The Wife Who Knew Too Much(17)
Weeks passed. The weather turned hot, and everywhere I looked, people went about their happy lives. Couples walking hand in hand. Moms at the grocery store, pushing chubby toddlers in shopping carts. I’d never known that peace, that contentment. And now I didn’t even want it. I wanted to walk into the fire. After years of feeling numb, I was back where I started—obsessed with Connor, believing he was the one road to nirvana.
I threw myself into my work, looking for a distraction. I got a part-time job as a data-entry clerk in the billing department at a local insurance company. But typing payment codes into the computer left my mind free to wander. I sat there reliving every caress, until I could hardly see the screen. I took extra shifts at the restaurant so I wouldn’t be alone in my apartment at night, tossing in my bed, touching myself like he was with me. But every time I passed the table where he’d sat, I stopped in my tracks, like I saw him there.
When I was alone, I gave in to the exquisite torture of searching photos of him online. Connor wasn’t the newsworthy one. Nina was, so every picture of him was of the two of them together. And they were together—still. Connor and Nina at a charity gala in New York, a gorgeous couple in their finery, smiling for the cameras. Or on the terrace of a restaurant in the South of France, eating lunch with a famous film director and his actress wife. Connor in a white shirt and sunglasses, his arm slung casually across the back of Nina’s chair. Frantically, I searched the dates. The photos were new. They didn’t look like a couple headed for divorce. They looked content. Not madly in love, perhaps, but undeniably together. How was that possible, after the time Connor had spent with me? He’d seemed so in love. He said he was. And I’d believed him.
Had it all been a lie? Probably. After all, it’s not like I hadn’t shown poor judgment in men before. Derek. My ex-husband. Can’t get much worse than that.
Derek Cassidy was a mechanic at the auto repair shop where I got my car serviced. He had clear blue eyes, amazing biceps, a leather jacket, a motorcycle, and a pickup truck. He was ex-military like my dad. His bad-boy aura should’ve been a warning, but we met not long after Grandma died, and I was feeling too alone in the world to listen to the voice of reason. All I saw were good looks, a steady paycheck, and the fact that he’d chosen me.
It was only after we were married that things got rocky. He was secretive. He had a temper. I’d threaten to leave, he’d promise to do better. And it would get better, for a while. Then, one night on a dark road, the cops pulled us over. And I learned that Derek had been dealing pills out of his truck. There was a hidden compartment underneath the floorboards. I knew nothing about it, but I was in the passenger seat, so they arrested me anyway. I could’ve had the charges dropped if I gave information. But Derek threatened me, and I knew him well enough by then to take him at his word. I pled guilty to a misdemeanor possession charge with a guarantee of no jail time because my lawyer said it was the best I could do. I got five years’ probation and fired from my good job at the hospital because they couldn’t have someone with drugs on her record.
That black mark is there to this day, holding me back from better things. Derek, on the other hand, I did manage to shake. He went away for five years, and I divorced him while he was in jail. He wasn’t too happy about that.
Once burned, twice shy. I dated here and there after Derek, but I was always leery of getting serious. Nobody got through my armor until Connor came back. And he’d left me dragging through my days, feeling like the hollowness inside would never go away. That’s why, after several weeks passed with no word from Connor, I let Hayley at the restaurant shame me into going on Tinder. She’d just gotten engaged to a guy she met on there. A nice guy, who owned a lawn-care company and went to church with her on Sundays. When I told her one time too many that I had no weekend plans, she grabbed my phone out of my hand and insisted on making me a profile. I don’t know if I was reckless, or stupid, or just desperate. But I let her do it, figuring it couldn’t do any harm. Wrong.
At home that night in the privacy of my apartment, out of curiosity I opened Tinder and started browsing eligible men in my geographical area. None of them could hold a candle to Connor, and I was about to give up when I found myself staring at a photo of my ex-husband. I couldn’t believe it. What the hell was Derek doing on there? I’d set Tinder to show me profiles within a twenty-mile radius. He’d gotten out of jail a year ago and moved to Florida. I’d heard that from enough people to accept it as fact. Whenever I woke from a bad dream about Derek, the thought that he was a thousand miles away always comforted me. But if Tinder was showing me his profile, that could only mean one thing.
He was back.
If I’d seen his profile, had he seen mine? If he had, would he come looking for me? I jumped up and drew the blinds. I double-locked the door, looked in both closets, and pulled my shower curtain aside. Then I sat back down on the sofa, my breath coming in fast spurts. After he went to jail, I’d moved from the small house we’d rented together into this ground-floor studio in an apartment complex. My address was not listed anywhere online that I was aware of. On the other hand, Derek and I knew people in common who knew where I lived. My apartment faced the parking lot and had two large windows with flimsy locks. I knew my neighbors well enough to smile and exchange pleasantries, but none were friends I could turn to in a moment of need. If I screamed loudly, I was pretty sure they’d call 911, but that was small comfort. I took a butcher knife to bed with me that night, and barely slept.