After she left the memorial service, I followed the ex-wife
in my car. I did a U-turn in the street, tailing the red Jeep by
thirty feet as she drove the three blocks to the ferry. If Court-
ney knew I was there, following her, there was no reaction. I
sat, idling in the street for ten minutes or so. She sat in her car, on the phone the whole while.
When the ferry arrived, she pulled her car onto the ship.
Moments later, she disappeared out to sea. She was gone. And
yet she stayed with me, in my mind. She’s with me still. I can’t
stop thinking about her. About Jeffrey. About their altercation,
about their embrace.
I’m also thinking about Imogen. About her silhouette in the
corner of my bedroom at night.
Will runs his fingers through his hair, his version of a comb. I
hear his voice, talking over the sound of the bathroom fan. He’s
telling me that this evening he’s taking Tate to a Legos event at
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the public library. They’re going with another boy from school,
one of Tate’s playdate buddies. Him and his mother. Jessica is
her name, one Will casually drops in the middle of the conver-
sation, and it’s the casualness of it, the familiarity of her name
that rubs me the wrong way, makes me forget for just this mo-
ment about Jeffrey and his ex, about Imogen.
For years, Will has been the scheduler of playdates for our
boys. Before, it never bothered me. If anything, I felt grateful
Will picked up the task in my absence. After school, the boys’
classmates and their mothers would come around to the condo
when I was at work. What I imagined was the boys disappear-
ing down the hall to play while Will and some woman I didn’t
know sat around my kitchen table, hobnobbing about the other
mothers at the elementary school.
I never saw these women. I never wondered what they looked
like. But everything is different since the affair. Now I find my-
self overthinking these things.
“Just the four of you?” I ask.
He tells me yes, just the four of them. “But there will be other
people there, Sadie,” he says, trying to be reassuring, and yet it
comes off as sarcastic. “It’s not like it’s a private event, just for us.”
“Of course,” I say. “What will you be doing there?” I ask,
lightening my tone, trying not to sound like a harpy, because I
know how much Tate loves Legos.
Will tells me that they’ll be building something from those
tiny bricks I find scattered all over the house, erecting rides and machines that move. “Tate can’t wait. And besides,” he says,
turning away from the mirror to face me, “it might do Otto,
Imogen and you some good, a few hours alone. Bonding time,”
he calls it, and I harrumph at that, knowing there will be no
bonding between Otto, Imogen and me tonight.
I step past him. I move from the bathroom and into the ad-
joining bedroom. Will follows along. He sits on the edge of the
bed, pulling on a pair of socks as I get dressed.
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The days are getting colder. The coldness leaks into the clinic
through the door and windows. The walls are porous, the doors
to the clinic always opening and closing. Every time a patient
walks in or out, the cold air comes with them.
I dig into a heaping pile of laundry, searching for a brown
cardigan, one of those versatile things that goes with nearly ev-
erything. The sweater isn’t mine. It belonged to Alice. It was in
the home when we arrived. The sweater is well-loved, worn,
which is half the reason I like it. It’s slightly misshapen, covered in pills, with a wide, ribbed shawl collar and big apron pockets
I can sink my hands into. Four faux shell buttons line the front
of it. It’s close-fitting because Alice was smaller than me.
“Have you seen my sweater?” I ask.
“What sweater?” Will asks.
“The brown one,” I say. “The cardigan. The one that was
Alice’s.”
Will says he hasn’t seen it. He doesn’t like the sweater. He
always thought it was odd that I laid claim to the sweater in
the first place. Where’d you get that? he asked the first time I appeared with it on.
The closet. Upstairs, I said. It must have been your sister’s.
Real y? he asked. You don’t think that’s kind of—I don’t know—
morbid? Wearing a dead person’s clothes?
But before I could respond, Tate was asking what morbid
meant and I left the room to avoid that conversation, leaving it
to Will to explain.
Now I find another sweater in the laundry to wear, and slip
it over the blouse. Will sits, watching until I’m through get-
ting dressed. Then he rises from the bed and comes to me. He
wraps his arms around my waist and tells me not to worry about
Jessica. He leans in, whispers into my ear, “She doesn’t stand a chance next to you,” making a poor attempt at humor, telling
me that Jessica is a hag, that she bathes infrequently, that half of 9780778369110_RHC_txt(ENT_ID=269160).indd 133
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her teeth are missing, that spit comes flying out of her mouth
when she talks.
