Chapter 2

 

Where I was going depended on what I wanted, and that part was easy. I wanted to have fun.

Picturing the beach, I pulled out a bathing suit. And a sundress.

But I also liked antiquing. I used to tag along with a high school friend and her mom, and though I knew little about antiques, I remembered the smell of history and the quiet. Both appealed to me now. So I pulled out a peasant blouse and shorts, jeans and T-shirts and sandals.

But I also liked hiking. At least, I had liked it that one college summer. Jude had known the forests—every tree, every stream, every creature—and had taught me well. Mountaintops were cold. I added a sweater and a fleece to the pile. Having tossed out my hiking boots long ago, I added sneakers. And heavy socks. And underwear, nightshirt, and hairbrush.

Did I want my laptop? Kindle? iPod? No. I didn’t even want my BlackBerry, but it was my phone, which, in an emergency, was a good thing to have.

Makeup? I didn’t want it, but didn’t have the courage to leave it at home. That said, I didn’t need purple eye shadow, navy liner, or two spare blushers. Leaving these on the bathroom counter, I put the makeup case on top of the pile.

It was a big pile. No way would everything fit in my bag. I thought of taking a second one, but vetoed the idea. A second bag meant clutter. If I was running away from a tangled life, simplicity was key.

I changed my blue shirt and black slacks for one of those T-shirts and jeans, switched diamond studs for gold ones, and glanced at my watch. It was 11:23.

I turned away, then back. This was no digital watch. Yet I knew it was 11:23—now 11:24—because in this life that I’d made for myself, every minute had to be accounted for.

Defiant, I removed the watch and left it with the earrings, then packed what I could and returned the excess to a drawer. Only when I lifted the closed bag did I notice the unmade bed beneath—beige sheets rumpled on a black platform bed, all sleek and minimalistic, like the rest of the place.

The bed went unmade often, a concession to the rush of our lives, but I made it now as a small gesture to James. Quickly done, I ran down a flight to our beige-and-black front hall, dropped my bag there, ran down another flight to our beige-and-black kitchen. Grabbing granola bars (colorfully wrapped) and bottled water (not Eagle River), I ran back up to the front door.

The mail had just arrived and was strewn under the slot in a way that previewed its contents. Resigned, I singled out my credit card bill. The company had notified me that I was maxed out, and I knew the offending charge wasn’t mine. Seeing it on the bill, though, rubbed salt on the wound.

I was returning it to the fanned-out mail, feeling discouraged, when another letter caught my eye. It was from Jude.

I didn’t have time to read it. I had to leave.

But I couldn’t not read it.

Like its predecessors, it was postmarked Alaska. Jude was fishing for crab on the Bering Sea, and he wrote remarkably well for a man who had thumbed his nose at every teacher he’d ever had in school. His lengthy descriptions of his boat, the sea, the nets spilling their jumble of bodies and legs on the deck, even the other men aboard, were riveting.

This letter was a single sheet.

Pleased? Jude had nearly killed me once. Pleased?

I was in the middle of my own personal crisis. I couldn’t process this now.

Tucking the letter in my back pocket, I called the garage where we kept our car. I would be there in five minutes, I said, and yes, I would like the tank filled with gas, put the charge on our tab, please. That was poetic.

Another poetic thought? If I had kids, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. No way could I leave kids. But then, if I was a mom, I wouldn’t want to leave. So maybe it was good I hadn’t conceived. Maybe there was a reason.

Shouldering the bag, I was halfway out the door when I had a last thought. James would hardly miss me; he was too busy. But he was my husband.

Returning to the hall console, I pulled paper and pen from the drawer. I’m fine, I wrote. Need a break. Will be in touch.

Leaving the note in clear view on top of the bills, I grabbed the car keys and was through the door without a backward glance. The rising humidity worsened my mood, making my need to escape stronger than ever.

