Page 18 of Stay Away from Him

Thomas:That’s right. I’m hollowed out, sad and angry and I can’t eventhinksometimes—but also, I have no idea what it’s all about. What I’m even feeling all of thisfor. Was Rose murdered? Did she kill herself? Did she go on a walk and fall into the river and drown? Did she leave me, leaveus? I don’t know. And the not knowing—it’s as bad as the grieving.

Amelia:Okay. This is good. What else?

Thomas:Well, in the middle of all this…thisambiguous grief, as you call it, the world has decided that I’m to blame. That I killed her.

Amelia:Not the whole world, Thomas. Your friends believe in your innocence. Your daughters. Me.

Thomas:Sure, but a good portion of the world, they think I’m a killer. You have any idea how that feels? My wife, the woman I love, the girl I fell in love with all those years ago—you remember, don’t you, how in love we were? Then we get married,and we make a life together, we have these beautiful girls, and the woman I fell in love with becomes the mother of the children I love more than life itself. Rose, my beautiful Rose, she’s gone. She’s the one person who I most want to find, the one face in all the billions of faces in the world that I’m completely desperate to see, who I’d be completelyrelievedto see. And some detective, some county prosecutor, some journalists get it into their heads that I killed her? That I snuffed the life out of her? That I’m capable of doing that to someone I love? I can’t even put words to it.

Amelia:That sounds incredibly difficult.

Thomas:And then you add the girls to it. Think of it—two girls, a fourteen-year-old and a twelve-year-old. What they must be going through. Losing a mother, that’s trauma enough. But then to also see their father accused of killing her? What’s worst of all, what absolutely kills me, is that I can’t protect them from any of it. I can’t protect them from what people are saying, what they think I did. It’s in their heads, even if they don’t believe it.

Amelia:You’re a good dad, Thomas. The girls have exactly what they need in you.

Thomas:Do they, though? I swear, sometimes it’s all so much, I feel like it’s literally going to break me in half. I go to bed some nights thinking this is it, that I’ll just die in my sleep—as if a person could die from stress and sadness. And maybe a person could. But then every morning I wake up, still alive, and I have to go through it all over again. It’s all just…

[pause]

[muffled crying]

Thomas:I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. You have to help me.

Rose

My husband is cheating on me with our next-door neighbor.

Next up on the irrational thought tour!

But is this one really so irrational? Thomas did used to be in a relationship with Amelia. They were together for a couple years in med school, then they broke up not long before Thomas and I met and started dating. From what I can tell, things were pretty serious between them. I don’t know much about that time in their lives. They never really talk about it. But from a few things they’ve said—stray, barbed comments—I’ve gotten the sense that they weren’t so much broken up when Thomas and I met, as taking a break. (CueFriendsmusic and Ross shouting, “We were on a break!”) I was Thomas’s rebound from Amelia, a fling that wasn’t supposed to last. But then we did last, got married, had the girls, bought a house.

And Amelia Harkness, for some reason, stayed close by every step of the way. She was Thomas’s best friend during the years we were dating, my maid of honor in our wedding, at his insistence. And when we settled in this house by Lake Julia in the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, she somehow ended up as our next-door neighbor. The girls call her Aunt Amelia.

My husband’s ex-girlfriend—his beautiful ex-girlfriend—is an honorary member of the family. Thomas loves her. So do the girls.

I’m the only one who’s not so sure. Who’s merely tolerated Amelia’s presence for years. Sitting at our table for weekend dinners. Her occasional pop-ins asking for Thomas’s helplifting something heavy or doing some work in the yard. Or when I wake up from a midday nap and realize I’m alone in the house, only to find my husband and kids next door with her, playing board games and eating popcorn and laughing. The very picture of a perfect, happy family—with Amelia Harkness playing the role of wife and mother in my place.

Sometimes I can’t tell if she’s the other woman, or if I am. If she and Thomas were meant to be together, and I’m the one who’s the usurper.

But are they having sex? That’s the question.

They certainly have before. You don’t spend two years in a relationship in your twenties without having lots of sex. And that’s bad enough. Not that my husband had prior relationships, prior sexual partners—everyone comes into a marriage with a history. No, what’s difficult is constantly being reminded of that history. Plenty of women are married to men with ex-girlfriends in their past. But how many women have to live next door to one of those ex-girlfriends? How many of them have to be constantly reminded of their husband’s past love for another woman?

It comes to me in flashes. Some of the time, I can put all of this out of my mind, think of Amelia as just another person, a woman living her own life, no threat to me. But then she and Thomas will exchange a glance, a brief gaze that feels charged and private. A smile will come to the corner of Amelia’s mouth, a distant and intense look to Thomas’s face, and then I’ll remember. Amelia and Thomas have been together. They’ve seen each other naked, can close their eyes and picture it anytime they want to. And I picture it too, not wanting to, but the images come to my mind all the same, Amelia and my husband tangled together in ways that are as intimate and vulnerable as it is possible for two people to be together.

No one should have to have these kinds of thoughts. And sometimes I’m furious at Thomas for forcing me to have them, by insisting on keeping Amelia in his life. Shouldn’t I be enough for him?

Ok, so they have had sex before, and that’s bad enough—but are they having sex now? Have they ever had sex while Thomas and I have been together?

They’ve certainly had the opportunity, living so close together. All Thomas would have to do would be to sneak over when nobody was watching, creep through Amelia’s back door, go to her in her bed. She’d be waiting for him, I’m sure, in something silky, something she bought with him in mind, meant to slip easily off her body. Then he’d creep back home after they were done, maybe take a shower over there first to wash the smell of her off him before sliding back into bed next to me.

This is what I imagine. But has it ever happened? I’m ashamed to admit it, but there’ve certainly been nights when I’ve been dead enough to the world—passed out from too much to drink or overmedicated with pills to help me sleep—that he’d easily be able to slip out of bed and come back an hour or two later without my knowing.

***

I even mentioned it to Amelia once. We don’t often spend time alone, just the two of us, but a week ago she came over and rang our bell in the middle of the day, when Thomas and the girls were gone. She’d gotten a piece of our mail by accident and wanted to return it to us. When I answered the door, she looked surprised to see me, and she explained what had happened with halting words, handed the envelopeto me from a distance, as if afraid to get too close. Her nervousness piqued my curiosity, and I invited her in. Maybe I wanted to torment her. This woman, a family friend, who I’d come to view as a rival.

We sat in the living room. I didn’t offer her a glass of water or a cup of tea, even though that would have been the polite thing to do. Instead, I just watched her, observed her hesitation to meet my gaze, fascinated. Amelia was usually so confident, but something about being alone with me unsettled her.

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