She poked her head out the back door. “I’m going up. Do you need anything else?”
Box emptied the contents of the bottle of wine into Miranda’s glass and held it up for Dabney. “Do we have another?”
“We do!” she said brightly. Box’s cheeks were florid the way they tended to get after a couple of glasses of wine, but he was not emitting an aura. Probably because Dabney was there. Of course! She had to leave them alone. A wave of dizziness overcame her and she steadied herself against the counter. She was not only engaging in awful, illicit behavior, she was hoping that other people would engage in it as well, so that she might feel less guilty.
Dabney hurried to open another bottle of the Shiraz.
Her escape was almost too easy. She slipped out the front door and into the Impala.
As Dabney headed around the rotary, she spotted Agnes’s Prius a quarter circle away. Had Agnes seen her? The damn Impala was impossible to miss. Agnes had been so suspicious lately, Dabney could imagine her zipping around the rotary in hot pursuit of her mother. She would have to abort her mission.
But Agnes must have been daydreaming, or on the phone with CJ, because she exited the rotary and headed toward home. Dabney stepped on it.
“I had a date with Elizabeth Jennings,” Clen said.
Dabney felt a stabbing pain in her gut. Her internal organs felt like they were being sliced up by sharp, shining knives.
“A date?”
“She asked me for dinner. I assumed there would be other people, but it was just the two of us.”
Dabney and Clen were lying on top of his expensive sheets, naked. The long kiss Dabney had come for had gotten away from them both, even though Dabney had told Clen she didn’t have much time.
Had Agnes seen her? Dabney wondered. Would Agnes barge in on Box and Miranda at an inopportune moment and say, I just saw Mom driving around the rotary. Where was she going?
This worry was diminished by the thought of Clen and Elizabeth Jennings alone at dinner.
“So how was it?” Dabney croaked.
“She served me a steak,” Clen said. “And I couldn’t cut it.”
Dabney winced. “Ouch,” she said. “How was the conversation?”
“There was some reminiscing about the good old days of fish sauce and Asian toilets. She asked about my arm.”
“Did you tell her the truth?”
“Yes.”
Dabney exhaled through her nose. The pain in her gut was enough to make her cry out. She pictured ten Japanese hibachi chefs fileting her.
“That’s pretty intimate,” Dabney said. “Did it get any more intimate than that?”
“She tried to kiss me,” Clen said.
Oh, God, no. Dabney emitted a moan and curled up in the fetal position, which served only to intensify her pain. She started to cry. She was going to lose everybody and everything. She recalled thirty years earlier, seeing Clen with Jocelyn at the Yale-Harvard tailgate, Jocelyn’s hands buried deep in Clen’s thick hair.
Clen wrapped his arm around her. “Don’t cry, Cupe. I didn’t kiss her back. I was very rude, pushed her away and left.” He nuzzled the back of Dabney’s neck. “I have to live with the thought of you sleeping next to the economist every night, you know.”
“I know,” Dabney bleated.
“But there isn’t another woman in the world for me,” Clen said. “There just isn’t. I only see you.”
The house was dark when Dabney pulled up, and she was filled with relief. She hadn’t wanted to leave Clen, especially after hearing about the date with Elizabeth Jennings. Anyone but Elizabeth Jennings, Dabney thought. She wasn’t sure why the aversion; Elizabeth was silly and harmless-but then Dabney admitted that Elizabeth was neither silly nor harmless. She was strong-willed and opinionated at the Chamber meetings; of all the board members, Elizabeth was the only one Dabney felt she had to impress. It was her money, maybe, or her pedigree. And Elizabeth and Clen shared memories of a different world, one Dabney couldn’t even begin to imagine. Elizabeth would lasso Clen, move him to Washington, introduce him to people. He would end up writing for the Post. He would escort Elizabeth to the Kennedy Center and inaugural balls; he would teach a class at Georgetown and drink at the National Press Club. He would be changed.
Dabney had stayed much longer at Clen’s house than she’d meant to, allowing him to reassure her, waiting for the knife pain in her gut to diminish so that she could get to her feet.
Before she left, Clen had said, “You seem to be dropping a lot of weight, Cupe. Have you thought of seeing a doctor?”
Dabney gasped involuntarily. “A doctor?”
“You’re very thin,” he said. “Damn near skeletal. And your skin is turning a funny color. And you said you nearly fainted in the boardroom. I’m just worried about you.”
Dabney pasted a smile on her face, which felt like a picture hung crookedly. “Lovesick,” she said.
“I hear you saying that. But, Cupe-”
Dabney kissed him goodbye and scurried to her car.
At home, Dabney eased open the front door, which wasn’t a door anyone in the house ever used. When she stepped in, she cried out in surprise.
Box was standing before her, blocking the stairs.
“Where have you been?” he said.
“What?”
“The truth, Dabney.”
“I went for a drive with the top down,” she said. “I needed air.”
“A drive?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t stop anywhere?” he asked. “You didn’t see anyone?”
She had sort of been telling the truth up until that moment.
She said, “I have horrible pain, Box. I’m still not feeling well.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re not answering my question. Did you stop anywhere? Did you see anyone?”
Dabney couldn’t tell him the truth, but neither could she lie. She said, “I can’t believe you’re asking me this. I can’t believe you care. You haven’t paid attention to me in years, Box. And now all of a sudden you care where I’ve been, if I stopped, if I saw anyone?”
“You’re my wife,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“Tell me the truth!”
Tell him the truth, she thought. He was asking for it. He deserved it.
“I was driving,” she said. “Driving around the island. Driving makes me feel better.”
“That is a load of crap!” he shouted. “Something is going on and I want to know what it is!” He slammed the door shut and the whole house shuddered. And yet Dabney was relieved that the front door was now shut because, from the corner of her eye, she had just seen a light go on across the street at the Roseman house. What on earth would York and Dolly Roseman make of the screaming coming from the Beech household, where two of the most civilized people they knew lived? Would they even believe it? No, they would think there was something horribly wrong. They would call the police.
“I don’t feel well,” Dabney said. “The antibiotics didn’t help, and I thought it was a wheat allergy, but-”
“You need to go to the doctor,” Box said.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“A real doctor,” Box said. “In Boston.”
“Okay.” Dabney hoped that if she agreed to this, he would let her off the hook.
“And another thing,” Box said. “When I was talking to that philistine Hughes at Elizabeth’s party, he said the two of you had bumped into each other on Main Street. You had a conversation with the man and didn’t tell me. But that isn’t the worst thing. The worst thing is that you told him I was in Washington consulting with the president!”