Chapter Ten: Ryder
Bethany’s sister, Emily, and her husband, Hank Perkins, lived thirty minutes away in an older part of town called Arlington Acres, just outside of Fall’s Church where Bethany grew up. They had a nice brick ranch with a big yard for the kids to play in and plenty of room for Hank’s work trucks and vans. He made a good living as a plumbing contractor, working mostly in DC for the government and the various defense companies with facilities there. He was a good provider, a good husband, a good man, and a good father. I knew all this because Bethany used to throw Hank in my face every chance she got. Hank this and Hank that… Hank does this and Hank does that… I wanted to hate the son of a bitch, but I couldn’t because Hank really was a good dude. There was a time when I’d have given my left nut to be more like him. If I had, maybe things would have been different today.
Hank and I could not have been more different. I was loud, egotistical, intolerant, sometimes quick to anger and slow to forgive. Hank was quiet, thoughtful, usually smiling, never in a bad mood. He was a few years old than me, in his early-forties, probably 5’10, and 200 pounds. He had always been on the pudgy side and had started losing his hair right after high school. With his buzz cut and pudgy face I thought he looked like a big two-year-old. But everybody loved Hank; especially my son Cody. Bethany said more than once that his Uncle Hank was more of a father to my son than I could ever be.
Ouch. Just fucking ouch.
Hank was in his driveway when I pulled up in the Range Rover, loading tools into the back of one of his white work vans. He tugged a rag out of his back pocket and wiped his hands with it as he watched me walking up the drive.
“Hello, Hank,” I said.
“Hello, Ben.” He held out his hand and I shook it despite the grease from his tools. His hand was like coarse sandpaper. He pulled me into an awkward “bro hug” and patted me on the back. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Well, I guess it’s your loss, too,” I said, pulling back and letting go of his hand. I’d never been much of a hugger. “And Emily’s, too.”
“That’s true,” he said, blowing out a long breath that puffed up his round cheeks. He tucked the rag into his back pocket and glanced over his shoulder toward the house. “Em and the kids are inside. Cody’s fine. He doesn’t know that anything’s happened yet. Em figured you’d want to tell him.”
“I appreciate you looking after him,” I said. I reached around for my wallet. “I’d be happy to give you something for you time.”
“We’re family, Ben,” he said holding up his hands. “We don’t charge for looking after our own.”
I felt my cheeks flush. What the heck was I thinking. I gave him an embarrassed nod and said, “You guys are the only family Cody has left now. I mean, other than me.”
My parents had been dead for over a decade and I had no siblings. Bethany’s folks had both passed the year before, so other than a few second and third cousins he’d probably never meet, Emily, Hank, and their three boys were the only family Cody would ever know.
“You home for good now?” Hank asked, holding a hand over his eyes to look at me in the bright sunlight.
“Yes, I think so,” I said, nodding. “I haven’t really had time to think about anything. I just got in this morning, so...”
“How long was that flight?” he asked with a frown. “From Iraq to DC?”
“About twenty hours with layovers,” I said.
“Damn. Where’d you have to layover?”
“Uh, Turkey, then London.”
“How long from London to DC?”
“Nine hours from Heathrow to Reagan.”
“Nine hours from London,” he said, shaking his head like the notion of international flight confounded him. “That’s a long time to be on an airplane.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “A very long time.”
“Bet you’re tired.”
“You have no idea.” I gave him a smile and he smiled back. There was a slight gap between his front teeth that just added to his boyish charm. Hank and I had never been big pals, mainly because other than our wives, we had absolutely nothing in common. Small talk was all we’d ever made, but now even that felt forced and awkward.
“Well, go on in,” he said, tipping his head toward the house. “Em’s probably in the kitchen. The kids were out back last time I looked. You’re welcome to stay for supper if you like.”
“Thanks, Hank, but we should get home so we can settle in,” I said. I took a couple of steps toward the house, then turned back and held up a finger. “Hank, can I ask you a question, just between us guys?”
“Sure.” He folded his thick arms over his chest and leaned back against the side of the van.
“Was Bethany seeing anybody that you know of? Has Emily said anything?”
