She heard soft footsteps in the playroom upstairs. The kids’ couch groaned under Warren’s unaccustomed weight. In that moment Laurel hated Danny McDavitt. Five weeks ago her life had been a beautiful dream. They had each decided to tell their spouse that they wanted a divorce on the same night, a Thursday. That way, no matter what happened, Warren would have to go to work the next day, and Danny would have flying lessons scheduled. They could almost surely find a way to see each other, even if Warren or Starlette had freaked out. They parted that Thursday afternoon with a feeling of elation that masked the deep anxiety Laurel felt at broaching the subject of divorce with Warren. After eleven months of soul-withering secrecy, they were finally stepping into the light.
Danny stuck by his side of the agreement. After he put his kids to bed, he sat Starlette down in the kitchen and told her he didn’t love her anymore. When she asked if he’d met someone, Danny admitted that he had and told her that he was truly in love for the first time in his life. Starlette went ballistic. Not only did she make clear that she had no intention of granting Danny a divorce (in Mississippi you had to have grounds), but she also stated that if Danny somehow forced her into one, his ideas on custody-him keeping Michael, for example-would never become reality. She would keep Michael, first to make Danny suffer as she would be suffering, and second because she wouldn’t let any of her friends think she was capable of relinquishing her autistic son with only minor regret (which was the truth). Danny spent that night in their kitchen, trying to find a way out of the cage he had constructed for himself.
In the Shields house, things unfolded differently. When Warren got home from his hospital rounds, he was more taciturn than usual, and he actually ignored the children for several minutes, though they tried desperately to get his attention. Worried, Laurel sent them into the backyard and asked him what was wrong. Warren told her that Jimmy Woods had died that afternoon. Jimmy had gone to school with Warren from nursery school through the twelfth grade, and they’d lived on the same street as boys. He’d developed diabetes some years ago and had a hard time keeping it under control. An hour before Warren got home from work that Thursday, Jimmy had gone into a diabetic coma while driving on Highway 24 to pick up his son from baseball practice. He ramped off a low shoulder, went airborne, and slammed into a pecan tree. Warren had been in the hospital when Jimmy was carried into the ER, and the attending had called him to help try to stabilize Woods, whose neck had largely been crushed. Jimmy died under Warren’s hands, as blue as a bruise and paralyzed from the neck down.
Warren had never before showed emotion when he lost patients, but as he recounted Jimmy’s death, he wiped tears from his eyes. He had personally broken the news to Jimmy’s wife, who’d shown up at the ER with their son in tow. Strangely moved, Laurel walked to Warren and hugged him tight, but he stiffened and tried to change the subject. She held him by force for a moment, then went back to the kitchen to finish cooking supper.
After she put the kids to bed, she came downstairs and found Warren on the sofa, blankly staring at MSNBC. Despite her desire to be with Danny, she could not find it in her heart to tell Warren then that she was leaving him. The packed suitcase hidden in her car trunk would have to stay there one more night. Danny would be upset, but they could certainly wait one day. She had decided to go take a shower when Warren turned to her and said, “What would you do if I died like that? If I was here one day and gone the next? Out of the blue?”
“Don’t talk like that,” she replied, not wanting him to go any deeper with his morbid musings.
“I think you’d be all right financially. I’ve been working on my estate this year.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Laurel said awkwardly. “But it would be such a blow to the children, I just don’t want to think about it.”
Warren nodded distantly. “Death is part of life, though. I see it every day. Men younger than Jimmy die every month in this town. Children, too. But it’s you I’m thinking about. Would
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said helplessly, wondering why Warren had decided to unburden himself on this night of all others. He never had before, and that was one of the roots of their marital problems-maybe even the taproot. Flustered and angry, she checked her clone phone in the bathroom and found a text message from Danny: DON’T TELL HIM! I’LL EXPLAIN TOMORROW.
They met the next day in the woods near Danny’s house. She arrived to find Danny pacing back and forth in the little glade, looking as though he hadn’t slept at all. She asked if he’d told Starlette last night, then immediately launched into her own explanation of why she hadn’t told Warren. She’d expected Danny to get angry, but instead he looked relieved. In a subdued voice, he told her he’d decided he couldn’t divorce Starlette after all. The reason was as simple as his son. He’d already talked to a lawyer, and the lawyer had confirmed the bleak visitation picture painted by Starlette. Laurel knew that Starlette was capable of following through on her threats. The irony was that Danny’s best chance of convincing a judge that he was Michael’s primary caregiver was Laurel herself; but her testimony would be useless if she was exposed as his paramour, a fact that even a semiprofessional investigation would probably uncover.
Eleven months of dreams had vanished in a span of seconds. She had given Danny everything, or almost everything, and she’d promised him the rest. Yet he was rejecting her. He had a valid reason, yes. But it still seemed unfair. How could all his promises evaporate in the face of his wife’s selfishness? Laurel had waited thirty- five years for true love, and having found it, was she doomed to watch it float away like smoke? She felt as though fate were mocking her, showing her what was possible and then snatching it away at the last moment. And what about the previous night? What if she had told Warren she was leaving him, only to learn that Danny had chickened out? Talk about jumping out of a plane without a parachute. When Danny tried to hug her, she shoved him away. If she couldn’t have everything, she’d decided, she wanted nothing.
A creak in the hallway made her tense, and the bike lock constricted around her throat. Then the guest room door opened as slowly as a door in a horror movie.
Warren looked down at her with eyes every bit as wild as those of an ax murderer. He had a stack of boxes in his arms, and these he dumped right on top of Laurel. When she flinched to avoid injury, the cable lock cut off her airflow.
“I can’t breathe!”
“Sounds like a personal problem,” Warren said, sitting on the edge of the bed with apparent disgust. “Let me know how it comes out.”
Laurel twisted her neck enough to get some air, but the terror generated by her need for oxygen overrode almost everything else. She dug her fingers under the cable and held it out just enough to take a long, sweet breath.
“I knew I was right,” Warren said. “For a while you had me doubting. The letter, too. It didn’t sound like Kyle. But you never know what somebody’s really like. You’re a perfect example of that. My pussy-hound partner turns out to be a closet romantic, and my wife a lying whore.” He clucked his tongue. “You learn something every day, right?”
Laurel had no idea why Warren was back on the Auster kick. It must have something to do with the boxes. “How are the kids?” she asked. “What did you tell them?”
“Mommy’s having a migraine.”
Laurel tried to guess every possible effect of this explanation.
“They’re very worried about you,” Warren said with false concern. “They’ve promised not to make one little peep, or to come downstairs. If they need something, they’ll call me from the upstairs extension.”
She nodded thankfully. At least they wouldn’t see her in this condition or be anywhere near Warren’s gun.
He opened one of the boxes and pulled out what looked like an accounting ledger, bound in red faux leather. “At first I figured you were storing these for Kyle. But that’s not it, is it?”
Laurel shrugged warily. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“You never give up, do you? I can understand why. You know what’s likely to happen, don’t you?” He held out the ledger. “This is some kind of duplicate set of books for the office. Only it shows all sorts of payments that never made it onto our tax returns. Cash payments, I guess. And there are codes beside certain patients’ names, codes I’ve never seen before. God only knows what they mean. God and Kyle, anyway.” He gave her a pointed look. “And you, right?”
Laurel risked cutting off her air to shake her head.
