Nancy Thompson - Out With The Old, In With The New

A few minutes later, I steer my Lexus SUV into the driveway and hit the garage door opener. I wait for the door to lift and notice the glow of the living-room lights seeping through the slats of the plantation shutters, as though a happy family lives here. Maybe Corbin’s still awake. A wave of panic seizes me, and I can’t breathe for a few seconds.

But I force air into my lungs. I still have no idea what I’m going to say to him, but I decide right then and there I’m not going to make it easy for him. Girls’ getaway be damned. Going out of town with Alex and Rainey would be like handing him a free pass to be with her.

Whoever she is.

I pull into the garage, kill the engine and sit there until the door wheezes and squeaks shut behind me. Once closed, the garage is perfectly silent, except for the occasional tick and sigh of the car’s hot engine.

If I really want to know who she is I can find out.

The thought makes my heart beat so fast it hurts. I take a deep breath to calm myself, run my hand over the tan glove leather of the passenger seat. I need to touch something tangible, something tactile, to ground me in reality.

I love this car. It was Corbin’s present to me three months ago for our twentieth anniversary. He picked it out himself. Had it delivered with a big red bow on the hood. Like something you’d see in a television commercial.

If material gifts were a standard of measure for his love, there would be no doubt. Always generous. A good provider. And a good father.

Because of that, doesn’t he deserve the benefit of the doubt? Or at least a chance to explain?

The beginning of a headache buzzes in my temples. I close my eyes and press my fingers against the lids, but it doesn’t help. When I open my eyes again, the dim overhead light casts an eerie yellow glow. Everything looks fuzzy and out of proportion, especially the shadows.

If I shine a bright light directly into the darkness, will I prove this dread is merely a figment of my imagination?

As my eyes focus, I see Caitlin’s in-line skates hanging on the Peg-Board next to the kitchen door. Corbin’s golf clubs sit below. My treadmill, slightly dusty, is next to it. Our three bikes are suspended by chains from the ceiling.

Am I willing to give it all up so easily because of an anonymous letter containing one vague sentence?

A chill winds its way through my body. Despite the cool January-in-Florida weather, the night air feels clammy and clings to me like a bad omen.

Okay, I’ll ask him.

I’ll ask him because I need Corbin to explain this away. Not so I can turn the other cheek while he fools around. I want him to convince me it’s not true for the sake of our family.

For the twenty years I’ve given him.

God, that’s half my life.

I let myself out of the car. As I put my key in the kitchen door, I hear Jack, our yellow Lab, barking before I let myself inside. He jumps up to greet me as I step into the kitchen.

“Shh, Jack. Be quiet. You’re going to wake the whole house.” I stroke his silky head half hoping, half fearing Corbin will call out to me that he’s in the living room. But he doesn’t.

The dirty dinner dishes are still on the table along with the remnants of Chinese takeout. I flip off the kitchen light.

My heels click on the hardwood floor as I walk into the living room. Is every light in the house on?

“Corbin?”

The house is so still my words seem to echo back at me. I turn off the downstairs lights and make my way upstairs, which is completely dark by contrast. I push open Caitlin’s bedroom door. Her night-light glows in the corner.

She’s sleeping on her stomach like an angel child in her pink canopy bed. Long, curly blond hair flows around her. She looks like a princess floating on a spun-gold cloud.

As far as her daddy’s concerned, she is a princess. Although he wasn’t exactly thrilled when I found out I was pregnant. Caitlin was a surprise. Our son, Daniel, was thirteen when she was born, and Corbin was ready to “have his life back,” as he put it. We were going to travel, and he wanted more time for golf.

Secretly, I was thrilled to be pregnant again. I’d miscarried three times after Daniel was born. Then I quit conceiving.

I just knew she’d be a girl. Not that I don’t love my son. I do. I just always wanted a baby girl. And now that Daniel’s away at college, it’s great having someone who still needs me. See, she was meant to be.

That’s what I kept telling Corbin and, of course, the minute she was born she had him wrapped around her little finger. So it’s been a moot point ever since. I mean what’s not to love?

She just turned six. It’s a wonderful age. Every age is wonderful, but this one is particularly nice. She’s so sweet, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than be her mother.

Is that so bad? Does it make me unambitious to find fulfillment in motherhood?

I suppose I should add wife to that job description. But it goes without saying.

Doesn’t it?

I stroke a wisp of hair off Caitlin’s forehead and realize with startling clarity as if I’m staring back through a tunnel of years that mine and Corbin’s relationship went a little off track when I got pregnant. I guess we haven’t had a chance to reconnect as we should have. But you know how it is having a new baby. Since then, life set sail on its own course. Corbin’s practice has just been named the staff physicians for Orlando Magic—the NBA team—and he’s busier than ever at the hospital. Sometimes I’ve felt as if all I can do is hold on or risk falling overboard.

But now everything’s run aground because of that damned letter.

My heart aches. I kiss Caitlin’s cheek and linger to inhale her sweet scent, but she stirs, and I pull back so I don’t wake her.

I walk down the dark hall, into our darker bedroom. I click on the overhead light. Corbin’s asleep on his side. His back is to me. When I sit on the side of the bed, my thigh grazes his body.

I touch his bare shoulder. He lets out a little snore.

“Corbin, wake up. We need to talk.”

I remember a time when a pickup line was defined as a lustful attempt to make somebody’s acquaintance. For the past nineteen years, the only pickup line I’ve been party to is the slow-moving, after-school queue that snakes around the Liberty School parking lot.

I don’t miss being hit on. What bothers me as I sit waiting for my daughter to get out of school is the fact that I never noticed the incongruous dual usage of the term.

Pickup line.

It’s so ridiculous. How could I have missed it?

It makes me wonder what else I’ve overlooked all these years.

I trust so freely. I mean, why shouldn’t I? If a person—namely my husband—has never given me reason to doubt him, why shouldn’t I trust him implicitly? It can’t be any other way. A relationship without trust is a derailed train.

No. Worse.

It’s a yawning sinkhole that opens its greedy jaws and devours everything that once seemed stable. Without trust, you might as well end it before the relationship gets ugly.

Because it will. Without trust, sooner or later you’ll end up eating each other alive.

That’s why when Corbin pronounced the letter someone’s idea of a sick joke, I chose to believe him.

I had to.

If you could have seen him, his eyes hooded and heavy with sleep. He propped himself up on his elbow and blinked at the paper I thrust in his face. “What’s this?”

The overhead light cast shadows on his face, hollowing his cheeks, making his cheekbones appear even sharper. So handsome. What woman wouldn’t want him?

“I don’t know, Corbin. I was hoping you could explain it to me.”