No. It can’t be.
I scroll through the document, skimming over the digital diary while Skye watches me. It goes on and on; the entries are letters, pages and pages of them, all written from my perspective. But I didn’t write them. I didn’t write a single word.
“I—I didn’t write this, Skye,” I say finally. I step toward her and she backs away, her jaw clenched. “There’s some stuff I need to explain, but I swear I didn’t write any of this. Not the email or the diary. I swear to you on my life.”
“You fucking liar,” she hisses. “I’ve caught you red-handed and you’re still lying? Grow a pair, Burke. Own up to what you’ve done. Own up to the two million dollars you stole from me.”
“What?” My heart storms inside my chest. “Skye, I didn’t steal two million dollars from you. I swear.”
“And why should I believe a fucking word you say?” She’s crying now, thick tears running down the apples of her cheeks. Her skin is mottled and red, but she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. All I want to do is hold her.
“Answer this simple question, Burke.” She wipes her face with her sleeve. “Is it true you have another wife, and children?”
I say nothing. Pressure swells behind my eyes.
Fresh tears spill down her cheeks. “You piece of shit.” Her voice is a cracked whisper.
“I’m so sorry, Skye.” The words feel stuck in my throat. “But I promise I didn’t write that email or those diary entries. For––for what it’s worth.”
Skye shifts in her stance. She rubs the creases of her eyes. “I’m leaving. When I come back here at six tomorrow, I want you out.”
“Skye, please don’t—”
But she’s already doing her knocks on the door, and I feel equally helpless and devastated as I watch her, a slave to her disease even now. And then she’s gone.
My chest feels hollow and tight, as though the wind has been knocked out of me. I am numb as I sink down on the couch and open my laptop. I log into my email. Sure enough, in the sent-items folder is an outgoing message “I” sent to Andie yesterday morning.
I scroll to the bottom of the email and click the attachment. The Word doc floods the screen and I force myself to read it thoroughly, all the way through.
Each letter or diary entry is addressed to Dr. K.
Dr. K.
Why does this sound so familiar?
Dr. K. Dr. K is Dr. Kendrick, our old couples therapist.
A memory of Dr. Kendrick takes shape in my mind. A balding man with a Roman nose in his fifties or sixties, third-floor office near the train station. Blue leather couch, a coffee table strewn with old issues of Psychology Today. We only saw him for a couple months; he didn’t take insurance, but Heather had heard he was one of the best therapists in New Haven and insisted we go. She said couples therapy would be her birthday present to me that year, as if that somehow made it more appealing. I hadn’t even realized our marriage was in such a bind, but in retrospect we weren’t doing well. In the end the therapy was too expensive, and given that money was the source of our problems, we stopped going.
I remember Dr. Kendrick’s advice during one particular appointment, the low, clear sound of his voice: As an assignment, I’d like you each to write in your own journals. Write whatever comes to mind—it can be about each other, or what you’re feeling in general, or anything at all. If it feels more natural, you can write the journal entries as letters to someone—to each other, or even to me. Of course, I’ll never see them. No one will. These are purely for you, an exercise to get to know yourselves better, as individuals independent of your relationship.
Heather and I had laughed about it in the car on the way home, about the “assignment” and how dumb we were for paying three hundred dollars an hour to have someone tell us to write in a journal, and that no wonder we had money problems. We’d howled over it; it was the first time we’d laughed together—really laughed—in months. I didn’t tell her a week later when I bought a navy Moleskine at the pharmacy, fueled by Dr. Kendrick’s advice. I didn’t tell her that I started writing in it, that the words rushed out of me like tap water, ready at the turn of a knob.
It’s so ironic it might be funny if it weren’t utterly horrifying, the sight of my impersonation on the laptop screen, at the open “BM Diary” document in front of me. I read through the whole thing, and by the end I feel warped, as though I’m not in my body but floating far up above. There’s a long skinny hallway and a door I can’t unlock, a door that’s laughing, pointing, and I’ve been here before, many times, powerless and trapped in my own mind. It’s what addiction does to you. It’s what Skye’s OCD does to her. It’s the battle we both endure, and I’ve never met someone who gets it the way she does, who sees me as lucidly, as compassionately, as she does. Or did. If I lose her, which I will, I’ll never forgive myself. This I know.
I blink my way back into my body, willing myself to comprehend what I’ve just read. Awareness of the impending damage oozes its way into my consciousness, a pooling sickness in my gut with implications far worse than what I can fully grasp—for losing and destroying Skye, for the fate of Garrett, Hopie, and Mags, for the inevitability of the legal repercussions that lie ahead. Most wrenching of all is the realization that none of this has anything to do with Andy Raymond or the guys from Langs Valley.
I realize what I already know. What I’ve known since the very first page of the document. I know who wrote these letters.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Heather
Dear Dr. K,
In July 1991, Burke and I moved to New York.
Oh, New York. There’s really no place like it, Dr. K, which you obviously know because you live there now. I’m sure you and the wife take full advantage of your backyard—museums, Saturdays in Central Park, Michelin-star dinners, Broadway shows. I’ve seen your Cartier watch—God knows you have the resources.
When Burke and I first arrived in New York, it felt like a miracle. It was by far the happiest I’d been in the horrible year since Libby Fontaine let my little brother drown in Chazy Lake. Senior year I tried to keep up my grades as best I could, but my being so depressed made it hard. For much of the year I felt depleted, as if the drive and stamina I’d had before had died in the lake with Gus. Despite Burke’s efforts to help me out of the muck, my fall semester average still dropped from a 3.9 to a 3.0.
I didn’t retake my SATs—my scores from the previous spring were strong enough—but with my new GPA the college counselor said it was going to be nearly impossible to get any kind of scholarship to Barnard, which had been my first choice. Burke encouraged me to apply anyway, but the application was complicated and daunting, and besides, Barnard was Libby’s alma mater. I realized I wanted nothing to do with it.
Sticking to our plan, Burke and I applied to schools exclusively in New York City. I got a partial scholarship to NYU and a full ride to Fordham University, so even though NYU was much higher ranked, I enrolled at Fordham. Burke’s transcript was a nightmare; the only redeeming quality was that his GPA showed a steady improvement from a 1.7 freshman year to a 3.0 senior year. I helped him write a personal essay on visiting his father in prison as a child, and he received a partial scholarship to CUNY Medgar Evers College.