The Consequences (22 page)

“Will you please sit down and talk to me?” Robert asked suddenly.

Kathy didn't answer the question, but continued her previous topic of conversation. “I suspected the truth last Thursday, when I was writing the Christmas cards. Once my suspicions were roused, it was relatively easy to put it all together.” She'd found the evidence because he had become careless; she knew that. He'd become just a little complacent; he'd gotten away with his affair for so long he'd stopped taking precautions. “There was a speeding ticket upstairs in your office. You got a ticket in Jamaica Plain on Halloween . . . even though you were supposed to be in Connecticut that night having dinner with a client.”

Kathy started feeding bread into the blender, grinding it to crumbs, taking a certain pleasure at the expression on his face when the blades were whirling. It sounded not unlike a dentist's drill, and she knew how much he hated going to the dentist's . . . though that hadn't stopped him from having a lot of very expensive work on his teeth done recently. She wondered if that had been at Stephanie's insistence; and what about the gym, the new clothes, the extra attention he'd started paying to his grooming? Wasn't that supposed to be one of the first signs of an affair?

“Then I remembered all the other nights you'd stayed away, meeting with clients, wining and dining them,” she continued. “I don't remember the company getting contracts from any of these alleged clients. You were supposed to be having dinner with Jimmy Moran at Top of the Hub last week. But when I called to check, they had no record of your reservation.”

“Jimmy and I really were supposed—” Robert began, but she hit the blender again and the blades howled. She wasn't interested.

“And then I found the phone records in the file cabinet. That was priceless.” Kathy turned, and the only expression on her face was one of disappointment. “Hundreds of calls, Robert. Hundreds. First call of the day. Last call at night. All to the same cell or the same house number.” She remembered a time, many, many years ago, before they had married, when he would always call her late at night . . . just to say good night. She'd always thought that was so romantic. “And I couldn't help but remember the mornings you left here without speaking to me, or the days when you were too busy to call to see how I was, or those days when you got back late and I'd be in bed. Whole days would go by, and we wouldn't speak more than a few words. And yet you always seemed to find time to phone your mistress several times a day.” She glared at him. “Every. Single. Day.”

“Maureen told me you'd seen the phone bills,” he muttered.

“She just confirmed what I already knew. She just gave me the time frame. She thinks it's been going on for a year. Stephanie said eighteen months. What is the truth?” She already knew the truth, but she wanted to hear him say it.

“June of last year was the . . . the first time.”

“The first time for what?” she snapped.

She saw Robert look over his shoulder toward the family room. Brendan's and Theresa's voices were audible as they chatted happily together. She didn't even want to think of the effect this revelation would have on the children. They both idolized their father; what would they think of him if they knew he had betrayed them all? Would they blame him, or would they blame Kathy, thinking that it must have been partially her fault for driving him away?

“Could we discuss this somewhere more private?” Robert asked.

Kathy shook her head firmly. “Right now, this is the most private room in the house. If we go upstairs, the kids will think that we're wrapping their presents and be in and out every five minutes. Right now, they know I'm prepping the stuffing for the turkey, and they've no interest in that.” She caught his reflection in the glass and was aware that he was moving around to stand beside her.

“Can I help?” he asked.

“No,” she said. Kathy hit the button on the blender, and it howled. When it stopped she said, “I don't know what's going to happen between us, Robert. But it's going to take me a long time before I can trust you again . . . a long time before I can even look at you without feeling sick to my stomach,” she added bitterly. She saw his hand move toward her, and she jerked away. “Don't!” she snapped. She didn't want him to touch her, to lay a finger on her. The knowledge that he had kissed Stephanie, touched her, slept with her, made Kathy physically nauseous.

“I'm sorry,” he said eventually. “I know it sounds like a cliché, but I never wanted to hurt you. You have to believe me—that was never my intention.”

What had been his intention? And yes, it was a cliché. It was, she imagined, what every man said when he was caught. He hadn't been thinking: That was the problem. He was prepared to sacrifice eighteen years of marriage, eighteen years of memories, of love and trust, for what . . . a brief moment of passion. Was that all their marriage was worth?

“I allowed myself to enter into the relationship—” Robert began.

“Affair!” Kathy snapped. “Jesus, Robert, call it what it is—an affair!” Robert had been working in advertising too long. He was trying to spin the word into a euphemism, soften it, take the sting away from it. Well, she wasn't having any of it.

“I began my affair with Stephanie last June. I was lonely, Kath, desperately lonely. I wanted someone to talk to, someone to share with, someone to show an interest in me. I tried to talk to you . . . God, I tried. But you never seemed to be interested.”

Kathy concentrated on the recipe, saying nothing, listening intently to what he was saying. Was it true? Had she not been interested? It cut both ways of course; he had only been vaguely interested in the house and the children. But she kept coming back to his statement, and, try as she might, she found she couldn't deny it. She had to admit that she had not really been interested. She had just lost her mother. She hadn't really cared about the company or how he was coping.

“You never asked how things were going, never seemed to be in the slightest bit concerned with the ordinary, day-to-day minutiae of keeping the company afloat. I'm not even sure you realized how much trouble we were in. We came very close to going under.”

Maureen had hinted at something similar, and Kathy suddenly felt extraordinarily guilty. Had she been so wrapped up in her world of home and children to the exclusion of everything else?

She pulled open the fridge and stared inside, looking for the sausage meat.

But if the situation had been that serious, why hadn't he made a point of sitting down and talking with her? She guessed that if she asked him that he would say that he hadn't told her because he hadn't wanted to worry her.

