I looked toward the front door. I could see Gary’s shape through the little window, standing on my porch, checking his phone.
“You think they’re the same man?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Linda said. “Maybe it’s a coincidence. But Rachel’s at Carol’s house right now. She went over there after the breakup. She’s been crying all morning. I’m going to call Carol and ask her for a picture of the boyfriend.”
“Linda,” I said. “This could just be a coincidence.”
“Exactly,” Linda said. “That’s why I want to check before we say anything to anybody. Keep Gary outside until I call you back.”
She hung up.
I stood in my blue kitchen holding a glass of water. I was trying to figure out why Linda suddenly sounded worried instead of amused.
Outside, Gary knocked on the door.
“Deb? You making that water from scratch?”
I opened the door about six inches and handed him the glass.
“Thanks.” He took a long drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So. Are we going to talk like adults now?”
“Depends,” I said. “Are you going to answer a question?”
“What question?”
“How long were you seeing her,” I said, “before you moved out?”
Gary twisted the glass between his hands.
“Why do you want to dig all that up?”
“Because you’re asking me to pretend it never happened,” I said. “So I’d like to know what itwas.”
“I told you,” he said. “It was a mistake.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He looked across the street toward Linda’s house.
“Maybe we should go inside,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because Linda’s nosy.”
“Linda isn’t even home,” I said. I’d seen Linda’s car pull out of her driveway a minute before, while I was getting the water. I didn’t know where she was going.
“Still,” Gary said. “I’d like a little more privacy.”
I watched him take another sip of water.
“Did you tell your girlfriend we were divorced?” I asked.
His hand stopped halfway to his mouth.
“What?”
“It’s a simple question, Gary.”
He lowered the glass slowly.
“I told her we were separated,” he said.
“Were we?”
“Debbie, you know things were difficult.”
“Were we separated?” I said. “When you started seeing her? Were we separated then?”
He set the glass down on my porch railing next to his golf clubs.
“Look,” he said. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out.
It was a text from Linda.
Carol sent me a picture of Rachel’s boyfriend. It’s Gary. I’m picking them up now. Five minutes.
I read the message twice.
Gary was watching me.
“Who keeps texting you?”
“Linda.”
“What’s she saying?”
“She found something interesting.”
“About what?”
“Your girlfriend,” I said.
His face went tight.
“What does Linda know about her?”
“Apparently,” I said, “more than I do.”
He reached for the handle of his suitcase. Then he let go of it.
“Debbie,” he said. His voice was different now. Lower. Quicker. “Let’s just go inside and talk. Just you and me. Like we used to.”
“I think I’d rather stay right here,” I said.
He glanced over his shoulder toward the street.
For the first time since he’d pulled into my driveway, he looked genuinely nervous.
A few minutes later, Linda’s red Honda pulled into her driveway across the street.
Linda got out from behind the wheel. Then the passenger door opened, and a woman climbed out.
She was in her late forties, with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a navy fleece jacket. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had the strap of her purse wound tightly around her wrist, so tight I could see it from across the street.
Carol stayed in the back seat with the window rolled down.
The woman walked across the street, slowly. She stopped at the bottom of my walkway, at the edge of the lawn.
Gary dropped the handle of his suitcase.
“No,” he said.
“Hello, Gary,” the woman said.
Gary turned around and looked at me.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing yet,” I said.
Linda came up my walkway and stood beside me on the porch.
“Debbie,” she said quietly, “this is Rachel.”
Rachel looked at me. Then she looked back at Gary.
“You told me,” she said, “you’d been divorced for two years.”
Her voice was shaking.
I looked at Rachel.
“He moved out four months ago,” I said. “We’re still married. The divorce isn’t final yet.”
“I told you the marriage was over,” Gary said to Rachel.
“You know things were difficult, Debbie,” he said to me.
“Difficult,” I said, “isn’t divorced.”
Rachel was staring at him.
“And your name isn’t James,” she said.
I turned to Gary.
“James?”
“It’s my middle name,” he muttered.
“You never told me that,” Rachel said. “In seven months, you never once told me that your name was Gary.”
Linda touched my arm.
“After we talked on the phone,” she said, “I called Carol. Rachel was sitting right there in Carol’s kitchen. So Carol asked her for a picture of the boyfriend and texted it to me.” Linda shook her head. “I recognized Gary immediately. From his golf shirt. That ugly orange one with the alligator. That’s when I went to get them.”
