The Rule of Three, page 15
“Monica never met your husband before we came to Kingsland. She would have told me.”
“Are you positive about that?” I retort.
“You’re lying.” He looks thoughtful in his anger. “I just can’t figure out why yet.”
“Why would I waste my time making something like this up? There are about a thousand conversations I’d rather be having right now than this one.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you have fabricated more of the drama that this neighborhood fuels itself on,” he says contemptuously.
“There’s no need to imagine new drama when there is plenty of actual spectacle happening between your wife and my husband. And between you and Terry. Honestly, that may be the bigger shit show of the two, depending on who you are asking.”
Spencer looks as though I’ve just grabbed him by the testicles.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he says furiously.
“This is a very small community, Spencer.”
“I’m aware.”
“One with very few well-kept secrets.”
“For example?” His face is aflame.
“Like you would never have been acquitted without Terry’s help, and that he owns you now.”
Spencer takes off his glasses and fumbles with a cleaning cloth. He faces away from me and I scan the party and see Terry and Gil watching us from the other side of the pool and wave at Gil. My husband doesn’t react to my wave, but Terry sees me and says something to Gil, seemingly prompting them to make their way over. My heart races.
“Spencer,” I say quietly. “Terry is irate and he is not going to let you and Monica leave Kingsland.”
“That isn’t his decision.”
“According to him, it very much is.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He is a few breaths away from apoplectic.
“That’s how he works. He owns you until whatever debt he believes is owed to him is paid off, and then some. Everyone at this party is here”—I gesture to the guests spread around us—“because they owe him something.”
“I owe him nothing,” he says angrily.
“Then you need to stand up to him,” I say under my breath as Gil and Terry close in on us, a smirk across each of their faces. I soften my voice and add quickly, “Spencer, please don’t say anything to Monica about what I said about her and Gil,” I plead.
His attention has already been drawn away by the approaching interlopers. He stares at them, seething.
“Nichols!” Gil says chummily to Spencer, while flat-out ignoring me.
“What are you two conspiring about?” Terry booms, and draws some looks from the nearest guests. Neither Spencer nor I respond.
“You look pretty cozy all tucked in over here. Playing a game of telephone with my missus?” Gil ribs.
They stand watching us, waiting, their arms crossed. Terry looks every inch the bully, and Gil, while softer in his presentation, has started to resemble him in his stance and attitude.
“Just getting to know your wife a little better, Gil. I think she might be a better poker player than you are,” Spencer says drily.
Terry releases a roaring laugh and I can feel the attention of the party shift. The ambient chatter falls silent. I don’t know where Vicky is, but I can see Monica about a yard from us. She looks stricken.
“I don’t know, Gil, you might need to keep an eye on this guy. If past behavior dictates future, he’s definitely up to something—”
Spencer’s hands are around Terry’s neck before he’s finished his sentence, and I let out a loud gasp and clap my hand over my mouth. Terry’s eyes double in size and he struggles unsuccessfully to break free from Spencer’s death grip.
Spencer growls. “I’ve had it with your bullshit!” He shakes my brother-in-law from side to side like a feral dog with a small animal in its jaws.
“Whoa! Nichols! Calm down,” Gil shouts, flustered that things have escalated so extremely. “Ease up!” He grabs Spencer’s forearms and manages to get him to unclench his hands from Terry’s throat. A few nearby men hustle over.
Terry rubs his neck while he bores holes into Spencer’s entire being. Spencer returns the steely gaze, and even though he’s released his grip on Terry, he hasn’t backed up an inch. The two men are toe to toe.
Gil steps close to them and tersely says, “Gentlemen, this is a celebration, not a confrontation. We need to settle this another time when our heads are cooler.”
After a strained minute of silent standoff, Spencer reluctantly backs up. Terry looks around and laughs and puts his hands up in defeat. “Jesus, Nichols, if you didn’t like the beer, you should have just helped yourself to some wine.”
There is scattered tentative laughter from the spectators and Gil joins in, but Terry’s eyes indicate that he is continents away from being amused. He looks savage.
The sound of metal lightly tapping on glass bursts through, and Vicky sings a summoning song from the deck, shifting the crowd’s attention from the strained cluster I’m standing in to where she is. She is a colorful vision in the afternoon light while she smiles widely and taps a fork on her wineglass once more.
“Dessert is served, everyone!” People dutifully migrate toward the long table of multiple cakes she’s laid out near the sliding doors, knowing from past years that this is the prelude to a series of toasts that people will give about Terry.
“Terry, honey.” Vicky summons him with a sweet wave of her arms and I watch my sister enchant the entire party, including Terry, who is reluctant to step away from his opponent so soon.
He turns back to Spencer. “Tomorrow, Nichols,” he says hatefully, and huffs off toward the retreating audience.
Gil looks at me with a mix of confusion and disappointment before he follows Terry without saying anything to Spencer. I let everyone get a few feet away before I turn toward him.
