The Rule of Three, page 11
“You are looking very healthy,” Milly says as she tracks my body with her dark eyes. She’s an attractive woman who is as garish in her workout ensemble as she is in every other social occasion. She’s head to toe in Alo, her hair is flawlessly plaited into two boxer braids, and she has a dramatic smoky-eye and red-lipstick combination. She will still be flawless by the end of the class, while the rest of us will be runny, sloppy, sweaty messes. Although it is entirely unsubstantiated, I have a theory she may have undergone a cosmetic procedure that prevents her entire body from sweating. I’m not sure that it even exists, but if it does, Milly has done it.
“Hi, Milly. Great outfit,” is as much as I can summon.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she says as she eyes her still empty spot near the front of class.
“I’m here every week,” I say.
“Since Vicky and Laura aren’t coming today, I thought you might be skipping it too.”
“Oh, they aren’t coming?” I casually unroll my mat where we’re standing and try to hide the sharp sinking feeling brought on by this news.
“I saw Vicky this morning. I offered to carpool to class, but she told me she was on her way to meet Laura, and they weren’t coming today.” She reads my face when I meet her eyes.
“Oh. I didn’t know.” A sour feeling blooms.
Milly looks ecstatic that she’s in a loop that I’m not.
“Why don’t you sit next to me today?” she suggests brightly.
At a loss for a nonawkward excuse, I fold my mat in half under my arm and follow her to the front row, where I lay it next to hers. I feel like an outsider in this room without the sisters.
A few more women from the area filter in and I nod at them and half wave and I am relieved that they warmly return the greeting. Everyone in Kingsland has been friendly and welcoming from the beginning, but I keep expecting that people will change their minds about me or shun Spencer and me.
Vicky often reminds me that things are different here. Neither Vicky nor Laura has laid it out explicitly, but I’ve come to understand why no one is going to run us out of town. Most of the residents of Kingsland Estates have dark splotches on their own reputations, which keep them safely ensconced in their own glass houses, rock-free. We’ve all been “canceled” for our transgressions in some form, or more accurately, looking around at the roomful of younger, exotically beautiful women, our husbands have.
I hate that I know the second-most common search term after “Spencer Nichols” is “Who is Spencer Nichols wife,” yet there is comfort in now knowing that I am not alone in this invasive experience. Many if not all of the women on these mats have that same unique identification with one another. Not one of them is defeated by this, and in many cases they met their husbands after the men experienced their downfalls and married them anyway. It became apparent that in addition to being a man of many talents in the areas of politics, business, law, and real estate developing, Terry Barnes is quite the prolific matchmaker. He unabashedly takes pride in pairing up multiple couples in Kingsland, making it chock-full of many May-December romances, and enough foreign countries represented among the Kingsland wives to rival the United Nations.
One of the first things Terry Barnes said to me when I met him in person: “Kingsland is one of the most richly diverse American communities you’ll ever find.” Which made me feel a little better about living in such a blatantly exclusive enclave.
I look at my watch and see that class won’t start for five more minutes, which feels like an eternity with the rising temperature and the lack of the sisters here. I sit with my legs tucked underneath me and gather my hair into a ponytail holder before reconsidering and releasing my mass of curls. Milly says hello to the women seated in the row behind us and introduces me, even though they are neighbors whom I’ve met multiple times. I say hello and try to keep a smile on my face, with diminishing success.
“So, how are things going?” Milly has perched herself in lotus pose atop two cork blocks and sweeps her arms while she speaks. Her enormous four-carat diamond stunner catches the light from the giant window, and it sparkles with each swoop of her hand. The class is a starfield of sparkly high-carated fingers.
“Great.”
“How does Kingsland compare to Silicon Valley?”
“It is really great and totally different from California.”
“It is a special community, isn’t it?” she says, her veneers gleaming.
“It is like no place I’ve ever lived,” I answer just as enthusiastically.
“We’ve been here from the beginning, you know. We had the second house built, after Terry and Vicky’s, of course.”
