The Second Silence (4 page)

Burns Lake, 1999

CHAPTER 1

N
OELLE HAD REHEARSED
for days what she would say, the exact words that would set her free. Not just from her marriage but from the sense of obligation she now viewed as somewhat foolish, like her diamond ring that snagged on sweaters and pantyhose, and lately, because she’d lost so much weight, had a habit of turning on her finger. Once, when smoothing lotion over her leg, she’d even cut herself with it. A tiny cut, but it had drawn blood nonetheless.

Now, though, face-to-face with her husband, none of those carefully worded phrases came to mind. Only the plain hard fact of the matter.

‘I’m not coming with you, Robert.’ She spoke as calmly as she could with her heart thudding like bricks being dropped one by one from a great height. ‘In fact, I’m not coming home at all.’

They were standing outside her grandmother’s house, where she’d been staying for the past three weeks, since Nana got home from the hospital. But Noelle had run out of excuses. Also, there was Emma to think of. Their daughter deserved to know the truth.

‘That’s ridiculous. Of course you are.’ Robert spoke sternly, as if to an employee who had stepped out of line. He glanced in irritation at his watch. ‘Now come on, get your things. You’re supposed to be packed already.’

‘Did you hear what I said? Are you even listening?’ Noelle felt suddenly panic-stricken, as if at any moment she would be sucked like a twig into the swirling eddy of his insistence.

‘I know this was only supposed to be temporary, but I—I changed my mind.’

Now Robert was stepping back to eye her warily, a tiny dent of uncertainty marring his perfect Simonized exterior. He stood with his back to the boxwood hedge: a well-built man in his forties who appeared taller than his actual height of five feet eleven inches, with thick maple-brown hair that fell in a boyish swath over his forehead, reminiscent of JFK, and pale blue eyes that seemed to generate a cold heat, like the sunlight reflecting off his silver Audi 100 parked a few feet away. He was dressed in khakis and a lightly starched blue shirt open at his throat and rolled up over muscular forearms, yet there was a contrived look to it all, as if he were aiming merely for the appearance of being relaxed and casual, traits that no one who knew him well would ever associate with Robert Van Doren. Even the gray streaking his temples seemed the work of a skillful makeup artist.

One hand was in his pocket; the other clenched about his key ring. She watched him flex his fist repeatedly, knuckles tightening, easing, tightening. The tic in his right eye, which most of the time he managed to control, was acting up. It made her think of a twitching cat’s tail—a reminder that with Robert you never knew quite what to expect. It was how he maintained the upper hand with friends and enemies alike: by keeping them off-balance.

‘You’re not serious.’ A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth, then died. ‘This is a joke, right?’

She drew in a breath that felt like something she’d swallowed that wouldn’t go down. The sultry July heat seemed to close about her like a sweaty fist. ‘Eventually, of course, I’ll be getting my own place. But for now I think it’s best that Emma and I stay here.’

There was a beat of silence in which the only sound was the chirring of insects and the faint chug-chug-chug of a sprinkler down the block. Then Robert spoke. ‘Is it Jeanine? Are you still punishing me for that? I told you. I’m not
seeing
her. I was never seeing her. It was just that one time. A mistake. One lousy mistake.’

He was lying, of course. She could see it in his eyes. He’d been sleeping around long before she’d caught him at it. It was almost corny enough to make her laugh: a cheap affair with his twenty-two-year-old secretary. But hadn’t she once been in the same position? A girl fresh out of college dazzled by her handsome, much older boss. Besides, Jeanine was no longer the point. She was just the excuse Noelle had needed to break loose. In a funny way she was
grateful
to Jeanine.

‘It’s not just Jeanine,’ she said.

‘Everything was fine before that,’ he insisted.

‘For
you,
maybe.’

It wasn’t just their marriage. It was the house on Ramsey Terrace and the Filipino maid who came four times a week. It was the country club and the Junior League teas, the committees and fund-raisers, the endless rounds of cocktail parties.

‘Did the old lady put you up to this?’ Robert’s eyes narrowed.

‘Nana had nothing to do with it.’ Her grandmother had never much liked Robert, it was true, but she was old-fashioned when it came to marriage. ‘In fact, she said I should talk it over with you before I made up my mind.’

‘It sounds as if your mind is already made up.’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Yes, it is.’

