Thirty minutes later, I was hungry again but resolved to put some distance between the dark prince next door and my heart.
We were only supposed to stay married for a year—in our eyes anyway—and I didn’t want to be the one walking away broken yet again.
Before I reached the stairs, I glanced down the hall. Mom’s bedroom door was open, and I left the box on the landing.
Her favorite color was red, and it showed in the rugs adorning her bedroom floor, the ruffled duvet, the curtains shielding doors that gave way to a balcony overlooking the backyard, and in the throw pillows sitting just so upon the black chaise lounge near a desk on the side of the room.
I rounded the bed and went straight for her nightstand, cringing when I saw a large black box taking up the entirety of the drawer. “Gross.”
Shivering a little, I hurried to the desk and searched there. I found nothing and stopped to gaze around the room, wondering where I’d hide something I didn’t want my daughter to find.
If she’d hidden them. Innocent until proven guilty.
I was about to leave when a bird called outside the window behind her bed. The sparrow took flight, and my eyes bounced to the right. To her walk-in closet.
Inside, I switched on the light and marveled at the size. As a kid, I used to dream of being able to come in here and play dress-up. It was bigger than our downstairs bathroom, gowns and business attire and antique dressers filling the space. Mirrors hung on each wall, and in the center was a huge chest filled with shoes.
I spied her wedding dress, which sat wrapped in a zippered plastic bag behind all her ball gowns. I walked over, staring at it for a moment too long, wondering if she’d been happy when she wore it, and if I really wanted to find the answers I was searching for.
I unzipped the bag and dug around inside but found nothing there save for silk and organza.
That was probably for the best.
Rehanging the gown, I stepped back to make sure it looked untouched.
And that was when I saw the box I’d given my mother when I was five.
It was covered with painted hearts and flowers, and I borrowed the stool from Mom’s dressing table to stand on and get it down from the shelf sheltering the long line of elegant clothes.
Inside were pictures of her and my dad, but not as many as one would expect for someone who’d been married to and had created life with the man.
My eyes squeezed closed at what I saw beneath them. The reason I’d felt compelled to invade her privacy in the first place.
Letters. Every single letter I’d written to my dad.
They were still in the envelopes I’d made sure to steal from Mom’s office. I remember thinking the less she had to do, then the less she’d make a face at me every time I asked her to send one to him.
That face wasn’t made in annoyance as I’d once thought, though. No, I knew her much better now. Far better than I ever had before.
It had been guilt.
Jude
The island came alive in a way rarely seen unless for important holidays.
Settlers Eve was one of them, and this one was expected to be a blowout to end all others being the hundredth anniversary of Peridot Island.
Carnivals were set up down by the docks and the beaches. The pub and two nightclubs overflowed. The movie theater and bowling alley were open free of charge. Restaurants took their business out into the market square to feed the many people coming and going from one activity to the next.
People came from all over to visit the island every year on its birthday. It wasn’t its real birthday. It’d been here, awaiting our arrival for fuck knows how long. But it didn’t matter. People came home from school, returned from their new lives off the island, and some even visited just for the experience.
We’d loved it as kids—the ability to sneak around the market square and the darker recesses of town virtually unnoticed.
So it was pretty damn inconvenient, for Fern anyway, that I should just so happen to wind up at the same party she was at. Especially after she’d been ignoring me for the past couple of days.
Perhaps I was being paranoid, but I hadn’t realized she’d been a part of any study group when I’d finally cornered her coming down the stairs this morning. “It’s recent,” she’d said.
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met,” I’d told her.
She’d just blinked at me before walking straight out the door.
I tipped the bottle of bourbon back, relishing the burn, and watched the stars wink at one another out on the back porch of Tyler’s place.
The party raged on inside, people spilling out of the narrow beachside condo every so often, laughing, singing, or sucking face on their way down to the water.
I froze, the neck of the bottle in my clenching hand, when I saw a flash of red hair and that smile.
Fern was walking back from the water with some guy I didn’t know or give two shits about.
“Well, well.” I drank some more, if only to keep from leaping at the preppy looking prick, and smirked up at my wife. “If it isn’t my wife.”
The guy next to Fern made a comical expression of half disbelief, half shock. “What?”
Fern shot her eyes my way, but there was no guilt, no remorse or fear for being caught. “We were just taking a walk.”
I looked down at the bottle in my hand, then I rose from the deck chair and headed inside.
“Jude,” Fern called, but I wasn’t stopping.
If she searched for me, she didn’t try very hard. I sat in the dining room, talking shit with Gary for the better part of an hour.
It was possible she’d left, and the thought of her leaving with that guy… I kept drinking until the room began to change color. Golden swathed bodies darted around the table, drinks spilling when a chick was lifted over it for some dude to attack her neck.
They left. Gary left. More drinks were poured. Discarded chip bags were knocked to the floor, many sets of feet crunching the plastic.
“Hey, stranger.”
I looked up to find a blurred yet all-too-familiar face. “Marns,” I slurred.
Her smile wobbled, or maybe I was finally trashed enough not to see straight after all. Mission accomplished.
Standing, I swayed, and she laughed as she grabbed my arm to try to steady me.
She fell into my lap on the chair instead, still reeking of that same perfume, her soft hair a little longer. “I’d ask how you’re doing”—she tapped the bottle in my hand—“but I heard you married the school nobody, so you must be miserable.”
“You’re not entirely wrong.”
Marnie laughed. “I told all my friends it had to be arranged. That maybe she’s pregnant or something.”
I widened my eyes, thinking that’d help me see better. “Sure.”
“So, then maybe you didn’t want to break up with me, and you’ve been missing me as much as I’ve been missing you.”
I belched, and she shoved my face away. “I haven’t missed fighting with you, that’s for damn sure.” Me and my stupid mouth. Though there wasn’t much reason to keep my less than lovely thoughts to myself anymore.
“But we fought so well,” she said, her hand cupping my cheek. When I didn’t say a word, she continued, “I almost didn’t come home for Settlers Eve. But I wanted to see you, to see if this Fern thing was real.”