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MAGGIE KENNEDY-O’KEEFE
Friday, June 19, 2020
As we drive home from Colin’s I vacillate between wanting to tell Shaun everything and keeping my mouth shut.
Shaun can see that something is wrong. He keeps glancing over at me as he drives. “Maggie, what’s going on?” he asks. “Is it the baby?”
“We’re fine,” I snap. “Quit asking me that.”
“Sorry,” Shaun says, not sounding sorry at all. “Sorry for being concerned about my wife and our baby. I’ll shut up now.”
“Let me out,” I say as we pull into our lane.
“What?” Shaun asks.
“Stop the truck, right here,” I order. “I need to get out.”
“Maggie,” Shaun sighs. “What’s going...”
“I said stop the truck!” I shout.
Shaun yanks the truck over to the side of the road and throws it into Park. I fumble with the door handle, throw open the door and step out into the humid evening air. I grab my purse from the truck’s floor. It’s where I put the bag that Nola gave me. I don’t want to take the chance of Shaun finding it.
“I just need some air,” I tell Shaun. His face is stony as he pulls away leaving me behind in a cloud of dust.
A new wave of shame comes over me. I’m not the woman my husband thought he married.
I take a deep breath and am met with the smell of fallen apples, decaying in the evening heat. I slowly walk beneath the canopy of leaves and reach up to pluck a red-and-green Cortland from a low-hanging limb. I roll it around in my hands until I come to one of the wrought-iron benches that we have placed intermittently throughout the orchard for visitors to take a rest.
I sit and take a bite of the apple, its sweetness exploding in my mouth. You’d think that living on an orchard, surrounded by thousands of apples would make me sick of them. But I’m not. If anything I crave them even more now that I’m pregnant. Shaun jokes that the baby will crave applesauce the minute she’s born. He’s probably right.
I confronted Cam. I can’t believe it, but I did. All the rage and anger that’s been bottled up inside of me for the last twenty-five years spewed forth when I saw him standing on my dad’s front lawn smoking that cigarette.
Of course he said I was crazy. That nothing happened between the two of us, that it was all in my head and I had no proof. He said if I said another word about it, he would sue me for defamation and then he walked away.
I sat on the curb, tightened my shoelace and saw Cam’s smoldering cigarette butt on the ground and I knew what I had to do. After Shaun helped me to my feet I asked him if he would go and get a few pieces of the pie to bring home with us. While he was gone I reached into the truck’s glove compartment and fished out an old newspaper that Shaun had stuffed inside.
Making sure to leave no fingerprints I used the newspaper to carefully scoop up the cigarette that Cam discarded and slid them both into the glove box.
I gnaw on the apple, surrounded by the buzz of cicadas. This should be one of the happiest times of our lives. We’re just about to have the baby we’ve wanted for years, I’ve recently been made detective and the orchard is doing great but I know better than anyone that everything you love can be taken away in a second.
“That’ll be seventy-five cents.” I look up to find Shaun standing over me.
“It’s worth it,” I say, tossing the apple core to the ground. Shaun settles on to the bench next to me, reaches for my hand. It’s warm and calloused and fits perfectly with mine.
“How’s Johnny Appleseed doing in there?” he asks, laying his other hand across my belly. The baby swoons with his touch and we both look at each other in delight.
“Johnny’s a girl,” I remind him.
Shaun shrugs. “Who says a girl can’t be named Johnny? We’ll just drop an ie at the end of her name. All the cool kids are doing that.”
I laugh. It feels good. We sit quietly for a moment, holding hands and gazing up at the red orbs swaying lightly with the breeze.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was way out of line. It’s just that I’ve been buried in Eve’s case. And having to be in the same space as Nola and the Harpers, it was like being transported back in time twenty-five years. It’s making me crazy.”
Shaun is quiet for a moment. “You weren’t out of line, Maggie. She was your best friend. You want to find out what happened to her.”
I nod. “I’m driving the evidence to the state lab on Monday. Then I’m going to tell Digby that I’m not working the case anymore.”
