The Lost Apothecary(8)
But not much else had gone right since then.
As soon as the box had arrived, I took it upstairs to hide in my suitcase. As I rummaged about in the closet, I grabbed a few additional items I hadn’t yet packed: an assortment of lingerie, a strappy pair of heels, a few essential oils. I sorted and set aside the lavender, absolute rose and sweet orange, among others. James particularly liked the sweet orange.
Sitting cross-legged on the walk-in closet floor, I held up a piece of lingerie I was undecided on, a mess of bright red string that, somehow, fit around one’s butt and between one’s legs. Shrugging, I tossed it into my suitcase next to a drugstore pregnancy test which, at the time, I desperately hoped to use in London if my period didn’t show. Which reminded me—the prenatal vitamins. At my doctor’s recommendation, I’d begun taking them as soon as we started trying to conceive.
As I walked to the bathroom to grab the vitamins, a buzzing sound—James’s cell phone on the dresser—caught my attention. I gave it a disinterested, passing glance, but it buzzed a second time and two letters caught my eye: XO.
Trembling, I leaned forward to read the messages. They’d been sent by someone listed in James’s contacts as B.
I’m going to miss you so much, read the first one. Then:
Don’t drink so much bubbly that you forget about last Friday. XO.
The second message, to my horror, included a picture of black panties inside a desk drawer. Beneath the panties, I recognized a colorful pamphlet with the logo of James’s employer. The picture must have been taken at his workplace.
I stared at the phone, stunned. Last Friday, I’d spent the night at the hospital with Rose and her husband while Rose was in labor. James had been at the office, working. Or not working, I now suspected.
No, no, it must be some mistake. My palms grew clammy. Downstairs, I heard James moving about the kitchen. I took several steadying breaths and grabbed the phone, my fingers clutching it like a weapon.
I rushed down the steps. “Who’s B?” I demanded, holding up the phone to show James.
The look in his eyes said it all.
“Caroline,” he said steadily, as though I was a client and he meant to present me with a root cause analysis. “It isn’t what you think.”
With a shaky hand, I navigated to the first message. “‘I’m going to miss you so much’?” I read aloud.
James placed his hands on the counter, leaning forward. “It’s just a coworker. She’s had a thing for me for a few months. We joke about it at the office. Seriously, Caroline, it’s nothing.”
A downright lie. I didn’t reveal—yet—the contents of the second text message. “Has anything ever happened between you two?” I asked, willing my voice to remain calm.
He exhaled slowly, running his hand through his hair. “We met at the promotion event a few months ago,” he finally said. His firm had hosted a dinner cruise in Chicago for new promotees; spouses were welcome to attend on their own dime, but we were saving diligently for London and I’d thought nothing of skipping out. “We kissed that night, just once, after too much to drink. I could barely see straight.” He stepped toward me, his eyes soft, pleading. “It was a terrible lapse in judgment. Nothing else has happened, and I haven’t seen her since—”
Another lie. I pushed the phone forward again, pointing to the pair of black panties in the desk drawer. “You sure? Because she just sent this picture, telling you not to forget about last Friday. Seems she keeps her underwear in your desk now?”
A sheen of sweat formed on his forehead as he scrambled for an explanation. “It’s just a prank, Car—”
“Bullshit,” I interrupted, tears spilling down my face. A nameless figure took form in my mind—the woman who owned those tiny black panties—and I understood, for the first time in my life, the incalculable fury that drives some people to murder. “You didn’t get much work done at the office on Friday, did you?”
James didn’t reply; his silence was as damning as an admission.
I knew then I couldn’t trust anything else he said. I suspected he’d not only seen the black panties with his own eyes, but he’d probably pulled them off her. James rarely found himself short for words; if nothing serious had happened between the two of them, he’d be adamantly defending himself now. Instead, he remained mute, guilt written all over his crestfallen face.
The secret—his actual infidelity—was bad enough. But in this exact moment, the raw, ugly questions about her, and the extent of their relationship, seemed less critical than his harboring of the secret for months. What if I hadn’t found the phone? How long would he have hidden this from me? Just last night, we’d made love. How dare he bring that woman’s ghost to our bed, the sacred place where we’d been trying to conceive a child.
My shoulders shook, my hands trembled. “All these nights trying for a baby. Were you thinking of her, instead of—” But I gasped over my own words, unable to say the word me. I couldn’t bear to attach this travesty to us, to my marriage.
Before he could answer, the nausea pressed upward, relentless, and I made a run for the toilet, slamming the bathroom door behind me and locking it. I heaved five, seven, ten times, until there remained nothing left inside of me.
The roar of a boat engine nearby on the river jolted me out of the memory. I looked up to find Bachelor Alf watching me, his hands spread open. “Are you ready?” he asked.