She was glad Jake had come around to the idea of dinner. So why was she upset? Why did she wish Jake had kept fighting?

Because at least when they were fighting, they were talking.

Tom texted her again just as she was finishing in the laundry room:
Urgent.

What?
she responded, breathless with fear. What if something had happened to him?

A photo. A field thick with bluebells, the color vibrant even on her phone. And a message
: I want to lie with you here in the sun. I want to breathe in your smell and touch your hair. And hear that crazy laugh. I've thought about this. J. doesn't make you happy. I know what misery feels like. I got past it. You can, too. Let me help you do that. See me. Five minutes. No strings. Just coffee and a kiss.

“Honey? What are you doing down there?” Jake called from the top of the stairs.

“Be right up,” Laura said. “Just getting the laundry.”

Lies upon lies. She studied the photo again before deleting it.
No. This has to stop now,
she wrote.
Tonight is IT.
Then she dropped the phone into her pocket.

Upstairs, Laura stopped in Kennedy's room to say good night and leave her a pile of clean clothes. “Hey,” she asked as she bent to kiss her daughter's forehead, “why don't you ever invite Melanie over after school?”

“I don't even know her. We're on different teams at school.” Kennedy was playing a game on her phone, scowling at the tiny brightly colored shapes.

“You do know her. You see her at the barn every week,” Laura pointed out.

“Yeah, but she's a bitch. Why would I talk to her?”

“Language, sweetie!” Laura said, taken aback. “Her mom says Melanie's being bullied. Maybe she could use a friend like you.”

Kennedy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Like Melanie would
want
me as a friend. I can't even!”

“You can't even what?”

“Never mind, Mom.
God
. I'm literally dying here with you preaching at me.”

Anxiety rose, thick and sour in Laura's throat. If Melanie—with her limber athlete's body and magazine hair—was getting bullied, where did that leave poor Kennedy, with her menopausal waist and stocky legs?

“Well, at least be kind to her,” Laura said. “Everyone deserves kindness in this world.”

“Sure, Mom. Tell that to the world, and maybe everyone will put down their guns.” Kennedy jammed her headphones on then, effectively cutting off the conversation.

Laura stepped out into the hallway just as Jake was coming up the stairs. “Coming to bed?” she said.

“Soon. I've got to check my schedule and catch up on a few e-mails first,” he said, turning into the guest bedroom that doubled as his office. “You go ahead and shower first.”

In the shower, Laura washed her hair and rinsed it twice, hoping the hot water would dissolve her sticky, weighty feeling of despair. She thought about the tiny bathroom in the first apartment she and Jake had rented after they were married. They'd shower together because the hot water ran out so fast. Sometimes they'd even make love with the water running, Laura with her back to Jake, hands pressed against the white tiles.

Now their master bath was the size of their old bedroom, with a double showerhead system and a bench inside the vast blue-tiled space.
Big as it was, Laura couldn't remember the last time they'd been in this bathroom together, never mind sharing the shower.

Once, when she'd asked Jake why that was, he'd said, “I hate intruding on your precious private time.”

Laura stepped out of the shower and toweled off. She picked up her clothes with a sigh, intending to toss them into the hamper, and felt the burner phone in the pocket of her jeans. Usually she stored it beneath the files in her bottom desk drawer at night. She glanced up at the door. It wasn't locked, but Jake wouldn't come into the bathroom while she was in here.

She pulled the phone out, not daring to hope that Tom had texted back after her last message.

But he had. He had!
I respect your choice to be faithful within your marriage,
he'd written.
I just want you to know that you deserve to be happy. You should stop communicating with me if it makes you uncomfortable, but please know that I'm here when you need me. As a friend you can trust.

Laura raised her eyes to the bathroom mirror and wiped the steam off with her hand. She was thicker-waisted than she wanted to be, yes, but now that she was nude and free of constraints, she felt thinner. Almost sexy. Would a man want her?

Tom would. She didn't know why she was so sure of that, but she was.

Before Laura could reconsider, she raised the phone and took a picture of herself from the neck down and sent it to him with a message:
In the shower and thinking of you. Can't think of you without smiling. Thank you for always being there.

Then she shut off the phone, tucked it back into the pocket of her jeans, and shoved the jeans into the hamper beneath the rest of the dirty clothes. What the hell. Jake hadn't done laundry in twenty years.

Immediately she felt ashamed of her own recklessness. Guilty.

Well, that was the last of it. A keepsake for Tom. And maybe for the Internet, if he turned out to be a creep, but at least she'd had the sense not to send him a picture of her face.

Laura felt a little shiver of pleasure as she imagined Tom opening up that photo. Maybe he would feel the same desire seeing it that she'd
felt taking the picture. Rare moments of joy for both of them before she ended their communication for good.

Meanwhile, she had to find her way back to Jake. She would be kinder. More loving. And firmer about the two of them spending time alone and really communicating. She had reached out to Tom because she so often felt like she was howling alone in the wilderness, overwhelmed by worries that she knew Jake must share in some way. Maybe she could even admit to Jake that she'd been tempted to see Tom. If nothing else, that could serve as a wake-up call in their marriage. She had invested far too many years in building her family to just throw her life away.