I looked at Gary.
He was staring at the pavement.
Rachel folded her arms across her fleece jacket.
“You told me,” she said, “that you and Debbie only still lived in the same house because selling it would upset your son.”
“Our son moved out three years ago,” I said.
“He told me your son was seventeen,” Rachel said. “A senior in high school. He said you were staying together until he graduated.”
“Kevin’s twenty-four,” I said. “He lives in Denver. He’s an engineer. He has a girlfriend named Priya. They have a cat.”
Rachel looked at Gary.
“You made her sound,” she said, “like she was keeping you trapped.”
“You don’t know what our marriage was like!” Gary snapped.
“Neither do I, apparently,” I said.
He looked at me. He looked at me with a face I knew very well. I’d seen it a thousand times in twenty-two years.
It was the look that meant help me. It meant I was supposed to step in. Smooth things over. Make excuses. Laugh it off. Say oh, Gary’s just being Gary.
For twenty-two years, I always did.
This time, I said nothing.
Rachel took a deep breath.
“You told me Debbie hated your mother,” she said.
Something tightened in my chest.
“You told me,” Rachel said, “that when your mother was sick, Debbie refused to visit her. That you had to take care of her all by yourself. That Debbie wouldn’t even go to the funeral.”
I couldn’t breathe for a second.
Gary’s mother, Marian, died three years ago. Breast cancer. She was seventy-six.
“I took her to chemotherapy,” I said slowly, “every Thursday. For six months. I drove her there and sat with her for four hours while the medicine went in and drove her home. I held her hand. I brought her ginger ale and crackers. I cleaned up when she was sick in my car.” My voice was shaking now. “Gary went twice.”
Rachel’s face hardened.
“You used her,” she said to Gary. “You used your own wife to make yourself look like a victim.”
“I was explaining how lonely I felt!” Gary snapped.
“So you made her sound cruel?” Rachel said. “You made her sound like a monster? So I’d feel sorry for you?”
Gary rubbed his forehead with both hands.
“Look,” he said. “I wasn’t happy. Okay? Neither of you understands what that was like. Being stuck. Being bored. Feeling like your whole life is already over.”
I looked at Rachel.
“How long?” I said quietly. “How long were you together? Really?”
Rachel hesitated.
“We were already seeing each other in March,” she said. “We met at a restaurant downtown in February. He told me he loved me on March eighth.”
I stared at Gary.
“That was our anniversary,” I said.
Rachel went completely still.
“March eighth?” she said.
“Our twenty-second wedding anniversary,” I said.
“He was still living with you?” Rachel said. “In March?”
“Yes,” I said. “He told me he had a work dinner that night. With a client from Chicago.”
Rachel looked at Gary.
“You told me you spent the whole evening alone,” she said slowly, “before you came over to my apartment. You said you’d been sitting in your car in a parking lot for two hours because you couldn’t stand to go home.”
Gary stared at the pavement.
I remembered that night.
I’d made his favorite dinner. Pot roast with the little potatoes and carrots. I’d set the table with the good plates, the ones from our wedding. I’d bought a card at the drugstore. To my husband, on our anniversary. I’d lit two candles.
He called at seven and said he had a work dinner. He said he was sorry. He said we’d celebrate on the weekend.
I ate by myself at our kitchen table under the beige cabinets. I blew out the candles. I wrapped up his plate in plastic and put it in the refrigerator for him.
He never ate it. I threw it out on Thursday.
Standing there on my porch, I suddenly wondered how many ordinary little kindnesses I’d given him while he was telling someone else I was a terrible wife.
How many plates in the refrigerator. How many warm cars. How many Thursdays at the chemo center.
“Debbie,” Gary began.
“Don’t,” I said.
He stepped toward me anyway.
“Look,” he said. He pointed at Rachel. “She was controlling. Always checking where I went. Always asking questions. Always wanting to know where I was.”
“Because you kept changing your stories,” Rachel said. “You’d say you were at a sales meeting in Akron, and then you’d say you were golfing, and then you’d say you were at your sister’s. That’s why I told you to leave.”
Gary turned back to me.
“And you shut me out emotionally,” he said. “For years. You never talked to me. You never wanted to do anything fun.”
I laughed. Once.
“Gary,” I said. “You told me everything was fine. Until the day you left. I asked you at Christmas. I asked you on New Year’s. I asked you on Valentine’s Day. You said everything was fine.”
