The Liar Next Door by Nicola Marsh
Fifty-Five
Frankie
THEN
A week after Walter’s unexpected call, he’s still on my mind. I’m busy during the day, taking Luna on a surprise trip to Manhattan, planning my content for the next month, and spending as much time with my daughter as I can because I know these early years will fly all too fast. It’s at night when I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling because it always takes me at least an hour to fall asleep, I think back to Walter’s call and how out of character it was. How worried he was about Julia.
I love Andre but Walter is the most capable man I know. He’s unflappable, the type of man you can depend on in a crisis. So for him to sound that rattled… I’m worried.
I didn’t like how he has concerns about Julia’s mental health. For staid, dependable Walter, the zombies of the apocalypse would have to invade earth for him to remotely be concerned about a girlfriend behaving erratically. Even when I’d told him about my parents and their lifestyle, he’d merely quirked an eyebrow though I know it had shocked him because we’d discussed it later. When a gas bottle for our barbecue had exploded in the garden shed and set the whole thing alight, he’d calmly called the fire department while trying to battle the fire with an extinguisher. When I’d freaked out after practically slicing my palm in half while chopping peppers one night making dinner, he’d reacted quickly, wrapping my hand in a dishcloth and driving fast, yet safely, to the ER department.
So that phone call and his uncharacteristic panic is bugging me. A lot.
With sleep elusive, I slip out of bed. I have to pass Luna’s bedroom on the way to the stairs and I pause, peeking through the gap. She’s barely moved since I tucked her in two hours ago, lying on her back, her arms spread-eagled on top of the covers, her golden plait at right angles on her pillow. Her night light casts the faintest stars around the room and I lean against the doorjamb for a moment, content in a way I never thought I could be before I had her.
She’s my world, bringing me a joy I never expected when I got pregnant. Luna is unpredictable and spontaneous at times, cloyingly affectionate at others, and I love every adorable inch of her. Not that we’re perfect all the time. She’s not so pleasant to be around when her demands aren’t met and she gets her obstinacy from me, but she’s amazing and I adore her.
She stirs, mumbling something in her sleep, and I ease away, not wanting to wake her. I tiptoe down the stairs, skipping the third from the bottom because it creaks loud enough to wake me when Andre has to leave for work early sometimes. I pad into the kitchen and fill a glass of water, before sitting at the dining table and flipping open my laptop.
I’ve never been one to look back on my past so I’ve never searched on social media or elsewhere for my parents or Walter. I prefer living in the present but with Walter’s weird call still making me edgy, it’s time I did a little digging on Julia.
I’m blessed with a good memory so I remember Walter mentioning her full name to me way back when we started dating. I type Julia Skelke into a search engine and wait as the hits pop onto the screen. However, a B-grade movie producer in Toronto, a teacher in London, a college student in Hamburg and a chef in Sydney don’t fit the bill. I scroll through a few pages, surprised there are no hits on social media either.
Puzzled by a lack of online presence—almost everyone has some kind of digital footprint these days—I take a different tack and check out if Walter has a social media profile. He does, on one of the more obscure sites, and it looks like he hasn’t updated it in years. On the upside, he hasn’t been clever enough to fully protect his privacy either, so I can look through his photos. There’s none of me and I don’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. There are a few of him at work and at conferences and this is when I finally find what I’m looking for.
It’s a photo of about twenty bank employees and their significant others, taken about six months before I met Walter, at a banking conference in Chicago. Walter has his arm around a blonde woman who’s identified as Julia Skelke in the fine print under the photo taken from some financial journal, but she’s mostly hidden by some guy with big hair in front of her.
That pesky third step creaks and I shut my laptop. The last thing I need is Andre asking questions why I’m looking at my ex-husband’s out-of-date social media profile. I sip my water as he enters the kitchen, rubbing his eyes, his hair sticking up at right angles all over his head.
His eyes are bleary with sleep. “What are you doing down here?”
