Book 1: Chapter 5
Present Day
“Amelia, I don’t know where you are, and your phone is going straight to voicemail. Stop being so petty. It wasn’t a big deal. So you forgot the drinks. You didn’t have to stay out all night. Tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.”
Matthew hung up the phone and frowned. He was confused. It wasn’t like me to not come home, even after an argument. When he’d woken up this
morning, and saw I still hadn’t come home. Well, I had, just, not the way he would notice.
When he saw I hadn’t come to bed, he smirked, thinking I’d just gone to sleep in a guest room, or something. He’d let me keep having my little tantrum. He’d stop somewhere on the way home and bring me a gift. A trinket to buy my happiness. A way for him to show everyone he loved me. Because he always apologized with jewelery. Or a car. The car I had driven last night, in fact.
He got me that after he got home from a ‘business trip‘ and it had slipped that for some reason, Seline had been on the trip as well. Seline. Who suddenly had taken an interest in importing and exporting, but who had never done a single day in business school, had a degree in fine arts, and I did have to admit, did have some talent for her jewelery. I bet you can’t guess who designed most of the jewelery he tries to buy my forgiveness with.
But two years ago, when he slipped about Seline being on the ‘business trip‘, he bought me the car to apologize. Even though the Range Rover I was driving was only six months old, and I liked it. He bought me the little Miata for fun, and for quick trips. And admittedly, it was a fun car to drive. And perfect for quick trips across town.
Until it gets hit by a truck speeding around a traffic accident, causing your little Miata to roll down the embankment and into a tree. Where it still lay, and where my body was mere meters away.
The night had not been kind to me. Animals, attracted by the scent of my blood no doubt, had satiated their appetites. And now, with the sun up, its rays came through the trees, which didn’t offer much coverage. It was July. It was hot and humid. And today, the meteorologist on the morning news Matthew listened to as he went about shaving and getting dressed said it was expected to break previous records. Matthew hadn’t heard that because he was planning on going into the guest room at the end of the hall to surprise me with a wake up kiss and an apology, that would sound heartfelt, but by
this time, I’d come to expect and could have recited along with him.
It was when I wasn’t in any of the guest rooms that he thought to call. He checked that I was in neither of the children’s rooms. He was careful to not wake them. It was summer time. No need to wake them early. They were on holiday from school. This was their time to relax.
And so, after double checking I hadn’t slept on the couch, he rolled his eyes and called my mobile. Knowing him, he figured that I had gone to our apartment in the city, where we stayed sometimes if we were going to be downtown late and didn’t want to drive home. Like at company parties where sometimes, we’d enjoy the freedom of having the nanny Matthew had hired for when we came home from the hospital with the twins. Or, possibly, he thought, I had stayed in a hotel. He put the phone on speaker and checked our credit card app to see if there had been a hotel charge.
He frowned when he saw that not only hadn’t I used our credit card to book myself into a hotel, I hadn’t even bothered to stop at the store to get the damned drinks. I could have brought them home, despite skipping the fireworks display, and apologized to the twins for forgetting them. They’d forgive
their mom for her oversight.
He figured that he would swing by the apartment on his way into the office, went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee to go, and left, not even thinking anything beyond telling me what I wanted to hear, and then apologizing. Maybe he’d take the morning off and he could apologize properly to me in our bed in the apartment.
It barely caught his notice that there was a huge hole in the barrier along the highway. He saw the remnants of the accident that I had been trying to get around – the sawdust still spread on the road to absorb the gasoline and oil and other fluids. If he’d paid a little more attention, he might have noticed the dark blue paint scratch on the broken barrier. The exact same blue as my little car.
No. Matthew was already picturing his ‘apology‘, and shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
He tried my mobile again, knowing I rarely slept in past eight these days, and even in the apartment, would probably be up, and would have turned my phone on. I had never gone more than a few hours without speaking to him or responding.
Again, it went straight to voicemail. His anger replaced what he’d been feeling just moments ago.
“So petty and childish,” he groaned.
Meanwhile, the ringing of my phone, still clutched in my hand, attracted a pair of stray dogs.
I watched for a minute as the dogs sniffed around my body, and then took what they needed. I turned away though. At least something somewhat good came from my lonely death, I suppose.
The temperature that day broke even the anticipated record. A ray of sun glinted off the glass nearby.
Matthew pulled into the parking area for our apartment. He frowned when he didn’t see my car in my usual spot. He rolled his eyes, figuring I’d parked in one of the guest spots on the next level. He shook his head and sighed. Somehow, he was going to have to do something to make this up to
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Book 1 Chapter 5
- me. He wasn’t sure what it was this time that I was still ignoring him, and the kids. But, after we talked, and maybe made love, he’d still have to find a way to make it up to me, whatever i was mad about this time.
Oh, Matthew. If you only knew, there’s nothing you can do to make this up to me. Not really. I have no more use for jewlery, handbags, spa days, new cars, the newest smartphone, or any other trinket or class or experience you think will make up for 25 years of doing everything for everyone, with no thanks, no appreciation, and no honesty. 25 years in which you poisoned my own children against me. 25 years in which you mother still never managed to remember that I would come to dinner with you and the kids. But she never managed to forget to invite Seline. Even after she got married. Even, and especially after she got divorced and was left a ‘poor, single mother‘. A ‘poor‘ single mother on a million dollar a month allowance plus child support. Poor indeed.
If only you knew that the nights in the office that became more and more frequent, never stayed in the office. Yes, Matthew. I got the notifications as well when you scanned your key fob into the parking area for our downtown apartment. Which is why it shouldn’t have surprised you that you didn’t see my car. You didn’t get a notification because I never scanned into the complex.
