The Marriage Lie by Kimberly Belle

Author:Kimberly Belle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

19

When I turn the corner to Inman Perk, Nick is standing on the sidewalk, two water bottles dangling from a fist. White-blond hair, super-sized limbs, doughy belly filling out the bottom of his tucked-in polo shirt like a half-inflated inner tube. I must have been worse off than I thought when I couldn’t place him at the memorial. Big and bulky, he’s not exactly the type of guy you can miss. A pair of pristine Nike sneakers poke out from under his office khakis, from the looks of them, fresh from a shoe box, and I’m suddenly sorry for suggesting we walk the BeltLine in the middle of a workday.

“Hi, Nick.”

“Hey, Iris. Thanks for meeting me. You ready?”

I try to take his emotional pulse, but his eyes are hidden behind dark wraparound sunglasses, his tone and expression guarded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

The thing is, by now I know that whatever Nick wanted to talk to me about, it can’t be good. Why else would he have called six times in half as many days and insisted we meet in person? If I had any doubts, his greeting and body language just now only confirmed it, morphing my suspicion into a dread as dark and sticky as tar.

He passes me one of the bottles, ice-cold and sweating, and we set off for the alley that leads to the trail in painful, stomach-churning silence.

Like on any other sunny spring day, the Atlanta BeltLine, a stretch of parks and trails carved out of the city’s abandoned railroad tracks, is bustling. Lululemon-clad moms pushing strollers compete for space with runners and dog walkers and college kids on skateboards. Nick and I fall in line behind them, following the trail north toward the high-rises of Midtown in the far distance.

“This is incredibly difficult for me,” he says as we emerge from the shade of the Freedom Parkway overpass, and even though he’s starting to sweat through his work shirt, I know he’s not referring to our hike. His head is down, his gaze glued to the pavement. “I hired your husband. I groomed him. In the eight-plus years he worked for me, I promoted him six times. Not because I liked the guy, which I did, but because he deserved it.”

“Okay...” I drag out the word, my heart jumping around too hard, too fast. I feel a “but” coming. It’s bearing down on me like an electric thundercloud, sucking every hair on my body skyward.

“I don’t know how much you know about our business, but most engineers don’t give a crap about where the money comes from. Will was one of those rare breeds that not only cared, he thought about how to bring in more. It’s part of why he was so brilliant at his job, because he could design things the customer didn’t even know they wanted until he showed it to them.” He latches onto my elbow, steers us to the trail’s edge to let a trio of bicyclists pass.

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