The Secret He Keeps Read online

  “I promise things will get better. I need to get my shit together, boy. How about a walk right now?” She could’ve sworn she saw a smile form on his black lips. He’d never know the ulterior motive of the walk.

  Rachel threw her pajamas on the floor, promising herself to stick those pants in the pile to give away. Who knows when she’d be caught in them again? Obviously natural disasters couldn’t guarantee her anonymity anymore. She stood in front of her closet and looked for something to wear. Most everything she had that wasn’t dirty was dress blouses and skirts. Some still even in the dry cleaning bags.

  As she rubbed her naked arms, she noticed there was an empty coldness in her house. Emptier than usual with no loud television playing in the background. Could someone really have a co-dependency to movie channels? It was nothing for her to watch eight straight hours of mindless crap. Before last year, she couldn’t have named one movie that starred Alec Baldwin. Now she could alphabetize seven of them and list the supporting cast members.

  On tippy-toes she stood, trying to shake loose a pile of shirts on the top shelf of her closet. She tossed them one at a time onto her stripped-down bed. Only the mattress pad was on it. All the blankets were strewn in the living room, where she slept most of the time. Her bed wasn’t the same without Scott sleeping on the other side of it.

  “Not that one. It screams eighteen-year-old wannabe.” She threw down the tight pink woven tee shirt. Clearly a candidate with Cookie Monster to go bye-bye.

  “Oh my gosh, are you serious? What decade did I buy this?” She held up a cheesy-looking shirt with a palm tree centered in front of an obnoxious neon orange sunset. It was a souvenir from South Carolina, ten years ago. She pulled down more piles of clothes, some she hadn’t seen in years. Doing laundry was something that needed to get on the list of what to do during movie intermissions. It wasn’t as if she had to beat them on a rock out back, just fill her washer with soap and add the clothes. She believed that’s how her mother put it when she spent four days catching Rachel up on her dirty clothes washing when she last visited.

  Luckily, she found a simple gray thermal shirt. The sleeves looked too tight, but it would have to do. Definitely not too dressy, but could be more than it was if accessorized correctly. Who cared what she wore, anyway? Anything she picked would be covered by a coat or jacket. And she only owned two of those. The long, black wool one she wore over her skirt suits or the puffy black one with the name of the designer written on the back shoulder. It was pretty much a no-brainer which one needed to be washed but wasn’t going to get to because she was putting it on again.

  Now some jeans. Her grief diet had certainly been beneficial to her pant size. No more sucking it in for her. No, indeed. The button eased right on it to its hole without the necessity of lying flat on her back and grunting obscenities to the ceiling about ice cream Fridays with Scott and her husband’s best friend, Dane. Any of them would suit now. She picked the ones her husband told her made her butt look good.

  Finally, hair. Without a curling iron or straightener, she’d have to pull it back in a ponytail. But with a cute ponytail holder, like the one her mother bought her in April that she shoved in her bedside drawer. How insensitive to buy a ponytail holder for a person who was contemplating slitting her wrists, she thought at the time. Fortunate for her, she was on hiatus from razorblades these days. Clearly a sign that state five of depression was coming to an end. Her therapist would be pleased with the breakthrough.

  Rachel opened the vanity drawer in her bathroom in search of some mascara. She’d read an article once that said eyes stood out with only a simple brush of black mascara. Dark, long eyelashes that fluttered when she opened and closed her big brown eyes would be good about now. But not today. All of the tubes of mascara in her drawer were dried out. Put it on the list: dog food, decent wine, and mascara. Oh, and crabmeat. For some reason she had a taste for crab. Imitation would have to do.

  Rachel smeared some gloss across her lips from the gluey pink tube she found under some cotton balls. She smelled it first, as if bad lip gloss smelled like decaying meat or something. She smiled in the reflection of the mirror and tilted her head to the side. “Hi, my name is Rachel.”