His high forehead split into deep lines. He closed one eye to look at me. “Seeing anybody? You mean like having an affair?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Why would you even ask such a thing, Ben?” he asked, giving me a look that for a moment made me think that he was going to punch me. He took a step toward me and put a stiff finger in the middle of my chest. There was anger in his eyes. “Bethany was a good girl, Ben. She loved you with all her heart. Surely, you must know that.”
“Look, Hank…” I thought briefly about telling him about the baby my wife was carrying in her womb that could not have possibly been mine, but thought better of it. Hank was a good guy and he thought the world of Bethany. He didn’t need me adding my dirty laundry to his basket or staining her memory in his mind. I held up my hands and backed away.
“You’re right. It was a stupid question,” I said with a heavy sigh. “I’m just tired, is all. Forget I said anything. I’ll go find Emily and the kids.”
“Ben, can I give you some advice?” he asked, leaning in and lowering his voice. He smelled like sweat and grease. The dingy white t-shirt he was wearing was stained with spots of brown and gray.
“Sure,” I said.
“Your wife is dead, Ben. There’s no need to drag up anything now. Let her rest in peace. Focus on your son. That’s all you can do.”
* * *
I found Emily in the kitchen, standing at the sink peeling potatoes for dinner. Through the open screen door, I could see Cody and the other boys playing in the backyard on the homemade jungle gym Hank had built. Sadly, it took a minute for me to distinguish Cody from Hank’s twins, Joey and Jack. They were all about the same age, blond hair, round cheeks, loud and spastic. Christ, I thought, you can’t even spot your own kid twenty yards away. Bethany was right. I was a shitty father. My guts started to churn as a knot of guilt started cramping its way through my intestines like a bad Mexican dinner.
Emily didn’t hear me come in through the front. I stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment with my hands in my pockets, just watching her work. Emily was two years older and twenty pounds heavier than Bethany, but from a distance they could have been mistaken for twins. Her dark hair was cut short so she didn’t have to mess with it, she said. She never wore makeup or did much to herself unless she was headed to church, which her family attended twice a week without fail.
“I’m a mom,” she would say, “Not a freakin’ runway model.”
Emily and Hank were deeply religious and never missed a Sunday morning or Wednesday night service. They’d tried to drag me and Bethany to church for years, but church wasn’t for me and Bethany wouldn’t go without me, which was really just her using me as an excuse because she didn’t really want to go either. Sometimes, they’d pick up Cody and take him along to be with their boys in the children’s service. I didn’t have a problem with it and he seemed to enjoy himself, though he was more impressed by the milk and graham crackers than the lessons about Jesus.
He called him, “Cheeses”.
“Cheeses died on the cross, daddy.”
How fucking cute is that?
I let my eyes drift up and down Emily’s body, not to check her out, but to register how different she was from Bethany, who refused to submit to the soccer mom fashion moirés as Emily did. Emily was wearing a pair of loose mom shorts that hung to her knees and a sleeveless blouse that was white with little flowers on it. Her calves were tanned and toned, though I could see wisps of black hair on her legs. Her ankles tapered nicely into her bare feet, which were usually dirty on the sides and bottoms because she rarely wore shoes. When she sensed me watching her, she turned with a potato in one hand and the peeler in the other. Water dripped down her arms and off her elbow.
“Jesus, Ben, you scared the crap out of me.” She crossed the room quickly and leaned in for a hug with her hands still full. “When did you get here?”
“Just a minute ago,” I said, mustering a smile. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just, well, you reminded me of Bethany for a moment.”
“I’m so sorry, Ben,” she said with a sympathetic frown. She dropped the potato in the sink, shut off the tap, and picked up a towel to dry her hands. There were tears in her eyes. She dabbed at them with the towel. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” I walked to the backdoor and stared out the screen at my son, who was laughing and running around like a chicken with its head cut off, totally oblivious to the fact that his mommy was dead. I wanted to call out to him, to scoop him up in my arms and give him a big bear hug, but I hesitated because I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to say to him. How do you tell a four-year-old that his mommy is dead?
“We haven’t said anything to Cody about Bethany,” Emily said, standing behind me with her hand on my shoulder. “I figured you would want to do that.”
