7
Kendra had barely finished turning the lock on the front door when she heard Caroline’s footsteps behind her.
Oh, how Kendra had resented Caroline’s presence when Martin had hired her. First, it was as if the decision for Kendra to quit her job and become a full-time stay-at-home mother had been made without her participation. It wasn’t even a decision in any meaningful way. It had simply . . . happened. One day, she was leaving her residency with contractions—probably a false alarm, she told herself at the time. Then she was receiving flowers at the maternity ward from her fellow residents. See you in twelve weeks, Mommy! the card had read. She returned as planned, but didn’t even last a month. She told herself that the leave would only be for the rest of the year; she’d return in the fall with the next class of residents. And then she became pregnant with Mindy, and the idea of practicing medicine seemed impossible.
When Mindy turned eighteen months, she called the residency coordinator and asked about going back. At that point, she thought the grueling hours of a medical resident would be a piece of cake compared to the demands of two young children. But by then, it turned out her medical education was out of date. She’d have to take more classes to re-enter the residency program. And meanwhile, Martin and his parents kept reminding her that Martin the “miracle baby” had been raised by a stay-at-home mother. She hated the way Cynthia would pat Martin on the arm, gaze at him adoringly, and say, “One very busy doctor is more than enough for one family.”
No wonder you expected me to idolize you, Kendra thought. God knew she had tried her hardest to please him.
At first, her life with Martin had felt like a fairy tale come true. She had been walking out of the classroom with Steven after Martin’s guest lecture when Martin caught her attention to thank her for fixing his computer glitch. “I think the good doctor’s smitten with you,” Steven had said afterward. She told Steven he had a wild imagination, but she knew he was right. Martin’s words to her had been perfectly appropriate—modest, thankful, professional—but he had spoken them with a sense of wonderment, as if he knew that they were having an encounter that would change both of their lives.
Martin would tell her later that he even checked with the university to make certain that there was no prohibition against his dating a bright, young, aspiring pediatrician he had met as a visiting speaker. By the time he contacted her to accompany him to a medical lecture in the city, she was expecting him to call. By the time they finished dinner that night, he told her that she absolutely had to accept a residency in New York City. “It will be much harder to get you to fall in love with me if you move halfway across the country,” he said.
She had tried so hard to make him happy. He wanted to get married as soon as she graduated, and then start a family, and then have a second child, and so she went along with all of it, every step of the way. And then he wanted his bright, young, aspiring pediatrician to stay home.
She had expected her mother to take her side. Kendra’s father had been a plumber. He made a decent living by Suffolk County standards, but her mother worked as a hairdresser to help pay the bills. Then he died of a heart attack just as Kendra was completing her junior year in college, leaving behind her, her mother, and a mountain of student loans. Her mother had worked at two different hair salons—one days, one nights—to make sure that Kendra finished school.
Instead of telling her that she had to live out her dream of being a doctor, her mother told her to do whatever she thought was right. “Don’t you see how lucky you are to have that choice?” her mother had said. “I never did. I would have loved to have stayed home with you. You only get one life, sweet girl. Whichever path you pick will be the right one.”
So she gave in. She told herself there was no real reason she needed to work. Bobby and Mindy would enjoy all the advantages she never had—private schools, a New York City upbringing, Martin’s parents’ substantial connections. All she had to do was stay home and raise them.
I tried, Kendra thought now. I tried to be what Martin wanted me to be. But it turned out that the confidence and grace he thought he saw in me in that classroom didn’t translate to this house—to being a wife and a mother.
The kids had exhausted her in a way that medical school had not. In hindsight she realized she had had postpartum depression. Her mother would drive two and a half hours each way, trying to help on her occasional days off. And then came the car accident. That’s what they called it anyway. An accident. But Kendra knew what had happened. Her fatigued mother—sleep deprived from trying to help a fatigued daughter—had fallen asleep at the wheel.
Kendra had slipped further into the darkness. Martin hadn’t even given her an opportunity to meet possible hires before he brought Caroline into their home.
“This is happening,” he had announced. “You’re a train wreck. Train wrecks don’t get a vote.” How she had wanted to kill him in that moment. She had wanted to be free of him.
Now, five years later, the woman she had resented so deeply was practically a member of the family.
“That woman was preying on your worst fears,” Caroline said. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhear.”
Kendra knew how soundproof this old carriage house was. Of course Caroline had been eavesdropping.
“Maybe Bobby and Mindy can start bringing their grandparents some extra unhealthy treats,” Kendra said. “Those two fossils can’t stay alive forever.”
She wouldn’t make such a dark joke in front of anyone else, but Caroline had seen for herself how horrible the Bells were to her. She had also grown accustomed to Kendra’s morose sense of humor.
“You don’t need to worry about anything, Caroline. It’s just a TV show. Let me change out of these scrubs, and I’ll come down for supper.”
Upstairs, alone in her room, she closed her bedroom door and then went into the bathroom and ran the water. She didn’t want anyone to overhear, not even Caroline.
She pulled up a phone number from her cell phone, stored under “Mike.” That wasn’t his name, at least not to her knowledge. And she knew this wasn’t his real number, just a temporary one he’d given her for temporary purposes. It seemed he gave her a new one every time she saw him. He was too good to have a traceable phone. She knew that by now.
She never should have mentioned the television show to him last November. But she was terrified that he would find out about the letter the Bells had written to the studio and punish her for not telling him. He always seemed to know more than he should. She had promised she would get rid of the producer, and she had, until tonight.
There was a pickup after two rings, but no greeting.
“Hello?” she said nervously.
“What is it?” he asked.
She told him that the producer had shown up at the house unannounced and pressured her to sign a release.
“Call her tomorrow and say you’ve changed your mind. You can’t do the show.”
She told him that the Bells were never going to let this drop. That if she didn’t go along with the show, they’d make good on their ongoing threats to take her to court. “If we went to court, they might find out about you.”
“Don’t threaten me. It won’t go well for you.” His voice was ominous.
“That’s not how I meant it,” she said. He was the scariest person she had ever encountered, simultaneously in complete control but completely unpredictable. “I’m just saying that I can do the show and not ever mention you. I swear on my life.”
“On your children’s lives?”
She felt a dagger of ice at the base of her neck. “It’s been five years. If I were going to tell anyone about you, wouldn’t it have happened by now? Please, I’m not trying to cause trouble.”
“Fine. Do the show. But remember what’s at stake. It would be a shame if something happened to Bobby and Mindy. Now, tell me every single thing you know about that television producer.”
She did as he instructed. Her hand was shaking as she hung up the phone.
Martin had been dead for five years.
She would never be free of him, not really. Since she realized he had been feeding her drugs, that question was always on her mind. He of all people should have recognized she had postpartum depression. Being on drugs was not the way to recover from it. Or was it that he and his parents wanted her to have children, and after they were born, they didn’t need her anymore?