The Marriage Pact (1) (27 page)

I
meant everything I said on our last night together. Looking back on it, I wish
I had not let you make me leave, but just held you all night long. If I had
known it was my last chance to touch you, I would not have let go so easily.
But when I did leave, as soon as I got down the stairs at your apartment, Cathy
was sitting there, in her car. She honked the horn and told me to get in.

Marci
remembered now, hearing the horn, oblivious in her bedroom just fifteen feet
away. She had thought nothing of it at the time—had no idea it was the sound of
her world being ripped apart.

I
won’t get into details, but it was obviously not a pleasant conversation. Cathy
told me she’d been following me for a couple of weeks, and had checked our
phone bills and saw all the calls to your number. She demanded to know who you
were, threatened to leave me and, to tell everyone in both our families what
happened.

As
you know, I refused to tell her who you were. But what you don’t know is that I
tried to leave her. Right then and there, I decided nothing was worth being
apart from you, and that I didn’t care about my family’s opinion if it meant
being stuck in a loveless marriage. I told her I was in love with you, and I told
her—finally—that I hadn’t felt the same way about her for years. I was
terrified but excited. I knew it was going to be an uphill battle, but that
everything we had dreamed about together was waiting for me at the end.

I
had my hand on the door handle, Marci, ready to come back upstairs to you.

That’s
when she told me about the pregnancy. She pulled out a sonogram, which later
turned out to be a friend’s that they had altered to show Cathy’s name. She
told me that if I left the car, or ever saw you again, she would make sure I
never saw my own child and that my parents would never know their only
grandchild. I know it’s no excuse, but I can’t tell you what that did to me.
My
heart is one thing; my
parents’ are something else. I couldn’t do that to them.

Next
is the worst part. Cathy made me promise to break it off with you, and to do it
in a way that there would be no chance of you wanting to continue. She
threatened to monitor my cell phone activity and credit cards every day. She
told me that she had told at least twenty people what was going on, including
people at the office, and that if there were any calls, any communication,
anything even remotely fishy going on, she would divorce me and take my baby to
Beaumont forever.

I
didn’t know if she knew that we worked together or if she was just guessing,
but I couldn’t take any chances. I knew getting you the job at the firm was
risky, but I hoped it would help, in some tiny way, to make up for everything
else. And that maybe we’d have a chance to talk so I could explain.

Marci,
I know you can’t forgive me for the way I treated you that night in my office.
It was all wrong and I see it now. But at the time, I guess I thought it was
the only way to make sure that I didn’t lose my family, my child. I thought if
you hated me, it might make it easier for you to move on. I guess it worked
because you’re back in Atlanta now and I heard that you’re engaged already.

The
rest of the story is just ugly, so I’ll keep it short. I started realizing
Cathy was not getting bigger, and I confronted her about it. At first she tried
to pretend she was just small from morning sickness. Then a few weeks later she
pretended she’d had a miscarriage. I was devastated—it was a despicable,
hurtful lie. Worse than anything you or I ever told. I didn’t love her anymore
but I had come to love my child, or thought I did. Finally one of her friends,
someone who knows both our families from back home, I guess she felt sorry for
me because she called me one day and told me the truth.

By
the time I found out the whole pregnancy was a lie, you were long gone and
building your new life. I moved out the same day, and it took a while to
finalize the divorce because Cathy and her lawyer kept stalling. I gave her
everything she asked for. None of it means anything to me anymore.

Since
then, I have been trying to get the courage to find you, talk to you. I have
written this letter twenty times or more. It will never be enough to say it
right. I honestly don’t want to disrupt your new life, if you are truly happy
in it. I just couldn’t let you marry someone else without knowing the truth
about what happened. And without hearing how truly, deeply sorry I am. I have
made lots of mistakes, but hurting you is the biggest regret of my life.

 Love
always,

Doug

Tears
splattered the letter as they fell from Marci’s cheeks and nose. She hated him
for bringing back all the pain she had left behind her. All the months she’d
spent healing were gone, and the wound was fresh again. She hated him and felt
sorry for him, too. His pain was clear in the words on the page and the look on
his face when she looked up.

He
wiped her tears with his thumbs, cradling her head in his hands. “I’m sorry,”
he whispered. She had no idea what to say. He pulled her toward him and kissed
her lightly on the lips. She felt dizzy and sad and scared.

“You’re
trembling,” he said softly. “Come here.” He kissed her again, more deeply this
time. A protest rose somewhere in the back of her brain, but communication with
her body seemed to be blocked. She moved toward him and kissed him back,
putting her arms around his neck. The next thing she knew, he was lifting her
off the floor and carrying her through the still-open door to his hotel room.
So often she had dreamed about this moment—while they were together in Austin,
and even after that, when she lay awake late at night, crying in the enormous
guest bed at Suzanne’s apartment.

