The Winter Sister(82)

“What?” I asked.

“You think you have it all figured out, but you don’t know anything.”

“When would you have seen him? The only time I ever saw the two of you together was at Persephone’s wake.”

She shrugged. “I saw him now and then.”

“When?” I asked. “Where?”

“We made arrangements.”

“You made arrangements. How? Through these?” I picked up a couple of envelopes, then loosened my grip, letting them slip back onto the bed like leaves floating to the ground.

She shrugged again. “Guess you didn’t pay close enough attention when invading my privacy.”

I stared at her—her nearly translucent skin thin as an onion’s, her eyebrows all bone, her gray eyes like clouds holding in their rain—and I saw her look at the notes that were scattered all around me. Her lips twitched, as if she wanted to say more.

Running my fingers over the letters still in the box, I grabbed a few at a time. “My new secretary is named Annie,” one said. “I find all sorts of reasons to say her name.” Without bothering to return it to its envelope, I dropped that note and went on to the next: “I saw you with your kids last week. You were checking out at the grocery store when I walked in. I had to stop myself from whisking you away.” I dropped that note and went on to the next: “I’m aching to see you.” I dropped that note, and as it fluttered on to the bed, it turned itself upside down, revealing another message, the handwriting cramped and small in the corner. “This Thursday,” it said. “2 p.m., usual place.”

I glanced up at Mom. Even as her mouth held on to a tiny, satisfied smile, her eyes brimmed with anxiety. I dug back into the notes I’d already read, flipping them over to see the words on the opposite side of each one. “Saturday night, 9:30 p.m., usual place.” “Next Wednesday, 3:30 p.m., usual place.” “Tomorrow, 8 a.m., usual place.”

“You were having an affair with him?” I blurted. “All that time?”

“Oh, don’t look so scandalized,” Mom said, but she wasn’t even looking at me; her eyes were stapled to the wall behind my head. “It was just a few times a year.”

“Just a few times a year? He was married.”

“And that was his business, not mine. If his wife couldn’t make him happy, then that was her problem.”

My mouth fell open. “Her problem? Oh my God, Mom—who are you?”

“I’m the woman who loves him.”

She tightened her crossed arms, her body rigid, as if she were solid as a deeply rooted tree—not the hollow stalk, easily snapped by the wind, that we both knew she really was. I held myself back from responding right away. I wanted the words she’d just said to reverberate in the air, mock her with their absurdity.

I looked down at the notes again. “What’s the usual place?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

I pictured them in the back seat of a car, like two teenagers with no better options. I pictured them in Will’s office, his wife unknowingly on her way with the bagged lunch he’d forgotten at home that morning.

“No,” I said. “But—when were you even meeting up with him? I feel like I’d remember that.”

And then, all at once, I did. I remembered those nights she’d come into my bedroom after one of her dates, tucking me deeper into sleep, her skin bringing the scent of peonies into the air. I remembered mumbling questions about the men she’d had dinner with, and I remembered her shushing me as if I were a baby beginning to fuss.

All those nights, she’d been going out with Will? I shook my head at the thought. She couldn’t have been. I’d seen some of the men she dated. There was that one who pulled into our driveway in a red Ferrari and Mom rolled her eyes as the three of us peeked at him through the curtains. We watched him check his reflection in the side-view mirror and nod his approval before heading toward the door.

“The men I went out with were just distractions,” Mom said now, as if reading my mind. “They were few and far between—fewer and farther than I let you think. I hardly dated anyone but Will. Sometimes I did—here and there, just to make him jealous, or just to feel like I was calling the shots—but mostly, it was him.” Her eyes glazed over and her voice became brittle. “All him.”

She slouched a little, her arms dropping to her sides, the knot of her body beginning to loosen. I watched her waver slightly, like a branch swaying with a breeze, before she placed her hand on the dresser to steady herself.

“So you understand what he was doing to you, then,” I said.

Mom squinted. “Doing to me?”

“You just said you went out with other men to feel like you were calling the shots. Because you were completely powerless, right? Completely under Will’s control, at the whim of his desires. If he wanted to see you, he didn’t ask when you were available. He told you when and where, and you just—you just showed up!” I laughed—a dry, abbreviated chuckle. “I mean, didn’t you have any respect for yourself?”

The silence she offered was enough of an answer, and as another thought pushed its way to the surface of my mind, gasping for attention, my stomach clenched.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Is this still going on?”