Tell Me Lies (14 page)

Bailey laughed, but he started the car. “You wouldn’t hit me, C.L. And you should know you can’t keep a secret in this town. You ought to know that.”

“No, but I can damn well try,” Maddie heard him say under his breath as he got into the driver’s seat. “Keep down,” he told her, and turned the ignition key.

Maddie watched Bailey’s taillights disappear down the road. Everyone would know tomorrow. “I feel like a whore.”

C.L. let his breath out in a rush. “Maddie, ease up, please.” He put the car in gear.

“He ruined it.”

“Only if you let him.”

Maddie thought about it as the car began to move. She’d just had the best evening of her entire life. She was going to regret it tomorrow; she was going to have a thousand things to regret tomorrow, but tonight she was gloriously in the dark with C.L. “Okay,” she said, and climbed over the seat to join him.

“I don’t seem to have any buttons on my shirt.” C.L. frowned at her in the light from the dash as he made the turn off the Point. “What did you do, bite them off when I wasn’t looking?”

“Next time pay attention,” she said, and stuck her tongue in his ear.

He swerved, but he got the car back under control before they ran off the road. “Don’t do that. At least not while I’m driving. Of course, in my car, this won’t be a problem. The shift will keep you on your own side.”

Maddie moved back to the passenger seat. “I liked your old car better. I could sit right beside you.”

“You still can. You’ll just have to put one leg on each side of the shift. It’ll give a whole new meaning to fourth gear.”

Maddie laughed. “You make me feel like I’m eighteen again.”

He took his hand off the stick shift to pat her knee. “I noticed you were pretty spry getting over the seat. No creak at all.”

“You should see me going the other way.”

C.L. turned to her, and Maddie could see him in the light from the dash, smiling at her with calm possession. “I intend to,” he said, and she settled back in her seat, wrapped in afterglow, ignoring tomorrow.

He had Maddie back.

She slid out of the car when he parked it behind Treva’s house, and he said, “Hey!” and she came around and kissed him through the car window, over and over, laughing low. It really was Maddie, finally, her round face and full lips and hot eyes, and she laughed and kissed
him,
and he thought,
What the hell, I don’t care about anything but this.
He got out of the car and tried to pull her to him, but she moved away.

“I have to go home,” she said, backing away. “I’ll walk it. Somebody might see us if you drop me off.”

Thunder rolled in the distance, and the wind picked up as he watched her leave him. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll call you. I want to see you tomorrow.”

She was fading away, walking backward in the direction of her own house. “I’ll try. You don’t know how hard I’ll try.”

She turned and ran down the alley, and he put the keys to the Caddy on the dash and walked to his own car. Two hours in a backseat and his life was brand-new.

The storm kicked in as he started the Mustang, and he drove out to Henry’s in the rain, his mind a kaleidoscope of Maddie moving to Columbus with him (could she leave Frog Point?), Maddie’s kid (what did he know about kids?), Anna’s face when he’d tell her (she’d be happy, especially about the kid), Henry’s face when he’d tell him (inscrutable), Maddie’s face when he’d suggest moving to Columbus (no way), Anna’s face when she remembered Maddie was married (oh, hell), and Frog Point’s faces when they’d realize he was going to be her husband (stunned), all of which led to thoughts of the extra land next to Henry’s farmhouse (“nice piece of land to build on,” he’d told C.L. when he’d married Sheila) and the chance to see Anna and Henry every day, and under it all, clouding any rational thought processes, Maddie’s heat and softness moving against him in the dark, her low moans, her eyes when she’d looked in his and come, and the way she’d curled in to him and clung when it was all over.

This time he’d gotten it right.

A small sane part of him said that two hours of car sex did not make a future, but the rest of him glowed with knowledge that this time they’d both get it right.

Right in front of everybody in Frog Point.

“Where the
hell have
you been?”

Brent’s voice came out of the darkness and she started, and then he turned the kitchen light on and blinded her.

“Brent?” Her voice quavered as she played for time. Was her dress buttoned right? She didn’t have a bra on.

“I said where in the hell have you been?” He ran the words together like a curse, sweating and shaking and breathing hard, one hand braced on the counter, and his eyebrows made a black slash across his forehead as he glared at her, his head down like a wounded bull.

“Brent, I’m okay.” She went toward him, trying to reassure him. “I took the Cadillac to go for a ride. Don’t worry about me.”