  Pathetic. Go back to bed. Pull the covers up and pretend this never happened. You look ridiculous. What are you trying to prove? That you still have it? Then what? It’s not like you can do anything if he did find you attractive, which he won’t. You’re too screwed up. You don’t work. You sometimes drink bourbon with your cereal, and you haven’t been to the dentist in eighteen months. She shuddered every time she’d get the postcard in the mail with the giant toothbrush on it, reminding her it was time for a checkup. She used to be a poster child of six-month dental cleanings. Now her mouth was probably a treasure trove of built-up plaque she couldn’t get rid of from simple daily brushings.

  Rachel tried to turn the voices down in her head. The ones that told her what a loser she was and how she’d never make it without her husband. The loss of her identity. Scott and Rachel. Now it was just pathetic Rachel. Table for one, Rachel. Movie ticket for one, Rachel. RSVP for one, Rachel. Not that she’d ever tried any of those identities out, but if she did…

  “It was your fault”: that was the bigmouth shouting loudest in the background of her mind. It grated her nerves like an icepick chipping away at a mountain-sized glacier. Pick, pick, pick.

  That’s what the pills were for, initially. To silence the icepick and to sleep through the night without all the questions plaguing her restless mind. She was the classic overthinker. Why did Scott drive drunk? Why would he put her life and his in jeopardy? If she had taken the keys, she wouldn’t have spent the last ten months in torment. She wouldn’t have had to be alone last night during the storm. She wouldn’t have lived the last bit of her life with such anger for him hurting her. How could it have been different? She played the what-if game so often, it began to kill her ability to realize what reality was and wasn’t.

  For instance, she could’ve taken the keys from him and she’d have firewood stacked by the backdoor, where there now was none. He could’ve been lying on the couch right now and she wouldn’t be getting dressed up to walk her dog, in hopes of asking a total stranger the time of day. Because she was so damned lonely she couldn’t take it anymore. The voices finally got quiet when she took the pills, but when she woke up in the hospital from getting her stomach pumped from the few extra she swallowed, the voices came back.

  At least she was over the initial stage after it first happened. She was a lesser grade of pathetic now. For a while, she’d put her husband’s clothes on the bed every morning. Shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and belt. Then she’d sit up on her pillow and look at them, her knees drawn close to her as she squeezed them with enough force it hurt her lungs to breathe. It needed to hurt because otherwise she would be left to think she was unable to feel anything. And that was her biggest problem. She did feel nothing. The shoes of his she kept by the front door were remnants of that stage in her life.

  Today, when the man surprised her at the door, she felt as if she was turning the bend to acceptance. It was over. Scott was not coming back. No matter how many times she wrote him, no matter how many messages she left him. He was not coming back. She experienced a pang of checking the “electric” guy out. Something she never thought she’d do again.

  She crammed her feet into a pair of brown boots she pulled from the front closet. They were buried under Scott’s six pairs of dress shoes. She swore he owned more shoes than her. She teased him about how silly it was to own four different pairs of black ones.

  “No one sees they’re different, Scott. They’re black, for God’s sake.”

  “But these have a small buckle on the side.” He held them up to show her.

  “Whatever you say. I thought girls were supposed to be the shoe whores of the world.”

  Rachel gave Gus a lecture before they left the house. “Now, I’m going to take you for a walk before I go
into town for my appointment. We might, and that’s a pretty big might, bump into that man again. The one who was here earlier and caught you from trying to escape.” She picked up one of the dog’s paws, pulling it through the black coat with the crossbones on back. “Because let’s face it, Gus. I know you weren’t trying to save me. You were trying to get away from me.” She hugged the dog. “I’ve let you down, but I’ll try to be better, buddy.”

  She stood up and presented herself to Gus. “So, how do I look? Like I’m trying?”

  Gus looked up at her and tilted his head. It was so difficult not being able to speak canine, she thought.

