Daughters of the Lake(20)

Five years passed. During that time, Kevin and Kate had purchased a home and a couple of cars, settled into a familiar routine of married life, and worked their way up from reporters to editorial positions at the newspaper.

One day, Kevin came home carrying a large, square box from the office supply store in town.

“I got something for you today,” Kevin said to his wife.

Kate smiled. “I’d hazard a guess that it isn’t paper for the printer.”

“Open it and find out,” Kevin said as he set the box in front of her. Kate gingerly took off the lid and peered inside to find a little black-and-white fuzz ball of a dog, all paws and teeth and tail. She squealed.

Kate lifted the little bundle out of the box and held it to her neck, where it nibbled on her chin with its sharp little puppy teeth.

“I know you’ve been wanting a dog.” Kevin smiled. “I saw an ad in the paper offering Alaskan malamute puppies for sale. I thought . . .”

But Kate wasn’t listening. This was truly love at first sight. Much later, when she thought about that day, she knew that whatever else Kevin had done, whatever heartache he had brought into her life, he had been responsible for finding Alaska, and for that, she would always be grateful.

After the breakup of their marriage, friends would ask Kate when things had started to go wrong. Had it been coming awhile? Had she seen any signs? The truth was, Kate had been blindsided by Kevin’s affair, but in retrospect, she realized that she should have seen the signs, which were as bright and prominent as the neon ones in Times Square.

Their own relationship had started out as a clandestine affair, after all, and although Kate would admit it to nobody, not even to Simon, it seemed that Kevin had enjoyed the secrecy and the forbidden nature of those early days a great deal. All that intensity cooled considerably once they were married, but Kate reasoned that it was normal, knowing that no couple could keep up such a frantic level of excitement for a lifetime.

Still, in her heart, Kate often found herself wondering if it was only the secrecy of their relationship that had truly excited Kevin. Kate didn’t realize that theirs was the longest relationship Kevin had ever had. He was always antsy for the thrill, the conquest, the adventure. He wanted to learn intimate things about somebody new. He longed to hear someone else’s important stories, their life scripts. To Kate, their relationship deepened with every passing day. To Kevin, it eroded.

Kate discovered her husband’s affair on her birthday. Their friends, mostly people from the newspaper, had gathered at the Tavern to celebrate, but she wasn’t much in the mood for partying. For several weeks, she had been feeling that something was wrong in her marriage. It wasn’t anything specific, but rather a vague sense of dread that she couldn’t quite define. Kevin was always making excuses to be out of the house—he went to the gym or for long walks, worked late, that sort of thing. It left Kate with a sour taste in her mouth, a literal feeling of indigestion. But it wasn’t anything that seemed big enough, substantial enough, for her to make an issue out of it. The fact that her husband was busy and preoccupied wasn’t so unusual, was it? He always came home to her, right?

Along with the frequent trips to the gym, Kate also noticed that her husband was overly attentive to Valerie, his new intern at the office. She was quite beautiful—jet-black hair, a perfect figure, and more than ten years younger than Kate and Kevin. He had hired Valerie to help write the news section and had talked about her to Kate in very casual terms. But lately she was coming up more and more in conversation. Kevin told Kate that he had taken the young intern under his wing. It was his intention to show her the ropes and make things a bit easier for her on the long, hard climb up the editorial ladder.

“The kid has great potential,” he was fond of saying. “I think we found a gem when we hired her.”

That wasn’t so unusual, either, was it? Oh, it was all professional and aboveboard. No hint of impropriety. An older, experienced mentor and a young mentee. But Kate’s radar detected something, and it wouldn’t stop sounding. Yet, to her rational mind, it seemed so cliché—a wife suspecting her husband and his pretty young intern were having an affair. And furthermore, Kate trusted Kevin. That’s why that nagging feeling made her all the more uneasy.

It simmered and boiled in her brain, the casual coolness between her husband and the intern, the ultraprofessional manner in which he addressed her. It seemed to Kate that he was going out of his way to show everyone that there was nothing going on between them.

But the night of her birthday at the Tavern, they had all been drinking. A few beers have a way of loosening lips, and actions. After they’d all had a few rounds of drinks, Kate saw something familiar in the way her husband reacted to this young woman. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about their fleeting glances, catching each other’s eyes for a second or two, then looking away.

Back at Harrison’s House in Wharton, Simon interrupted Kate’s memories.

“Hey, you were in another world there,” he said to her. “Thinking about Kevin?”

Kate nodded, not knowing quite what to say.

“I keep thinking back to that conversation we had not too long ago about him working late so often,” Simon mused, sipping his coffee. “You were making so many excuses for him. I saw the signs but didn’t say anything. I wish I had.”