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Mixed in with those moments were the ones I’d spent with Roger, at the restaurants, in the various condos I was showing him, in bed at the King Edward Hotel, in the bed I was lying in right now, next to my sleeping husband. “Oh, God,” I groaned,flipping onto my stomach and trying to smother the unrelenting series of images with my pillow.
How could I have been so stupid? To jeopardize my marriage, my family, my principles, all because I was feeling a little neglected, because I was unreasonably jealous of a woman half my age, because I let my unfounded suspicions get the better of me. What was the matter with me?
When I did manage to fall asleep, I descended into a jangle of pixelated nightmares, horrifying images of face-shifting monsters who pursued me through dark, icy, windswept streets, only to break up into hundreds of tiny shards and change shapes again when I worked up the courage to confront them.
You’re dreaming if you think I’m going to stay with you after what you’ve done,I heard my husband say, his voice infiltrating my nightmares to jolt me awake.I’m leaving and I’m taking the kids with me. You’ll never see them again.
“What?” I shouted, jerking up in bed, my eyes searching for his in the dark.
“It’s okay,” he was saying, his face suddenly looming over mine. “You were having a bad dream. Take deep breaths. Try to calm down. Your yelling is going to wake up the kids.”
“I was dreaming?”
“Sounded like one hell of a nightmare.”
“I was yelling?”
“Screaming is more like it. Who’s Roger?”
“What?”
“You kept yelling to‘watch out for Roger!’ ”
Shit. “I don’t know anyone named Roger,” I told him. Not exactly a lie. The man I knew as Roger didn’t exist.
“Try to get some sleep,” Harrison urged, pulling me back down.
I felt my head crease the pillow, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep. How could I when my subconscious could betray me at the first unguarded moment?
So, I lay there, wrapped in my husband’s arms, the husbandI’d so carelessly betrayed, and tried to think of other things: the kids, my job, the appointments I had lined up for the week ahead.
But try as I might, my thoughts kept circling relentlessly back to tonight’s party, to Elyse’s knowing smile as she introduced us to her son, to her son’s warning not to interfere with whatever his mother might be planning, to Tracy’s careless decision to court disaster by seeing the man again.
I couldn’t even talk to her about my reasons for objecting so strenuously to her seeing him. If she couldn’t grasp the folly in dating the son of a clearly predatory woman, how could I confide in her about my affair? Not that I didn’t trust Tracy to keep a secret, although the truth was that Ididn’ttrust her entirely in that regard. Not that she would willfully betray me. More that she would somehow let it slip. Tracy was careless, and she’d never been what one would call discreet. She tended to talk first and think later, and I just couldn’t risk it.
Elyse understood this, and she used it, as she used everything, to her advantage. Divide and conquer had always been part of her plan. Now, with her son’s help, she was taking things a step further. By threatening to romance my sister, Roger—as I still thought of him—was ensuring my silence, my compliance. How could I discuss anything with Tracy without being certain that she wouldn’t reveal it to Roger?
But, if I’m being honest, it was more than that. Telling Tracy about my affair would mean revealing myself to be as careless as she was. More so. My sister wasn’t in a committed relationship; she didn’t have children; she didn’t consider herself to be more grounded, more self-aware, more responsible.
How could I have been so gullible, so trusting, sowrong?
Who was I to try telling her what to do?
My life might be a churning, cloudy mess, but one fact was now painfully clear: I was in this alone.
