Page 12 of Little Secrets
Castro explains that her Portland contact ended up outside the hotel where Derek is staying, and that’s when he happened to spot Marin’s husband coming out the side door with a woman he knew wasn’t Marin. Curious, he followed them for a bit. They were heading to dinner. Henry’s Tavern in the Pearl District.
When Castro says this, Marin winces again. Henry’s is one of her favorite casual spots, and she and Derek always eat there at least once whenever they’re in Portland. They do a great mango margarita. They also do a fantastic calamari. Tempura-battered, flash-fried, dusted liberally with cracked pepper and sea salt with a jalapeño aioli dipping sauce, enough to share.
“What led your contact to the hotel in the first place?” Marin tries not to imagine her husband feeding his mistress fried squid. Surely he wouldn’t order the appetizer they always get.
“He looked into the employee’s cell phone records, the one who’d been arrested for the bar fight,” Castro explains. “And there was a ten-minute call from the Hotel Monaco to the employee’s phone. He staked out the hotel, and when he saw Derek come out with another woman, he snapped pictures and sent them to me.” She clicks on her mouse. “That lead didn’t check out, by the way. It turns out the employee’s brother-in-law is in town for a Blazers game, and they were making plans to meet up. The brother-in-law made the call from his room.”
A new photo is on the screen. Now they’re inside the restaurant. Derek is speaking, gesturing with his hands. His mistress is laughing at whatever he’s saying. They each have a cocktail. An old-fashioned for Derek, which is his go-to drink, and even if she didn’t know that, the orange slice is a dead giveaway. Something pink—strawberry daiquiri?—with an umbrella for the mistress.
They’re sharing the fucking calamari.
The thing that’s surprising is how shocked Marin feels now that it’s finally sinking in, even though she sensed it, even though on some level sheknew. It’s not like she hasn’t noticed certain things. She and Derek are on the verge of their twentieth wedding anniversary, and even though she’s self-medicating with wine most nights, she’s been aware that things have been shifting. It’s not just that they haven’t been having sex, or that Derek has been away overnight for work more and more often, and for longer periods of time. It’s that when he’s home, there’s an emotional distance between them that’s growing, and currently it’s the size of a continent.
“I didn’t email you last night because I wanted to dig a bit deeper first,” Castro says. “Because I was assuming you’d have questions.”
“How long?” The words come out a croak. Marin takes anothersip of water to lubricate her dry throat, finishing the tiny bottle. Castro tosses it into the recycling bin beside her desk and places a fresh water in front of her.
“At least six months, from what I can tell.” Castro is typing again.
Six months.Six months. That’s not a fling. That’s arelationship.
Marin lets out a long breath as the full weight of it hits her. Where the hell has she been for six whole months that she didn’t notice? Oh, right. Trying to cope with the disappearance of their child. It tends to keep a mother occupied.
The restaurant photo disappears, and Marin braces herself for another emotional stab wound. But it’s not another picture. It’s a spreadsheet. Derek’s cell phone records. Castro scrolls rapidly through the pages, where she’s already highlighted every instance of when the other woman’s phone number appears, either as the caller or as the recipient of the call. They flash by in bright yellow sparks. Derek and his mistress are in constant communication, by the looks of it.
“Six months is as far back as the phone records go. I could go back further, but I’d have to access that information a different way. I was only able to access these because his cell phone account is under yours.”
Marin isn’t planning to ask her how she’d even accessedtheserecords. At their first meeting last year, she’d been very clear in her instructions.Look under every rock. Leave no stone unturned. Follow every lead, no matter where it goes, no matter who’s involved.She’d expected—no, she’d demanded—complete transparency. Everything the PI discovered, Marin wanted to know.
Castro had said she could do that, but warned Marin that her methods were unconventional. The less Marin knew abouthowshe did things, the better. And then she cautioned that clients didn’t always like the answers, and that sometimes unanswered questions were easier to live with than the truth.
And the truth is that right now, Marin’s husband of nearly twenty years has been having sex with a younger woman. For six goddamned months.