“Yeah, I should be the one to tell him,” I said, though in my heart I wished he already knew. Emily would have told him if I had asked her to, but I would never do that to him or her. I was his daddy. Giving him news like this was my responsibility, not his Aunt Emily’s. I was the one who should comfort him and tell him everything was going to be all right. I was the one who should hug him as he cried and explain how his mommy was now in Heaven but still loved him very much. I had to be the one. I’d just have to figure out the best way to do it without breaking down in front of him.
I thought back to when my folks died three months apart from one another when I was twelve-years-old. My mom died first of cervical cancer, a slow, agonizing death that at least I had time to prepare for. My dad died suddenly of a heart attack while he was at work. His boss at the construction company was the one to tell me. He called the house and said, “Ben, bad news. Your dad is dead.” It wasn’t very tactful, but it did the trick, like ripping a Band-Aid quickly off a wound. It hurt like a son of a bitch for a little while, then gradually the pain went away.
“So, what are your plans?” Emily asked as she pulled a glass down from the cupboard and filled it with cold water from the tap. She leaned against the sink and watched me as she took a sip.
“I’m not sure at this point,” I said, shrugging as I sat down at the kitchen table. “Just spend time with my son and get through this, I guess.”
“That’s a good plan,” she said with a sad smile. Emily smiled a lot, even when things were shitty. She always seemed to see the sunny side of life, not that there was a sunny side in this situation. She glanced out the window at the boys climbing on the jungle gym and sniffed back a tear. “I know Cody misses you, Ben. He’ll be glad to have his daddy home for good.”
“Yeah, I know.” I took a deep breath and thought about asking her if she knew who her sister was fucking while I was away, but decided to get the formalities out of the way first. I said, “So, I went by the funeral home. The arrangements are all made. Just a small ceremony with the immediate family on Thursday at 3, then burial in the plot next to your folks, just like you suggested.”
“She would like that,” she said, sitting down at the table across from me. She held the glass between her hands and rolled it around the wooden table top that was scuffed and scratched and stained with permanent marker and God only knows what else. She had tears in her eyes, but mustered a sad smile for my benefit. “Bethany never was one for big crowds.”
I smiled back. “Yeah. She hated crowds. You couldn’t get her near a mall at Christmas time.”
She chuckled. “That’s true. If she couldn’t buy it online, she said she didn’t need it.” Our heads bobbed in unison. Emily stared into her water glass and I stared at her.
“Em, I have to ask, do you have any idea why she was out so late in a rainstorm?” I held out my hands as if the answer might appear between them. “I mean, she must have said something when she dropped Cody off here, right?”
Her shoulders went up and down. Her hands tightened around the glass. “No, not really.”
I braced my elbows on the table and leaned in. I laced my fingers together and calmly said, “So, take me through it then.”
She glanced up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean take me through the last time you saw her,” I said, trying to keep the tension out of my voice because I knew it would only make things worse. Emily wasn’t the enemy here. She had lost her only sister. She was upset and mourning, probably more than I was because they were so much closer than Bethany and me, sad to say. Emily wasn’t the bad guy here. If anything, that role was being played by me.
I said, “Sunday, what time did she drop Cody off here? Did she call first? Was it already arranged?”
She wiped a knuckle under her nose and sniffed back the tears. She glanced at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall. “She called around four, I guess. She asked if Cody could spend the night. I said sure, bring him on. He’s always welcome here.”
“Why did she want Cody to spend the night?”
She blinked at me as if she didn’t understand the question. “What?”
“Why did she want Cody to spend the night?”
“Oh, um, she said she was meeting some friends and would be out late. Her baby sitter had canceled last minute, so she called me.”
“Friends or friend?” I asked.
Emily frowned at me again. “What?”
“Did she say she was meeting friends, plural? Or meeting a friend, singular?”
“Jesus, Ben, I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head at me. Her voice took on an irritated edge. “What difference does that make?”
I took a deep breath to suck down the frustration and anger that were bubbling in my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. I leaned in and spread out my hands. “It makes a big difference, Em. I’m trying to figure out why my wife was driving in a rainstorm on a Sunday night rather than being home safe and sound with our son where she belonged. There’s a reason why she was out there. I want to know what that reason is.”
“You make it sound like she was doing something wrong,” she said defensively, as if I was accusing Bethany of a crime. Her untrimmed eyebrows knitted at the center above her brown eyes. “What are you insinuating, Ben? What do you think she was doing?”
