The Comfort of Lies: A Novel Read online

  She needed facts. There was no way Juliette would be left out—the proverbial last one to know—again. If knowledge were power, then she’d get her strength from learning exactly what was going on.

  She found Caroline’s image on the Web site of Cabot Hospital in Boston, where she was a pathologist specializing in pediatric cancer.

  Caroline’s hawkish nose told Juliette that looks didn’t rule Caroline’s world. Many women would have pared down that nose. Caroline Fitzgerald lived in Dover, so surgery costs weren’t likely a factor in her decision. Thin lips gave her a tense look, but her eyes overcame all her sharper features. Intense olive eyes framed by long, sandy lashes stood out from everything else. One coat of juliette&gwynne bitter-chocolate mascara, and Juliette could make those eyes striking. They’d pop.

  Juliette found the computer folder labeled “Promotions,” from their early days, and opened a file labeled “Deep Discount,” seeking the flyer that they’d once used to romance customers in the hopes of building a following.

  “Please accept our offer of child care while enjoying our signature day of beauty.” Juliette entered Caroline Hollister Fitzgerald’s name and printed the invitation on creamy ivory paper topped with a double line of black and pansy stripes.

  CHAPTER 7

  Juliette

  Two days later, Juliette drove to Boston. She needed to be alone, away from the shop, the house, and the boys, if only for a few hours. And Nathan. Jesus, did she need to be away from him. She didn’t even want to be in the same town.

  Of course, her destination would hardly bring relief.

  Juliette hadn’t said anything about the letter yet. She refused to show it to Nathan until she knew more. She needed control over her life, and, like a smart lawyer, she didn’t want to ask any question to which she didn’t know the answer.

  Of course, she knew she should talk to Gwynne before her constant thoughts about the child and that woman drove her completely insane, but she didn’t. If Gwynne knew what Juliette was about to do, she’d lock her in the linen closet.

  The road curved as Juliette followed Route 16 to Route 9. The last time she’d driven to Boston had been for a meeting with her lawyer, when she and Gwynne rewrote their partnership agreement to adjust for the changes in their growing business. That day, she’d headed downtown. Today she headed to Jamaica Plain.

  It was late morning. Time would soon slip away. Juliette’s freedom ended when Max’s soccer game began at four. Nathan would meet her there, because—oh yes—they were a children-first family.

  Juliette loathed her growing bitterness. She missed the sweetness that came with loving Nathan. She wished they were back at Cape Cod, the way it had been when the boys were little. Nathan spent hours digging in the sand with Lucas and Max, dribbling wet sand over dry, digging deep moats so the boys could dangle their feet inside.

  Nights were lobster, warm butter, and cold wine. Scrabble and lovemaking. Waking brought happiness.

  She’d believed Nathan when he told her it was just stupidity. Just greedy, meaningless sex. She’d believed her research. He was an idiot. She’s believed that she’d forgiven him.

  Now she worried that her anger had simply lain dormant. During their struggle, the worst of it had been the awfulness of hating Nathan. In truth, Juliette thought she loved him too much.

  Juliette slowed for the red light ahead, realizing she’d been speeding. Route 9’s amalgam of stores interspersed with stretches of tree-lined road became denser with cars and business as she neared the Boston city limits. Already the Atrium Mall loomed on her right. Gwynne and Juliette had considered opening their shop at the upscale Atrium, but they realized foot traffic suited them better.

  Keeping her eyes on the road, Juliette rummaged in her pocketbook, which she’d plopped on the passenger seat, until her fingers felt the crackle of the bag of M&M’s she’d grabbed from her stash. Every Halloween she bought enough miniature bags of M&M’s to keep her through the following October. Full-sized bags would add a dress size a year.

  Hiding food at forty-one was pathetic, as though she were still a child sneaking candy past her mother and shoving it to the very back of her dresser drawer.

  Since receiving the letter two days before, Juliette worked at not being alone with Nathan. She spoke to him as little as possible, alluding to work problems and PMS, both tactics guaranteed to give her lots of space. He didn’t find her work very interesting, much as he tried to pretend otherwise, and like any man, he shied away from anything to do with her cycle.