But that would require you to think with your head. The one with your two eyes and mouth. Because right now, you’re wondering if I’m putting on a little show for you. That maybe this was something I had planned, to get a little time alone with you.
If only you had paid a little bit of attention last night, Matthew. If only you checked the location app for the key fob, since it would have tracked from my last time accessing the complex two weeks ago. And that was to check and make sure any food in the pantry hadn’t expired, to make sure nothing had been left in the fridge to go bad, and to do a little clean up, dust, change linens, stuff we could always get a service to do, but since I hadn’t worked since the twins were born, I’d taken it upon myself to do, so I had a reason to go somewhere.
It was during one of those housekeeping visits that I found the bra. It was definitely not mine. The twins breastfed until they were fourteen months, and I could not pull off that lacy strip of cloth anymore. And I didn’t have to even guess who it belonged to. I would recognize that nauseating synthetic rose smell anywhere.
I didn’t say a word to Matthew about it. I just left it on his pillow after I remade the bed with fresh and clean sheets.
That’s when I got the Range Rover.
However, today, Matthew didn’t think to check the app connected to our fobs. He just rode the elevator up to our apartment and unlocked the door, expecting to either find me sitting in the den drinking coffee, or out on the balcony.
He was confused by the lack of coffee smell coming from the kitchen. The TV wasn’t on, which it would be if I were in the den drinking my coffee, and he could see from the doorway that the drapes covering the sliding door out onto the balcony were closed. I wasn’t outside.
Matthew smirked thinking maybe I was waiting in the bedroom, and began loosening his tie and undoing the top button of his dress shirt.
He stopped when he got to the bedroom and saw the bed still made from my last housekeeping visit.
Frowning, he checked the other bedrooms and even his office. I wasn’t in the apartment.
“Amelia,” he said, calling my phone again and getting my voicemail. “This is riduciulous. I don’t even know what you’re mad about. It can’t be about us not waiting for you to go to the fireworks. But I can’t think of what else it is. I’m at the apartment and you’re not here, you didn’t come home. Are you in a hotel? Are you downtown? Tell me where you are. I’m getting worried.”
He’s just now getting worried? He wasn’t worried when he woke up and saw I hadn’t come to bed? He wasn’t worried when he saw I hadn’t slept in the house at all? He wasn’t worried when my phone, which I always keep charged in case there’s an emergency, went straight to voicemail? He wasn’t worried when he didn’t see my car in the parking area? Or didn’t see a notification that my fob had been swiped? It wasn’t until he was confronted with an empty apartment and no hotel charges on our joint accounts.
I watched Matthew as a lightbulb seemed to go on in his head. He smiled and went back down in the elevator, locking the apartment before he left.
He got into his car and drove four blocks away to the Hotel Farino. It was a small boutique hotel that Davenport Industries kept an account with. The company paid for and maintained a suite in the hotel. I could have gone there and used the room and it would have only shown up in next month’s statement. Matthew figured he probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, because there would have only been a small surcharge for the housekeeping services that the hotel would provide once I left the hotel after my stay. He figured that’s what I had done, and his mind, once again, wandered off and into the bedroom.
Once again, Matthew pulled into the parking lot for the hotel and took out his key card. He crossed the oak–wall lined lobby, waved at the concierge – Philippe- and headed to the elevator. If he had stopped and spoken to Philppe, he might have learned that I hadn’t stayed in the suite last night. It would have saved him the embarrassment of coming across the CIO in the shower with his secretary. Brian had been working as Tom’s secretary for six months. It might have been a company record.
Matthew apologized profusely for barging in on them, awkwardly asked if I had come by last night, to which Tom shook his head and Brian took a step back, trying to hide from Maatthew.
“Brian, I don’t care. Just keep it professional in the office,” Matthew said to the younger man. Relief and confusion fought for dominance in his
features.
Matthew left the hotel sat in his car trying to figure out where I could have gone. He called a few of our friends telling a tale about how we’d had a silly little spat and that I had said I was going to stay with friends, but hadn’t said with whom, and had any of them seen me?
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Book 1: Chapter 5
None of our friends had, of course.
“Which is strange,” Stella, who I served on the Golf Club’s Ladies‘ Auxiliary with said to Matthew. “We were supposed to meet for a breakfast meeting at nine, but she never showed up. And her phone stopped going through around, nine thirty, I guess. I must have called, oh, half a dozen times”
- Thirty SIX times, Stella. And each time, more animals were attracted by the sound, and then the smell. Thirty. Six. Times. Now, my phone has died along with me. It’s still clutched in my hand, but my hold is tenuous. The tendons were the last to go. A nocturnal visitor will knock the phone out of what is left of my hand and will knock it closer to the car.
In the clear blue sky, the sun is beating through the trees and refracting off the broken pieces of glass which are refracting onto the fluids on the ground. It’s already late, and the sun is setting, but it didn’t set quite fast enough to stop a tiny ember to catch onto the dry grass. It would simmer all night. Never quite catching, but never quite going out. It would move from blade to blade all night, the winds coming up from the ocean adding more fuel, if I can truncate a phrase.
But tomorrow morning, at six fifty three in the morning, when the sun was already beating a path down the mountain, Jeremy Anderson, a lawyer in Santa Monica and of no actual reason to be mentioned except that Jeremy is a smoker happened to drive by. And Jeremy thinks the world is his ashtray. So, Jeremy’s role in my story is simply that his still–lit cigarette butt landed right within the little embers that were already catching as the wind from the ocean came up and the sun started to shine directly on a concave piece of glass.
It only took the length of a sneeze for the dry brush near my car to catch. No one on the highway even really noticed the smoke. Not until it reached the wet grass near my car. Because that grass wasn’t wet with water. My gas tank had been leaking into the grass all night.