“You need to get the hell out of Kingsland, Spencer. Before it is too late.”
He doesn’t acknowledge that he’s heard me or that he’s even in the same time and space dimension as I am.
“They are working together and against you,” I say seriously.
“I’m starting to think that you might be right,” he replies before stalking off in the direction opposite the party.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MONICA
Spencer is staring out the kitchen window when I enter. The noise of the running water in the sink obscures my approach and he doesn’t even look over his shoulder to acknowledge me.
It is just after three p.m. and I haven’t seen him all day. He left the barbecue yesterday without saying goodbye, only sending me a one-line text that he’d gone. When I finally made it home after helping Vicky straighten up after the neighbors dispersed, he was locked in his office. When I woke this morning, his side of the bed was cold.
Spencer absently shuts off the water flow as he continues to gaze out the back, a similarly morose look on his face from our final days in Santa Clara. I stand very still and observe him looking out through the glass at something that I wonder if only he can see. There is a large chef’s knife on a cutting board behind him lying next to a half-sliced cucumber, and I doubt he would even react if I brandished it.
“Spence,” I finally say.
He doesn’t turn to face me, just lowers his head and fixes his gaze sideways on the surface of the counter adjacent to the sink.
“Hmm,” he murmurs.
“Can we talk about yesterday?” I take a seat at the table.
“What is there to talk about?” He sighs.
“You going apeshit on Terry, for starters,” I say carefully.
“He had it coming. He’s lucky that I didn’t squeeze harder.”
“Spence, you can’t just attack the host of the party. Especially not Terry.”
“Clearly I can. That guy needed to be taken down a few notches.”
“I apologized to Vicky and Terry on our behalf after you’d left. Terry still seemed pretty pissed off, though. You should talk to him as soon as possible.”
Spencer’s eyes flicker upward and I catch something north of irritation. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he says.
“Done what? Apologize?”
He nods angrily.
“What did you expect me to do? Act like it didn’t happen? Half the neighborhood witnessed it.”
“I don’t care who saw it.”
“I’m trying to fit in here. I’m going to be getting grief about it until Labor Day.”
“You’ll be long gone before then,” he says cryptically.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“We are leaving this weekend. I’ve already made arrangements.”
“Spence. Stop it.” I laugh nervously. “I told you that I would consider it, but that was just a couple of days ago.”
“You lost the right to decision-making when you started keeping secrets from me.”
“What are you talking about, Spence?”
“It doesn’t matter. I just have some loose ends to tie up.”
“I’m tired of running every time you get into a war with our neighbors.”
He sweeps his arm across the table, sending the ceramic fruit bowl crashing to the floor. An orange and a grapefruit roll in one direction and a peach in the other.
“Calm down!” I cry out.
The bowl lies in three jagged pieces off to the side. I don’t move.
“You are my wife and you will go wherever I say,” he growls.
“Where are we going?”
He stays silent.
“You aren’t even going to tell me where?”
“I can’t trust you.”
“You are acting paranoid, Spence. I’m worried about you.”
“I’ve got everything under control,” he says.
“I’m on your side, sweetheart.”
“Then start acting like it.”
“Just because I support you doesn’t mean that I have to roll over every time you command me.”
“This isn’t a discussion.”
“I don’t want to leave Kingsland. I have friends and a routine I like. I am starting to feel like my old self again.”
There is a shadowy glint in his eyes. A chill goes through me.
“Your ‘old self,’ as in the voracious follower of Gil Mathers?”
I tremble beneath the table but keep my composure above.
“Excuse me?” I manage.
“You never mentioned that you knew exactly who he was before we moved here, and certainly not after. I find that very suspicious.”
“There wasn’t any . . . reason . . . to bring it up,” I stammer.
“You don’t think moving nearby one of your old boyfriends was a reason?”
“He was not my boyfriend.” I shake.
Spencer’s steely gaze levels me.
“Not currently?” he asks.
“Not now, not ever.” I can barely speak, I’m so overcome.
“Tell me, dear, how am I supposed to believe anything you tell me on this topic when you’ve apparently omitted so much up to this point?”
“Where is this even coming from?”
“I wasn’t sure that any of this was true until the answer was as plain as the lie on your face. And a basic review of your Facebook history yielded a ton of telling information about your involvement in the Gil Mathers universe.”
“I was into self-help. It was before we met. What’s the problem?”
“For starters, you’ve been spending so much time over at the Matherses’ house, and I assumed it was because of your friends, but it has recently become very clear that there was another reason.”
“Did somebody say something to you?” I ask.
“I noticed you acting very squirrelly when Gil showed up here and again at the party yesterday. I realized who the common denominator was.”
“Spence, I really think you are making an issue where there isn’t one.”
“Gil Mathers aside, we are done here. We won’t ever talk about this again.”
“Spence. Please. You’re acting irrationally.”
