The Other Widow (17 page)

Tomas glances at the menu, gestures toward the waiter. His mustache is filled with snow that melts and drips onto the table. He orders
té con leche
for them both.

“I've missed you,” he says when the waiter has come and gone, when they're sitting face-to-face, their hands around the teacups.

“I missed you, too, Tomas.” She says this in a friendly, offhand way, but she looks up finally, meets his eyes before she looks away again to study her fingers on the steaming cup. “When did you get to Boston?”

“I texted you,” Tomas says. “Over two months ago.” The waiter comes back and Karen loops her hair behind her ear, asks Tomas to order for them both.

“I'm so sorry for your loss, Karen. For Joe.”

“Thank you,” she says. “How did you know?” She stares at him across the table. “The paper? The
Globe
ran an article—”

“No.” He shakes his head, a tiny movement. “I was there. At Mass General. I was there that night in the ER. I wanted to call you, but I didn't wish to intrude,” he says. “I know you like space.”

Karen nods. “Your mother?”

“She passed away.”

“I'm sorry, Tomas.”

“Sometimes it is for the best,” he says. “She was ill for a long time.”

“Unlike my husband.”

“Yes,” he says. “A very different thing.” They both turn to watch the waiter set down plates of steaming food.

“Very. A terrible accident.”

“Eat,” Tomas says and the two of them bend over the delicious food. For a little while, it feels as if Tomas has never been away.

“Dance with me?” he says, when they have eaten nearly every scrap, and Karen shrugs out of her coat to dance in the back of a large open room, much dimmer here, much more intense. She rests her chin on Tomas's shoulder and they sway among the other dancers. Tomas turns her slowly, dips her nearly to the floor.

“I'm so glad you got in touch with me,” he says. His mustache tickles her cheek.

She pulls away. Only a little, but enough. He doesn't try to pull her back, but she remembers how she used to feel with him, faintly suffocated. Will that change, now that she's alone? Now, without Joe? She feels herself beginning to thaw, her insides, her heart. She leans her head back slightly and looks at Tomas. His eyes are dark and kind. The front door closes with a bang, breaking the spell. He twirls her once, twice, before they walk back to the table.

“I have to go,” she says after a few minutes. “The dog,” she says. “Antoine . . .”

Tomas nods. “And I, as well.” He looks down at his watch. “It was so good to see you, Karen. Are you all right?”

She shrugs. “It's lonely now. The house—” She grabs her coat and Tomas holds it as she slides it on.

He nods again, tosses a few bills on the table. “I'll walk you to the train. And Karen.” He stops just inside the door. “Well,” he says. “You know. I am here.”

It's freezing. They talk very little on the way to the station, and she's happy when they get there, relieved to be inside. “Tomas,” she says, when the two of them stand at the entrance. “I never got your letter. I would have answered it, but I never—I just found it. I was going through Joe's things and it was there with his— He must have taken it.”

“Oh.” Tomas doesn't seem shocked, really, or even surprised. “He's done worse things to you than that, no?”

Karen starts to answer, but her phone rings. Alice. She'll call her back. She'll text her from the train, but Tomas, too, is in a rush, a little harried, pressed for time. He hugs her briefly, plants a quick kiss on her forehead. “Go on,” he says. “Really. Answer your phone. I have to leave now, too, or I'll be late for work.” He backs away and waves, takes off down the sidewalk.

Work. Karen picks up her call from Alice, but she watches Tomas walk away. Alice's voice is garbled, and Karen keeps the phone up to her ear, catching only dribs and drabs. Her mind wanders. Work, she thinks again. She'll stay at the bookstore until she's back at Home Runs. She misses it anyway—the books, the customers, Alice—not to mention, she's nearly broke. And it is in the city. She'll feel more connected, more a part of things again. The thought that if she's working in town, she'll be closer to Tomas is just there at the corner of her mind, but she dismisses it. “Alice,” she says into the bad connection. “We need to talk about me coming back to work. In fact, maybe we could add a few more hours. At least until the insurance settlement comes through or I convince Edward to— My money's running out more quickly than I—” There isn't any answer. The phone's gone dead. She sighs, runs across the station to her train.