I force a smile. “She sounds lovely,” I say. Though still I won-
der why they have to drive together, why they can’t just meet
at the library.
Will leans further into me, breathes into my ear, “Maybe after
the Legos event, after the kids are in bed, you and I can have
some bonding time too.” And then he kisses me.
Will and I haven’t been intimate since the affair. Because
every time he touches me, all I can think of is her and I bristle as a result, nipping any suggestion of intimacy in the bud.
I couldn’t stake my life on it, but I was sure she was a student,
some eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl. She wore lipstick, that
I knew. Hot-pink lipstick and underwear that was flimsy and
small, leaving it in my bedroom when she left, which meant that
she had the audacity to not only sleep with a married man but
to parade around sans underwear. Two things I would never do.
I often wondered if she called him Professor, or if to her, he was always Will. Or maybe Professor Foust, but I doubted that somehow. That seemed far too formal for a man you’re sleeping with, even if he is twenty years your senior, a father of two
with traces of gray in his hair.
I thought a lot about audacious young women. About what
one might look like. Pixie cuts came to mind, as did low-cut
blouses, midriff bared; shorts so short the pockets hung out from
below. Fishnet stockings, combat boots. Dyed hair.
But maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe she was a self-dep-
recating young woman, shy, lacking in self-respect. Maybe the
marginal attention of a married man was all she had going for
her, or maybe she and Will had a connection that went beyond
se
x and to a like-minded desire to save the world.
In which case I think she did call him Professor Foust.
I never asked Will what she looked like. I did, and at the same
time didn’t, want to know. In the end I decided that ignorance is
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bliss and never asked. He would have just lied anyway and told
me there wasn’t another woman. That it was only me.
If it wasn’t for the boys, our marriage may have ended in di-
vorce after the affair. I’d suggested it once, that maybe Will and
I would be better off if we got a divorce, that the boys would
be better off.
“God, no,” Will told me when I’d suggested it. “No, Sadie,
no. You said that would never happen to us. That we’d be to-
gether forever, that you would never let me go.”
If I said that, I didn’t remember. Either way, that’s the type
of ridiculous nonsense people say when they’re falling in love; it doesn’t pass muster in a marriage.
There’s a small part of me that blamed myself for the affair.
That believed I’d been the one to push Will into the arms of an-
other woman, because of who I am. I blamed my career, which
requires that I be detached. That detachment, the absence of
an emotional involvement, works its way into our marriage
at times. Intimacy and vulnerability aren’t my strong suit, nor
have they ever been. Will thought he could change me. Turns
out he was wrong.
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Sadie
When I pull into the clinic parking lot, I’m grateful to find
it empty. Joyce and Emma will be here soon, but for now it’s
only me. My tires skid on the pavement as I make a sharp left
turn into my spot, searching the adjacent street for signs of high
beams.
I step from the car and make my way across the parking lot.
This early in the day, the world is asphyxiated by fog. The air
around me is murky, like soup. I can’t see what’s five feet in
front of me. My lungs are heavy, and suddenly I don’t know for
certain if I’m alone or if there’s someone out there in the fog,
watching me. Standing just beyond those five feet where I can’t
see. A chill creeps up my spine and I shiver.
I find myself jogging to the door, plunging the key into the
lock to let myself in. I push the door closed behind me, and turn
the dead bolt before making my way inside. I move down the
narrow hall and to the reception area, Emma’s domain.
Before I arrived, there was another doctor in my place, a long
time resident of the island who went on maternity leave and
never came back. Joyce and Emma often stand and pass baby
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photos around and lament how much they miss having Amanda
here. They hold me responsible for her leave, as if it’s my fault
she had that baby and decided to give motherhood a go.
What I’ve come to discover is that the island residents don’t
take well to newcomers. Not unless you’re a child like Tate or
gregarious like Will. It takes a rare breed to choose to live on an island, isolated from the rest of the world. Many of the residents
who aren’t retired have simply chosen seclusion as a way of life.
They’re self-reliant, autonomous, and also insular, moody, obsti-
nate and aloof. Many are artists. The town is littered with pot-
tery shops and galleries because of them, making it cultured but
also pretentious.
That said, community is important because of the isolation
that comes with island living. The difference between them and
me is that they chose to be here.