Escape. The word was perfect. I didn’t want to arrange a party that my mother would hate. Didn’t want to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of a woman I barely knew. Didn’t want to tell a client that her deformed fetus was worth $21,530. Didn’t want to smile through one minute of my firm dinner, with my husband or without.

An ambulance sped through the intersection ahead, its siren just one more everyday ho-hum. Crossing the street, I hurried to the end of the next block, where the nose of my car edged out. As getaway cars went, it was high-end—and largely responsible for my maxxed-out credit card—but James loved this car. Me, I wanted reliability, so his high-end car would do.

Stowing my bag in the trunk, I slipped behind the wheel, blasted the AC, and headed for FDR Drive, but crosstown traffic was thick. A single truck, stopped for a delivery, was enough to slow everything down. As I watched the light ahead turn green, then red, then green again, I tried to relax, but I was out of practice. When I consciously slackened my limbs, it worked. As soon as my mind wandered, though, my muscles tightened right up.

Tension was my body’s default, and it did follow, in a sense. A trial lawyer had to be alert to hear every nuance of every argument, so that on a second’s notice she could argue in defense of her client’s rights.

Only I wasn’t in a courtroom. I hadn’t been in one since being a summer associate at Lane Lavash, when I’d been wined and dined and shown what it would be like if I joined the firm. No one had mentioned a cubicle. The tension in a cubicle was bad, but for different reasons.

Relax, Emily. Do not think about this.

What to think about then? Handsome, irrepressible, unattainable Jude?

Not a good idea. This was my escape—from everything.

On the Bruckner now, I turned the radio on, then off. I needed silence, but I also needed food, since I was starting to shake. The console said it was 1:08. What had breakfast been? A donut. Had I eaten it? I couldn’t recall.

Driving one-handed, I scarfed down a granola bar and crumpled the empty wrapper. Then I uncrumpled it and held it up beside the wheel. Chocolate peanut butter. That sounded good. Had it tasted good? I had no idea. I had eaten it too quickly to know.

At least I was making progress. Hitting the Hutchinson heading north, I followed the signs for New England. The route was familiar; I had driven it dozens of times to visit my mother in Maine.

Thinking of Mom, I reached for my BlackBerry, then thought twice. Turning it on meant hearing the ding of messages that were waiting, but I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to text. Besides, no one would worry. Walter Burbridge would be annoyed when I wasn’t at the firm dinner, but James and I were maybe two of eighty. My sister would be annoyed when I didn’t call her back with a party update, but I was used to her scolding. No one would miss me at yoga, what with different classes at different times. And book group wasn’t meeting for another two weeks.

My mother would be fine. She was the most undemanding of the people in my world. We had talked on Thursday. If she didn’t hear from me over the weekend, she would wait.

My father might not. Once, when I was in college and he couldn’t reach me, he had called a cop friend, who had called the campus police, who had personally tracked me down at a weekend retreat for my sorority. Talk about embarrassing? But Mom knew how to handle him now. She had wised up after the divorce, coming into her own enough to tell him when she thought he was wrong. They actually had a great relationship. I’ve often thought they should remarry, but Mom insists that the key to their friendship is distance.

And my husband? Would James worry when he got my note? Probably. I had never before been even remotely flighty. But he would be busy at work, surrounded by associates with whom he spent far more time than he did with me. One of those associates was a new hire I had met at James’s last firm dinner. She was single and strikingly attractive, and she had been cool and disinterested in me to the point of rudeness. When I told James that she had her eye on him, he had given me a quick hug and laughed.

I didn’t find it funny. Jude had cheated on me, so I knew what it felt like to have the bottom drop out of your world. I didn’t think I could bear it with James. But we rarely saw each other. Rarely talked the way we used to. Rarely shared dreams as we had once.

Feeling the impact of something tragic, I cracked open the window and let the fresh air brush my face. If this trip was my escape, I had to relax.