“I’m not insinuating anything, Em” I said calmly, leaning back in a less defensive posture to try to put her at ease, even though I knew my words were going to have the opposite effect. “I’m telling you straight up, Bethany was seeing another man.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she said, her head shaking.
“I’m not wrong, Em. I have proof.”
“I don’t believe it,” she huffed. “Bethany would not do that.”
“Yet, she did.”
She picked up the glass and brought it to her mouth, but didn’t take a drink because the glass was shaking in her hand. She pushed herself out of the chair and went to set the glass in the sink. She picked up the potato peeler and shook it at me with her teeth gritted.
“This is your fault, Ben Ryder. All of it.”
“My fault? How do you figure that?”
“You drove her away.”
“I drove her away?”
“Yes, you drove her away. You pushed her away. You lost my sister a long time ago. And because of you, she’s dead.”
She turned toward the sink and picked up another potato and went at it with the peeler, hacking into it with the gusto of a lumberjack chopping wood, sending little shards of potato and peel flying into the sink. I sat quietly at the table and let her stew for a minute. She was right. I had driven Bethany away. I would cop to that. But I needed to know who I had driven her to. She was sleeping with another man. She was pregnant with his child. I had to know the truth, for my own peace of mind.
“I’m sorry, Em,” I said quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I know how much you loved your sister.”
She stopped hacking at the potato and looked out the window over the sink into the backyard. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not my place and Bethany’s death wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “She was your sister and you’re protective of her. And I know I wasn’t the best husband. Trust me, Bethany reminded me of that fact all the time.”
“Every marriage is different,” Emily said, her palms braced on the sink, still facing the window. “Even me and Hank have our troubles sometimes. But we get through them with the good Lord’s help.”
“I wish Bethany and I had what you and Hank have,” I said honestly. “But we didn’t. And that was probably my fault. I should have been a better husband and father. It’s just that, well, with my job… Regardless of that, I should have done more to make things work. Period. Hopefully I can still become a good dad, like Hank is to your kids. Bethany was always saying that I should be more like Hank. And she was right…”
“Hank has his faults,” she said quietly, staring at the potato clutched in her left hand. “We all do.”
“That’s true.”
She turned to face me again. She wrapped her arms around herself and slowly shook her head. “I don’t know who she was seeing, Ben. Honestly, if I did, I would tell you.”
“So, you knew she was seeing someone?”
“I had a feeling. I didn’t agree with what she was doing. God doesn’t condone adultery. It wasn’t right. I encouraged her to wait and try to work things out when you got home, but she didn’t listen. It’s like she just… changed into someone I didn’t even know anymore. She started dressing differently and going to the gym and wearing makeup and dropping Cody off here all the time. I’m not stupid. I knew what was going on. You’d have to be a fool to miss it.”
“Do you know how long she’d been seeing him?”
She shrugged. “Couple of months, I guess. She started asking me to look after Cody more after you left this last time. He was here most weekends, from Friday night to Sunday.”
I felt the muscles in my jaws tense. They got so tight my teeth started to hurt. I put my hands under the table and balled them into fists in my lap so Emily couldn’t see my hands shaking.
“So, she never mentioned a name or said where they met?”
“No.”
“Never said where she was going? Or maybe the names of friends she was going to meet?”
“No, nothing. And trust me, Ben, it wasn’t because I didn’t ask. I asked a lot of questions, but she just put me off. Said she was hanging out with friends, but nobody in particular. Honestly, other than me, I didn’t know she had other friends. Did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Did you know she was pregnant?”
Emily’s eyes grew as round as saucers. She covered her cheeks with her hands and gave me a horrified look. “Oh, my god, no…”
I gave her a slow nod. “Six weeks, according to the medical examiner. I’ve been gone for eight.”
“Oh lord, Ben, I had no idea. I swear to God, I didn’t.”
I studied her face for a moment. She was telling me the truth. Emily wasn’t a liar. At least not one who could lie so convincingly. I pushed myself out of the chair and rubbed my eyes for a moment. I moved to the screen door and pushed it open.
“If you can think of anything else, please let me know,” I said. “Right now, I’m going to get my son and go home.”