It would be virtually impossible not to know this info, since Milly had told me every time we’ve spoken that she and her husband, the insufferably dull Roger LeFleur, were Kingland’s third and fourth residents. Roger is one of Terry’s many lawyers on call, who always seems to be working on a landmark case. While he was not one of the lawyers who worked on Spencer’s team, he knows Spencer’s counsel “extremely well,” something he reminds us of every time we interact with him. This infuriates Spencer to no end. “I didn’t move here to have my court case brought up by that imbecile at every goddamn Kingsland soiree.”
Terry seems to collect powerful lawyers the way some wealthy people collect boats or cars. My few exchanges with Roger LeFleur have been predictably annoying and unforgettable aside from the consistent impression of Roger’s being enamored of himself and sliding his and Terry’s alma mater, Harvard, into virtually every conversation.
“I heard you mention that your son got into Harvard. That must be exciting,” I say. Milly brightens by sixty watts.
“It was such a relief. We knew Bryce was going to be admitted, but there is always that little seed of doubt with the way college admissions are going now. People practically get penalized for being legacy.”
I look her over the way she’s been doing to me for the past five minutes. Every statement she makes has an outsize physical flourish, like she’s a former silent film star who’s adjusting to being heard.
I pull my hair out of my face and into a ponytail because the heat has gotten unbearable. When I do, I hear the woman behind me, Ramona Salton, gasp. I catch her motioning to her friend Harmony that she’s caught sight of the bruise that I was concealing and I see Harmony’s frozen face make a microreaction of horror in the mirror. I see Milly looking at Ramona and then craning her neck to see what has prompted her friend’s reactions. Her eyes return to the front of the room, but the distinct energy of a cat ready to pounce is coming off Milly in waves.
The class has begun to reach its maximum capacity now and it seems to have fallen eerily silent. I feel many eyes on me, but I don’t dare turn around. Let them talk; I don’t care what people think about my marriage or my husband any longer. All I can think about is what I’ve done to make Laura and Vicky exclude me. I’m burning with worry now and can barely focus on the opening remarks from the teacher about the light in all of us.
As the teacher lowers the lights and increases the heat, she turns to face her eagerly awaiting students, and I prepare myself for hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY
VICTORIA
“You’ve always had a good instinct for these things.”
I’m sitting across the table from Laura at Halliard, the nautically themed bayside dining experience that’s been a regular fixture of ours since moving to Kingsland. I use the term “dining experience”—as opposed to the more conventional “restaurant”—to mirror the level of pretension that the establishment traffics in.
The humidity is thick today, so we’ve opted away from a table on the outdoor deck in favor of the aggressively air-conditioned main room. The space is outfitted in gleaming white tile with steel accents—the height of austere minimalism. Peppered around the room are a couple of lobster traps perched high in the corners, as well as a few errant mooring buoys hung along the wall and a length of fishing net affixed to the ceiling above the bar area.
On offer below is a carefully curated menu of craft cocktails, each named after references to maritime literature; there’s the Coyotito’s Pearl, the Sargasso Weed, and the Pequod, among others. The food is predictably sea-centric, unusually refined and dependably excellent. They don’t offer any sort of fried monstrosity with a name like “The Angler’s Net,” nor some half-assed kids’ menu with fish sticks and tartar sauce and a paper place mat where the child colors in a pirate ship using a cardboard cup’s worth of half-gnawed crayons. For these merciful gestures I’m eternally grateful. The service is crisp and efficient, the amenable staff dressed as if they’ve recently disembarked from a catamaran after sunset cocktails. Not a single one of the fishermen who supply the restaurant would ever be caught dead patronizing the place.
Lunch at Halliard is normally a table-for-three affair, but we’ve strategically neglected to inform Monica of our absence from hot yoga today in order for my sister and me to have some alone time with the aim of getting to the bottom of the situation with Gil. After all, it simply wouldn’t do to have the object of the upheaval on hand while we’re trying to tamp down the fallout resulting from it.