Thankfully, the farther I got from New York, the easier it was. Out of sight, out of mind? Partly. The rest was pure denial. Had I not been so good at it, I might have left the Big Apple months ago. Was that ironic or what? Denial had kept me in a bad place. Now it would help me escape.

Once I passed the haze of Bridgeport, my shoulders began to unknot. With fewer trucks after New Haven, I grew light-headed. Approaching Providence, I actually felt wisps of euphoria. I was free! No work, no family, no demands. I was on my own, and I was headed for the beach.

Unfortunately, so was everyone else, to judge from the traffic in Massachusetts. As I shot toward Cape Cod, there were slowdowns with no cause other than the sheer volume of cars. As I inched over the Sagamore Bridge, I looked at my watch. The bare spot on my wrist was a reminder that I was in no rush.

I headed for Chatham because I had heard it was charming, and once I reached trees, shingled houses weathered by sea salt, and June gardens, it was. I found a vacancy at a modest motel not far from the beach, two levels of rooms shaped in a U around a pool. Leaving my bag, I walked into town. The air off the Atlantic was salty and cool, and moving felt good. In time, growing hungry, I sat on the outside deck of a restaurant and ordered a cod salad. It looked amazing, I was famished, and it was gone in minutes.

Determining to work on actually tasting my food, I glanced at the watch that wasn’t there, then at the low-slung sun. Guessing it was eight, I bought several magazines and, back at the motel, stretched out by the pool with Women’s Health. I was just getting into an article on vitamin D when a couple arrived with two cranky toddlers. They were followed by a pair of families with eight kids between them, splashing and shrieking as they played in the pool.

No reading here. Closing the magazine, I went back to my room and undressed. And there was Jude’s letter, stuffed in my back pocket.

Coming home? What was I supposed to do with that?

I tried to read and failed. I dozed off, only to bolt up moments later, disoriented. The bedside clock read 11:04. It was another minute before I got my bearings.

Wondering if James had come home and seen my note yet, I watched the clock until I couldn’t bear the suspense a minute longer. I turned on my BlackBerry. It was midnight.

What do you mean, you need a break? he had texted. Where are you? He had left an identical voice message, then a second text. This isn’t funny, Emily. Where the hell are you? All three had come in the last half hour, which meant he had worked pretty late.

He hadn’t said he was worried. What I heard, in my vulnerable frame of mind, was Cut it out, Em, I don’t have time for this.

Disappointed, I turned off the BlackBerry.

Only then, knowing that James knew I was gone, did I feel the shock of what I’d done. But not regret. His response clinched it. I needed a break.

The sounds outside now were adult—drunken whoops and hollers, the shudder of a diving board, the explosion of water. For a split second, I wished I’d brought my iPod. But covering one noise with another wasn’t the answer.

Wondering what was, I drifted into a fitful sleep, but I was up before dawn, waiting for the sun. Dressing warmly then, I walked into town for a newspaper and breakfast. The newspaper was a mistake—not much happy news—but by the time I realized that, my eggs and toast had disappeared, inhaled like so much else of what I ate.

Vowing again to work on that, I returned to the motel to change and, a short time later, hit the beach. The ocean air gradually warmed, but along with the strengthening sun came families, boom boxes, and volleyball. Seeking peace, I walked far enough off to be able to hear the gulls and the tide, but when sand gave way to rocks, I had to turn. I stretched out on my towel again and ate a hot dog at the beach bar for lunch, but by mid-afternoon I was antsy.

This wasn’t fun. It wasn’t where I wanted to be. I had traded one noise for another—city sounds for pounding waves, shrieking kids, blaring boom boxes.

Returning to the motel, I packed and checked out. Then I sat in my car trying to decide where to go. I thought of continuing to Provincetown, which was the practical choice, since I was already on the Cape.

Rejecting practical, I considered heading up to Ogunquit. My mother lived an hour from there, making it the safe choice.

The safest choice, of course, would be to head south to New York. If I did it now, I could be back with no one but James the wiser. Much longer, and the consequences would grow.

