One Hot Doctor by Sarah J. Brooks

Chapter 22

Thomas

The last few weeks have gone by in a flash, and Cora and I have fallen into an easy routine where we spend much of our weekends together. Today is Friday, and I’m looking forward to spending another easy weekend with her. Her belly is nicely rounded now, and anyone who knows her can tell that she’s pregnant.

Close to noon, after a patient leaves my office, I pick up my cell phone and see a missed call from an unfamiliar number. I hit call and wait for the person to answer.

“Hi Thomas, I was hoping that you’d call back.”

The hairs at the back of my neck rise at the voice that is so eerily like Tessa’s. A voice I haven’t heard in four years.

“Hi Liz, what a surprise to hear from you.”

I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I’m speaking to Tessa’s younger sister. After we buried Tessa and the court case was over, I did not keep in touch with her family, but it wasn’t from a lack of trying. I’d called Liz several times, but she’s always seemed to be in a rush, and she would say that she would call back, and she never did.

It was the same thing with her parents. I’d called a few times, but I’d gotten the feeling that they did not want to talk, and I’d stopped calling. I had concluded that speaking with me was a constant reminder of their loss, and so I’d stopped trying, though it had saddened me.

As much as my family understood my grief, Tessa’s family related more with my loss. I’d hoped that we could help each other heal. I’d muddled through it on my own, hoping that after the initial intense grieving period, they would come around. They never did, so it’s a shock to hear from Liz after so long.

“How have you been?” I ask her. “What about Mo—” I’d called Tessa’s parents Mom and Dad, but it seemed odd to call them that now. “Your parents?”

“They are well; we are all well,” Liz says.

“That’s good,” I say, and after that, there’s nothing to say. It’s sad because, in addition to being Tessa’s sister, Liz was Tessa’s best friend, and because of that, she and I had been pretty close.

She clears her throat. “Listen, I was calling you because I planned on going to lay flowers on Tessa’s grave today. Can you believe that it’s been four years already?”

Horror comes over me. I glance at the small calendar on my desk. Liz is right. Four years ago today, we lost Tessa. I can’t believe that I forgot. How? It’s the first time something like that has ever happened.

“I find your flowers every year, and I thought that this year, we could go together,” Liz says.

I’m disappointed in myself, and I can’t help thinking over and over again that if Liz hadn’t told me, I would have missed laying flowers at my wife’s grave.

“Yeah, okay,” I say.

We arrange to meet outside the cemetery at half-past two o’clock. When I disconnect the call, an avalanche of guilt hits me.

“I’m so sorry, Tessa,” I murmur while covering my face. “It won’t happen again.”

I leave a little early to give myself time to buy the biggest, most beautiful bouquet of flowers that I can find. Later, I drive to the cemetery, park the car, and get out. The memories of the day we laid Tessa to rest are not as strong now. All I remember was that it had been a summer day like today. I remember wondering how I could be in such pain on such a beautiful day.

I don’t notice Liz until she walks up to me at the cemetery entrance.

“Hey,” she says smiling unsurely.

“Hello, stranger,” I say and smile to show her that the past doesn’t matter. We all did what we had to do to survive losing Tessa.

We hug and walk into the cemetery together.

“It’s good to see you looking so well,” she says.

“Thanks. You look well too. It’s true what they say; time is a healer,” I tell her.

We chat as we walk along a path between the graves. I notice a man standing by Tessa’s graveside with his head bowed low. He’s wearing a hat, but his blond hair is long and touches his shoulders. He is no one I know.

Liz hasn’t noticed him yet as she’s busy telling me about her life, her husband, and their two-year-old son. We get closer, and the sounds of his sobs reach us, drawing Liz’s attention.

She touches my arm. “Wait here.”

I do as she says and watch as she hurries to the man’s side. I worry, and I follow her, and when I get close, I catch the last of the conversation.

“… great future together.”

“You have to go. Please.”

He turns and meets my gaze. He stares at me longer than normal with his red-rimmed eyes and then leaves.

