The Consequences (26 page)

CHAPTER 44

I
t was only when Kathy saw the two women standing at the door that the tears came. The racking sobs came from deep within and left her shaking with emotion. Sheila and Maureen gathered her into their arms and hugged her closely, letting her cry out her pain and terrible anguish.

Then Maureen eased them all away from the door and in toward the kitchen and sat her down in a chair. “Make some tea,” Maureen suggested to Sheila, while she dug in her tiny handbag and produced a linen square, which she used to pat Kathy's eyes as if Kathy were a child.

Kathy drew in a deep breath. “I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me.”

Maureen crouched beside her. “There's nothing to apologize for. You've been through a lot over the past couple of days.”

“Where are Brendan and Theresa?” Sheila asked.

“They've both gone out—to different parties.”

“Robert?”

“Upstairs. Asleep. At least I think he's asleep. I haven't heard any movement in the last hour or so.” Kathy sat up and carefully wiped at her smudged eye makeup. “Why doesn't waterproof mascara ever work?”

“You look wonderful,” Sheila said.

Kathy was wearing a simple wine-colored wrap dress that she'd bought about six months ago for an industry dinner, but which she'd never worn. Robert had been forced to cancel at the last minute. . . . She hadn't thought too much about it at the time, but now of course, she could think of any number of reasons why he would have wanted to cancel.

Sheila was wearing a silver and black beaded vest over a purple silk blouse, skinny jeans, and leather boots that made her tower over her sister. Maureen was, as always, elegant and sophisticated in black trousers and a white roll-neck sweater.

“Thank you for coming, both of you,” Kathy said sincerely. “I think I was beginning to go crazy here. And, you're the only two people I can talk to about the situation. But I won't,” she added quickly. “I promised myself that we'd have a little food, a little drink, but we wouldn't discuss . . . Robert and me.”

Maureen pulled over a chair and sat down beside Kathy. The older woman's almost translucent eyes had taken on the gray of the afternoon sky, and it made her look older, sterner than usual. “I don't think either of us will hold you to that promise.”

Sheila put a cup of tea on the table in front of Kathy. “I talked to Maureen on the way over,” she said. “She knows about my situation too.”

“No secrets?” Kathy asked.

“Not between us,” Maureen said. She nodded her thanks as Sheila put a cup of fragrant Earl Grey down in front of her.

“I've got plenty of food,” Kathy said. “I know Brendan and Theresa ended up making themselves some macaroni and cheese last night. Some Christmas dinner, eh?” She looked from Maureen to Sheila. “We can eat in the kitchen or the dining room.”

“Let's do it properly,” Maureen said. “Let's sit in the dining room.”

The dining room smelled of Christmas tree and incense mingled with the woody tang from the logs on the fire. The three women carried in platters of cut meat, deep bowls of vegetables, and a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge. An opened bottle of Malbec sat breathing by the fire. Kathy assumed her usual position at the table, and the two other women sat down at either side in the places normally occupied by the children. While Kathy served the food, Sheila poured the wine—red for Maureen and herself, white for Kathy—and then they raised their glasses in a toast.

“What will we toast?” Sheila asked.

“Christmases to come,” Kathy said.

“Lots of them,” Maureen said, “and all of them better than this one!”

“Amen to that,” Kathy agreed.

They ate in companionable silence for a while. Kathy suddenly discovered that she had an appetite, and then she realized that she hadn't eaten properly since . . . well, Monday night, she thought, before she had seen her husband kiss another woman. She hadn't been able to stomach anything solid since then.

“I'm really glad we're doing this,” Sheila said. “I was going crazy at home. Since I'd decided not to go to Julia's for her traditional Boxing Day leftovers, all I had to look forward to was
The Sound of Music
and a Whole Foods prepackaged turkey dinner. With stuffing,” she added significantly. She glanced sidelong at her older sister. “You didn't invite Julia?”

“No. I wanted to enjoy this in the company of people I loved.”