Oh yeah, New York was definitely the safest choice, but safe choices were what had done me in. Right now I was a rebel, and this was still my escape.

Aiming west, I breezed back over the Sagamore Bridge toward the Mass Pike. Traffic was light; weekenders were already where they wanted to be. The farther I went, the more the land opened, the meadows greened, the woods thickened. Daring the radio, I found a classical station that soothed, and set the volume only high enough to feel the effect.

By the time I reached the Berkshires, the shadows were long. Wanting quiet, I avoided Stockbridge and Lenox, instead following signs to a lesser town whose name I knew. There was only one place to stay, an inn that would likely cost a lot, but for this night, that was fine. There was no sign indicating a vacancy, and the parking lot was full, but I was here, and it was worth a shot. Finding a sliver of space at the back, I eased the car in and shouldered my bag.

The inn was a rambling affair whose main attraction was a wraparound porch with rocking chairs, but the people in those chairs and the ones walking inside for dinner looked to be young professionals like James and me. Most had kids.

Letting a party of six pass, I followed them in. The clerk at the front desk was older, more starched than the guests, and reluctantly—Well, we do usually have a two-night minimum—gave me a room. It was over the kitchen, but the noise of pots and pans was mild, and the smell of sizzling tenderloin so tempting that I ordered it for dinner. I ate at the bar, which was quiet and dark. No one bothered me, and I actually tasted the beef.

My senses were returning, which was nice. Along with it, though, came my conscience. I was starting to feel guilty. And sad. This was the first Saturday night I’d been without James.

I figured it had to be ten. I wondered if I should call just to say I was okay.

But what if he was working? He often did on Saturday nights. If he didn’t answer his phone, I might worry that he was with her—and if he did pick up, he would want to know where I was and when I’d be back. But I couldn’t go back yet. I had barely begun to relax.

Bent on doing that, I settled on the porch and rocked for a while, then borrowed a book from the little library in the living room and headed upstairs. But I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking of James. Wondering if he was thinking of me, I turned on my BlackBerry.

You took my car! Where ARE you? Please call, he had typed earlier that afternoon, and barely an hour later, Why did you take so much money?

You maxxed out my credit card, I typed, so I’m using cash.

That’s a lot of cash for the weekend, he replied. My firm dinner is tomorrow night. You’ll be back by then, won’t you?

He was worried. I considered giving in. I truly might have, if he had asked how I was or what was wrong. I surely would have, if he’d said that he loved me or missed me. But I saw none of those words on the screen.

I’ll let you know, I replied and, feeling a profound sadness, turned off the BlackBerry before James could text back. I might hate electronic wizardry, but it was my ally now. I could use it or not, could respond to James or not, and with my calls simply showing “New York” on his caller ID, he had no idea where I was.

That knowledge didn’t help me sleep. I kept waking to the strangeness of what I’d done and a disconcerting sense that I was treading water. And then came the coyote dream, which had to have some sort of message, I knew, though I couldn’t figure out what it was. I brooded for most of the night.

Respite came with the sun in the form of the smell of fresh-baked bread, wafting up through the old oak floorboards from the kitchen below. I hadn’t smelled fresh-baked bread in months—and bread was only the start. By the time I reached the dining room, the cook was adding breakfast meats and waffles. I filled my plate with eggs, a scoop of hash, thick slices of bacon and banana bread, and ate slowly, chewing deliberately between sips of joe. The coffee was dark and rich, its mug warm in my hands.

Other families had drifted in by now, leaving tennis rackets and golf gloves by their chairs as they went to the buffet. There was no talk between tables, but I was used to this. People weren’t unfriendly, simply minding their own business, which was what we urbanites generally did, and these folks were from the city, no doubt about that. They might have been my neighbors, attending a week of tennis or golf camp now that their kids had finished school for the year.