She dropped her gaze to his long shadow slicing the driveway into two neat halves. Late-afternoon sunlight lay in tiger stripes over the grass beyond, and the summer heat seemed to press down like a hot jar. Birds called from the feeder and she caught the flash of a cardinal out of the corner of her eye. When she looked back up at Robert, she was shocked to see that there were tears in his eyes.

‘Jesus.’ He exhaled through his teeth, a faith whistling sound. ‘Jesus, Noelle, how the hell did it come to this?’

How indeed? When eight years ago her first thought each morning upon waking was,
How did I get so lucky?
Shy, skinny Noelle Jeffers, still a virgin at twenty-one, how had
she
managed to catch the eye of her much-sought-after boss? A man who might have been a movie star for all the whispered speculation around the office, all the hearts that beat faster when he was near. She remembered clearly the first time he’d stopped to chat with her. Her pulse had raced, and she’d become so tongue-tied she was certain she’d made a fool of herself. But two days later he’d asked her out to dinner.

‘I don’t know. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot to start with,’ she hedged. ‘I was so young …’ Making excuses was easier than casting blame, she’d found.

‘We didn’t get off on the wrong foot. I did a stupid thing, that’s all.’ He corrected here, almost angrily.

‘I’m not punishing you, Robert.’ Maybe she owed him Jeanine. After all, it couldn’t have been easy for him those first few years, living with a drunk. But that was beside the point.

‘Really? Because that’s what it feels like.’ There it was again, that nasty, grating edge, like a rusty tin can poking up from a neatly tended flower bed.

‘I can’t help that.’ In her head she heard the clipped no-nonsense voice of Penny Cuthbertson, her therapist at Hazelden:
Keep in mind, Noelle, it’s far more difficult to reclaim power than to hold on to it in the first place.

But Noelle couldn’t remember a time when she’d taken a stand against Robert. From the very beginning he’d been in charge. First as her boss, then as her husband. She’d wanted the wedding ceremony to be held at St Vincent’s, but Robert had insisted on a grand outdoor affair at the country club instead. And when she was pregnant with Emma, he wouldn’t let her near kindly old Dr Matthews, who’d looked after her practically since she was a baby herself. (Never mind that the high-priced obstetrician in Schenectady was off skiing in Aspen when she went into labor.) Even when her drinking got so bad she could no longer hide it, Robert had stepped to the fore. He knew someone on the board at Hazelden, an old crony from Stanford. Within hours a room was available.

But now
she
was taking the lead, and Robert wasn’t happy about it. Noelle could almost feel the seismic upheaval taking place in his mind, and as he moved toward her, she automatically took a step backward, edging off the driveway onto the lawn. In eight years of marriage he’d never once raised a hand to her but for reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she was afraid. She realized now that she’d always been a little bit afraid of her husband. Maybe that’s why she had never dared to challenge him; she didn’t
want
to know what he was capable of.

The hand he lifted, though, was conciliatory. ‘Noelle, please. If you don’t care what it’ll do to me, to us, think about Emma.’ His voice was low, cajoling.

She felt a hot flare of outrage. ‘Don’t you
dare
drag Emma into this. That’s not fair.’

‘Is it fair to tear a family apart?’

Suddenly Noelle felt tired. Her head had begun to throb. ‘Let’s call it a draw, okay? It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s everything. Maybe Jeanine was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.’

‘It’s not too late. We could start over.’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, Robert, you know I was never cut out for that lifestyle. All those parties and committees. If I’d had to listen to Althea Whitehead drop one more mention of her ski lodge in Telluride, I think I would have screamed.’ She didn’t add that her old friends from school, girls she’d practically grown up with, weren’t exactly comfortable with her role as Mrs Van Doren either. Over the years they’d drifted away, one by one.

He shot her a withering look. ‘How do you think my dad built our business? Working nine to five like the poor slobs punching time clocks? He threw parties, joined organizations, invited the right people to dinner. It’s no different now. You think I’d have gotten the variances for Cranberry Mall without knowing Carl Devlin’s golf handicap or that Reese Braithwaite prefers Habana Gold Sterlings to Honduran Excaliburs?’

‘Stop.’ She put her hands over her ears, ‘just
stop.’

Robert abruptly fell silent, scrubbing his face with a hand that appeared less than steady. He looked defeated all of a sudden. ‘Christ, Noelle, what do you want from me? Do you want me to get down on my hands and knees and beg?’