I run a hand along the wall, feeling for the light switch. The
lights above me come to life with a hum. There, on the wall
before me, sits a large dry erase calendar, Dr. Sanders’s and my
work schedule. Emma’s brainchild. The schedule is arbitrary
and irregular; Dr. Sanders and I are not slated to work the same
days from week to week. If there’s any method to the madness,
I can’t see it.
I go to the calendar. The ink is smudged, but still I see what
it is that I’m looking for. My name, Foust, written under the date December first. The same day Mr. Nilsson supposedly saw
Morgan Baines and me arguing. The same day Mr. Nilsson says
I savagely tore a handful of hair from the woman’s head.
According to Emma’s calendar, on December first I was
scheduled to work a shift that spanned nine hours, from eight
in the morning to five that night. In which case, I was here at the clinic when Mr. Nilsson swears I was outside the Baines’s home.
I find my phone in my bag and snap a photo of it for proof.
I sit down at the L-shaped desk. There are notes stuck to it.
A reminder for Emma to order more printer ink. For Dr. Sand-
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ers to call a patient back with test results. One of our patients
is missing her doll. Her mother’s phone number is on the desk,
with a request to call if the doll is found. The computer pass-
word is there too.
I revive the computer. Our files are stored on medical soft-
ware. I don’t know for certain that Mr. Nilsson is a patient of
the clinic, but nearly everyone on this island is.
There are any number of eye disorders that affect the elderly,
lar degeneration, one of the leading causes of blindness in older
adults. It’s possible Mr. Nilsson suffers from one of these, and
that’s the reason he thought he saw me with Mrs. Baines. Be-
cause he couldn’t see. Or maybe he’s begun to exhibit the early
signs of Alzheimer’s disease and was confused.
I open the computer program. I search for the medical re-
cords of George Nilsson, and sure enough, they’re there. I’m
quite certain this violates HIPAA laws, and yet I do it regard-
less, even though I’m not Mr. Nilsson’s physician.
I scan his medical records. I come to discover that he’s dia-
betic. That he takes insulin. His cholesterol is high; he takes
statins to keep it in check. His pulse and blood pressure are
fine for a man his age, though he suffers from kyphosis, which
I already knew. Mr. Nilsson is a hunchback. It’s painful and
disfiguring, an offshoot of osteoporosis seen far more often in
women than men.
None of this interests me.
What I find surprising is that Mr. Nilsson’s vision is fine. Dr.
Sanders notes no concerns about Mr. Nilsson’s cognitive abili-
ties. As far as I can tell, he’s of sound mind. His mental facili-
ties aren’t failing him and he’s not going blind, which takes me
right back to where I began.
Why did Mr. Nilsson lie?
I close the program. I move the mouse to the internet, double
clicking. It opens before me. I type in a name, Courtney Baines,
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and only as I press Enter does it occur to me to wonder if she’s
still a Baines or if, after the divorce, she reverted to a maiden
name. Or maybe she’s remarried. But there’s no time to find out.
From down the hall, the back door opens. I have just enough
time to X out of the internet and step back from the desk be-
fore Joyce appears.
“Dr. Foust,” she says, far too much animosity in her tone for
eight o’clock in the morning. “You’re here,” she tells me as if
this is something I don’t already know. “The door was locked.
I didn’t think anyone was here.”
“I’m here,” I say, more perky than I mean to be. “Wanted to
get a head start on the day,” I explain, realizing she’s as easily put off when I’m early as when I’m late. I can do no right in her eyes.
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Mouse
Once upon a time there was a woman. Her name was Fake
Mom. That wasn’t her real name, of course, but that’s what
Mouse called her, though only ever behind her back.
Fake Mom was pretty. She had nice skin, long brown hair,
and a big, easy smile. She wore nice clothes, like collared shirts
and sparkly tops, which she’d tuck into the waistband of her
jeans so that it didn’t look sloppy like when Mouse wore jeans.
She always looked put together in a way that Mouse did not.
She always looked nice.
Mouse and her father didn’t wear nice clothes except for when
it was Christmas or when her father was going to work. Mouse
didn’t think nice clothes were comfortable. They made it hard
to move. They made her arms and legs feel stiff.
Mouse didn’t know about Fake Mom until the night she ar-
rived. Her father had never mentioned her and so Mouse got to
thinking he probably met Fake Mom that very day he brought
her home. But Mouse didn’t ask and her father didn’t say.
The night she arrived, Mouse’s father came into the house
the same way he always did when he’d been gone. Mouse’s fa-
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ther usually worked from their home, in the room they called