Wondering why I was sitting in a room with the same people I wanted to escape, I swallowed the last of my coffee and, skirting Mountain Buggies on the porch, went off to see the town. For a sophisticated place, it was little more than a crossroads, a modest mix of small Colonials and cottages, private homes and shops. I did my antiquing, browsed through a closet-size art gallery, even stood at the window of a yarn store and watched the women inside. A latecomer invited me to join them as she opened the cranberry door, and though I envied them their friendship, I didn’t knit.

Consoling myself with the quiet, I walked on. I was free, but I couldn’t feel the rush of it. I sat for a while on a bench where the road forked. But euphoria didn’t come.

Discouraged, I returned to the inn, took newspaper and pen from the front desk, and sank into an overstuffed chair in the library. Crossword puzzles were a distraction, though I had never been terribly good at them. After an hour, I gave up and went out to the gazebo to think about freedom. But thinking about freedom made me think about Jude, and I didn’t want to do that.

So I followed the other guests when they headed in for lunch. After waiting in line, I fixed a sandwich from the make-your-own at the buffet table, and settled in a rocker on the front porch, but the families around me made me think of my own. Taking the BlackBerry from my pocket, I checked for messages from my parents. There were none. My sister made up for it. She had sent multiple notes and wanted to know why I wasn’t answering.

Fearing she would make trouble if I didn’t act, I shot her a quick reply. No time now. I’ll write later in the week.

Walter Burbridge had sent a slew of e-mail. I didn’t read Friday’s batch but, rather, allowing him time to cool off, read the one he had sent late yesterday. Tessa said you were sick, but it isn’t like you not to respond. What’s going on? And then, earlier this morning, Are you all right? Let me know if I can help.

He actually sounded concerned, but I wasn’t fooled. Working weekends at Lane Lavash was optional, but there was nothing optional about Mondays. If I didn’t head back soon, I wouldn’t be at my desk in the morning. Walter would be pissed. Word would spread. My job would be at risk.

First, though, came James. There were lots of missed calls from him, with no messages left, and his texts were brief.

This dinner is important, babe.

Then, Please answer me. I know you’re seeing this.

Then, If you’re having a nervous breakdown we can deal but you have to call. I’m starting to worry.

Then, WHERE ARE YOU?

He sounded frantic, and I almost did call. But I knew how persuasive he could be. What was it they said about the difference between a lawyer and a bucket of crap being the bucket? James was a brilliant negotiator and, though barely thirty-five, had already made a name for himself.

I didn’t trust myself to talk with him. He would have me back there in two minutes flat. But when I pictured driving south, everything inside me backed up again.

I pulled in a slow, painful breath that must have opened a window of thought, because, sitting on that porch with the remains of a half-eaten sandwich and a once-promising life, I realized that this wasn’t about James. It wasn’t about work or Manhattan or my sister, Kelly, and it wasn’t about having fun. It wasn’t even about Jude. It was about me. Where I was headed. Who I wanted to be.

But I did owe James, and texting wouldn’t do. So I steeled myself and called his cell.

He answered with a worried “Where are you?”

“I won’t be back in time, James. I’m sorry. Just tell them I’m sick.”

“Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I need to think, and I can’t do it there.”

“Think about what? You’re my wife.”

“I need time.”

“For what? You’re giving me a heart attack here, Emily. What happened? You were fine Thursday night.”

“Was I?” I asked, thinking of all the times I’d floated the idea that I wasn’t fine at all. “I’ll call once I know where I’m at. I’m sorry about tonight, James, I really am.” I disconnected before he could say anything else, and turned off the BlackBerry with a sense of relief. I was glad I’d called. With all the wrong things I’d done, this was right.

Returning to my room, I restowed the few things I’d taken from my bag. The Berkshires were an improvement over the Cape, but both were way stations. If the point was to figure out who I was, I had to go back to the place that had set me on this course. That place wasn’t New York.

I started the car. With each mile, the consequences loomed, but they were in my rearview mirror. I was headed north.