  Rachel stepped onto her porch and cautiously looked down the street toward the five men, all wearing hardhats. My gosh, what am I doing?

  Before her feet left the front stoop of her porch, her slumping posture became erect, her shoulder blades cut back and her chin lifted high. All the while her hormones were break-dancing throughout the inside of her body.

  A few men turned toward her, smiling and nodding as she passed by. A friendly bunch of men, in light of the fact they were there to get a job done that came with no heat and no guarantee what time quitting hour was. And none of them were as remotely attractive to her as the one who talked with her earlier. She feigned shock when he finally turned and greeted her.

  “Hello.” His eyes seem to have a gravitational pull to hers.

  “Oh hello, again.” She paused, not knowing how awkward she wanted the moment to be. She hadn’t lost her coy look. The little tight smile that pushed a dimple on her cheek. The doe eyes of helplessness. The stance had found her, all right. Like never forgetting how to ride a bike, her cheerleader-meet-quarterback position had found her.

  “In search of some more of your porch decorations?” He stood, holding a long pair of what looked like pliers in his hand.

  She did the two-beat chuckle and smiled. The exercise of semi-laughing startled her. “I’m just taking Gus for a walk, but I’ll keep an eye out for my four-piece patio set.”

  “I’ll certainly let you know if I come across any.” He dropped the tool on his boot, rolling his eyes before he bent over and picked it up.

  Thank goodness he seemed as uncomfortable as she was feeling.

  “Well, I’ll get going and let you do your job.” Rachel continued up the street, somewhat hyperventilating from her second brief encounter with the stranger.

  Like an alcoholic falling off the wagon after a year of sobriety, she struggled with the celibate side of herself, fighting the compulsion to remain near to him. To find a way for him to bump into her. A light touch. A boob graze. Something, anything. Didn’t everyone’s body go into some state of shock if it wasn’t touched at least once a year? Post Traumatic Isolation of the Skin Follicles, didn’t they call it? She must be suffering from it now. The last time she’d been touched was that time an old man stumbled into her coming out of the liquor store. He smelled like gin and mothballs, as his stiff fingers with long gray hairs on them held on to her arm to stop from falling. She needed something more than that.

  Rachel laughed at the thoughts in her brain and gained her composure for the walk back home. This time she took the loop around, avoiding contact and small talk with the out-of-town stranger. Hopefully on Clover Street, she’d find her pride and pick it up on the way home. By tomorrow, the guy in the hardhat with eyes of steel would only be a file in her memory. She’d label it Runaway Hormones.

  CHAPTER TWO

  You Are the Town’s Gossip

  Rachel drove down the isolated streets of town. She considered it her town now. Being a transplant from Georgia, she liked Connecticut weather better. All of the snow in winter and never getting hotter than eighty-five degrees in the dead of summer. She appreciated not having her clothes stick to her like Scotch tape in August. In Georgia, if the mosquitoes didn’t carry you away, you’d die from heat exhaustion.

  The coastal aspect of Connecticut was also pleasing to her. It was easy to find the water in the area she lived. The end of pretty much any street in the downtown area offered water views. Hearing boat masts clanging was as prevalent in Mystic as were the frogs croaking in the swampy areas of Savannah. And this is where she had her medical practice. Even if she hadn’t been to work in what seemed forever, she knew it was there waiting for her if she was ever ready for it. At this rate, it was easier to watch movies and converse with Gus.

  The people would be waiting, too. The nicest people you could find around. Artisans, vendors, simple fishermen, their wives, and their children. Up at the crack of dawn, the fishermen were casting their nets and hauling in crates of crabs and fish. Spending the next half of the day as a family affair, separating good catches from bad ones on large tented tables, and selling first to the locals before sending them out on the market trucks.