“She is your sister,” Maureen reminded Kathy gently.

“As you get older, you get to pick your own family; they become more important than the family of your birth.”

“Hey . . . ,” Sheila said, mock indignantly.

Kathy reached over and held her sister's hand. “And sometimes, they're one and the same.”

“Thank you.”

“Julia feels that she has a role to live up to,” Maureen explained. “She thinks you all need a mother, so that's the role she's assumed for herself. Just be honest with her. I imagine you've both deferred to her all your lives.”

The sisters nodded.

“Reminds me of my own sister,” Maureen remarked.

“All this time I've known you and I never knew you had a sister,” Kathy said.

“My crazy sister Sue. Four years younger than I am and isn't afraid of anything. I thought of her today for the first time in ages.” Maureen smiled wistfully. “She used to be a friend of Jimmy Moran's . . . a very good friend,” she added significantly.

“Where is she? . . . What happened?” Sheila asked, glancing sidelong at her sister.

“She's in LA. Married twice—three times maybe—and now runs a hugely successful casting agency. When Jimmy was trying to get his Irish films off the ground, Sue was his Hollywood connection. We had a fight—not about Jimmy, but he was part of it—and just stopped talking.”

“Do you miss her?” Sheila asked.

“Sometimes.” Then Maureen shook her head. “I rarely think of her, to be honest. She could be such a bitch sometimes.” She shook her head again. “I thought about calling her and telling her about Jimmy, but I didn't want to enter her toxic world again, or allow her back into mine.” She sipped her wine, her garnet-colored lipstick leaving a perfect impression of her lips on the glass. “But Kathy's right: As you get older, the family you choose to surround yourself with can be just as important as those who are accidents of birth.” She looked over at Sheila. “You'd started to tell me in the car about Alan.”

“Poor Alan.” Sheila laughed wistfully. “He's infatuated with me . . . or at least he thinks he's in love with me.”

“For men that's the same thing,” Maureen remarked.

“Apparently, I'm the great love of his life. After the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Patriots, and the Bruins. Before I finally managed to push him out the door on Tuesday, I made him promise that he wouldn't say anything to his wife. Made him swear. Told him we needed to talk and plan.”

Kathy concentrated on her wine, feeling uncomfortable with the conversation. Robert and Stephanie must have had a similar chat when they were working out the best days to tell her that he was leaving her.

“So he's agreed to say nothing to his wife. I'm going to break up with him as soon as I can. Problem solved. Except . . .”

“Julia?” Kathy guessed.

“Julia! She's now threatening to tell his wife . . . who'll throw him out . . . and then I'll be stuck with him!” Sheila shook her head. “I'll talk to Julia about it. It'll cause a fight, but I don't have any other options. I promise you, I'm through with married men or men with partners, lovers, or girlfriends, ex or otherwise. I'd never really thought about the other women before.” She reached out and touched her sister's hand. “But watching you . . . seeing what's happened . . . made me realize just how destructive an affair can be, how painful it can be. I'd never thought about that before. I just assumed that if the men were wandering it was because there was something wrong at home.”

“There was. There is,” Kathy said bitterly.

Maureen stepped in quickly. “It's a good decision,” she said. “I've had my share of relationships. I've been cheated upon, I've cheated, and I've been the mistress . . . and you know something: It never works out. Never.”

“Can a marriage survive an affair?” Kathy wondered seriously.

“Absolutely. And it can sometimes be stronger because of the affair,” Maureen said. “But in my experience, the affair can never survive the discovery. The men inevitably go back to their wives, who invariably take them. The mistress is nearly always abandoned.” She saw Sheila watching her closely from across the table and nodded. “And you don't want to get a reputation as a mistress. After a while you stop getting the invites to the parties, just in case you might try and seduce all the married men. And when you do go, all the old letches come around, thinking they've got a shot.” She held up her glass, and Sheila refilled it. “Men—who needs them!”

Kathy pushed away her plate, suddenly no longer hungry. She looked at Maureen. “You know Robert. How do I . . . how do I make this work?”