It's nearly dark when she gets home, and after taking Antoine out—a fast and frigid walk—night settles in. Her lunch in town has energized her, and she's anxious to get back to going through Joe's things. She grabs a glass of wine and starts across the house to the back bedroom.

Antoine stands at the window, nose pressed up against the glass, his back legs planted on a chair arm. His tiny nails dig into the upholstery. “Antoine!” She claps her hands, but he doesn't budge. He's parted the curtains with his nose, making the entire house visible, and Karen starts toward him to nudge his pudgy body down. She reaches to pull the curtains back together, and sees a car on a side street facing her house with its lights dimmed. She moves closer to the glass, and the car jerks slightly forward and then back as Karen throws her coat around her shoulders and runs through the front door. By the time she's off the porch, her blue slipper coming down on the top step, the car is nothing but a vague bright blur, squealing down the street. Seconds later, someone with one headlight out pulls off from the curb a few doors down and drives away. Half a minute after that, a FedEx truck lumbers by. Karen finishes her glass of wine and thinks she'll make an appointment with a doctor or a counselor—someone who can help her with her nerves. An herbalist, maybe or a Reiki healer. Alice will know someone.

She continues back to Joe's old office, pulls up the spreadsheets on his laptop again. He was meticulous when it came to the company; she can't imagine these aren't right.

She sits on the floor, Joe's computer propped up on her lap, and she leans her back against the daybed. It wasn't only Joe or even Joe and Edward. She was there, too, when the company was in its infancy. Even before that, when it was just a vague idea in her husband's mind, Karen was there. She helped him plan things, cheered him on. She helped him save and, later, it was Karen who found their first small space downtown. It was much more than just a job for Joe, but it was more than that for Karen, too. It broke her heart, giving up her own career to raise the boys, to keep this old house patched together, but even that was an investment in the future of Home Runs, in their future together, hers and Joe's and their sons'.

She spots a piece of paper under the heavy wooden desk across the room. A tiny piece. A corner. She tells herself she really has to clean up the entire house. She needs to streamline—this office, her life—especially with no money coming in. Will she have to sell her home? If so, where will she go?

She scoots across the rug and grabs the paper, a bill of some sort. Joe was usually so careful, filing things away. He must have knocked it off his desk or dropped it from a coat pocket. A Chase bill. Strange. They've never had a Chase card. She glances at the date—over a year ago. Her eyes scan the list and linger on a charge for the Harborside Inn.

She knows the place, but it's been ages since she stayed there, only one time, when she and Joe were caught in Boston in a heavy snow. They got the room on impulse, and Karen watched the snow fall through the night in thick wet clumps as they made love. Why would he bring this bill here to the house? To flaunt his adultery in her face? To stare at and remember on nights he missed his stupid little twit? She turns it over and stares blankly at a note he's written on the back.

She gets up and walks across the hall to the bathroom. She'll flush it down the john. She sits on the toilet lid and drops her face into her hands, angry. Hurt. Furious. Still, in a way these unexpected finds are comforting—the photograph, the secret credit card. Ironically, these things that tell her Joe was not exactly who she'd thought—not quite the man she'd loved for more than half her life—these things make losing him more bearable, because, clearly, even before the accident her husband was already gone.

She doesn't drop the Chase bill in the toilet. Neither does she rip it into pieces. Instead, Karen stares at the note Joe's written on the back:
Check on building materials returned to Home Depot? Why?
And “why” is underlined three times.

XX

DORRIE

D
orrie gets up early and takes a shower before Lily is awake. They really need another bathroom, Dorrie thinks for the millionth time, at least a half bath off the kitchen, a small powder room that Samuel could build over a few weekends. She yawns, listens to his heavy footsteps in the hall.