“That was Chad, an old family friend. He went to school with Tessa,” Liz says with a small smile. She turns from me toward Tessa’s grave. “She loved daffodils,” Liz says as she lays her flowers on the grave.

“She did.”

“Do you remember when she decided to rent a patch and grow her own daffodils?” Liz says, laughter in her voice. “She gave it up after two weeks saying that the ground was too hard.”

I laugh as I remember the sheepish look that Tessa had worn as she explained why she had stopped gardening. Tessa had loved projects, but rarely did she carry them to fruition.

Liz and I are soon laughing as we exchange Tessa’s stories.

When it’s time to leave, I don’t feel like parting from Liz just yet. It feels as if I have a part of Tessa again. “Do you want to go for a drink?” I ask her.

She smiles warmly. “I’d love to. I want to catch up and hear all about you.”

We agree that I follow her to a bar downtown called Spritos. I’m assailed by all sorts of emotions as I drive. It’s odd that Liz and her parents were such a big part of my life, and then suddenly, they weren’t.

Liz and I settle on a table in a quiet corner, and a server comes over. We both ask for cold beers, and as we wait, we stare at each other and then laugh self-consciously.

“I can’t tell you how good it feels to see you after so long,” she says. “I have a feeling that Tessa is smiling down at us,” Liz says.

“It’s great to see you, too.”

There are so many things I want to ask her. Like why they were so unwilling to keep the communication lines open with me, but I don’t. I don’t want to scare her off.

“I’m surprised you got married,” I say after the server brings our food. Liz had been one of those young women who were very adamant that she intended to concentrate on her career as a lawyer and no man was going to hold her down.

“I grew up, and I met someone special,” she says quietly.

We spend the next couple of hours catching up, and after a few beers, I’m feeling maudlin fueled, of course, by the alcohol. My thoughts shift to the last couple of years with Tessa. I’ve carried the guilt of not giving Tessa the baby she wanted for four years.

“Tessa really wanted a baby,” I tell Liz. “I wish I’d agreed to go ahead with the fertility treatments.”

She places her hand on mine. “You shouldn’t. In fact, Tessa once told me she was glad that you guys had held off having a baby. It had given her more time to concentrate on her career.”

That makes me feel a lot better. Liz and I drink far more than I had planned, and when it’s time to go home, I’m a happy drunk. I leave my car at the parking lot and take an Uber home.

 

 

***

 

I wake up with a hint of headache, which is a relief considering how many beers I downed last night. I smile. It was good to catch up with Liz, and knowing that Tessa had been glad that we hadn’t had a baby makes me feel as if a load has been lifted from my shoulders.

As I review the previous day, something tugs at my memory, causing some discomfort. It’s the man who had been crying by Tessa’s gravesite. I recall Liz’s restraining hand on my arm. She’d told me to wait and gone to speak to the man. She had said that he was a family friend and Tessa’s schoolmate in high school. At the time, I hadn’t given it much thought as I’d been too overcome with emotion from seeing Liz.

The more I turn it over in my mind, the more her explanation doesn’t make sense. Why would an old classmate cry as if his heart was breaking years after Tessa’s death, yet I, who had been her husband, did not?

She had said his name was Chad, but if he was such a good friend, why hadn’t Tessa ever mentioned him? I don’t like the direction my thoughts are taking, but this doesn’t make any sense. My heart pounds hard against my chest, and nausea rises. What I am thinking is so frightening and so sickening. I try to talk myself out of it. But it won’t let go.

I try to remember the kind of person that Tessa was. She did not have a cheating bone in her body. I know that I should just let it go and keep moving on with my life, but I can’t. I like things to make sense, and that man being at the cemetery crying his heart out just doesn’t.

I reach for my phone on the charger and turn it on. There are several messages and calls. I click on the message from Cora.

Are you still coming?

An hour later,

I guess not. It would have been nice to let me know that you weren’t.

And then another.

Don’t call me.

I should call her and try and explain, but I can’t. I feel as if I’ve entered another sphere where the only thing that matters now is to find out the truth about Chad. Everything else is secondary.

