Stranger in the Lake(21)

But a more pressing point is, what would Paul do if I held out my hand right now? Would he smile and slap some bills in my palm? Would it make me a different person in his eyes? Paul once told me he admired me for the way I worked two jobs at sixteen, paying the bills for Chet and me, pulling us both up by the bootstraps. He said he loved how my penniless past shaped me into a person he wished he could be.

But like I explained to him then, I wouldn’t wish my past on anyone. You have to come from nothing to be like me. You have to suffer. And one thing I know about my husband is that he’s never suffered, not that way. He has no idea what it’s like to eat nothing but ramen noodles for thirteen days in a row, or to have your electricity cut off in the dead of winter. He’s never felt that kind of worry. Privilege will do that to a person, make you blind to the struggles of those who exist outside your bubble.

“In case of what?”

“Emergency. Disaster.” He lifts his hands in the air, lets them fall to his sides with a slap. Money is his love language, and he can’t see a single thing wrong with him offering it to me now in place of himself. “I don’t know. The point is, it’s there for whatever you need while I’m gone.”

“What I need is for you to stay here, with me.”

“I wish I could do that.” He looks sincere enough, but I don’t believe him. There’s too much here I don’t understand, too much he’s not telling me. He might not say all of what he’s thinking, but he’s not supposed to lie.

He presses both hands to my face, his palms cupping my cheeks. “Promise me you’ll sit tight until I get back. Promise me you won’t tell anyone where I’m going.”

“Not even your mother?”

“Especially not her. Promise me.”

I shake my head, not because I don’t want to make that promise, but because I’ve already seen the gleam in his eyes, the determined set of his chin, and I know I can’t stop him. It’s the same expression he wears on a build site, where he can look at a pile of bricks and already see the finished walls. For Paul, there is an answer to every problem, a neat and logical path to every solution. In his head, at least, he’s halfway around the lake already.

But I can’t make myself say the words. I can’t make that promise.

“What about Friday?” I say instead.

“What happens Friday?”

“The appointment with the doctor. The ultrasound.”

Paul grimaces. “I will do my best, my very, very best, to be back.” He pauses, glancing over his shoulder at the door. “But I can’t make any promises.”

“Then neither can I.”

Paul threads a hand around my neck and pulls me in for a kiss, then drops to his knees and presses his lips to my stomach. I stand there like a statue, the room spinning like the world has shifted on its axis and I don’t know how to stop it.

“I love you.” He pushes himself to his feet. “I’ll be home before you know it. Take care of yourself and our baby.”

“I love you, too,” I whisper, but he’s already gone—off like a rabbit released from a trap.

I watch him through the front window, backpack bobbing as he kicks into an easy jog up the drive, and think of my mother. Shoving Chet in my arms and leaving us in a trailer with nothing but crumbs. Ordering me to stop fussing, that she’d be right back. The way my lungs locked up when I looked through the window to see her dropping into some stranger’s car.

Now I sink onto a stool and look around Paul’s big, fancy house—a place with everything I thought I ever wanted, only now it feels empty and cold. It doesn’t take me long to realize why.

In the thirteen months I’ve lived here, I’ve never slept in this big house alone.

  Paul and I were on our fourth date, halfway up the trail to High Falls, when he told me about Katherine.

“We met in college, at one of those dives that serves hot wings and PBR in pitchers. She was on a date with some other guy, but I didn’t care. He went to the bathroom, and I slid into his seat. Later she told me they were just friends, but it was obvious they were close. I assumed they were together.” He grinned over his shoulder. “I’m persistent, but then again, you already know that.”

I smiled, thinking back to the first day he walked into the gas station, how he made me ring him up three times—for gas, then for gum, then for a $100 prepay card I knew he’d never use because clearly he was the type of guy who could afford a monthly plan. I promise not to buy one of those, he’d said, pointing to a giant jar of pickled eggs I had to fish out with a ladle, but only if you tell me your name. He was persistent, all right, and already I was smitten. Our fourth date, and I would have followed him anywhere.

“We were married eleven years, all of them happy. Until one day, a Thursday, Katherine went for a swim. Her daily morning ritual, like me and my runs. She went out the back door, me out the front. Do you know her last words to me? ‘The raccoon pooped on the back deck again.’ I wish I could say it was something more poignant, but we talked about raccoon shit. If nothing else, I’ve learned never to leave someone without a proper goodbye.”

He didn’t look back this time, but I could hear the emotion in his words, the way pain had turned his voice vulnerable. Every other sound faded away—the water pounding the rocks below, my lungs sucking air, the blood thudding in my ears. It was just me and Paul on that hill, and his love for her was flaying my heart.