Doug
settled her softly on the bed, still kissing her. She was shaking now, almost
violently. “Are you cold?” he asked. She shook her head. She thought of Jake,
sleeping in a crappy motel off some rural highway, hating her.
And now he
has every reason
, she thought vaguely.

Doug
handed her the wrapped box. “Maybe this will warm you up.”

Hands
trembling, she pulled on the baby blue ribbon and opened the package. Inside
the velvet cube was the last thing she expected: an enormous diamond engagement
ring. Nearly twice the size of the more modest antique on her left hand, it was
surrounded by her favorite tiny blue sapphires. She felt dizzy, in shock. She
looked up to see that Doug was kneeling in front of her.

“I
figured every girl is a diamond girl at
some
point. Like I said, I just
wanted you to know that I am 100% serious. And that you really do have options.”
He took her left hand in his and looked at the simpler ring Jake had given her
three months earlier. “I guess I’d better let you decide whether you want to
take this one off or not. You can’t really wear two of these. It’s Georgia, not
Utah.”

She
was completely dumbstruck. Words failed her, and the tears began to flow more
freely than before. “Why don’t you take some time to think about it, okay?”
Doug was saying. “It’s a huge decision, I know. I can be back in town next
weekend if you want, and you can tell me then. Or, hell, mail it to me if you
decide to stay with your Southern gentleman. Just be sure to get the insurance
on it. This baby wasn’t cheap.”

Marci
knew his rambling jokes were to cover his nervousness. She had to smile because
it was so very rare to find Doug Stanton in this state. He sounded like a
complete idiot, which helped to counter the feeling she sometimes had when she
was with him that he was superhuman.

“I
won’t mail it,” she said and he smiled back at her. He kissed her folded hands
and burrowed his head into her lap, nuzzling his way under her arms. She sighed
deeply.

“Doug,
the answer is no.” She tried to say it quickly, so his hopefulness would not
last long. Despite how much energy she had spent hating him all these months,
she now had no desire left to hurt him.

“Look,
honey, I know you’re mad—”

“I’m
not.”

“Maybe
you just need time—”

“I
don’t need time. I’m sorry, Doug, but our time is over. No matter what our
reasons, this relationship was wrong. From the beginning, right until this very
moment. I’m sorry about you and Cathy, I really am. But I’m with someone else
now. Maybe I deserve him and maybe I don’t. But I know that
he
deserves
better than this. I shouldn’t be here.”

She
stood and found that the trembling had stopped and her head was clear for the
first time in days. She handed him the velvet box. “Good luck, Doug,” she said,
and kissed him on the cheek. “Please don’t ever contact me again, okay?”

“Marci,
what are you saying? Don’t you think we should talk about this? Don’t you want
to take some time to think it over?”

She
supposed she never should have expected the great salesman to take no for an
answer. She picked up her purse where it had landed next to the bed and turned
toward the door.

“Look,
Marce—I love you, but if you walk out that door now, I am not coming here
again. Do you understand? I’m not playing games here.”

When
the door closed behind her, she did not look back. “Neither am I,” she muttered
and strode toward the elevators.

There
was a spot on a hill, just south of town, where Marci had gone sometimes with
an old boyfriend after college. You could sit in the parking lot of a tiny
church and watch the planes taking off and landing at Hartsfield-Jackson,
crisscrossing in the sky as they danced in their flight patterns. As soon as
she left the hotel parking lot (
$15 for two hours!
), she knew it was
where she wanted to go next. It took her a few minutes of experimenting with
various familiar-sounding roads and one scary turnaround—watched suspiciously
by a cluster of hooded teenagers whose party in the dead end of a residential
street she had obviously interrupted—but she eventually found the road that
curved uphill to the little church.

As
she crunched into the gravel driveway, she was surprised that nothing appeared
to have changed in the past eight or so years. In the part of the world where
her parents lived, everything had been expanded and updated or torn down and
rebuilt altogether since she had moved away. But the rickety old church was
exactly the same, except for two new signs that designated general areas of the
gravel lot for “Pastor Parking,” and “Deacon of the Month.”

It
was quiet, at least for one of the higher-crime areas of town on a Saturday
night. The parking lot was deserted, but she could hear the rhythmic thumping
of cars in the near distance. She knew her father would kill her, so would Jake
for that matter, if they knew she was here alone at night. She just wanted some
time to process before heading back to the inevitable inquisition at Suzanne’s.

