The Mirror and the Mask (6 page)

“Huh. Too bad.” He leaned his hairy arm against the door frame. “Hey, pretty lady, you're welcome to stay with me if you got no place to go. Hell, even if you do—”

“No thanks,” said Annie.

“You change your mind,” called the guy to her retreating back, “my door's always open.”

 

 

 

W
hen Susan awoke the next morning, Kristjan was in the shower. She could hear him singing a country-western song, all “crying in my beer, but I still love you darlin' ” stuff. He was off in his own world, a happy world, while she was stuck in bed in a state of anxious hyperclarity. After a night of passion and whispered promises, the morning light had dawned in dread.

The genesis of that dread had less to do with Kristjan than it did with Susan's husband, Jack. The onetime love of her life would never give her an easy divorce. She'd never be happy as long as she was married to him. It was an impossible situation. And if Jack ever found out she was cheating on him, that she and Kristjan had been meeting in motels for months, digging whatever time they could out of their busy schedules to be together, he'd make her pay. At this early morning hour, she wasn't sure of much, but she was sure of that.

Susan's record was far from spotless when it came to other men, although she'd done a good job of keeping Jack in the dark about her
affairs. On the other hand, Jack had all the real power in the relationship and thus could be far more blatant about his.

When Viagra came on the market, he was at his doctor's office the next day demanding a prescription. He'd been popping them daily for years, which made his once waning but now energetic sex life possible. Susan found Viagra deeply creepy even though Jack swore by the little pills. He said he felt like a kid again. He refused to call his sexual encounters with other women affairs because he never got emotionally involved, and that was the trump card he always played. He loved one woman—her. Till death do they part. Although his brand of love came with little extras Susan didn't consider loving, it was a package deal. She'd made a bargain with the devil on Viagra and had been forced to cope, mainly by her obsessive need to live the kind of life Jack could provide.

Since the beginning of their relationship, Jack had put her down for the way she raised her kids. And lately, whenever she shared a job frustration, he would twist it around to make her feel like an incompetent businesswoman. The fact that she let him get away with it—in
this
economy—said a lot about how much frustration and downright hate she'd had to stuff in order to stay married. He belittled her political opinions, criticized her clothes, her hair, but never said a word about her body. She pretty much lived on three snacks a day and spent enough time at the gym to ensure she was in top shape. Even so, when he eyed younger women in her presence, his blatant sense of entitlement infuriated her.

The worst part of the bargain was that, every now and then, Jack would use a night of brutal sex to keep her in line. It happened rarely, although the threat was always on the table. She hated herself for allowing the situation to continue. She'd been justifying it for years by telling herself that no relationship was perfect. Every human being had rough edges. When you got close to someone, those edges seemed that much sharper. It was simply the price she had to pay to
keep the things she wanted. But now that she had Kristjan with her, that price was beginning to feel too high.

Jack liked his home life peaceful and orderly, and since it was good for the kids, Susan rarely challenged him. In fact, he'd been such a great father to her children that she sometimes wondered if they loved him more than they did her. He was careful with them, never let them see his bitterness. He wasn't a deep thinker, but instinctively he must have known that what was inside him had the power to destroy relationships.

Jack put on a face for the kids, for his business clients, and for his all-consuming charity work. He was positive, confident, generous. But over time, perhaps because he'd grown to trust her, he'd allowed Susan to see who he really was. And sad as it might be to admit, his intuition had been right about the corrosive nature of his inner self.

Jack Bowman was a deeply angry man, full of hostility toward the world in general and, specifically, at people from his past. He didn't talk much about his personal history—his childhood, his early life—but when they were alone, especially at night in the privacy of their bedroom, certain things leaked out.

For instance, his father enjoyed humiliating both him and his mom. Jack had once let it slip that his dad liked to make him watch while he had sex with various babysitters. Jack's mother was an alcoholic, loving one minute, pushing him away or screaming obscenities at him the next. The worst, he said, was when she got sloppy affectionate, made him come sit with her while she cried and slobbered about how much she loved him. He said it was the first time he understood what people meant when they said something made their skin crawl.

Susan wasn't positive, but she thought Jack might have spent time in prison. She knew enough not to press him for details. As frightened as she could be of him, and as surely as his relentless criticism and bitterness had dissolved any feelings she'd once had for him, she also found this slow process of discovery fascinating. She'd never
know the full story now. As soon as he sniffed out any disloyalty, all intimate communication would cease. Maybe if she'd known the full story she might have been able to find some compassion for his shortcomings. But Jack would never have accepted compassion. It would be easier for him to handle outright loathing. At the very least, loathing was something he understood.

Hearing the shower snap off in the bathroom, Susan drew back the bedcovers and swung her legs out of bed. She'd just put on her satin robe when Kristjan breezed into the room, still singing, a towel wrapped around his waist, his blond hair wet and slicked back from his high forehead. They both traveled with a small overnight bag, so they had clean clothes to wear when they had to spend a night away from home. Weather in Minnesota could be treacherous, and that provided an easy excuse for equally treacherous husbands and wives.