  Swallowing back her unspoken words made conversation almost impossible. Keeping quiet required muffling her voice with food: she’d used the brownies she’d baked late last night, and the lasagna from Thursday, so thick with meat and mozzarella that as she watched Nathan devour the food, an instant heart attack from cholesterol overload seemed possible.

  That morning at breakfast, Juliette stuffed herself with four pieces of toast and then finished both the kids’ and Nathan’s crusts. Her waistbands were already getting tight, and she couldn’t afford it.

  After breakfast, she’d scoured the stove and then scrubbed the counter until the granite screamed.

  Pathetic, aiming her anger at appliances.

  Cleaning.

  A women’s rifle range.

  Clorox.

  A woman’s bullets.

  The now smeared and creased photos of Savannah called constantly. Repeatedly she took them out, worrying at them like an erupting blemish. Perhaps she was hoping that the image would finally evaporate, and then Max would no longer seem like a middle child.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror. A chin hair fit for Methuselah had popped out and heralded the end of her useful beauty years. Once she’d been able to count on being attractive, now it required every product she’d invented. She plucked at the hair with a forefinger and thumb, despite it being fruitless and doing nothing but inviting a car accident.

  Juliette pushed her oversized sunglasses higher on her nose and pulled Max’s baseball cap lower on her forehead. She wore Lucas’s shapeless old jeans jacket and sweatpants.

  NPR blared. She snapped it off and pulled off the Arborway. She drove down Morton Street to Tia’s workplace, clueless about her motive, except she hoped Tia had gained a hundred pounds and that her skin resembled a leper’s. A roughened complexion had been Tia’s weakest feature; at least, at the distance from which Juliette had spied on her years before. Perhaps hormones and time had ravaged it into pits and craters.

  So thoughtful of Tia to include her work address and the name of the agency where she worked, but Juliette was puzzled when the GPS led her to a church. She didn’t want to get too close, but finally she left her car and walked down a weedy slate path. The massive entrance door, guarded by an expanse of overgrown evergreens and untrimmed bushes, was locked. Juliette backed away.

  A foot-worn side path ended at a parking lot behind the building. A brick propped open a heavy back door, where a young man in a brimmed cap sucked on a cigarette. A brush broom leaned against the wall.

  “Help you?” He stamped out the butt and swept it into the pile of trash to his left.

  “I think I’m lost,” Juliette pretended. “Is this the Spaulding Nursing and Therapy Center?” She looked around as though bewildered. “This looks like a church.”

  “You’re lost all right, lady. What you want is down the parkway. You’re at the Jamaica Plain Senior Advocate Center. This is a church—their offices are here.” He peered at her. “Sure that’s not what you’re looking for?”

  Juliette bent her head to the silver clipboard she held, the kind with a slim box for holding papers. “Nope. Says right here: Spaulding Nursing and Therapy. I’m an inspector for the city.”

  “Okay then. Good luck.” He took his broom, removed the brick holding the door open, and walked back into the church.

  Maybe she had an untapped aptitude for deceit. Perhaps if she left Nathan, she’d give up beauty and become a private ey
e.

  Now that she knew she was at the right place, Juliette returned to her car and drove around back, parking within sight of the now closed door. Across from the church, masses of trees and vines filled an empty lot.

  Full of nervous energy, but without a single task, she sorted through the receipts in her wallet. Then she cleaned out her glove box, wishing that it were Nathan’s car she was inspecting, so she could search for evidence of further betrayal.

  When she’d discovered a forgotten card from Tia in Nathan’s glove box, a year after Nathan’s confession—crushed way in the back—Juliette had been hit all over again by his betrayal. Just a ghostly thought of the card brought back that feeling.

  That sickening card, dated soon before Nathan’s telling her about his affair, showed a simple red heart. Inside, the printed message read, “Meant to Be.” Written in perfect script were the words You own me. Tia.

  Now Tia owned Juliette. If possible, Juliette would have used the card to carve Nathan’s heart into the same million pieces into which he’d lacerated hers.

  Tia came out.