She
thought about Vann Peterson—Patterson? No, definitely Peterson—the guy who had
brought her here a few times after dates. They had met in a mailroom during one
of her first temporary office assignments after college, and dated for about
four months before she called it off. She tried now to remember why. Had it
been a good reason, or was it just one of the early examples her dad was
pointing out about running away?

Vann
had been cute, charming, and really smart. Like Jake, he was obsessed with old
movies, and outraged to learn on their first date that she had never seen
Casablanca.
Their second date had been ordering pizza and watching all four hours of it at
his apartment. She remembered wondering whether he might not really be
interested in her that night—because despite her best efforts to make herself
available during the movie, he hadn’t so much as kissed her until the credits
rolled.

On
their third date, though, he had brought her here, where he loved to watch the
planes take off and guess where they might be going. They sat on the hood of
his car and made out for nearly an hour, putting her fears of his indifference
to rest, especially when his hand found its way underneath her bra. She laughed
at the memory of his sheepish smile when he did this. Why
had
she broken
up with him?

It
seemed so long ago now, but Marci thought she remembered her friends had
suggested he had not been good for her. Had they all hiked in the North Georgia
mountains one weekend or something? And Vann had some kind of family thing that
night so the rest had gone to dinner without him. Suzanne had said something
about the way he always steered the conversation back to old movies, Rebecca
had noticed his “lack of fashion awareness” or something like that, but it was
Jake’s take that made an impression.

She
remembered with sudden clarity. “He just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who
would put you first,” Jake had said, in a big-brotherly tone.

He
had been dating the microscopic blonde girl with huge breasts named Regan at
the time, and Marci remembered Regan cuddling close to him and gushing, “That’s
what I love about him, always looking out for his friends. Isn’t he just the
best?”

Nearly
a decade later, she felt a surge of nauseated jealousy remembering Regan
smearing her perky self all over him at the table, and Jake kissing her
playfully in return. No one in their little group had cared for her much,
either, but unlike Vann, Regan had not required an intervention to oust her.
Jake had always managed that process pretty well on his own. In fact, despite a
steady stream of beautiful companions over the years, she couldn’t remember a
time when Jake had dated anyone for more than a couple of months.

A
car passed by on the main road, slowing visibly as it passed the church. A
black man with a
gray
mustache and suspenders looked out
at her from the driver’s seat and came to a slow stop on the shoulder, just
past the gravel driveway. She imagined it was one of the church members,
wondering what a solitary car was doing here on a Saturday night. She waved at
him, but he continued to stare at her stonily. She supposed the fact that she
was a white girl in jeans and a GAP sweater with a Toyota Corolla didn’t mean
she couldn’t be a prostitute or a drug dealer.

As
she watched him watch her, she knew it was time to go. The man kept his vigil,
foot on the brake, until she had re-entered her car and pulled out of the
driveway. As she coasted down the hill, she saw him in the rearview mirror,
backing into the driveway and starting back up the hill.

Returning
to the apartment, she hoped Suzanne would be awake so they could talk. She had
so much to tell, so much to sort out; what Marci needed most was a stiff
cocktail and some time with her best girlfriend.

When
she pushed open the door, however, there were two faces staring at her from the
oversized leather couch, lighted by the erratic flashes of some movie on TV.
Suzanne’s eyes were wide in an “I tried to warn you” expression, while Jake
looked cold and sullen, still staring at the TV. In that instant, Marci
realized she had turned her phone off to avoid calls from Doug after leaving
the hotel and never looked at it again.

“Hey...everyone,”
Marci said lamely.

“Hi,
baby doll,” Suzanne trilled, her voice unnaturally high and sweet, even for
her. “Jakie and I have just been sitting here watching
Spiderman
for a
couple of hours. It’s been just like old times, sitting around watching movies,
drinking beer. I was just saying that we need to do this more often, just get
together and relax like this, you know, doing
nothing
, and I already
told him I wasn’t sure where you were tonight. But here you are! Okay, then,
I’m going to bed! Nighty-night, y’all!”

She
was up and off the couch by the time she finished this hasty speech, and her
silky pink bathrobe fluttered as she closed the door to her bedroom, leaving
Jake and Marci alone.

“Hey,”
she said. “You’re back early. How was your trip?”

“Fine.
How was your evening?” He spat the question out as though the taste of it
offended him.

“It
was, okay, actually,” she said, answering genuinely.
Might as well get it
over with
. “I saw Doug.”

“I
guessed that,” Jake retorted coldly.

“It’s
not what you think.”
Great, Marce. Really original.

