The After House (3 page)

Scott refused to admit anything was wrong. He came home long after she went to sleep, leaving so early that she only knew he’d been there by the indent in his pillow. With dawning horror, she sat with the detective her father had hired, looking at pictures of Scott with another woman and a baby boy. There were pictures of them at the bank, the mall, out to eat. It seemed he had plenty of time and patience for the slender blonde he chose to be with. Remy’s face reddened with shame. There were
pictures of him at their sandwich shops holding the girl’s hand and carrying his son in an infant seat. Remy lowered her head into her arms, too shocked to cry. In the stores! That meant even the employees who worked for them knew what was going on. She wanted to curl up and die.

“I debated telling you,” her father told her, his amber eyes sad. Her parents flanked her in her tiny kitchen. The light hurt her eyes. “This is serious.” Brian held her hand after the private investigator left. “He’s going to drain you dry, honey. You have a child, you can’t let him ruin your life.”

“He just did,” Remy answered tearfully.

Her mother made tea, the cure-all, and urged her to return home with them. They would help her in any way they could. She needed to regroup, her parents insisted.

“Do you think I should talk to him?”

“What?” Brian stood impatiently. “For what? How much are you going to take?”

“Brian, please,” her mother said. “This is not the time. Remy, is that what you really want to do? Do you think you can salvage your relationship? Do you really want to, honey?” Her mother took her face, holding her cheeks as though she were a precious treasure. “Can you forgive what he’s done?”

“We have a child,” she said miserably. “He’s not all to blame. I checked out too.”

“Checked out!” Brian repeated with outrage. “Dogs have puppies too. Anyone can be a father, even an animal.”

“Dad!” Remy said at the same time her mother called out, “Brian.”

“He’s a good father,” Remy said.

“But a bad husband. Look, Remy, ultimately it’s your decision. I…I never expected this to happen to you.”

Remy hung her head.

“Kiddo, it’s not your fault.” He looked down at her, his face mirroring her anguish.

“Maybe it is.”

“Remy, stop doing this to yourself. Think of Olivia.”

So she did what she thought she should, confronting Scott when he returned later that night. He was tearful, filled with remorse, agreeing to do anything to save their marriage. They went for counseling. After the third session, Scott refused to go anymore.

His girlfriend and their newborn boy used up whatever funds they had saved from the bank. It finally ended with a bitter fight, Scott backhanding her when she demanded to know why he wouldn’t return to the therapist. She left him that night, wondering how many times a heart could break. She took her daughter with her and moved into a motel for a week. She never told her daughter where her black eye came from, and she refused to allow her parents to discuss Scott in front of the child.

Olivia was bereft without Scott. He had the same magical effect on her child as he did on Remy in the beginning. Scott was a charmer and knew exactly how to make Olivia feel he was the victim in their breakup. Remy picked her battles, but she fought fair. She was devastated when the bistros closed within the month but was honest enough to admit that she was happy not to have to deal with Scott in a professional atmosphere.

Tail between her legs, she ran home to her parents, who facilitated the divorce. Remy found her yoga certification buried in the back of her old closet and took a job at the local gym. She was a good teacher, her style well regarded. Her classes were always filled. She began arranging private classes with many of the clients and supplemented her income. She was in great demand; her gentle instruction yielded results, and soon she was juggling a full schedule. Though her parents welcomed her, let her use their paneled basement for private sessions, she knew it was an imposition. She hated being dependent on them, like a child. She wanted her own place, needed a bit of freedom from their hovering.

She took on odd jobs, saving every penny she could. After having her own household, it was hard to move back in with the folks. She knew too, even though they never complained, that it wasn’t fair to them either. She waitressed at night while she built up the small private yoga business, selling everything she had from her life with Scott on eBay. She rented space for a studio on Main Street. It was a large room in the lower level of a faded pastel building, nestled right in the center of Cold Spring Harbor. A hairdresser had the upstairs rental. Remy’s space had a bathroom, complete with a changing area, and she was able to book teacher trainings that plumped up her bank account. Three local schools asked her to instruct the gym teachers. This led to business with more and more schools. Her dad hung up blinds, and her mom helped her paint the room a pale green. It wasn’t long before she had put together funds to rent a three-hundred-year-old
house in the small town, just blocks away from the studio. Olivia could walk to school. It was perfect.