Noelle thought for a moment. What exactly
did
she want from him? Suddenly she knew. ‘I want a divorce.’

His mouth hardened, and he stared suspiciously at this new, possibly dangerous entity that had taken the place of his formerly quiescent wife. When he spoke, all pretense at cajoling had been dropped. His voice was harsh with controlled fury.

‘Do what you want,’ he snarled, jabbing a finger at her, ‘but don’t think for one minute I’m going to let you have Emma. I’ll fight you, Noelle. I’ll do whatever it takes.’ He loomed close, his face mere inches from hers. His right eyelid was twitching uncontrollably, and she thought of Dorian Gray, a handsome man whose real face, hidden in the attic, was monstrous. ‘You think any judge in his right mind would give
you
custody? A woman everybody knows is a drunk?’

Noelle felt the blood drain from her face. He was standing so close she could see the hairs in the nostrils of his perfect aristocratic nose, the tiny scar on his chin where his older brother had accidentally struck him with a hockey stick when Robert was ten. And those eyes, pale blue with a rim of black around the pupils, eyes that seemed to stare fixedly, like those of a Siberian husky. For a moment she was certain he
would
hit her.

She felt a flash of anger, cold and invigorating. It took all her control not to lash back, remind him it had been six years since her last drink, and not even six months since she’d caught him in the arms of another woman. That would have been giving Robert exactly what he wanted, the battle he was far better equipped to wage than she was.

She forced herself to reason with him instead. ‘You’d only be using her to get back at me, and—and I know you wouldn’t do that to Emma. You’re a good father, Robert. You’ll still see her. We’ll work something out.’

For a long moment his expression remained stony. Then all at once it seemed to collapse inward. He blinked, rocking back on his heels. The fist in which his key ring was clutched unfurled slowly. He stared down at his open palm in wonder almost. Even from where she stood, Noelle could see the red welts in his palm where the keys had bitten into it.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘God, Noelle, I’m sorry. So sorry.’ Covering his face, he began to weep softly. She’d never seen him cry, not like this, and it stunned her into touching his arm lightly in sympathy. When he lifted his head, his pale eyes were bloodshot, his misery starkly written in a face filled with self-loathing. ‘It’s all my fault. I screwed up. You have every right to hate me.’

‘I don’t hate you,’ she told him, her own throat tightening.

He stared at her with that awful bleak expression, pleading softly, ‘Can I ask just one favor? Will you give me that much?’

She waited in silence, not quite trusting him.

‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night. I’ll reserve a table at the Stone Mill,’ he continued in a rush. ‘We’ll talk about Emma, what’s best for her. That’s all, I promise. Like you said, we’re her parents, both of us. Nothing can ever change that.’

Noelle hesitated. She didn’t doubt he truly cared for Emma. And if he was as sincere as he seemed, she owed it to her daughter to accept his invitation. At the same time a voice inside her whispered,
It’s a trap. Don’t fall for it.

But that was silly, she told herself. What harm could there be in two civilized adults sitting down to a meal? They’d be in a public place, and if things turned nasty, she could always leave. Besides, Robert was far too careful to risk such a scene.

That’s what lawyers are for,
persisted the voice.
Can you honestly believe he’ll give you what you want?

Maybe not. But it was too soon for lawyers. How could it hurt at least to hear what he had to say? She searched his face for an indication, however small, that she was being set up. But the only thing she saw was raw, naked appeal.

Nevertheless, it was with great reluctance that Noelle found herself answering, ‘I’ll see if I can get Aunt Trish to baby-sit. Nana’s not really up to it yet.’

Robert gave a wan smile. ‘I’ll pick you up around seven, okay?’

‘No, I’ll meet you there.’
If I take my own car, I’ll be able to escape, at least.
For some reason the thought did little to dispel her uneasiness.

The Stone Mill, situated along Route 30 about five miles north of town, was where Robert had taken her on their first date. Over the years they’d eaten there often, and though she preferred its cuisine to the country club’s, Noelle found it equally pretentious. Pulling into the tree-lined parking lot, she saw the usual assortment of late-model luxury cars, their hood ornaments twinkling like so many miniaturized trophies in the glow of the fairy lights strung from the wisteria over the mill’s recessed entrance.