The older woman rested her chin on her right hand and gazed at Kathy. “Do you want to make this work?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I love him.”

“But does he make you happy?” Maureen asked.

“Yes . . . once he did. But we were younger then, with fewer responsibilities. . . .”

Maureen shook her head firmly. “With more responsibilities. A young couple, newly married, children on the way, a business to grow, a house to pay for. You should have been under even more pressure and yet, I'll bet, you were never closer.”

Kathy nodded. It was true.

“But then you got used to one another, maybe a little bored. You allowed your relationship to slip into a routine.”

Kathy nodded again.

“It's the routine that's the killer. Boredom.” She squeezed Kathy's hand. “I know you're going to get through this. You love him; that's a start. And he says he loves you.”

“He did say that.”

“He just has to be honest with you now. You both have to be honest with one another. No more secrets, no more lies.”

“Plus he has to guarantee that he'll stay away from his mistress,” Sheila added.

“He's already promised me that.” Kathy heaved a sigh. “You're right. I'd hoped we would have had a chance to talk, but so far everything has conspired to keep us apart. And he's so tired at the moment; he's just emotionally and physically exhausted. Driving into the office on Christmas Eve wiped him out.”

Maureen's eyes flickered across to Sheila. “Why did he go out on Christmas Eve?” she asked casually.

“He got a call from the alarm company; the office alarm had gone off. Turned out to be a false alarm—literally—in the end: snow falling onto the roof. He wasn't gone that long, though driving in the snow on the icy roads must have been a killer. He was exhausted when he came home, and then of course, he had to go out again on Christmas Day.”

Maureen sipped her wine. “Wonder why the alarm company didn't call me,” she murmured. “I'm on that call list too. And my name is first.” She saw the suddenly distraught look on Kathy's face and said slowly, “Robert probably had me taken off the list when I got sick.”

“Probably,” Kathy said, though no one at the table believed it. She stood up suddenly and started to gather up the plates. “Now, who wants some Christmas pudding?”

“With brandy butter?” Sheila asked.

“Freshly made,” Kathy said, far too cheerfully.

CHAPTER 45

Friday, 27th December

 

 

K
athy waited until she heard the bathroom door close, the lock click shut, and the shower start to thrum, before she moved. She had maybe six or seven minutes at most. Moving quickly from her bedroom, she padded silently down the corridor and slipped into Robert's study. His computer was still on, a digital clock slowly rotating on the screen.

She had to know.

Previously, she'd felt guilty when she'd had her suspicions about him. No longer. Now she just needed to know the truth, and she would do whatever it took to discover it. There was a quote she remembered: “The truth will set you free.” Maybe that was right, because now not knowing had her trapped like a fly in a web, and the lies, the suspicions, the doubts, and the constant questions were destroying her.

Still listening for the shower, she sat in the chair before the screen and moved the mouse.

Please enter password.

Kathy blinked in surprise. That was new. She'd never known Robert to add a password to his screensaver before. Her instinct was to turn and flee—she definitely didn't want to be caught doing this—but she sat and stared at the black letters on the gray rectangle.

Please enter password.

She knew he used his dead dog's name as the password for the machine log-on; he'd hardly use the same password for the screensaver too, would he?

He had.

She entered
Poppykoo,
and the screen cleared. Outlook, the e-mail program, was still open, a message from Jimmy's brother open on the screen. Kathy clicked on the in-box, looking for something from Stephanie.

There was nothing.

Kathy moved the cursor down and clicked into the Sent box and then blinked in surprise. He had sent out scores of e-mails over the course of the past twenty-four hours, a simple “I am terribly sorry to inform you that our good friend . . .” They were to Jimmy's friends, colleagues, industry journalists, and scattered among them were e-mails to all three of the Moran brothers.

She finally found what she was looking for—and hoping not to find—at the bottom of the screen. An e-mail sent to Stephanie Burroughs on Wednesday morning—Christmas Day—at 2:43 a. m.

