Tips for Living(61)

“Al?”

“Sinead’s husband, Al.”

“Al Rudinsky? Tidy Pool Al?”

She nodded.

I was confused. “What was he doing here?”

“He cleans the alley on Fridays.”

I sat down on the banquette next to Kelly, trying to process this. Al was the maniac in the van? He’s always been such a sweetheart—a shy, mellow man. Since when did he work here? If Al moonlighted as a janitor, that amounted to four jobs between him and Sinead. Money must be even tighter than I thought. Plus, they were still raising teenagers. I couldn’t even imagine the strain on them.

“Someone’s bowling in my head,” Kelly whined and went down weeping again.

“I’ll get you some water.”

I hurried back to the bar, sprayed water from the soda gun into a beer mug and brought it to her. She sat up, took the mug and handed it back to me after a few sips.

Then she collapsed into me and started crying again. I put my arm around her.

“Stokes was having an affair,” she croaked.

“Oh God,” I gasped, doing my best to act shocked. “I’m so sorry,” I said, which was genuine.

“I came here to sleep last night. I couldn’t stay in the house with him another second.”

She continued to cry softly while I stroked her greasy hair and shushed her gently. I knew firsthand how betrayed and awful she felt.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “So, so sorry.”

Kelly finally sat up and rubbed her eyes. I pinched a bunch of paper napkins from the dispenser on the table and handed them to her. She honked into one loudly and then wiped her eyes with another.

“He was sleeping with Helene. Helene Walker.”

This was confirmation of Eric Warschuk’s story from another source. An unimpeachable one. Gubbins could use this.

“No way,” I said in a higher-than-usual pitch. My guilt was kicking in for all this dissembling.

She nodded, and her ponytail fell apart completely. Now her black hair covered her face like a troll doll. I brushed some of it aside for her.

“She’s the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t she. How did you find out?”

“Stokes told me. He said he wanted me to know before he confessed to the police. They interviewed us yesterday. He didn’t say anything about the affair then, and now he’s scared they’ll uncover it. That not telling them will look, you know, suspicious.”

A preemptive move. Smart of Stokes. I wished I could ask her if he was home on the night of the murders. Not the right time. She’d begun weeping again.

“I never thought he’d do this to me. To us.”

I handed her another napkin, and she sniffled. I gave her a hug.

“I feel like I’ve lost my best friend.”

I remembered that feeling. Utterly alone and abandoned after I found out about Helene. The unbearable realization that I was replaceable for Hugh. But hearing Kelly speak the words provided a new perspective. Hugh and I were never best friends. Hugh set the terms of our relationship. Terms that allowed him affairs. I could accept them or leave him. Or use a more insidious option: pretend they weren’t occurring, which worked until he did something impossible to deny—he made a baby.

“I’ve been such an idiot,” Kelly moaned. “I was actually teaching her how to tone her flabby abs and tighten her saggy butt. Trying to make her sexy while I turned into a blimp.”

“Stop it. Your body is gorgeous. You’re a beautiful, voluptuous woman.”

A few years ago, I was desperate to have a fertile, round-bellied body like hers. But now I understood that if I had gotten pregnant, I would have been dealing with Hugh’s infidelity, coping with a toxic level of stress at the height of my vulnerability. That’s what Kelly was facing. My life would have gone one of two ways: either I would have divorced Hugh and become a single mom, or stayed and raised a child in a marriage filled with mistrust and resentment. I did not envy Kelly. For the first time, I entertained the idea that I’d gotten off easy with Hugh.

“Believe me, if I’d known what Helene had done to your marriage when she came to Pilates, I never would have let her join the class.” Kelly sniffed. “I let the fox into the henhouse. No, that’s wrong, I let the . . . no. Anyway, none of this would have happened. Or maybe he’d have cheated with some other woman. I don’t know. I feel so confused. I don’t know who Stokes is anymore.”

I took Kelly’s hand. What was the point in telling her that Helene had been with Stokes since September, well before she showed up in class? More important was to soften the impact of the devastating possibility I was about to present her with.

“Sometimes there’s a side to people we love that we don’t want to see because it’s too painful. We can sleepwalk . . .” I squirmed. “We can sleepwalk through a relationship, Kelly. But there’s a time to wake up.”

Kelly blinked at me and widened her eyes.

“What I’m trying to say is, on the surface Stokes seems one way, but underneath he might be a very destructive person.”

She burst into tears and flopped down on the banquette again. “You’re right. He’s killed everything we had together. I don’t think I can ever forgive him.”

“No. I mean . . .”