“A good instinct?!” Laura nearly spits sparkling water all over the tablecloth. “What single part of this entire mess would lead you to believe that I’ve ever had ‘a good instinct’ about anything, Vic?”
I’ve seen this one too many times before. My sister will flash a particular look before a hard truth sets in, when she’s still wrestling with whether or not to allow herself to believe something that she innately knows to be the case. It’s the expression of her emotional self grappling with her intellectual self, in a fight that’s often spirited but inevitably resolves with her brain getting the better of her heart. Accompanying all this is a feeling of deep self-consciousness born of vulnerability; her sense that you’re already aware of the thing she’s just coming around to. The embarrassment brings an almost animal ferocity out of her. Having watched it over the years has not made it any easier to bear, and I’ve realized that the further I skirt around the turmoil’s epicenter, the better for all involved.
My first memory of traipsing across the minefield came in the wake of a nasty breakup between Laura and a serious college boyfriend. She’d found out rather unceremoniously about his other girlfriend after he’d bailed on a date with my sister, claiming that he felt under the weather. She’d offered to come over and check on him, only to be told that it would make him feel worse knowing that he’d ruined a perfectly good Saturday night by asking her to come play nursemaid. He’d promised to call in the morning with an update, and they’d agreed to leave the matter at that.
Later that evening, despite their agreement, Laura had stopped by his room to leave off some chicken soup and crackers. From behind his door, she’d heard an unmistakable series of noises. She proceeded to let herself in using the spare key he’d gifted her, only to find some freshman she vaguely recognized from around campus riding her boyfriend while moaning all manner of unholy sounds. If his dorm had been a shorter walk from the dining hall or the outside temperature hadn’t cooled the soup as much as it had, that poor girl might have been chased out of the room with third-degree burns setting in.
It had been the weekend before winter break, which meant that the sting from the incident was still fresh when both Laura and I arrived home from our respective schools. I could tell something was eating at her, but she seemed especially reticent to discuss whatever was going on. Finally, after a couple of drinks and not a little prodding, she opened up about what had happened.
My sister had never been particularly demonstrative with her emotions, so it was surprising when she broke down in a heap of tears, but what caught me equally off guard was the level of self-recrimination laced through her words, as if she’d been angrier with herself than with him. It seemed as if she were bearing the brunt of the blame.
I listened patiently as she seesawed between the roles of victim and enabler, and when she paused long enough to take a breath, I’d asked her whether it was possible that she’d expected the betrayal on some level and had stopped by with the soup as an excuse to catch him in the act. The look she gave me in response—a piercing blend of accusation, anger, humiliation, and acknowledgment—rattled me to the marrow.
In that moment, a fact I’d been subconsciously smothering leapt to the forefront of my brain. A hard truth about our very own family was thrown into sharp focus. I was suddenly faced with the reality of the way we were raised and the damage that had resulted. A terrible knowledge finally dawned on me, and it was this: Our father was an unscrupulous man. And the problem, I realized, with being raised by an unscrupulous adult is that you’re made to feel foolish for simply wanting to have faith in a parent you love and depend on. It’s an excruciating feeling, akin to a taunt, a sneer, a sucker punch.
I stare at my sister across the table and again recognize that pained expression on her face. I know that I need to approach the situation gingerly, and I allow myself a breath to regroup. “Laura,” I begin, meeting her glance with soft eyes. “I just meant that your intuition is generally pretty spot-on, you see.”
Her shoulders relax a touch as her mouth softens. She lets out a sigh. “I guess you’re right,” she says. “I just . . .” Her eyes narrow. “I dropped Monica’s name right in his lap, and there was . . . nothing. No change on his face. Not a glimmer of recognition. Zilch.” She shakes her head. “It’s kind of fucking with me now.”
“Well, keep in mind that Gil made a career out of turning manure into magic.” I see the cords in her neck tighten. “Your words,” I remind her, plucking the white linen napkin from my lap and waving it in mock surrender. She snorts at the gesture, and I feel my chest relax.