Twelve Fourteen Spring Street was a tiny, white cottage with a handful of cozy rooms. The low, smoky ceiling gave her a feeling of security. Her dad told her she was three ways a fool for renting such an old place, but he did admit it was solid as the bedrock it was built on. Perched on a small hill behind Main Street, the house looked out over Eagle’s Bay. A ribbon of a road separated the lawn from the calm water, and an ancient rose garden in the rear had been laid out the same way for three centuries. Remy knew it was filled with sixteen types of roses and couldn’t wait to see them bloom.

She had a small kitchen with a giant fireplace on one wall and a huge Kasten, an original faded blue wooden Dutch cupboard, built into a spot against the wall. Her breakfast table was a refurbished antique door, the base a late-nineteenth-century sewing machine. Olivia always stretched her short feet to pump the pedal. Remy matched it with modern chairs, giving the room an eclectic look. She had collected copper pots at various yard sales, hanging them around the surround of the fireplace. The landlord, the nephew of the original owner, had replaced the appliances, and the room sported new stainless steel, which sparkled between the smoldering dark colors.

The last occupant had added a laundry room. He was a pretty famous artist who had lived in the house for over five decades. When senility set in, the nephew put him in assisted living and rented the cottage to her. She had painted and done some updating, but she was still waiting
for an alarm system, phone, and cable to be put it. The old artist never even had a television set. The last two weeks had been challenging, with spotty cell phone service and no Internet.

She loved the small parlor, with its wide, planked floors and permanent smell of woodsmoke. An interesting mural covered an entire wall—a seascape with a whaler who was known to have shipped out of the local harbor. Not exactly her taste, but it was a condition of her rental that she not remove it. She wouldn’t dream of it, especially because of Olivia’s fascination with the bearded sea captain bleakly watching his ragtag crew manning a whaleboat.

Captain Eli, as he was called, stood on the top deck as sailors chased a great sperm whale, their longboat being pulled through the foamy waves. He gazed intently, his face giving the impression of unhappiness, while the crew seemed oblivious to it all. It did take some getting used to, but it was a piece of Americana, and Remy respected that. They also had a tiny study where they hung a television in anticipation of the cable service being activated.

The study was attached to a formal dining room she used for practicing yoga. Upstairs were two bedrooms—one for her and one for Olivia—and a black-and-white bathroom that begged for a renovation. Once the studio paid a profit, that would be her first project. Well, after she purchased it. She was determined to save up enough for a down payment. The home had been built in the early 1700s in the whaling town of Cold Spring Harbor. She knew that fact from the plaque nailed next to the front
door under the address. Oddly enough, the house originally belonged to a whaling captain and his family. Perhaps the artist did his mural as an homage to them. However, now the snug place was hers and Olivia’s, and nobody was going to tell her what to do anymore. Not ever.

The icy bay was quiet, but she could see the white-tipped waves curl against the rocky beach. Cupping her hands around her warm mug, she wandered out of the kitchen to sit in one of the winged chairs she kept before the fireplace in the small parlor. She felt her feet glide over the cool polished wood and then find relief as they warmed on the area rug that filled the center of the room. It was a Chinese rug she had appropriated from her parents’ house. A bright emerald green, its border were filled with cream and light rose flowers. It had been rolled up in the attic, a leftover from Aunt Ruth’s house, and was out of style. “But beggars can’t be choosers,” she thought with a sniff.

Olivia was not crazy about the house. They made a big deal about giving it a more feminine feel, but her daughter was unconvinced. Remy gave Olivia her first house key, attached to a fuzzy ball of pink fur, so she could get in all by herself. Olivia responded by announcing that she didn’t even want to be in the house, much less have a key. She kept silently poking around the nooks and crannies, her great whiskey-brown eyes wide in her pale face.

“What are you looking for?” Remy asked her.

“I don’t know, but when I find it, I’ll tell you,” Olivia said in her serious little voice. “I feel all goose bumpy here.” She rubbed her hands together. “Mommy, do you think someone is watching us?”