“Really,
Marci? It’s almost midnight. And how the hell do you know what I think?”

Even
though she expected it, still it was like being hit with a steel pipe. He had
never been this angry with her before. In all their years of friendship, he had
been the voice of reason, the cooler head. She had only ever seen him
occasionally angry with anyone, and had always known she did not want to be on
the wrong end of it. During the few times they had fought, he had simply
remained calm and waited for her to come to her senses. Now she saw the hurt in
his eyes and had to fight to stay where she was rather than run out the door.

“I’m
sorry. I went to Doug’s hotel—”

“To
his hotel?”

“Well,
the restaurant at his hotel,” she clarified, though it felt like a lie of
omission. “To explain why I don’t want him to contact me anymore.”

“Oh,
of course, I should have known,” Jake fumed. “Whenever I never want to see
someone again, the first thing I do is go visit their hotel.”

“Well,
it’s just that he had called me a whole bunch, and after everything we had been
through, I felt  I owed him an explanation in person, you know?” He was
silent for a second and she hurried through the rest of her explanation before
he could cut her off again. “Anyway, we had dinner, and he gave me this note
explaining everything that happened all those months ago. I told him it didn’t
change anything and not to contact me ever again and I left. That was hours
ago. I went to go watch the planes for a while by myself. I thought you were
staying in south Georgia. If I’d known you were here—”

“Jamal
was in a car accident and shattered his leg. His career is probably over. The
family opted out of the documentary.”

“Oh,
God, I’m so sorry—” Poor Jamal. And his family. And all of Jake’s hard work.

“It
wasn’t his fault,” he said simply. “Suzanne called you. I called you. Three
times.”

“I
turned off my phone. I’m sorry; I just knew he would be calling me trying to
get me to come back and I didn’t want to deal with it. I thought you were out
of range, so—”

“What
were you thinking, going down to that place alone at night with your phone
turned off? Do you have a death wish or something?” His anger was veering
toward concern for her safety, and she began to feel relieved.

She
took a step toward him. “I’m sorry, it was stupid. I—”

“So
you didn’t go to his hotel room?”

She
froze. His voice was calm, but she sensed the mass of anger just below the
surface. “Well?”

Lying
had become such a habit for Marci over the past year that the justification
sprang to her mind immediately. The truth, that she had gone to Doug’s room,
seemed so opposite everything she had intended and everything she felt. If Jake
knew the truth, they were over. As a couple, and probably as friends, too. She
knew this instinctively, the way she knew his gestures when he talked about
something important, or how he reached for her in his sleep. The thought of
losing him now was unbearable.

But
if she lied to Jake, she would have nothing left anyway. She looked up and
said, “Yes, I did go to his room.”

He
winced as though she had touched him with a hot poker; his face returned to its
previous stony expression. “And you kissed him?”

Marci
looked at her shoes. “Yes.”

He
stood quickly, and for a moment she thought he might throw something at her, or
put his fist through a wall. From the other side of the couch, he picked up his
duffel bag, her first indication that he had come here intending to spend the
night. He had planned to make up with her tonight, and she had been with Doug
instead.

“Anything
else?” he asked in a controlled voice.

“No.”
She held her left hand in her right, as though protecting Jake’s ring from
being ripped off her hand. “Well, he tried to give me a ring. I guess an
engagement ring. But I didn’t accept it. That’s when I left.”

“Why
not?”

“What?”

“Why
didn’t you accept?” The malice in his voice was entirely new to her. Someone
was ripping her chest open and pulling all the vital organs out right there in
the living room.

“Because,
Jake,” her voice was desperate, “because I don’t love him. I just told you I
don’t want to see him ever again.” She was crying now. She had made her choice
tonight, without even realizing it, a choice about the rest of her life. And
now she was watching it slip away before her. “I love
you
.”

There
was a long silence. Finally, Jake broke it.“I don’t think you even know what
that means.” His tone was not cruel, but cracked with something he had just
begun to understand himself. He was disappointed in her, sorry to have chosen
her. This hurt Marci most of all.

“Jake
—”

“Don’t,
Marci. I’m going home.”

He
walked past her, slamming the door so hard when he left that a picture fell off
Suzanne’s wall, leaving a large crack in the glass. When she turned around,
Suzanne was in front of her. Marci held out the broken picture in both hands
like an animal she’d just accidentally hit with her car. “I’m sorry; I’ll fix
it. I’ll pay—”

“Oh,
honey,” Suzanne said, flinging the picture into a nearby chair. “Shut up.” She
embraced Marci warmly, holding her and stroking her hair for nearly an hour
while she sobbed uncontrollably into the pink silk.