I ignore the rest of the messages and calls and scroll down to Liz’s number. I hit call. She answers on the third ring.

“I need to speak with you about something important,” I tell her after we’ve exchanged pleasantries.

“I can’t,” she says, distance in her voice. It reminds me of when I used to call her after Tessa’s death, and she didn’t want to talk.

“Please, Liz, it’s important, and it won’t take a lot of your time. I’ll come to your place.”

She sighs deeply. “Okay, fine. I’ll text you the address. Call me when you get here.”

I shower and dress at record speed. I make a coffee to take with me as it’s the only thing I can manage to coax down my throat. My whole body is cold as I sit in the back seat of the Uber.

I’m more frightened than I ever have been in my life. One minute I think that I must be crazy to think of such a thing, and in the next, I think it would make sense why Tessa’s family wanted nothing to do with me. It wasn’t because I reminded them of their loss; it would be because I reminded them of Tessa’s guilt.

The Uber drops me at the parking lot where I left my car. I follow the directions that Liz gave me, and in fifteen minutes, I’m parking in front of a two-story family home. I kill the engine and text Liz to let her know that I’ve arrived. Seconds later, the front door opens, and she comes out. She spots my car right away and hurries toward me.

She slips into the passenger seat and bangs the door shut. We exchange terse greetings, the warmth and friendliness of the previous day forgotten. Her hands are shaking the slightest bit, and my fear doubles in intensity.

“So, what’s this about?” Liz says, but she doesn’t look at me. Her body language screams that the last place she wants to be is here in the car with me.

“The man at the cemetery, who was he?” I ask her.

“I told you. He and Tessa were—”

“I know what you told me, but it doesn’t make sense. Why was he so heartbroken four years later? Tessa was my wife, and I’ve healed. Somewhat.”

Liz looks pale and like she’s going to be sick. I hate myself for doing this to her, but this is important.

“It was four years ago. Just leave it. Leave the past where it belongs. You have a baby on the way; concentrate on that.”

“I can’t leave the past when I don’t understand it,” I tell her.

She drops her head, and my heart gallops in my chest. I can’t breathe, petrified of what will come next. I have a sick feeling that my suspicions were correct.

“I hate you, Tessa, for putting me in this position,” she mumbles to herself. She inhales deeply and then looks at me. “He and Tessa were having an affair when she died.”

Lances of stabbing pain shoot up my shoulder and then grip my heart like a vise. I slump back into my chair and fork my fingers through my hair. I want to defend Tessa because I knew her. But her sister knew her better.

I try to think of instances in the past when she wasn’t at home, and she should have been, but I can’t. I worked insanely long hours at the time, and I left her alone a lot. She had ample time to have an affair if she wanted. But Tessa? We had been so in love. Our lives revolved around one another.

“You were working a lot and had no time for her,” Liz said.

“So, it was my fault that while I was working hard to earn a living for us, my wife got bored and had an affair?” I exploded.

Liz looks at me. “That was her excuse. We never once blamed you.”

“Who is we?”

She shifts in her seat. “My parents and I.”

I inhale sharply. They must have thought I was an idiot loving and then mourning over a woman who was having an affair.

“How did it start?” I thought that losing Tessa was the most painful thing that had ever happened to me.

“The class reunion,” Liz says. “They went for drinks once or twice, and then the affair took off from there.”

I imagine Tessa in another man’s arms, whispering sweet words in his ear like she did when we made love—no, had sex. I feel like I’m being punched in the gut over and over again.

More details emerge. How the whole family had begged her to stop, and she kept saying she would, but she never did.

Then something pops into my mind. Something the man had said. They were going to have a future together. “Was she planning to leave me for him?” I can’t say his name.

“I honestly don’t know. She would not have confided something like that to me because she knew how I felt about the whole thing.”

I’m overwhelmed. And grief-stricken. It’s like I’ve lost Tessa all over again. I cover my face and do something I’ve never done in front of anyone. I cry. I’m beyond embarrassed.

For four years, I had mourned a woman who did not exist.