“Don’t be silly, Livie,” Remy said with a chuckle. Still, there were times she felt as though she was not alone in the house. They joked about finding ghosts and ghouls, made a great game of it, but Remy had to admit that all that talk made her slightly uneasy. “Big baby,” she would think when she caught herself entertaining such ideas. They blasted music, and Britney, Christina, Katie, and Lorde filled the old cottage with loud tempos to chase away the sullenness.

Still, Olivia seemed happy enough this weekend to leave her and spend the night at Scott’s with his bimbo. It smarted, but Remy was determined not to ruin it for her child. No matter how immoral Scott was, Olivia deserved to have a relationship with her dad. A girl needed a father, and while he treated Remy cavalierly, at heart he was a good dad to Olivia. Remy resented his new family, but Olivia seemed OK about it. Her daughter’s acceptance troubled her just a tiny bit, but she didn’t want to rock the girl’s boat any more than she had to. She had to carve out a new life, and she refused to let the bitterness of the divorce color it. Lots of kids lived like this. Scott would drop her off at school tomorrow, and Remy would have her until Wednesday. Though she didn’t like it, it was her new reality.

She curled up on the saggy seat of the chair, the small fire she built earlier warming her cold cheeks. It crackled and hissed, spitting sparks that unnerved her. She jumped every time the wood popped from the intensity of the flames. Remy reached down to where she’d placed a new bottle of scotch. Holding it up, she gazed at the rich
liquid. It was the same color as both her eyes and Olivia’s. “God, I miss my daughter,” she thought with a heartfelt sigh. The silence screamed at her, and she thought of fifty things to do but somehow couldn’t muster up the energy to start anything. She had boxes to unpack, curtains to hang, drawers to line, but her hands felt heavy, her chest tight with the pain of being alone. Oh, she had her parents, but she was ashamed to admit she missed Scott.

She couldn’t believe that after all he’d done to her, she could still feel the loss of him, but she did, and it made her angry. He was a shit, a total shit, yet when she thought of him, she had to remind herself of the pain she felt when he deceived her. For God’s sake, he had punched her. Still, she wondered what part of it was her fault. Did some of the responsibility belong to her? What if they didn’t have the money pressures? Maybe she could have worked harder.

“What if we’d waited to have a child?” she wondered. Olivia was the best thing that ever happened to her. Ever. Period. In the end, her parents were right about Scott. Her innocent and love-struck eyes failed to see the monster she tangled with. She touched the spot on her face where he had bruised her over a year ago. It didn’t hurt anymore, of course. It had healed, as it was supposed to, but her heart never had. Scott was wrong, she reminded herself. She rolled her head against the chair, feeling oppressed. Her face grew hot, her lips quivered, but she fought the tears. This was just the beginning. She had to adjust. The empty future yawned ahead of her, frightening her. She had picked that loser. She missed every sign, was blind
to his faults, trusted her schoolgirlish heart to tell her she was in love. Remy shivered, knowing she was afraid to trust her judgment about men anymore. She realized she’d better get used to being alone.

Loneliness was a state of mind, she reasoned. If she chose not to focus on it, maybe it would disappear, like the fog rolling over the waves. Her eyes returned to the empty room, the shadows painting the walls. Olivia’s discarded coloring book lay on a footrest. Her crayons were scattered about the end table. Remy knew she should put it all away, but she just didn’t want to. The house seemed devoid of life, missing the childlike joy Olivia brought to any room. “This sucks,” Remy thought as she pouted. She placed her mug in the fold of her lap, unscrewed the top on the bottle, and shakily poured…a what? A tot? A dram? Whatever—a gulp of scotch into her half-finished tea. Remy took a healthy swig of the tea. The liquor burned behind her nose and traveled down to the pit of her empty stomach. She shook herself with a grimace. She wondered what people could possibly like in the stuff. It tasted like iodine. Not that she knew what iodine tasted like, but she figured it probably tasted like scotch.

Not one to waste things, she took another sip, this one more tentatively. She found it not as distasteful, instead experiencing a delightful lassitude that relaxed her brittle muscles. Another sip made her feel more comfortable with the brew, and by the time she was sucking on the dregs of her cup, nothing was bothering her anymore—not the weather, not her ex, not being alone, and certainly not the weird shifting of the shadows in the hallway of
her little house. “Nope,” she thought, holding the empty cup against her cheek. “Nothing’s going to bother me tonight.”