He grabbed her arm. “I’m not worried about you—” He broke off and shook her arm a little. “When I tell you to be home, I expect to find you
home.
Do you understand?”

“No,” Maddie said, guilt and anger scrambling her thoughts. “Why are you acting like this?” She wrenched her arm away. “This isn’t like you. What are you so mad about? What difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference because I say so.” He leaned over her to trap her against the sink. He reeked of sweat and beer and he was so close that the pores of his skin looked like craters. “I’m your husband.”

She shook her head at him.
No more. I don’t need you anymore. I’m free of you.
“That’s crap.” She pushed away from him.

He put his head down again, moving toward her, glaring at her under his brows. “I want to know where you’ve been.”

“Why?” she asked, backing up. “I don’t ask where you’ve been. I don’t ask”—she took a deep breath—“because I know.”

He stopped. “What?”

“I know all about your slimy little secrets. I got that damn box open. I know it all.” She turned away to the rain-spattered window because she couldn’t stand to look at him anymore, but she saw him reflected there. He was standing dumbstruck, his arms dangling at his sides. Big dumb cluck. Her neck hurt, and she reached for her pills. She’d take them without water. She didn’t want to lose the taste of C.L. in her mouth. “Who the hell do you think you are?” she went on as she shook the pills into her hand. “Did you really think you’d get away with this stuff forever just because you’re Brent Faraday? Well, you’re not going to. If you think I’m buying that crap, you’re even dumber than—”

She was turning to confront him when he hit her, backhanding her with his fist across her eye. She stumbled, and then tripped backward, hitting the wall as she fell, spilling pills across the floor.
Thank God Em’s not here,
she thought as she slid down the wall to the floor.
Poor baby.

Then her sense of self-preservation kicked in, and she scrambled to her feet as he came after her. She ran into the hall, screaming, “Don’t touch me!” and when he didn’t follow her, she stumbled into the living room to lean against the edge of the couch, trembling and breathless, still gripping the bottle of pills.

Her head hurt, almost beyond pain. So this was what it felt like to get beat up. Battered. This was going to be another good one for the neighbors. She felt the side of her head, and her hand came away with blood on it. His ring must have cut her. She’d have to explain to Em tomorrow. To her mother. To the town. Her knees went out on her and she sank down onto the couch.

And they’d know about C.L. because Bailey would tell. What the hell had she been thinking of? She’d sold her life down the tubes for two hours of absolute happiness. It might not have been a bad price if it had just been for her, but she’d sold Em and her mother, too. She was a selfish bitch and there was no way she could save things now. She’d really done it this time.

She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t fix things anymore. She couldn’t be the good girl anymore. She just couldn’t. She tried to focus her eyes and saw the bottle of wine she and C.L. had shared on the table, nearly empty, just a couple of inches left. She was so tired, and her head hurt, and she was never going to be happy again.

Three Tylenol had sent her into oblivion that afternoon. Most of her pills were scattered all over the kitchen, but there were still seven when she dumped the bottle into her palm. Oblivion was still within reach. She dropped the pills into the wine bottle one at a time, and then swished it to make the pills dissolve.

“Maddie.”

Brent was slumped in the doorway, still wearing his bowling shirt. God, he looked stupid. It wasn’t the shirt. C.L. would look great in that shirt. It was Brent.

She looked at the bottle and set it down with a crack on the table. Brent was the problem, not her. She had to stop drinking. She’d almost committed suicide there, or at the very least, serious illness. And that self-pity had to go, too. She definitely had to stop drinking. “So,” she said, feeling the side of her head again. “Bad day?”

Brent closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hit you. I love you. You know that. I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re sorry,” Maddie said. “I know.” He’d never hit her before, and it almost didn’t matter now. It just made it easier for her to leave him. She’d be almost glad he’d hit her if it hadn’t hurt so much and there wouldn’t be so much hell to pay later for it. All the people she was going to have to explain it to, all the people who were going to think he’d hit her because of C.L., and while she was explaining, Brent would go on his careless way. The bastard.

“You went through my stuff at work,” Brent’s voice was heavy. “You went through my office.”

“Oh, yeah.” Maddie was surprised. Somehow that seemed like another day. Another century. “I had a reason.”

“I want that box back.”

“Later.”

“I want it back
now.
And I want to know where you’ve been. Who have you been talking to?”