“I'm famished,” said Kristjan, pawing through his bag for a fresh shirt. He slipped it on, let the towel drop to the floor, then stepped into a clean pair of boxers. Sitting on the rumpled bed, he drew her down next to him. “I love you more than I thought I could ever love another human being.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don't know,” he said softly. All of his happy energy faded. “But we can't go on like this. I want a life with you, not all this ridiculous sneaking around.”

A few weeks before Susan had married Jack, he'd come to her with a prenup to sign. She'd been expecting it, so it wasn't a surprise. Once upon a time, before the housing market tanked, she'd made a good living, but even then, Jack was the one with the big earning potential. Even combining their earnings, she and Kristjan didn't make a tenth of what Jack made a year. And that was a huge issue for Susan. She was infatuated by Kristjan—she'd come to the sad conclusion that she might not be capable of love—but that didn't alter her practical side. Perhaps that was why, in the middle of the night, she'd found the courage
to whisper in Kristjan's ear: “We'll never have what we both want as long as Jack's around.”

It was a simple enough statement. It could be taken any number of ways. And yet, in her heart, she was sure he knew what she meant. The comment had wedged itself between them in the night, like a restless third person in the bed, an unpredictable, possibly even desperate presence. She realized as soon as she woke that it wasn't some ghost in bed with them; it was a possibility. A next step that stank of madness.

“I can't stand the idea that you're going back to his bed tonight,” said Kristjan, smoothing the tangles in her hair.

“How . . . how will Barbara take it . . . when you ask her for a divorce?”

He expelled a deep breath. “Not well.”

“And your kids?”

“That's the worst part for me. What's a divorce going to do to them? They're all so young, so happy and well-adjusted. But other people split and it isn't the end of the world. The children survive.”

“Do you want joint custody?”

“Hell, yes. We've never talked about that. You up for raising three more kids?”

“Of course I am,” said Susan. She could feel her heart rate speed up. Kristjan was eight years younger. Not a big deal to either of them. But did she really want to plunge back into child rearing just when she was about to get off the mommy track? The truth was, she doubted it. But that was something they could deal with . . . after. Right now, she needed his help.

“So what's our next move?” asked Kristjan, buttoning his shirt, not looking at her.

“I'm not sure.”

“The longer we continue sneaking around, the better the chance that Jack will find out about us. If he does before we've made some
serious decisions, it will be the end. We'll lose the only chance we have to . . .” He couldn't seem to finish the sentence.

“To what?” she prodded. She wanted him to say it first.

“To take care of business. To do what we talked about last night.”

“But we never talked about anything. Not really. Not . . . specifically.”

“We'll never have the kind of life we've both been dreaming about unless Jack . . . dies.”

She felt a sudden panic, as if she'd reached the edge of the earth and was about to fall off.

“But for the life of me,” he said, his eyes searching hers, “I don't know how to make that happen.”

“I do,” she said, trying to keep the coldness out of her voice. She didn't want to scare him. Intuitively she knew that Kristjan had to be handled carefully—kept at a sexual pitch. She'd been working toward this moment for weeks. “You and me,” she said. Her confidence permeated every word. “We'd make it happen because it's what we want. It's what we deserve. Jack's treated me like dirt for years. I've put up with it far too long. Are you with me, Kristjan? Because if you're not, tell me now and it stops right here. This is the last time we'll ever be together.”

After a long, agonized moment, he looked over and whispered, “I'm in.”

 

 

 

T
wo rings. Three. A voice said hello.

“Is this Steve Glennoris?” asked Jane. She'd been in her office at the Lyme House all morning trying to locate a man in Traverse City who'd worked with John Archer back in the nineties. She'd found Archer's name on a number of property sales, along with the name of Steven Glennoris. She was pretty sure she'd hit pay dirt.

“Yeah, this is Steve.”

“My name's Jane Lawless. I work for a lawyer in Minneapolis. We're trying to locate a guy named John Archer. I understand you worked with him?”

“What's this about?”

“His uncle, Calvin Archer, recently died and left him some property. I was hoping you might know where he is.”

Jane had been working her way through various options, trying to determine how best to get the information she needed without tipping off Glennoris that Archer was under investigation. If they were still friends, he might refuse to talk to her if he knew the real story.

“Property, huh?” said Steve, sounding amused. “Something big?”

“Forty acres in northern Minnesota.”

“Lakes and trees?”

“Lots of trees.”

“Really.” He laughed. “This is crap, right?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because, for one thing, I don't remember Johnny ever talking about an uncle Calvin. But mainly, nobody would leave that sack of shit anything worth spit. You're a PI, right? Or a cop? What'd he do now?”

“Are you still in touch with him?”