Three Years Earlier
“What are you doing in here?” Todd asked.
I started violently but managed not to scream. I was sitting in our home office, working on the computer with my back to the door that led off the front hallway. Our garage was on the opposite side of our one-story house, so I hadn’t heard Todd come home. I had always hated being startled. Horror movies, haunted houses, practical jokes—these were not among my favorite things. I also didn’t like the idea of someone entering my house without my being aware of it, even if that someone was my husband.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I said, willing my heart rate to return to normal.
“Sorry,” Todd said mildly. He dropped a kiss on the top of my head, and I could smell the scent of sweat still clinging to his body.
“How was your match?” I asked.
“First, ask me this... Who is the king of tennis?”
“Who is the king of tennis?”
“Me! I am the king of tennis. I just pulled out the win in a third set tiebreaker.” Todd raised two triumphant fists over his head. “I ended the match with an ace. It was so sweet. Maybe the best match of my life.”
“Good job,” I dutifully supplied.
“Good job? Is that all you can say?”
“What else do you need from me?” I asked. “Congratulations on your win? Yay you?”
“A little enthusiasm would be nice. That’s the first time I’ve ever beaten Joe Hammond. He’s owned me until now.”
Todd was a tennis fanatic and competed weekly in a local league. It was basically a bunch of middle-aged men playing at night after work, but they took it so seriously that you might have thought they were training for Wimbledon. Still, I was glad Todd had an outlet. When work started to overwhelm him and he wasn’t able to play, my husband became tense and moody. Far better he took his stress out on a little yellow ball. However, there were some downsides to his hobby.
“Speaking of tennis,” I said, “I was going over the bills, and I wanted to ask you about something. Did you really spend $224 at an online tennis store? I was hoping that was a mistake on the bill.”
I could see from my husband’s sheepish expression that it was not. My spirits plummeted.
“I know, I know,” he said, holding his hands up. “It was an impulse purchase.”
“What was?”
“A new racquet. But it’s the racquet Federer plays with. I was just going to try it out—they let you take it out on a test run and then return it if you don’t like it—but I couldn’t not keep it. It’s the best racquet I’ve ever played with. It’s the racquet that helped me finally beat Joe Hammond! Anyway, it was on sale.”
Tension tightened my shoulders, and acid roiled in my stomach. I took a deep breath, trying to contain the anxiety, not to lose my temper.
“We can’t afford a purchase like that right now.” I pointed to the Visa statement I had pulled up on the computer. “Have you seen this lately? Our balance is over ten thousand dollars. That’s the limit. We’re now officially maxed out.”
I could have continued with a full accounting of our current financial struggles. We were a few weeks late paying the mortgage because the majority of Todd’s last paycheck had been swallowed up by an expensive car repair. The school tuition bill was due. Liam’s birthday was in two weeks and he had been begging for a laser tag party, which we couldn’t afford at the moment.
It was times like these, the nights when I was poring over the bills, trying to figure out where I could cut our already tight budget, that I tried to remember why I had ever given up my job. But almost as soon as the question floated up into my consciousness, I would remember anew, with a fresh jolt of pain. It hadn’t been a choice to stop working but a necessity. The grief I experienced after losing Meghan was a dark, smothering force that robbed me of my will to do just about anything. Eating, sleeping and showering were all equally unappealing options. But I had a three-year-old and a newborn to take care of. Falling off a cliff wasn’t a luxury I could indulge in.
I had arranged for a three-month maternity leave before I gave birth to the twins. When that time was up and I was still struggling, I went to see the dean of the math department. He suggested I take the rest of the semester off. But even when the grief started to recede and I slowly rejoined the world, going back to work still seemed like an impossible task. Then Todd was offered a job in West Palm Beach, which at the time seemed to offer a fresh start for our family.
But it also meant that we suddenly went from enjoying a comfortable two-income existence to living on one. We learned to make do while we waited for the raises and bonuses Todd had been promised when he was hired. We made up the difference with a series of credit cards we were paying only the minimum on each month to cover the unexpected expenses. A repair to the air-conditioning unit at our house. A cavity that needed filling. Tennis club memberships.
“It was only $200,” Todd said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Besides, how much have you been spending on all of those lunches out with Kat?”
“I don’t spend $200 on lunch,” I retorted.
“No, but $30 a couple times a week adds up.”
“So it’s okay for you to burn through money on your tennis hobby, but I’m not allowed to have a social life?” I hated how thin and brittle I sounded. But I resented more that we couldn’t have the simplest conversation about our finances without it turning into a fight.
“I didn’t say that. Jesus, why do you have to be such a...” Todd struggled to find the proper word to describe just how awful a person I was.
“Bitch?”
“I did not say that,” Todd said, pointing at me. “I would never call you that.”
Bridget appeared at the door to the office, looking anxious. She was wearing ladybug-print pajamas, and her hair was tousled. She was clutching Leo, her well-loved plush lion, to her chest.
“Are you fighting?” she asked in a small voice.
“No, we’re just talking,” I said at the same time Todd was saying, “No, honey, everything’s fine.”
“You were shouting,” Bridget said. “It woke me up.”
“We weren’t shouting. We were just talking a little...loudly,” Todd said.
Bridget’s lower lip trembled. “It scared me.”
“We’ll keep our voices down,” I said, hoping the smile I gave her looked more genuine than it felt.
“Come on, Monkey, I’ll tuck you in,” Todd said, holding out his hand.
“Good night, sweetheart,” I called after them.
Todd didn’t return to the office to continue our fight after getting Bridget settled. I found him in the kitchen, a beer in his hand while he flipped through the mail on the kitchen counter. I rubbed a tired hand across my face and decided to leave the argument about the Visa bill for another day.
“Don’t forget Kat invited us over for dinner tomorrow night,” I reminded him.
“Oh, right. To celebrate your book,” Todd said. His face relaxed. “That’s some good news, for a change.”
I had gotten the word a few days earlier. My book of logic puzzles would be published by a small university press. The advance I was getting was nominal—certainly not enough to make much of a dent in our current financial woes—but it was still an exciting development. Even this small success—or at least, small compared to the publishing I’d hoped to accomplish in the course of my academic career—made me feel a little more like the Alice I’d been before Meghan’s death.
“So I’m finally going to meet the mysterious Kat,” Todd said. He lifted his bottle of beer in a mock toast, then brought it to his lips.
“She’s hardly mysterious,” I said, annoyed by his flippant tone.
“She is to me,” Todd said. “What’s her husband like? What’s his name?”
“Howard, and I’m not sure. I’ve never met him.”
“But you don’t like him?”
“Why would you think that? I just said I’ve never met him.”
“Yes, but right after you said it, you did that thing you do when you disapprove of something or someone. You twist your lips up.”
“I don’t do that.” As I said it, I could feel my lips starting to twist. What a horrible habit to have developed.
“Yes, you do. You do it all the time,” Todd said. “You did it a few minutes ago when you were asking about the charge on the credit card.”
I hated the idea of having a tell and decided that I would not allow my lips to twist ever again.
But Todd was right. I wasn’t at all sure I was going to like Howard. Whenever Kat talked about her husband, which wasn’t very often, she hadn’t exactly extolled the positives. Howard was selfish, she’d told me, and people often found him abrasive.
“I finally get to meet the mysterious Kat and her apparently unlikable husband. That should make for an interesting night,” Todd mused. He took another long draw from his beer.
I used to find my husband’s insouciance charming. I wondered when that had stopped.