Maddie was tired. Battered, bone-dead, after-sex, I-don’t-want-to-have-this-conversation-now tired. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

“Now.”

“Great,” she flared at him as she rose to her feet. “You first. Where the hell have
you
been? And don’t tell me bowling, you bastard. I can’t believe what a liar you are. I’m never going to believe anything you tell me again.”

Brent seemed to swell before her eyes.
“Shut up,
”he said. “This isn’t about me. Where—”

“The hell it isn’t about you,” Maddie told him. “This is all about you being the big man, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” Brent said.

“Good old Brent Faraday, can get any woman he wants, most likely to succeed, that’s it, isn’t it?” She moved around the coffee table and headed for the hall, sick of the conversation. “Well, I’m not playing that game anymore. I’m leaving.”

“No, you’re not,” Brent said, shaking. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I know what you are—” Maddie said.

“Shut up!”

“—and it’s not much, so don’t—”

She passed him while she was still talking, and he said,
“Shut up!"
again and swung at her again, his fist hitting the side of her face with a dull thud that made the inside of her head sound hollow, inches below where he’d hit her the first time.

She staggered backward and righted herself, blinking back automatic tears. Then she said,
“No more,
”and shoved past him, knocking him back and then to the floor as she stumbled toward the stairs. He fumbled to his feet and she ran, flinging chairs behind her to slow him down. She heard the hall table fall and wood splinter as he fell over it, but she didn’t turn back, making it to their bedroom and slamming and locking the door behind her just before his body thudded against it. She shoved the heavy vanity in front of it and then she spoke to him in bursts, trying to catch her breath, swallowing her tears. “Get out. Get out of the house. I’m calling the police. You’re drunk. Or crazy. I don’t know what you are. But I know what you’ve been up to, and I know the kind of man you are, and it’s over.
Get out.”

She heard him sag against the door. “Maddie,” he said, and she thought he might be crying except that Brent never cried. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. It just happened. Where were you tonight? Just tell me. I just need to know what you know. I need to know who you told.”

“I was with C. L. Sturgis,” she said. “All night. I’m filing for divorce on Monday. I know everything, all about your blonde, everything, but hitting me was the worst. Hitting me
twice.
Go away. You’re not my husband anymore.”

“What did you tell him?” Brent said, and she could see the door move under the pressure of his body, but she leaned against the bureau, and the lock held. “Jesus, Maddie, what did you say?”

“Go away,” Maddie said. “Just go away.”

After a long silence, she heard him going down the stairs, hitting each tread like a punching bag.
This is it,
she thought.
This is the end of that life. That’s gone. I’m glad he hit me. That was the bottom. I could never take him back now. Not for Em, not for my mother, not for anybody.

She heard him moving around downstairs between the breaks in the thunder outside, and then, after a while, she heard him talking. She sat on the bed and eased up the receiver on the bedroom extension, but all she heard was Brent saying drunkenly, “I still don’t believe there’s any goddamn prowler, but I’ll bring it. But that’s it. Then it’s over.” A woman’s voice said, “Fine,” and then Brent slammed the phone back on the hook and Maddie heard the hall phone crash to the floor. He walked around for a good fifteen minutes while she sat on the edge of the bed, her head throbbing, but then she heard the jangle of his keys as he went out the front door, and she fell back onto the bed.

She began to cry from the pain and exhaustion and fear and confusion and her lost marriage, all tied up with a couple of good punches to the head. As tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. All the things she had to take care of—Em and Kristie’s baby and her mother and the puppy and the divorce and Treva and her car and even the microwave—all of it jumbled in her head with the pain and the tears while the storm picked up speed outside and she thought she’d go mad from all of it. And she wished C.L. were there to hold her, to make Brent stay away, to make everything right again.

It wasn’t until almost four when the storm ended that she drifted to sleep, and it was then, right on the edge of unconsciousness, that she realized it wasn’t the beating alone that had ended everything for her, although that would have been enough. It was the reason behind it. He wasn’t afraid she’d been cheating on him; he was afraid she’d been spying on him, that she’d caught him at his slimy little game and the whole town would find out what a creep he was. “I just need to know what you know,” he’d said, and she could smell the sour fear on him, the fear that he might not be the great Brent Faraday anymore.

At least I’m not afraid,
she told herself.
At least I’m ready to be who I really am.
She thought of her mother then, and the town, and Bailey telling everybody everything, and that was bad. And then she was too tired to think anymore and sank into sleep.