A Stranger on the Beach by Michele Campbell

Author:Michele Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

36

I walked in to the empty apartment, still shaky from seeing that ugly threat scratched into the paint of my car. DIE BITCH. Would Aidan really hurt me? The signs were beginning to point to yes.

Jason’s briefcase was gone from the front hall bench, and his raincoat was missing from the coat stand.

“Hello? Jason?” I called out.

Silence. I double-locked the door behind me. As afraid as I was to be alone, I was relieved to find the apartment empty. A woman about to phone her lover and get him to implicate himself in a crime didn’t need a suspicious husband breathing down her neck. I had things to do that Jason couldn’t see.

To make certain he was gone, I went through each room, checking. I even looked in the bathrooms. In the master bath, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and stopped short, startled. I looked haunted, exhausted, with pinched cheeks and shadows under my eyes. If I saw myself from a distance, I would think, That woman is hiding something. You could see the deception in my eyes. Jason was no longer the only party to this marriage who had secrets. Now I was the one retreating to other rooms to take phone calls, lying about where I’d been, sneaking time alone to conduct my shady business. What had happened to me? When did I become this horrible person? Mere weeks ago, Hannah, Jason, and I were a happy family. I slept easy at night. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t tell lies. Then the Russian woman came to the party, and everything changed. In a moment of weakness, I slept with Aidan, and the dominoes began to fall. Now I was as bad as Jason, as bad as the Russian woman. I wanted my old life back. I wanted my family back.

I wandered into Hannah’s room and sat down on her bed. My little girl had left for college, and I missed her with a terrible, stabbing pain. I toppled over sideways, pressing my face into her pillows, tears flooding my eyes. I was tired, and I was sad. I hugged Hannah’s stuffed puppy dog to my chest and rocked him like a baby. His name was Benji, after the dog in the movie that she loved when she was a little girl. I whispered his name over and over again, kissing his raggedy head. Poor Hannah—she’d wanted a dog so bad, but she was allergic. I should have tried harder, looked at hypoallergenic breeds, taken her in for allergy shots. A pet would have made a difference to a lonely kid like her, but it had seemed like too much bother. Was I a bad mother? I remembered dropping her off at school when she was little, how she’d cling to me, afraid of the mean girls. That exquisite agony of protecting a child from harm, the awful wrench when you had to let them go. I was the one alone now, and I wanted Hannah back.

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