She slips into the bedroom and dresses while he gropes for his coffee in the kitchen. She avoids him. She isn't sure exactly how she feels about him after last night's chain of contradictory events—the sweet and fairly loving husband in the bedroom, the scary voyeur on the stairs. She fixes her hair and bangs on Lily's bedroom door before she pops frozen waffles in the toaster and retrieves the orange juice from the fridge. “Lily!” she calls into the general morning din, and, seconds later, Lily plops down sleepily at the table. She snarls a greeting, grabs a waffle from the toaster, butters it, and eats it like a piece of toast. Three crumbs fall across the blue paisley of her pullover, and she brushes them off with the backs of her fingers. Samuel comes and goes, a shadow in the bright white light of morning, reaching around her as she stands at the sink, to plant a kiss discreetly on her cheek.

She sticks the last dish in the dishwasher and waves Lily off from the front porch, watching as she slides into the front seat of Mia's shiny butter-colored car. “Be careful!” Dorrie calls. “The roads might still not be very—” Lily cuts her off with a dismissive, embarrassed little wave and Mia's car chugs down the driveway, leaving Dorrie standing like a shrew, her hands on her hips, her apron flapping out around her. Bits of snow blow off the eaves in a sudden puff of wind, and she feels an eerie dread. She tells herself it's only nervousness about Maggie Brennan coming to the office again this morning. There are a couple of employees she still has to talk to, she said when she called. Dorrie unties her apron. All these questions. All this madness with Joe's phone. She wipes her hands and sticks her apron in the kitchen. As she grabs her coat and hurries to her car, her heart flip-flops and her mother's voice inside her head shouts
Watch out, Dorrie.

Brennan is already inside with Edward when Dorrie opens the door to her office. Did Edward happen to remember something else? she hears Brennan say, anything at all? Did Edward notice the oil in Joe's old parking space?

“No.” Edward sounds a little shocked. “It could be anything, though.” His voice is calmer suddenly, as if he's sorting this out. He goes on to say it could be someone from the building or even from the street, pulling into the garage to call for a tow. Joe's spot would be the likely place to park, he tells her, and it's clearly empty. Now. His voice breaks on the last two words.

Dorrie hears what sounds like papers being rearranged. Seconds later there's the sound of Brennan crossing the wood floor of Edward's office, and then silence as she hits the plushy carpet on the way to the back room. Dorrie sticks on her coat and slides into her snow boots. “Going up to Mug Me,” she stops in Jeananne's doorway to report. “I need to go over some things I jotted down while I still have some vague idea what my notes mean.”

“I'll come with you if you can wait a couple minutes,” Jeananne calls, but Dorrie's already halfway to the lobby.

“I have this craving for a Mug Me Monster Muff,” she calls back, and, anyway, I need to—like I said—I'll forget what I—”

“Fine,” Jeananne yells up the hall. “Be that way. I'll just see you up there.”

“I'll grab us a table!” Dorrie is now approaching the front desk, her yellow snow boots slogging along the lovely carpeting, her coat unbuttoned, and her hat wobbling on her head. She doesn't slow down until she's at the corner, safely inside the popular little coffee shop. Bits of snow fall from her head and drip across her forehead and she takes off her hat, teases the flakes from her hair.

She orders two Monster Muffins—walnut, one for her, one for Jeananne—and takes her hot chocolate to a table in the back. She stares at her notes. Her feet are killing her. Yellow boots seemed fun when she first bought them, but now she feels as if she's trapped inside a children's book when she wears them, every time she happens to look down at them, a book on ducks or maybe some kind of mystery. The Girl in the Yellow Boots. And then she thinks back to the night Joe died, tries to remember if she wore these same bright boots. She doesn't think she did. She hopes she didn't.
Yes,
she imagines someone saying, someone who was there, the driver of the lurking car, possibly.
That's her all right. I recognize the yellow boots!

She bites into her muffin. She's managed to avoid Brennan with her endless innuendos, her prying, probing questions. She opens a small steno pad and glances at the notes she's jotted down from clients' phone calls, messages she's picked up. She flips the page and studies the figures she went over with Francine a few days before. Francine kept the books quite neatly, putting all the data in order when Edward e-mailed it to her—income, output, new clients. She never had the details, only bare-bones figures, but somehow Francine managed to balance the books.