She looked at Mark.
His face was kind where Tom’s was handsome. He was a family man. He was everything that Tom wasn’t, and she wondered for a moment where exactly their friendship had sprung from. Why someone like Mark would keep coming around Tom was a mystery to her. Unless there was a side of Mark that she hadn’t seen.
We all had secret sides, didn’t we? We all had pieces that we kept tucked away, broken or too sharp for others to safely handle.
As she looked at him, she wondered if he possessed such a piece.
Mark looked back at her. His eyes locked on hers.
“So, what made you stay tonight?” he asked.
“Tom. He asked me to. I’d rather have been somewhere else,” she said.
“You know,” Mark mused. He looked away from Vanessa for a moment. “Sometimes I don’t think I appreciate Teresa enough. But then I look at you and Tom, and I know that I’m at least doing better than he is.”
Vanessa was silent for a moment, absorbing the shock of his words. Their frankness and the reality of what he’d just said. She knew it was true, but it still stung.
Their relationship hadn’t had its former glory for some time. She wondered when that had happened. If there was a specific moment in time when they’d lost what they’d had. It had been so good in those first years. She could still remember their honeymoon. A week tucked away in the snow of the Rockies. They’d fallen asleep in front of the fire almost every night, tangled up in each other. They’d barely left the cabin. It had been perfect. Now, it seemed like they couldn’t stand the sight of each other.
Even so, Vanessa couldn’t leave.
Tom was all she’d ever known and the alternative to the hollow existence they’d carved out seemed more formidable than the potential unhappiness she might face in years to come. There would be time—wouldn’t there?—to make a final decision. They were young. Time stretched out infinitely in front of them. Who knew? Maybe they would find their way back to each other. Vanessa clung to that.
Maybe it was illusion. Sitting here with Mark, she realized that she was out by the pool next to Tom’s colleague while Tom flirted his ass off with undergraduate students. Vanessa was only a few years away from being old enough to have given birth to them.
Suddenly she wished that she had followed her instincts and stayed at work for the evening.
“I’m sorry,” Mark said. “That was probably inappropriate.”
“It’s true,” Vanessa said quietly.
She stared into the pool, the pink of the wine all but vanished.
“To be honest, things with Teresa haven’t been wonderful for a long time. Probably since Molly was born. Don’t ever have kids,” Mark laughed. “No. I’m kidding. I would never regret Molly, but things certainly changed after she came.”
Vanessa smiled hollowly.
“You deserve sainthood for putting up with him,” Mark said.
Vanessa looked back at him.
“You think so, don’t you?” she asked.
She was struck by the earnestness in Mark’s gaze. There was something else there, too. Pain, she thought. She recognized it. She saw it every night as she brushed her teeth, getting ready for bed. The pain suffered by those who have lost something great.
Mark reached a hand up to her face and stroked her cheek gingerly, as if testing the waters. Vanessa didn’t stop him. She leaned the side of her face into his palm, almost like a horse, nuzzling its favorite stable hand.
Mark brought her face to his and kissed her. It was so gentle. So different than loving Tom. There was something pure about it. The root cause of the kiss hadn’t been overwhelming desire on either of their parts, but instead a longing for comfort. A yearning to feel safe in someone’s arms again.
Vanessa kissed him back. Mark pulled away.
They sat in silence beside the pool for a few moments. Vanessa finally stood and made to excuse herself.
“Vanessa,” Mark reached for her hand.
She let him take it and looked over her shoulder, unsure if anyone on the patio could see them.
“I don’t regret that,” he said.
And Vanessa knew in that moment that she didn’t regret it either.
But she would.
IONE
I pace in the study, the sun setting outside, casting a red glow into the room that makes the walls look as though they are bathed in blood. Suddenly, a shadow appears outside the doors that keep me inside. A man.
Tom.
I rush to the door as he unlocks it, slipping inside like a snake.
His lip is bloodied, his eyes wild. I reach for his arm.
“Tom, you have to let me see her,” I plead.
He bats me away without a word like an annoying insect. I follow him as he stalks around to his seat behind the desk. He collapses, an exhausted heap of a man. I look at him for a moment.
Sweat stains the neck of his button-down shirt and blood has dripped from the corner of his mouth—someone struck him—onto the blue fabric, staining it a deep purple.
“What happened?” I demand.
“Nothing!” he bellows. He reaches for the phone and fumbles around, looking for a piece of paper in the stacks on his desk. Finally, he finds it. With trembling hands, he begins to dial.
I watch as his fingers hunt for the numbers on the old rotary phone. With each crank, the ancient machine trills, one step closer to connecting him to the outside world.
He waits only a couple of seconds before I hear a voice on the other end, muffled by Tom’s ear against the phone.
“We’re sending her out,” he says and then hangs up the phone.
It makes a short-lived ringing noise as he bounces in back into its cradle, an unwanted child.
Tom looks defeated. Broken.
He opens a drawer to his right and digs deep into the farthest recesses of the desk.