Her throat feels like sandpaper, and she opens the second bottle of water. “Derek used to visit the manufacturing facility in Portland every month. Now it’s every week, and he’s often there for days at a time. His company has tickets to the Blazers,” she adds lamely, as if that explains it, as if it somehow makes it better that he’s never home. And then, because she’s a masochist, she asks, “Are there any more pictures?”
Castro clicks the mouse again, and another photo fills the screen. Derek with his arms wrapped around the other woman. They’re both smiling, and once again Marin’s hit with the feeling that she’s seen her before. It’s not uncommon for her to think this about someone—she owns three salons that have thousands of clients, most of them women—and maybe Derek’s mistress has been in one of them before, for a haircut, or a manicure. Again, the feeling is fleeting, and it’s gone before she can dig deeper.
In these stunned, shell-shocked moments, Marin can’t seem to process the details of the other woman’s appearance. Looking at her makes her feel physically sick. She can’t seem to stare at the woman long enough to decide whether she’s pretty or not, or understand what it is her husband sees in her. By the time she starts figuring it out, she’s nauseous, and she has to switch gears and focus on Derek. And when she does, all she can see is her husband’s smile. The look in his eyes as he looks at the other woman. He hasn’t looked at Marin like that in a long time.
Four hundred eighty-six days, to be exact.
The pictures are clear and in full color, high-definition, not grainy and black-and-white like she assumed they would be. Nothing about this is how she assumed it would be. In the movies, the private investigator who delivers the bad news about a cheating spouse is an older,weathered man, cynical and lonely and dressed in a wrinkled, ill-fitting suit, and his pictures are printed and delivered in a manila envelope. In reality, the private investigator is a woman around Marin’s age, quite attractive in her dark blue skinny jeans and fitted jacket. She’s not wearing a wedding ring, but these days, that means nothing.
Castro is looking at Marin’s ring, something other women do often. Ten years ago, Derek upgraded her engagement ring to a five-carat Asscher-cut diamond. It seemed like a reasonable size at the time—most of the women in their social circle had diamonds the same size, or bigger—but here, in the small office, with its plain yellow walls and leafy potted plants, and the tiny fish in the tiny aquarium, and the pictures of Derek with another woman on the computer screen, the ring seems like a joke. It’s huge. Flashy. Expensive. Which is what Marin wanted, wasn’t it? For everyone to know how well they were doing, how fortunate, how—and she hates this word in particular—blessed?
She’s tempted to take her diamond ring off and toss it into the fish tank. Her eyes are stinging, and she blinks rapidly, willing the tears not to fall. She stares at the photo of Derek and his lover, the images blurring through her tears, turning into a mess of colors and shapes that don’t make sense.
“I have to take this,” Castro says suddenly. Marin turns away from the computer screen to find the PI holding her cell phone. She didn’t hear it ring. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The office door closes behind her. Marin doesn’t hear her speaking in the waiting room, which has a receptionist’s desk but no receptionist. She realizes after a few seconds that there is no phone call. Castro is giving her client some time alone to react, to fall apart if she needs to. It’s kind of her, but Marin isn’t going to fall apart. At least not right now. She’s good at faking it. She knows she can quash it until she gets home, where she can lose it in private, without anyone watching, with her pills and a bottle of wine.
Marin got cocky. It’s the only explanation. Especially once she had Sebastian, after four difficult rounds of IVF. She’d been given too much—too much money, too much success, too much love from her husband and child—so the universe set out to correct that imbalance of abundance by taking the one thing from her that meant anything.
Her son.
Numbness is beginning to set in, and she’s grateful for it. She knows from experience that humans can only tolerate intense emotional pain for so long before things begin to dull. It’s the body’s way of coping, and it isn’t so much relief as it is a reprieve. The pain will be back. Marin will feel every ounce of it later, and when she does, she’ll wash it down with a Xanax and a bottle of cab sauv before it gets too bad.
The office door opens again.
