Little Secrets(14)
Castro is watching her, her face full of concern. “Are you okay?”
Marin can’t seem to speak. All she can do is nod, close her eyes, and take several deep breaths through gritted teeth. She grips the padded arms of the chair with sweaty hands as the practical parts of her brain fight to take over. Logically she understands that she’s safe. Her heart isn’t physically splitting in two; the world isn’t literally ending; the walls of the room aren’t actually closing in. Castro is a former cop and most certainly knows CPR, if it comes to that. Marin is not going to die today, no matter what this feels like.
There’s a Xanax in her purse, but she’d be mortified to take it. She doesn’t want anyone to know she relies on prescription pills to keep herself from drowning. She takes another deep breath, and then another. After a moment, her heart rate slows, returning to normal. She opens her eyes. Her gaze focuses slowly on the PI’s face.
“That sonofabitch,” she finally manages to say. She reaches for the bottle of water. “He’s with her right now?”
“Actually, they’re not together at the moment.” Castro manages to sound both gentle and professional. “They spent yesterday together, and she took the train back from Portland alone early this morning. I checked her Instagram page, and it mentioned something about classes later today.”
Portland. Train. Instagram. Classes. It’s all too much. Marin closes her eyes again, as if shutting them will blot out the images Castro just showed her. It doesn’t work. They’re already seared into her mind. “She’s a teacher?”
“She’s a graduate student. Art school.”
Marin winces.
“I’m sorry.” Castro shakes her head. “I’m sure that doesn’t help.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-four.”
Twenty-four and an artist. A student, for Christ’s sake. Marin opens her eyes again. Her gaze meets the PI’s, who’s watching her with a look of utter compassion so genuine it almost makes her want to cry.
Another moment passes, and then Castro begins to describe how her discovery had come about. Per Marin’s instructions at their last meeting, she’s been looking into Derek’s employees, and two who work in his manufacturing facility in Portland were flagged. Castro engaged a contact in Oregon, a cop who moonlights as a PI on his days off, to do some digging. He learned that both employees have arrest records, and both were charged, though the charges were ultimately dismissed in both cases.
“What were they arrested for?” Marin asks, trying to focus on the investigative details and not the sight of another woman’s lips pressed against her husband’s.
“One was arrested for a bar fight,” Castro says. “The other was accused of assaulting her next-door neighbor.”
“Her?”
A hint of a smile passes over Castro’s lips. “Apparently they don’t get along. It started when one neighbor accused the other of stealing her ceramic garden gnomes.”
Castro explains that her Portland contact ended up outside the hotel where Derek is staying, and that’s when he happened to spot Marin’s husband coming out the side door with a woman he knew wasn’t Marin. Curious, he followed them for a bit. They were heading to dinner. Henry’s Tavern in the Pearl District.
When Castro says this, Marin winces again. Henry’s is one of her favorite casual spots, and she and Derek always eat there at least once whenever they’re in Portland. They do a great mango margarita. They also do a fantastic calamari. Tempura-battered, flash-fried, dusted liberally with cracked pepper and sea salt with a jalape?o aioli dipping sauce, enough to share.
“What led your contact to the hotel in the first place?” Marin tries not to imagine her husband feeding his mistress fried squid. Surely he wouldn’t order the appetizer they always get.
“He looked into the employee’s cell phone records, the one who’d been arrested for the bar fight,” Castro explains. “And there was a ten-minute call from the Hotel Monaco to the employee’s phone. He staked out the hotel, and when he saw Derek come out with another woman, he snapped pictures and sent them to me.” She clicks on her mouse. “That lead didn’t check out, by the way. It turns out the employee’s brother-in-law is in town for a Blazers game, and they were making plans to meet up. The brother-in-law made the call from his room.”
A new photo is on the screen. Now they’re inside the restaurant. Derek is speaking, gesturing with his hands. His mistress is laughing at whatever he’s saying. They each have a cocktail. An old-fashioned for Derek, which is his go-to drink, and even if she didn’t know that, the orange slice is a dead giveaway. Something pink—strawberry daiquiri?—with an umbrella for the mistress.
They’re sharing the fucking calamari.
The thing that’s surprising is how shocked Marin feels now that it’s finally sinking in, even though she sensed it, even though on some level she knew. It’s not like she hasn’t noticed certain things. She and Derek are on the verge of their twentieth wedding anniversary, and even though she’s self-medicating with wine most nights, she’s been aware that things have been shifting. It’s not just that they haven’t been having sex, or that Derek has been away overnight for work more and more often, and for longer periods of time. It’s that when he’s home, there’s an emotional distance between them that’s growing, and currently it’s the size of a continent.