“Your plan involved breaking the law, Heather.”
“Yeah, something you’ve proven you’re more than comfortable with,” she spits. “Something that runs in your fucking blood. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, babe.”
She’s hurling the most painful things she possibly could at me, and I can tell from the relief on her face and the venom in her voice that she’s been thinking them for a long time. For years.
“Fuck you, Heather. I fucking did what you wanted. This insane plan. I did it! For you!” The back of my throat is raw from screaming, but I can’t stop. I want to tear my hair out.
“You fell in love with another woman!” Heather howls. Her face is twisted and red, and when she blinks, tears spill from her eyes. “You fucking fell in love with another woman,” she repeats, quietly this time. “There’s no worse betrayal than that.” Her voice is suddenly so low and hoarse I can barely hear her. “Especially for us. We’re the only family each other has, Burke. Remember?”
I close my eyes. I’m back in high school, at a party in Scott Lynch’s parents’ barn. I’m drunk as shit, and Andy Raymond is cutting us more lines, and out of the corner of my eye I see Heather, golden haired and pretty and all mine, and something inside me clicks. Sexy, intelligent Heather Price is my girlfriend, and she will drive me home from this party when I’m too wasted to stand, and tomorrow I’ll wake up with my arms curled around her warm body, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
When did I stop being the luckiest guy in the world?
I sink to my knees, defeated. Pain pinches my heart, and I understand now why my parents got divorced. I understand how it is possible to fall out of love with someone with whom the sun once rose and set. People never want to break apart. But when they do, there’s no way to stop it.
“This plan was our chance, Burke.” Unmasked desperation is in Heather’s voice. “This money was our shot to start over. We’re supposed to be in the Maldives right now, remember?”
“Running away to the Maldives wouldn’t have fixed our problems, Heather. Money wouldn’t have fixed our problems.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Heather.” I steady my voice. “You have to understand. It’s not that I just fell in love with another woman. I had already fallen out of love with you when I met Skye. And I think you had fallen out of love with me, too. I think we were both clinging to each other because—because we didn’t know where else to turn. But together we’re—we’re broken. We’ve been broken for a long time.”
“That’s bullshit,” Heather croaks, shaking her head.
“We have to dig deep. We’re not sixteen anymore. We’re not twenty-five anymore. And we can’t keep going on like this.”
“What are you saying, Burke?” Her bottom lip trembles, apprehension pooling in her eyes, and for the first time all night I realize just how scared she is.
“I’m saying…” I exhale slowly, resting my gaze on hers. “I’m saying what I already said in my email. We’re over, Heather. I want a divorce. And I’m moving out.”
The words are an instant ocean between us, and for a moment I don’t believe I’ve actually said them out loud. I feel as though I’m in some sort of dream, tiptoeing the line between conception and delivery.
But then I hear Heather’s breath hitch and register the expression morphing her face—something wild, boiling, unhinged. Suddenly she grabs the bottle of Malbec from the counter and hurls it across the room with all her might, sharp shards splitting across the kitchen in dozens of pieces, red wine splattering the whitewashed cabinets like blood.
Heather stares at me, her eyes watery and inflamed, her cheeks flushed crimson. “You bet your ass you’re moving out, Burke,” she hisses. “You’re moving to fucking prison, and for longer than you think once the Starlings’ lawyer discovers you can’t pay back any of the funds you stole.”
“What are you—”
“All the ‘salary payments’ from your fake job that you transferred to me? The two million dollars that disappeared from your joint account? That money’s gone, Burke. You’ll never find it. And as for your beloved Skye Starling? She’ll never forgive you. She and her family will make sure you’re locked away for a long, long time.”
With one final look of searing contempt, Heather walks upstairs, leaving me on the floor in a pile of shattered glass. I realize I’m still holding my half-finished letter to Skye, clutching it against my chest. The words I’ve written suddenly feel wrong, incomplete. I think of the Moleskine that’s now tucked safely away in my briefcase, those nine entries that are, for better or worse, the only actual account of the truth, from my eyes.
Heather’s words echo inside my head, scorching the space behind my heart. And as for your beloved Skye Starling? She’ll never forgive you.
I’m suddenly desperate to show the Moleskine to Skye. If only there is a way to tell her the truth—the important parts of the truth, at least—I think I could make her understand. After all, Heather doesn’t know Skye the way I do. Heather has never been able to forgive, let alone forget. It’s why our marriage was over a long time ago, though it took me ages to realize it. It’s why I fell in love with Skye.
Heather is nothing—nothing—like my wife.
Chapter Forty-Three
Heather
Dear Dr. K,
I missed New York like an old lover—or how I imagined one might miss an old lover, since I’d never been with anyone but Burke. Nonetheless, I swallowed my feelings and did my best to settle into our new life in New Haven. Burke’s hours at PK Adamson were more than manageable; he never got to work before nine, and he was always home by five-thirty. Two years into the job he received a small pay bump—nothing drastic, but enough that we could seriously start thinking about buying a house instead of dumping cash down the drain each month on our rental.
We found a reasonably affordable four-bedroom split-level in Amity, a suburban neighborhood about a ten-minute drive from downtown New Haven. It wasn’t close to being my dream home except for its being white, and Burke promised we could paint the shutters blue. The kitchen was dated and the windows drafty, but the street was safe, the backyard was a decent size, and the owners accepted our lowball offer of just under a hundred grand. We closed a few days before I found out I was pregnant with Maggie.
The thing about getting pregnant by accident when you’re married with two kids is that you can’t entertain the idea of not keeping it. It was my own fault. With a seven-year-old and a four-year-old to keep tabs on, it often slipped my mind that I was only twenty-seven and still very much in my fertility prime.
Burke thought it was fate that I’d found out I was pregnant the same week we closed on a house with four bedrooms.
“One for each of them.” He’d beamed, placing his palm to my stomach.
“The fourth was supposed to be a guest room,” I’d muttered when he was out of hearing distance. Libby had told me how important it was for all houses to have a guest room; it was a piece of her WASPy guidance that had no place in my life now, yet I could never unknow it.