  She hadn’t gained weight—if anything, she was smaller, sharper. Her skin seemed no worse, but no better either. Her hair was still short, but she’d cut it into ragged pieces that were more Oliver Twist than Vogue. How did her lack of style make her seem more vulnerable? She was the type that men lined up to rescue.

  Look at her. Miss Delicate, who’d abandoned her baby like so much rubbish and then used the child as an excuse to contact Nathan. Why hadn’t she kept her daughter? Too selfish? Had the baby only been a scheme to keep Nathan?

  Juliette studied her from a distance. Learn your enemy. She wore cheap, nasty knockoffs that had the look of H&M. No makeup except for a garish line rimming her eyes. Scuffed clogs completed her careless look.

  She was still beautiful.

  • • •

  Supper should have tasted like ashes that night, but instead compliments flew as Nathan and her sons forked up buttered noodles, beef chunks, and carrots so tender from wine and time, you’d think they’d been cooked with love.

  Now, at eleven thirty, Lucas and Max slept. Juliette mopped the kitchen floor until she feared she might wear away the finish. Nathan spent three hours hidden in his study.

  Finally, Juliette put down the sponge and went to the bedroom. She propped herself on pillows and studied juliette&gwynne’s financial statement for the previous quarter. This part of the business bored her to the point of wanting to bash her head against the wall. Numbers were Gwynne’s responsibility, and Juliette would happily leave every box in every spreadsheet to her. But Nathan’s father had lectured Juliette on the importance of keeping watch, and she’d promised him that she would.

  “Remember Bernie Madoff,” he’d warn her, as though Gwynne spent her nights concocting phony invoices. Juliette wanted to ignore him, but breaking a promise to her ever-vigilant father-in-law seemed sinful. Each time he called her sweetheart, the word inflected from his worry as much as his accent, Juliette felt protected and loved.

  Nathan carried in a load of laundry. Juliette lowered her files and pad, and studied him over her reading glasses. Concern showed on his face. Nathan noticed moods, performing domestic tasks when he sensed tension.

  “This was next to the stairs.” He placed the basket on the bench at the foot of the bed. “Where do you want it?”

  Juliette creased the papers she now gripped too hard. “There’s fine.”

  “You okay?” He sat on her side of the bed, forcing her to move over. “What’s wrong? You’ve been weird for days.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Nathan ran a hand down her arm. “You don’t seem fine.”

  In his sweatshirt and jeans, he looked like Lucas. Juliette studied the bare thigh revealed by her short nightgown. Spots from old sunburns had morphed into age spots. “Work,” she said. “Just work.”

  He took off Juliette’s reading glasses, a move earned by sixteen years of marriage. As though he were a righteous man, he laid a gentle finger between her brows and rubbed where her glasses always pressed in a line.

  Words backed up in her throat. Her fingers curled until she ripped the report on sunscreen sales.

  “Whoa! You’re more than a little tense. Is business okay?” He touched the report as though to look. Juliette pulled it back, clutching it against her chest so the words weren’t visible.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said.

  “So what’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Really. Just in a sad mood, I guess.”

  “Poor baby.” Without saying any more, he pulled off his clothes, got into bed, and stroked her back.

  Even as Juliette meant to move, push him away, and run to the kitchen, where she’d shovel in forkfuls of noodles cold with congealed butter, and wine, and strings of icy beef until she’d eaten away her desires, she remained motionless, feeling him work against her rigid muscles. Without saying yes or no, she let him proceed.

  She lay facedown. Broad, warm hands that had once run over Tia’s hips, Tia’s breasts, Tia’s flat stomach and slender thighs pulled up Juliette’s nightgown and stroked Juliette’s back.

  Numbness crept up her body. Nathan’s hands might as well be moving over layers of blankets. He traced her shoulder blades.

  He urged her to turn over. Juliette faced the ceiling.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, praying for the release of orgasm or tears. She prayed for the release of knowledge she didn’t want.

  Juliette pulled Nathan’s hand away, his touch too intimate. He thought her ready and climbed on top. This she could take, his weight, him inside pounding without tenderness.

