33

Jason shoved through the door to Brenda’s apartment building. The morning light pressured his eyeballs. He brought a hand up and wished for the sunglasses that rested safely in his BMW a block away.

His watch read 7 a.m. He thought of Brenda standing at her door, leaning against the frame after they kissed good-bye, her hair a mess, her green eyes lidded by tiredness. A smile tugged at his lips, and he let it come.

He rounded the corner; the sun was at his back, and his eyes could focus now. He spotted the rounded edges of his car. His mind played over what had happened since he’d parked it. He thought he must look like a crazy man to anyone who saw him on the street, the way his smile wouldn’t stop.

At the car, he found his sunglasses and got the Bimmer started, and in ten minutes he pulled into his driveway and pressed the garage-door opener. As he watched the panels fold up, his mind was on a quick shower and change of clothes.

Serena’s car sat on the left. Where she used to park it before she left him.

His foot rested on the brake pedal. He stared at the black trunk lid, the three-pronged symbol in back a mockery of the peace sign. The vehicle announced her presence, and in response Jason found claustrophobia pressing in on his body from all angles.

She’d left a space for his car where she used to, but Jason yanked on the parking brake lever and turned off the ignition where he sat in the middle of the driveway. He stood outside his car, the neighborhood quiet in the still morning air, calmness all around him while his heartbeat charged and his vision clouded with irritation.

He fingered the key to his BMW as if it were some sort of magic charm that would ward her away. He could jump back in his car and return to Brenda’s apartment. Take a day off, the both of them.

But no, that would be the coward’s way out. And Serena would know he’d come home. She would have heard the churn of the garage-door opener unless she was in the very back of the house.

Jason clicked the lock button on his car key and moved into the garage. The door to the house was unlocked. He stepped inside.

There she sat. A portrait of female counsel seated at table. She wore a new gray suit, shoulders sharp enough to cut paper, skirt revealing the curve of her crossed knees beside the tabletop. The neckline of the jacket circled the base of her throat and left a gap exposing the dip at the center of her collarbone. The black fabric of a belt circled a waistline he’d rested his hands on a thousand times.

She lifted a china cup to her lips. Her lipstick had pinked the brim. She pursed her lips and swallowed, and as she returned the cup to its spot on the saucer, her left hand rose to draw a strand of her auburn hair behind an ear. She turned her eyes to him, brown, brushed upward at their edges by blackened lashes. Those eyes revealed nothing. She could have been considering a contract. Or ready to pull a trigger.

But her hair was different, trimmed at the ends since he’d seen her last, so that the curl where it rested on her shoulder wasn’t as long as it had been when she’d walked out on him. Like everything else about her appearance, it was just right.

Jason wondered if she had trimmed her hair and bought the new suit to torture him. He didn’t speak. He closed the door.

Serena’s middle fingertip circled the lip of the china coffee cup, the steam rising from inside swirling around her fingers. She’d painted her nails with a new shade of red—was that purple in it? They could have been candy.

“Long night, Jase?” Her voice had the texture of silk.

He put his keys on the counter. “Too short.” He went for the cupboard and brought out a mug. Serena’s coffee was always weaker than he liked it, but it would do. He brought it up for a sip. His hand trembled, the mug flittering against his lips until he pressed it to them. He waited for a remark from her about it. None came.

Jason took his mug to the table and sat. She watched him, her cool expression unchanging. You’d have to strap a polygraph to her to see what was going on in her head—if you could even coax a straight answer out of her. Her finger kept working around that china. Jason tried to decide if it was the maddening deliberation of the movement or her silence that was making him so angry. Or maybe it was just her presence here, sitting in her favorite perch as if nothing had ever happened and she was just having coffee with her husband on an ordinary day.

She tapped the lip of her cup twice with that fingertip. “Who is she?”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve asking me that.”

She uncrossed her legs and turned to face him. Her hands circled the cup. “So you still believe it.”

“Of course I do.”

“We’ve been over this, but I’m going to say it again and keep saying it until you believe me. I never had any kind of relationship with Pete Rossi other than a professional one. I never cheated on you. I never lied to you. Ever.” A practiced glare. A dramatic flash of the eyes and pinch of the brow betrayed the emotion behind her level tone.

It made him angrier than ever. “Sure. I believed that for a long time. All the business trips with him, the late nights coming home. I believed all of it. Until I found that letter.”

“Yes. The letter.” She leaned back. “Do you still have it?”

“I burned it.”

“Too bad. I was hoping to go over it with you. Did you really read it? The words, the sentences? I wouldn’t compose anything like that, no matter what kind of delirium of love I was supposed to be in.” She slid the coffee cup an inch to the left. “Did you look beyond the penmanship? I don’t think you did. This is what truly disturbs me about all this, Jason. That you would believe this drivel no matter how similar the penmanship looked, instead of believing words out of my own mouth.”

“You said all that before you walked out on me.”

Her jaw jutted toward him. She drew a breath in. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about it that way.” She blinked.

Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her shed tears. He thought hard. It came to him.

His resolve fled.

He looked down to the table. Steam still rose from his mug, but none lifted from Serena’s china cup. The teaspoons of coffee remaining in her cup pooled tepid there.

It was on their wedding night that he’d last seen her cry. He’d asked her what she was crying about, and she’d told him she was so happy it overwhelmed her. She’d laughed through her tears and thrown herself into his arms again. They were tears of joy that night.

Now she wouldn’t look at him. Blinking back the tears didn’t quite work. She had to flick one aside.

Jason’s hands itched to go to her face, to touch the smooth skin of her cheek and wipe any tears away. But his hands probably smelled of Brenda’s perfume. He clenched his fingers together so they would stay in place.

“Serena . . .”

She held up a hand. “Don’t.” It was all she could get out. She went for the cup and swallowed what was left. A deep breath heaved the chest of her tailored suit, and she leveled her eyes at him. They shone, but no longer with tears. “Someone is trying to destroy our marriage. But that’s not what’s killing me. It’s that you’re willing to let them do it. Well, I’m not. I’ve had two months to think it through—two months of being apart from you and having to live with you believing lies about me—and I’ve decided. Whoever it is is going to have to do a lot more than forge a letter to get rid of me.” She took the cup and saucer and went to the sink.

After covering her hands with plastic gloves, she soaped a sponge and ran the water. Jason watched the slope of her neck, the way her hair folded forward until she finished with the cup and saucer and reached for a dishtowel. Busy hands always kept her from giving in to her emotions. She forced herself into her intellect with activity. Any moment she would have a plan.

The dishes dried and in their proper places, she folded the dishtowel and hung it from the oven handle. When she turned to Jason, he saw resolution in the pinched angle of her brows.

“I’m not running away again,” she said, and she folded her arms over the trim tailoring of her suit. “I’ll be back after work. You think about what I said, and I’ll think about who would attack our marriage. This conversation is not over.”

Her purse stood in its usual place next to her chair. She leaned over, snapped it up by the straps, and came to him. Her hand on his jaw, she kissed his cheek with no emotion other than deliberation. As she pulled back, her expression told him that Brenda’s fragrance still clung to him. She held his gaze for a moment, and he volunteered nothing.

“I’ll see you tonight.” She went for the door.