Kathy looked at the screen and watched the words dissolve and fragment as bitter tears stung her eyes. Here it was: proof, if proof was what she needed that he was still in touch with Stephanie. She brushed away the tears and read the e-mail again . . . Then frowned. Something wasn't right. He'd sent this e-mail after his return on Christmas night. He must have gone to her home searching for her.

Kathy heard the water pipes clank, and then the shower was turned off. She was tempted to hit Print, but she was unsure how long it would take the printer to warm up. Scrolling back up to the in-box, she positioned the cursor on the e-mail from Jimmy's brother, then slipped out of the room. She hoped that the screensaver would kick in before Robert returned from the bathroom.

Stepping into her bedroom, she shut the door behind her and turned the key in the lock. Whatever type of e-mail she had been expecting to find from Robert or Stephanie, it certainly hadn't been this one. She didn't need to print the e-mail. Every word was imprinted on her consciousness.

So he had lied to her and gone over to Stephanie's house on Christmas Eve night. . . . But Stephanie hadn't been there, and he had been concerned that something was wrong.

This would have been only hours after Kathy had made him promise that he would not see Stephanie again. Even as he was making that promise, he was obviously worried about Stephanie's disappearance, which suggested that he'd tried to get in touch with her earlier in the evening. He'd obviously been so worried that he'd driven to her apartment in a snowstorm to check up on her. She wondered what he had thought he'd find—a body? He was flattering himself.

Women like Stephanie didn't kill themselves over men like Robert.

Kathy was surprised by how calm she felt. She'd just discovered more evidence of Robert's infidelity, more evidence of lies. She should be angrier. . . . Instead she just felt sad. Sad and exhausted.

Well, since she'd started down this path . . .

Sitting by the side of the bed, she riffled through her old diary until she found the number she was looking for.

“Pro-Alarms. Tony speaking. How may I help?”

“Good morning, Tony, this is Kathy Walker, R&K Productions. We're one of your clients.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Walker. Do you have a security reference code?”

“A security reference code?”

“We ask our clients to supply us with a word known only to them. When they get in touch with us, we use the word to verify that it really is them.”

“Oh.” Kathy looked at the diary again. There was nothing beside the Pro-Alarms number. Then a sudden thought struck her. “The only word I have here is Poppykoo.”

“Thank you. We just have to be sure it's a genuine call.”

“I understand. Tony, could you tell me if the R&K Productions office alarm was activated early on Christmas morning, December 25th?” She heard fingers tapping a keyboard. “Some friends were coming home from a late party and thought they heard our alarm ringing.”

“I have nothing on record. No, definitely not. Could have been a nearby building.”

“Probably. Before I go, could you confirm that you have Maureen Ryan and Robert Walker on your call list in that order.”

“Yes, Mrs. Walker. We contact Ms. Ryan first; then, if she is unavailable, we contact Mr. Walker.”

“And you have two numbers for him: cell and home?”

“Yes. It would be our policy to contact the home number first, particularly for a late-night call, then we try the cell phone.”

“That's great. Thank you, Tony—you've been very helpful. Have a Merry Christmas.”

“And a Merry Christmas to you too, Mrs. Walker.”

So now she knew.

She'd contacted the alarm company just in case Robert had been telling the truth. He hadn't. He'd risked the dangerous drive just to check up on his mistress.

Exhaustion settled over her in a leaden blanket. She felt her eyelids close and her shoulders slump. All she wanted to do right now was to crawl into bed, curl up in a warm cocoon, and drift into a deep and dreamless sleep. But what was that going to achieve? Nothing would have changed when she got up.

Could she blame him for doing what he had done?

The sudden thought caught her unaware, and she sat, still and unmoving on the edge of the bed, looking out over the snow-locked streets.