“I was lonely,” Robert repeated. “We'd stopped . . . having sex. When I tried, you'd turn your back on me or you'd come to me so reluctantly that I felt like you were making love to me almost as a duty.”

There was some truth in what he was saying. After a long day of tending to the house and the kids, carpooling, helping with homework, cleaning . . . she was often too tired.

“You didn't seem to enjoy it.”

And she hated refusing him, but it had become apparent to her a long time ago that their rhythms were different. She liked to make love in the early morning; she loved the burst of energy it gave her. It lifted the entire day. Whereas he liked to make love late at night and then fall into a sound, motionless sleep.

“After a while I stopped making the effort; I'll admit it,” Robert continued. “But—and please don't take this as a criticism; it's just a statement of fact—you never made an effort either.”

“So you're saying it's my fault you found yourself a mistress?” Kathy asked savagely, but at the back of her mind she knew the point he was making was true. She could not remember the last time she'd initiated their lovemaking. A long time ago; too long.

“No,” he sighed. “I'm not trying to score points here—I'm just trying to let you see how I ended up in this situation. I allowed myself to have the affair, Kathy, because I believed—genuinely believed—that you no longer loved me.”

Kathy spun around to face him, mouth open, but he held up his hand.

“I know. I'm just telling you how I felt, telling you how I saw things. When you stood in Stephanie's living room earlier and said that you loved me, no one was more surprised than I was.”

“I never stopped loving you,” Kathy said immediately, though in the last couple of days she had stopped liking him.

“Even right now?” he asked, attempting a smile.

“I'm not sure how I feel about you at this moment,” she said truthfully, “but the very fact that we're both standing in this room, even after all that's happened today, should suggest something.”

“What?” he wondered.

“That maybe I do accept some responsibility for what happened,” she said simply. “I wasn't paying attention. And if a marriage is going to work, then both parties have to keep paying attention. You stopped paying attention to me, and I stopped paying attention to you.”

“Would it help if I said I was sorry, truly sorry?”

She looked at him. “Sorry for what? Do you regret the affair?” she asked lightly, though she was deadly serious.

“I regret the pain it caused you,” was all Robert would say.

At least he hadn't lied and said that he regretted the affair, because she knew he didn't. She could see it in his eyes, and he'd said only a few short hours ago that he loved Stephanie. “Well, I'm glad you chose to tell me the truth.”

“I would never knowingly hurt you,” he murmured.

“And yet you have hurt me, Robert,” she said simply. “Hurt me and humiliated me. And it's going to take me a long time to forgive that.”

“What's going to happen to us?” he asked.

She'd thought about nothing else on the drive home, creating all sorts of possibilities, and she kept coming back to the same conclusion. Taking a deep breath, she said quickly, determined that her voice would not shake, “As I see it, we have two choices: We can stay together, make some new rules, start again, and really work at it this time.” She finished quickly and paused before continuing. “Or I can file for divorce.”

She watched him assimilate that. The thought of divorce was terrifying—she had no idea of the practicalities involved: splitting the assets, maybe selling the house and the business, moving the children to different schools. She would have to find a job. . . .

“Well, look, let's talk about this later, or tomorrow maybe,” Robert said, unable to disguise the tremble in his voice. “We're both tired and probably not thinking too clearly. I know I'm not,” he added. He took a breath. “I do have a favor to ask.”

She was shocked by his arrogance, but bit her tongue before she said anything.

“Kath, if you decide that you want me to go—and I understand if you do—then can we keep this from the kids for a while? I don't want to ruin their Christmas.”

Kathy bowed her head and looked away. She had been about to make a similar request. “I won't ruin their Christmas,” she promised. “Let's try to get through the next couple of days like civilized people.” If they could get through this, then the children would never have to be told.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely.

“When were you going to tell me, Robert?” she asked him suddenly.

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me that you were going to leave me.” She already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it.

“I don't know for certain,” he mumbled. “Probably over the weekend.”

Something cracked and broke inside her. “You don't sound so sure.”

“I'm not,” he admitted.

“And yet Stephanie seemed convinced that you were going to tell me after Christmas so that you could spend New Year's Eve with her.”

“Yes, we talked about that.”

“Or were you going to give her an excuse and stay here?” Kathy guessed. She was surprised that she was not hearing a tremendous amount of conviction in his voice.

“Kathy, I have no idea what I would have done. But yes, the plan was to tell you, probably on Saturday or Sunday, that I was leaving.”

“Bastard!” Kathy hissed. She felt a terrible rage bubble up inside her. She wanted to scream and shout and howl. She wanted to hit him and claw at his face with her fingers. How could he walk away from eighteen years together in such a cavalier way? She put her palms on his chest and pushed him hard away from her. “You callous, uncaring bastard!”

Robert stepped back. “I'm sorry, Kathy; I really am. But I made that decision believing that you didn't love me. Before I knew the truth.”

Kathy turned away from him. She concentrated on the turkey stuffing, clamping down hard on her anger. When she was sure that she could control her voice, she said, “If we're going to rebuild our lives and our relationship, we're going to have to be honest with one another.” She looked up and found that he was staring at her reflection in the window. “Will you be honest with me, Robert? Can you promise me that?”

“Yes. Yes, I can,” he said.

“Then you have to promise me something else.”

“Anything.”

“You have to swear to me that you'll stay away from that woman.”

“I promise,” he said quickly. “In any case, I think you can tell from today that she'll want little enough to do with me.” Then he turned and left the room.

Kathy continued leaning against the sink, staring out into the night, seeing only her own reflection, broken and distorted in the window. Stephanie had said that she was finished with Robert . . . but the real question was: Would Robert accept that?