“That’s just it,” she says. “I’ve been with him long enough to be able to spot his tells. He can bullshit most people, but there’s always something, some little flinch or tic that I’ve seen before, that gives him away.” She picks up her fork and halfheartedly pushes a poached shrimp around her plate of Cobb salad. “But today? Nada. No emotion whatsoever. It was like I’d asked him what he thought of the mailman.” She sighs and gives up on the dish.
“Do you think he’s maybe just gotten better at compartmentalizing?” I offer. “The stakes are very high in this case. Could he just be playing the whole thing extra-cool?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs in frustration. “He sure got all red in the face when I mentioned his big secret project with Terry. That one threw him all sorts of ways.” She snorts. “So, what the hell does that tell you, Vic?”
I take a sip of water, as much to buy time as to slake my thirst. As I drink, our server appears at the table, all smiles and overly solicitous cheer. “Ladies,” he says, surveying the table, a subtle look of concern forming on his face at our barely touched meals. “Is everything tasting okay over here?”
“It’s fine,” Laura responds curtly.
“Everything is great,” I say in a warm voice, attempting to sand the rough edges off of my sister’s response. “Thank you so much.” He grins and retreats from our table. I set down my glass, shift my body back toward Laura, and focus my stare on her as I offer a compassionate smile. “Look,” I begin. “You know Gil Mathers better than anyone in this world. You’ve been along for the ride, from the highs to the depths and everything in between. In spite of all of his bluster and bravado and bullshit, you know him down to the core. So, what I think you need to ask yourself is whether Gil is capable of this. Whether this is something that he would do. That he could do. Whether your husband is really this person.”
She holds my look defiantly, her lips puckering. “I don’t know, Vic. I just . . . I’m just not sure.”
I reach a hand across the table and set it firmly atop her own. “Honey,” I say steadily. “Who is this man you married?”
I feel her fingers squeeze mine, and it seems as if she’s grasping at a life preserver. Her face screws up, and I see that primal, wounded look in her eyes, the one I know so well, the look that eats away a piece of me each time I receive it. She stares at me with that adolescent indignation, daring me, before her expression morphs into something more raw, less guarded. Finally, she lets herself blink, slowly and deliberately, as if her lids are relieving themselves of a burdensome weight. When her eyes open, she’s looking at me sheepishly, timidly. I study my sister, and without her speaking a word I realize that she’s known who her husband’s been all this time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LAURA
Most of the drive home is a stormy blur of flashbacks until I throw on Lizzo and sing along to “Good as Hell” at the top of my lungs.
As I ease the Lexus around the bend and up our long driveway, my vision goes from normal to red as I see stacks of boxes in the open garage come into focus. They weren’t there when I left this morning, and I’m shocked at how apparently busy my husband has been in my absence. My daughter’s name is written in Gil’s sloppy hand over and over. At the sight, my ears begin to ring with an excruciatingly painful frequency, prompting me to reach for the buttons to turn off the music that has already stopped playing.
I am going to kill him.
There are about thirty cardboard moving boxes with Libby emblazoned across the sides in black marker. I feel the air in my lungs completely empty, leaving me behind the wheel of my car heaving with rage. The sight of our daughter’s name out in the open, waiting for me, has brought forth an old anger that I had forgotten.
He’s taunting me.
There is no sign of Gil as I storm into the garage and tear off the tape from the top box of one of the neatly stacked towers. A monsoon of my tears cascades into the container holding her light pink security blanket, which is shoddily folded on top of the cache of stuffed animals, baby books, and fingerpainted artwork. I pull the box from its perch and place it on the ground and proceed to tear the strip of packing tape from the box below it. This one is filled with her baby clothes, piles of lush Laura Ashley dresses, and adorable miniature Ralph Lauren Christmas sweaters that are soft in my hands. I pull a BabyBjörn from the box and put it around me and begin to feverishly gather as much of the box contents into the sling as I can before bolting into the house.