He was worried about this woman. He was in love with her—she had to accept that. Love wasn't something you could turn on and off like a tap; she knew that. Even after everything Robert had done, Kathy still loved him. So, it stood to reason that Robert must also still have feelings for Stephanie. He'd admitted as much when they had spoken on Tuesday; he'd said then that he still loved Stephanie.

So he'd tried to get hold of her and failed, and then risked a drive across the city to see if she was all right. He hadn't abandoned her. Kathy had to admire that loyalty, that commitment. And then she remembered that they were the qualities of the man she had originally fallen in love with.

She heard the bathroom door open, then the door to Robert's office clicked shut.

The man she had married eighteen years ago had been kind and gentle, caring, honest, and loyal. Especially loyal. She liked to think that he still had most of those qualities. On impulse, she climbed off the bed, knelt on the floor, and pulled open the drawer under the bed. At the bottom of the drawer, buried under piles of tee shirts that she would never wear, was a small cloth suitcase. Dropping the case onto the bed, she pulled the curtains closed and turned on the lights before she turned back to the bed and opened the case. Inside there were hundreds—maybe thousands—of pictures, either six-by-four or ten-by-eight prints of every Christmas and birthday, first days of school, visits to the zoo, pictures from camp, high school, and college. For a long time, she'd been meaning to scan them and digitize them in order to preserve them for her grandchildren . . . but she'd never gotten around to it. At the bottom of the case was the white linen box that held her wedding album. She opened the box and lifted out the heavy leather-bound volume with the gilt-edge pages. A sprinkling of eighteen-year-old confetti fell to the bed covers.

Kathy didn't remember the last time she had looked at the album. A couple of years ago, she thought, when Theresa had asked out of the blue what her wedding dress had looked like.

She turned to the back of the book. The early pages, which held all the photos of her late mother and father, were filled with too many sad memories, and she knew if she started with them, she would end up weeping. The last few pages contained the images of the wedding reception.

Kathy smoothed down the slightly crumpled tissue guards and looked at the first picture she came to: the happy couple dancing in the center of an empty floor. Robert, tall, handsome, and elegant in a Ralph Lauren tuxedo, with his eyes fixed on her face, holding her as if she were a delicate piece of china. She looked so young—she had only been twenty-five, but looked maybe eighteen—wide-eyed, innocent, and ecstatic. She was wearing the wedding dress that now lay wrapped in tissue paper in a suitcase in the attic. Eighteen years later, she could only remember fragments of the day with absolute clarity: her father crying the first time he saw her come down the stairs in her dress; the moment she stepped out of the limo in front of the church; the instant she said “I do”; and then later, this particular photo, the first time she'd danced in the arms of her husband. She had never felt so beautiful, so loved.

And she had been proud to be Mrs. Walker. Robert was kind, caring, and compassionate, someone his friends and family could depend on to lend a hand when it was needed. She loved him for those qualities. When the call had come in from the hospital, he hadn't thought twice about going in to be with his friend. She understood that. It was the same quality that had driven him out of the house to see if Stephanie was all right.

But he should have said something. He shouldn't have lied to her. She smiled as she turned the page, trying to imagine the conversation. “Oh, Kathy, I know you've just discovered that I'm having an affair, but I just want to pop over to Stephanie's to see if she's okay. I'll just be a minute. She's dropped out of sight, and I can't get in touch with her.” Kathy was hardly likely to have said, “Go right ahead,” was she?

The next-to-last image in the back of the album was a group photo of all their friends. She was shocked to discover how few of them she could name. There was Jimmy Moran standing behind Robert. She'd met him for the first time at the wedding. On the other side, looking exotic in a navy dress that exposed far too much flesh, was Maureen Ryan. But who were the rest, and where had they all gone? The girl in the pink dress was someone she had gone to college with, and the boy with the pitiful attempt at a beard was a young director who had been working for Hill Holliday advertising at the time. He was still there as far as she could remember.

Loss of friends . . . that was one of the hidden costs of marriage. Oh, they'd all kept in touch for the first year or so, and then slowly, one by one, as they'd married or moved on to different careers, they'd slipped away.