  The smell of the sea filled their pores; she always knew their occupation before she read their medical charts. They rarely came into the office, though. Only from serious things like deep cuts from the rusty metal on the boats, catching their skin as they pulled their nets to the hull. Or once when Bill Parsons fell overboard two years ago in February. The water was below freezing and when the guys from his boat carried him in, his eyebrows had ice on them. He managed not to lose any fingers and toes. He was wearing a wet suit at the time for extra warmth and it saved his life.

  Shop owners of the community were also some of her people now. They all shared more than the common areas to sell their product; they shared small community principles. When one was having a tough month, the others would pitch in and help in campaigning better advertisement for the tourists to shop there. In the end, it helped everyone’s business.

  The tourists were nice, too. Although if they needed medical attention, they’d go to the hospital that just opened up down the highway, off exit 88. After it opened, big, blue shiny signs peppered the roads with the directional signs to it. The emergency room seemed nice, what she remembered of it.

  Living in a small town outside of a city afforded her the ability to get to know everyone. And for everyone to know her. Even when she was holed up in her house, unable to get past the front door.

  At first after the accident, her friends and patients sent platters of tuna salad, crab leg casseroles, lobster casseroles, Alfredo casseroles, and whatever else they could catch and put into a casserole. Norma Wilkins brought lasagna, leaving a note that she had an allergy to shellfish or she’d made a seafood casserole. Bless her heart.

  Rachel would take them into her kitchen and find a spot for them in the refrigerator. Pretty soon she had to pull her shirt over her face to grab a can of Coke off the shelf. Her mother came to visit and filled one of those black leaf bags with all the leftover furry casserole food. She washed up all the dishes and waited for Rachel to call the people to come get their plates. They were still in her bottom cabinet today. She couldn’t remember who brought what and was too embarrassed to call after all these months.

  Driving this day, she saw most of the storefronts were still boarded up from the storm on the water side. When she turned onto Main Street, she discovered a few lit buildings. The diner sign was flipped to the Open side, so she pulled to the back parking lot.

  It’s the one place Rachel would go to grab a bite to eat when she was full from ice cream sandwich dinners and peanut M&M desserts. Scott’s aunt and uncle were the proprietors and had been there thirty-five years, running it pretty much themselves. Peggy was the waitress; Frank was the cook. They had one busboy, Tommy, and one other waitress, Billie Jean.

  Tommy was small-framed, with a baby face, and still lived with his mom in a two-bedroom house, three streets over from the restaurant. He rode his bike to work when it didn’t snow; otherwise, Frank swung by and picked him up on his way to work. He got the job when he was a junior in high school. Ten years later, he was still flipping the Open sign every morning at six. That gave them an hour before the guys came in from the docks and hung their yellow slickers on the side wall pegs and
stretched out, drinking their morning cup of joe.

  Billie Jean was new in town and needed work. Her black eye and cut lip didn’t seem to be doing her wonders for the employers at the shops on Main Street. She had no work history and was staying with a cousin down off Muller’s Road. It was fifteen miles from town; Peggy had asked whether she had a way to work every day and whether she could be trusted with tending the cash drawer during the lunch rush hour. Billie Jean looked at her and told her she was no thief. Stupid with men, but no thief.

  Peggy hired her on the spot and for the last three years, Billie Jean had been promoted on Thursdays to pie maker. It seemed that in addition to being stupid with men and being no thief, she baked a mean French apple pie. Ms. Morgan was even seen coming in for a piece. And Ms. Morgan was known as never paying for something that she could make at home herself.

  Being traditionalists, Peggy and Frank refused to change the decor of the restaurant to match the decade. Original Formica tables with silver legs and red booth chairs still sat in the dining area, and a chrome-edged counter took up the back wall. Red vinyl barstools attached to the floor sat in front of it and squeaked when you swiveled in them. The cash register dated back to the sixties and Peggy still pounded out customer’s checks on the noisy thing. Tape for the machine was no longer manufactured, so if you needed a receipt, she had to give you a handwritten one. There was no credit card machine and everyone in the town knew to bring cash.