Out With The Old, In With The New

I just knew she’d be a girl. Not that I don’t love my son. I do. I just always wanted a baby girl. And now that Daniel’s away at college, it’s great having someone who still needs me. See, she was meant to be.

That’s what I kept telling Corbin and, of course, the minute she was born she had him wrapped around her little finger. So it’s been a moot point ever since. I mean what’s not to love?

She just turned six. It’s a wonderful age. Every age is wonderful, but this one is particularly nice. She’s so sweet, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than be her mother.

Is that so bad? Does it make me unambitious to find fulfillment in motherhood?

I suppose I should add wife to that job description. But it goes without saying.

Doesn’t it?

I stroke a wisp of hair off Caitlin’s forehead and realize with startling clarity as if I’m staring back through a tunnel of years that mine and Corbin’s relationship went a little off track when I got pregnant. I guess we haven’t had a chance to reconnect as we should have. But you know how it is having a new baby. Since then, life set sail on its own course. Corbin’s practice has just been named the staff physicians for Orlando Magic—the NBA team—and he’s busier than ever at the hospital. Sometimes I’ve felt as if all I can do is hold on or risk falling overboard.

But now everything’s run aground because of that damned letter.

My heart aches. I kiss Caitlin’s cheek and linger to inhale her sweet scent, but she stirs, and I pull back so I don’t wake her.

I walk down the dark hall, into our darker bedroom. I click on the overhead light. Corbin’s asleep on his side. His back is to me. When I sit on the side of the bed, my thigh grazes his body.

I touch his bare shoulder. He lets out a little snore.

“Corbin, wake up. We need to talk.”

CHAPTER 2

I remember a time when a pickup line was defined as a lustful attempt to make somebody’s acquaintance. For the past nineteen years, the only pickup line I’ve been party to is the slow-moving, after-school queue that snakes around the Liberty School parking lot.

I don’t miss being hit on. What bothers me as I sit waiting for my daughter to get out of school is the fact that I never noticed the incongruous dual usage of the term.

Pickup line.

It’s so ridiculous. How could I have missed it?

It makes me wonder what else I’ve overlooked all these years.

I trust so freely. I mean, why shouldn’t I? If a person—namely my husband—has never given me reason to doubt him, why shouldn’t I trust him implicitly? It can’t be any other way. A relationship without trust is a derailed train.

No. Worse.

It’s a yawning sinkhole that opens its greedy jaws and devours everything that once seemed stable. Without trust, you might as well end it before the relationship gets ugly.

Because it will. Without trust, sooner or later you’ll end up eating each other alive.

That’s why when Corbin pronounced the letter someone’s idea of a sick joke, I chose to believe him.

I had to.

If you could have seen him, his eyes hooded and heavy with sleep. He propped himself up on his elbow and blinked at the paper I thrust in his face. “What’s this?”

The overhead light cast shadows on his face, hollowing his cheeks, making his cheekbones appear even sharper. So handsome. What woman wouldn’t want him?

“I don’t know, Corbin. I was hoping you could explain it to me.”

The memory seems ancient, as though it happened years ago, but it still shakes me to the core. I move up three car lengths, edging closer, but not too close, to the Volvo station wagon in front of me, then pull the lapels of my navy-blue peacoat closed at my neck and wait in stone-cold silence for the pickup line to inch its way around to Caitlin. The radio’s off because every time I turned it on they were playing songs like “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and “How am I Supposed to Live Without You.” When was the last time I heard those ditties?

I glance in the rearview mirror. The line of cars stretches back to infinity.

I’m gridlocked.

Even if I wanted to get out of this line, I couldn’t. If I were in a better mood I might make a wry comparison about how gridlock reminds me of marriage.

I can’t leave him. I mean, my God, we’ve been married for twenty years.

Half my life.

Whoa. I will not waste my energy by contemplating divorce. Corbin’s not having an affair. Period.

Last night he caved in over the note, as if someone punched him in the stomach. He held his head in his hands and said, “What the hell…? This is bullshit. Kate? You don’t think—?”

“I don’t know what to think, Corbin.”

I stood there with my hands on my hips acting like such a bitch—for about thirty seconds. Then all I wanted to do was beg him, Tell me it isn’t true, Corbin. Make me believe this isn’t true.

But I couldn’t say it because I knew I should either believe in him…or leave him. Asking him to tell me it isn’t true is like admitting I don’t trust him.

Feeling the sinkhole rumble underneath me, I sit in the midst of pickup line gridlock, stuck in my own personal gridlock because I can’t write off the letter as a hoax. I won’t let myself slide down into the what-ifs of extramarital affair investigation.

You know—A plus B plus C equals Corbin’s opportunity to cheat. Oh, and remember that time that he should have been home at six, but didn’t get in until eleven-thirty—

La! La! La! La! La! La! La! I can’t hear me! Don’t want to hear me because my husband is not having an affair.

That’s better. I lean my head against the cool window. Try on the words for size: I believe him.

I want to believe in the way he reached out last night, took my arm and pulled me down next to him on the bed.

“Kate, look at me.”

He tried to lace his fingers through mine, but I jerked away and traced the burnished gold-on-gold woven into the raw silk of our duvet cover. Until he pounded the bed. “Goddamn it, Kate. Come on. This is fucking bullshit.”

I pounded the bed, too. “Don’t yell at me, Corbin! This is not my fault.”

Tell me it isn’t true. Make me believe this isn’t true.

He held up a hand. Squeezed his eyes shut. Drew in a deep breath through flaring nostrils. “I’m sorry, let’s just start over. From the beginning. Where’s the envelope?”

The plain white rectangle lay kitty-corner, half on the hardwood floor, half on the Persian rug next to the bed. The white stood out like a surrender flag against a blood-orange sunset.

Corbin picked up the envelope. Flipped it from one side to the other. Snorted. “Nothing.”