“The truth is, Monica, your personality has become pretty insufferable since we got here, and with each passing day, you become more like some reality TV character and less like the woman I married. You are too emotionally unstable for this kind of environment.”
I’m stunned.
“I’m doing this for your own good,” he says with a smirk.
My blood runs cold. I know fighting him is futile. When Spencer makes up his mind, he is unmovable and increasingly cruel.
“I need you to get ready,” he says.
“I have our book club tonight,” I remind him. “It would look suspicious if I miss it.”
“Go. Consider it your time to say goodbye to your friends, without actually saying goodbye.”
I shoot him a disbelieving look.
“I mean it, Monica—don’t say a word about our leaving.”
“What about you? Aren’t you expected at the poker game?”
“Yes.”
“Terry is expecting an apology.”
Spencer smiles crookedly, apparently relishing a punch line that only he knows.
“Oh, I’ll be going for sure. I have a few things that I need to tell them both. And I’ll enjoy taking their money and their pride on my way out.”
“Spence. I know I can’t stop you from leaving Kingsland,” I say gently, “but I’m not going with you.”
He snorts. “What? Are you divorcing me? Good luck with that.”
“If it comes to that. This is my home now.”
“You had nothing when you met me, and you will have nothing if you leave me.”
“You can’t make me do anything that I don’t want to do.”
“This may be your ‘home,’ but it isn’t your house. It is going to be pretty hard to blend in with the Kingsland set when you are homeless. Don’t forget who keeps you in this lifestyle.”
“There are more things than money, Spence,” I say calmly.
“If you fight me on this, you are going to be begging me to take you away from here. You’ll have nothing left. Trust me,” he says, coldly confident.
He stands from the table and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his menacing expression erasing any long-gone signs of love for me.
“Spencer, I’m staying,” I say firmly as he moves past me.
“Start packing,” he yells before slamming the front door behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
VICTORIA
“Ter of the dog that bit ya?” I quip.
I’ve just returned home from running errands to find my husband standing in our kitchen, staring vacantly into the refrigerator, surrounded by the stray gifted bottles of unopened booze strewn about the counter awkwardly, like participants in a game of musical chairs who find themselves without a seat when the song stops playing. He looks bleary-eyed and short-tempered as he sips gingerly from a bottle of Barnes’s Brew. My attempt at wordplay doesn’t appear to have amused him.
“Huh?” he manages to squeeze out.
“You feeling okay, honey?” I ask. “Pretty long day yesterday.”
He promptly waves me off. “I’m fine,” he states, as if disappointed by my obvious lapse in judgment. “Just all the pollen in the air, I think.”
Terry’s always been this way. I think he finds it emasculating to admit to a hangover, and therefore operates as if the laws of human physiology somehow do not apply to him. In each of the years that we’ve been throwing our Fourth of July bash, he’s managed to come down with some ailment or other the morning after, be it a weather headache, a cold, a flu, or, once, food poisoning—from a neighbor’s three-bean salad, naturally. But, miraculously, he’s never suffered the most common aftereffect of session drinking shitty beer for eight straight hours. I normally find this tough-guy routine grating, but today I decide to will it in the direction of endearing.
“Oh,” I say brightly, changing the subject. “I ran into June Hill in town. She asked me to be sure to thank you for yesterday. She and Scott had a marvelous time.” It occurs to me that this statement from our neighbor remains genuine largely because she and her husband left early, thereby missing the dustup between my husband and his supposed friends, but I keep the thought to myself. “And she told me that Scott was raving about the brisket all night.”
“Good, good,” says Terry, a glint of pride brightening his eye. “Glad to hear it.”
“Anything I can do to help you out today?” I offer, leaning my hands on the island countertop between us.
“Nah, Vic. I’m good.” He shuts the refrigerator door, not seeming too hot on the idea of solid foods at the moment. “Just going to toss all this shit in the garage.” He flings his arm in a lazy sweep to indicate the leftover liquor and the stack of unused aluminum serving trays next to the sink. “Then probably tinker around in the office until our game tonight.”
I study his face, but the low-lying haze of residual alcohol makes it hard to get a clean read on his expression. “Well, that should be fun,” I nudge.
“We’ll see.” He shrugs. “Guess it’ll depend on whether that fucking hothead Nichols wants to go another round with the big man.” The thought seems not to disturb him, but rather to raise an attractive prospect of bloodlust. There’s a flash in his expression of something primitive.
“Well, I can get a referee over here before I leave for book club,” I tease. “You know, just in case.”
“Oh right,” he says, my comment distracting him only slightly from whatever violent scenario he’s concocted in his head. “You’re seeing those girlfriends of yours later,” he mumbles without looking at me.
“Yes, honey,” I say. “I’m getting together with Laura and Mon. Just like every other Sunday.” As the words leave my mouth, I realize that they’re tinged with resignation rather than annoyance, which saddens me. “That’s if I can leave the three of you alone here.”