  Years of marriage had given Nathan too much awareness, and he used his familiarity to bring her to climax despite herself, almost as though Juliette’s body was cheating on her heart.

  He rose above her and came in a rush of murmured love. He collapsed as he melted, pressing his warm lips to the spot above her collarbone.

  An image of Savannah swam before Juliette. Mouth full at the bottom and sweetly curved on top. Nose the tiniest bit broad. Eyes so large and dark the blackness seemed blue. Chubby hands cupped the sides of her serious face.

  CHAPTER 8

  Caroline

  Caroline drew the curtains in Savannah’s room. Her daughter slept so soundly that Caroline or Peter had to wake her each morning. There seemed something unnatural about a five-year-old child who didn’t bound from bed, a child who slumbered, waiting for her parents to bring her to the surface. The clattering of drapery rings didn’t disturb the girl, whose face remained grave even in sleep. Sometimes Caroline thought Savannah had inherited, through proximity if not genetics, Caroline’s worst characteristics. Caroline hated waking. Like Caroline, Savannah was tense, a perfectionist, and a watcher. Caroline had insisted on naming their daughter Savannah, a romantic gesture to the city where Caroline and Peter had honeymooned, hoping the name might make her witty and romantic—even daring—all the qualities Caroline believed she lacked.

  Savannah stirred when Caroline sat on the eyelet quilt covering the bed, arching into Caroline’s hand as Caroline drew finger pictures on Savannah’s back.

  “Ice cream cone,” Savannah mumbled.

  “Guess again,” Caroline said.

  Savannah turned her head and opened her eyes. “Do it under, Mommy.”

  Caroline lifted Savannah’s pajama top, still warm from sleep. Using a light touch, she traced an M on the child’s skin three times.

  “M. Like in Mommy,” Savannah said.

  “Right,” Caroline said.

  Savannah rolled over and squinted. “Really?”

  “Really. Now go to the bathroom, and then we’ll pick out clothes.” Caroline worried about Savannah’s nervous distrust, wondering where it came from.

  Savannah returned from the bathroom with a shining pink face and toothpaste-fresh breath. The child liked to get clean first thing. She had a natural sense of orde
r that Caroline found endearing.

  Caroline and Savannah sorted through possible outfits, serious at their task. Savannah would travel no farther than the random destination chosen by Nanny Rose—sometimes the Dover library, sometimes the playground, sometimes only the backyard—but they prepared for each day carefully, united in their attention to the task, as though Savannah reported to some important children’s workplace. Caroline worried about not having enrolled Savannah in preschool, but having a nanny was so much easier than rushing back and forth to school. She’d let herself buy a few more years of freedom from school obligations. With Savannah’s birthday being in March, she’d still enter kindergarten at five years old.

  Okay, time to stop fooling myself.

  Ballet classes, swim classes, music classes—all the enrichment provided through Nanny Rose’s research and driving—didn’t make up for not having sent her to preschool. Caroline knew that, but she pretended that seeing other children once or twice a week was enough, except on the days when she forced herself to read the list in her mind: things I should be doing for Savannah.

  Caroline didn’t mind that Peter left for work early most days, leaving her to ready Savannah for the day. These were their best mother-daughter moments. Time-limited tasks allowed her to stay patient. Specificity calmed Caroline, and focus was her best friend. She went to work eagerly each day. She was puzzled at how coworkers longed for the weekend, as desperate as if they were escaping indentured servitude.

  Ten minutes past the time when Nanny Rose should have arrived, Caroline strained to pretend she was fine, just fine. Calm, in fact. See, Savannah, Mommy’s fine. Smile. Hug. Turn on television—just this once.

  Truly, Caroline knew, she had no reason to be concerned. She always allowed at least an hour of grace when scheduling around her knowledge of Nanny Rose. After five years, Caroline knew Nanny Rose’s foibles. When estimating Nanny’s arrival time, Caroline took into account Nanny’s traffic backups, Nanny’s hour of primping, and Nanny’s tendency to get caught up watching the Today show and then rush in babbling about what Matt had said that morning, as though he and Nanny Rose were pals. Despite being five years younger than Caroline, Nanny Rose seemed to be from an older generation.