His words stirred the hair beside her ear. “Trixie, you've got to stop. It's over.”
The sentence - and that's exactly what it was, in every sense of the word - fell between them like a guillotine. Trixie disengaged herself, wiping her eyes on the puffy sleeve of her coat. “If it's us,” she whispered, “how come you get to decide?” When he didn't answer - couldn't answer - she turned and stared out the front window. As it turned out, they were still in the parking lot. They hadn't gotten anywhere at all.
* * *
The entire way home, Laura planned the way she was going to break the news to Seth. As flattering as it was to have a twenty-something man find a thirty-eight-year-old woman attractive, it was also wrong: Laura was his professor; she was married; she was a mother. She belonged in a reality made up of faculty meetings and papers being published and think tanks conducted at the home of the dean of humanities, not to mention parent-teacher conferences at Trixie's school and worries about her own metabolism slowing down and whether she could save money on her cellular service if she switched companies. She told herself that it did not matter that Seth made her feel like summer fruit about to drop from a vine, something she could not remember experiencing anytime in the last decade with Daniel. Doing something wrong, it turned out, packed a heady adrenaline rush. Seth was dark and uneven and unpredictable and . . . oh, God, just thinking about him was making her drive too fast on this road. On the other hand, Laura's husband was the most solid, dependable, mild-mannered man in all of Maine. Daniel never forgot to put out the recycling bin; he set the coffee to brew the night before because she was a bear when she didn't have any in the morning; he never once complained about the fact that it had taken a good decade longer than he'd liked to make a name for himself in the comics industry because he was the stay-at-home parent. Sometimes, ridiculously, the more perfect he was the angrier she got, as if his generosity existed only to highlight her own selfishness. But then, she had only herself to blame for that - wasn't she the one who'd given him the ultimatum, who'd said he had to change?
The problem was (if she was going to be honest with herself) that when she asked him to change, she was focusing on what she thought she needed. She'd forgotten to catalog all the things she'd lose. What she had loved most about Seth - the thrill of doing something forbidden, the understanding that women like her did not connect with men like him - was exactly what had once made her fall for Daniel.
She had toyed with the idea of telling Daniel about the affair, but what good would that do, except hurt him? Instead, she would overcompensate. She would kill him with kindness. She would be the best wife, the best mother, the most attentive lover. She would give him back what she hoped he never realized had been missing. Even Dante said that if you walked through hell, you could climb your way to paradise.
In the rearview mirror, Laura saw a carnival of flashing lights. “Goddamn,” she muttered, pulling over as the police cruiser slid neatly behind her Toyota.
A tall officer walked toward her, silhouetted by the headlights of his vehicle. “Good evening, ma'am, did you know you were speeding?”
Apparently not, thought Laura.
“I'm going to need your license and . . . Professor Stone? Is that you?”
Laura peered up at the officer's face. She couldn't place it, but he was young enough; she might have taught him. She offered her most humble expression. Had he gotten a high enough grade in her class to keep her from getting a ticket?
“Bernie Aylesworth,” he said, smiling down at Laura. “I took your Dante class my senior year, back in 2001. Got shut out of it the year before.”
She knew she was a popular teacher - her Dante course was rated even higher than the Intro to Physics lectures where Jeb Wetherby shot monkeys out of cannons to teach projectile motion. The Unauthorized Guide to Monroe College named her the prof students most wanted to take out for a beer. Had Seth read that? she thought suddenly.
“I'm just gonna give you a warning this time,” Bernie said, and Laura wondered where he had been six months ago, when she truly needed one. He passed her a crisp piece of paper and smiled. “So where were you hurrying off to?”
Not to, she thought, just back. “Home,” she told him. “I was headed home.” She waited until he was back in the cruiser to put on her signal - a penitent motion if ever there was one - and pulled into the gentle bend of the road. She drove well within the speed limit, her eyes focused ahead, as careful as you have to be when you know someone is watching.
* * *
“I'm leaving,” Laura said the minute she walked through the door. Daniel looked up from the kitchen counter, where he was chopping broccoli in preparation for dinner. On the stove, chicken was simmering in garlic.
“You just got here,” he said.
“I know.” Laura lifted the lid on the skillet, breathed in.
“Smells really good. I wish I could stay.” He could not pinpoint what was different about her, but he thought it had to do with the fact that when she'd just said she wanted to be home, he believed her - most of the time, if she apologized for leaving, it was only because it was expected.
“What's going on?” he asked.
She turned her back to Daniel and began to sort through the mail. “That departmental thing I told you about.” She had not told him; he knew she hadn't told him. She unwound her scarf and shrugged out of her coat, draped them over a chair. She was wearing a black suit and Sorel boots, which were tracking snow in small puddles all over the kitchen floor. “How's Trixie?”
“She's in her room.”
Laura opened the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of water. “The crazy poet is trying to stage a coup,” she said.
“She's been talking to the tenured professors. I don't think she knows that . . .”
Suddenly, there was a crash, and Daniel turned in time to see the glass explode against the tile floor. Water spread in a puddle, seeping beneath the edge of the refrigerator.
“Damn it!” Laura cried, kneeling to pick up the pieces.