“Couldn’t sleep so thought I’d grab a drink, maybe a snack.”
“Want me to make you cheese on toast?”
I smile. My husband thinks all the world’s problems can be solved by cheese on toast at any time of day or night. “No, I’m good. I might grab one of those oatmeal cookies I made earlier today.”
He wrinkles his nose but grabs the cookie jar regardless. “I don’t like those white chia seeds you added to them.”
“If Luna couldn’t taste them, I doubt you can.”
He places the cookie jar on the table in front of me and pretends to pout. “I’ll have you know I’m a cookie connoisseur and I can detect the slightest hint of healthy crap you try and hide in otherwise delicious cookies.”
“Well then, I’m surprised you didn’t figure out I put wheat germ and powdered greens in those cookies you demolished so quickly last week.”
“What?” He clutches his stomach. “That’s plain unfair.”
“Hey, I have to get the healthy stuff into you guys somehow.”
“You need to be punished,” he says, pulling me to my feet and patting my butt.
I laugh and widen my eyes in false innocence. “Oh really?”
“Yeah. Upstairs. Now.” He growls a second before he nuzzles my neck and I wrap my arms around him, thankful for this man every day.
We got through the tough times and despite my insecurities causing a few minor hiccups every now and then, and my general dissatisfaction with my work, we’re doing okay.
“I love you,” I whisper, pressing my cheek against his chest, comforted by the steady beat of his heart.
“Right back at you.”
As we ease apart and he stares into my eyes I realize I need to stop worrying about my ex’s problems and concentrate on my marriage. I have enough going on in my life to fret about anyone else’s.
But the next evening, Walt calls again. I can’t give him advice about how to handle his deranged girlfriend and I don’t want to lend a sympathetic ear again. I need to nip this in the bud because I can’t have him calling me so often. There’s a vast difference between an annual call for sentimentality and being his go-to person for relationship advice. It’s all kinds of wrong.
But when I answer and hear a subdued sob, I’m so shocked I don’t say anything.
“Francesca, love of my life.”
Hell, he’s drunk. A confirmed teetotaler, life must be really bad for Walter to contemplate taking a sip of alcohol let alone drinking so much he’s slurring his words and saying he loves me.
“Walt, you have to stop calling me.”
“Can’t. You’re the only person I can talk to.”
“That’s not true. You’ve worked at the bank for years and you have college buddies. You’ve got plenty of friends to talk to.”
I hear a sniffle. “But you’re the only one who understands me.”
This isn’t good. After our divorce, Walter never gave any indication he has residual feelings—apart from that one slip-up when I escaped to the beach house after Andre cheated. I’m concerned that the alcohol has loosened his inhibitions and his tongue, and his true feelings, long buried, are emerging.
If that’s so, I feel sorry for him, as I can never be anything other than a distant friend. I know why I indulge him in our annual chats. Because I still harbor incredible guilt that I turned to him in an hour of need and I used him to get back at Andre, even if my husband doesn’t know it.
I never should’ve taken advantage of Walter like that. It was wrong on so many levels. At the time, I’d justified it in ridiculous ways: telling myself that Andre slept with someone so this would be payback and we’d be even, I needed to feel attractive rather than spurned, I knew Walter would make me feel good for a short period of time when I really needed the validation. But no matter how much I dressed it up or how many excuses I told myself, I had used him and I hope this isn’t the result.
“Francesca? You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me wine is so good? I’ve drunk a bottle and I feel so much better. I swear I can hear the waves much clearer through the living room window. I love this beach house. So many memories…”
I know I’ll regret asking this but the sooner I get to the bottom of this phone call, the sooner I can hang up.
“Why do you need to feel better?”
“Because I need to break up with Julia and I know it’s going to be awful.”
“So you’ve made the decision yet haven’t done it?”
“I’m a chicken.”
He starts making clucking noises that end up sounding like a duck quacking and I stifle a laugh. Walter is so honorable and upstanding I can’t imagine him tipsy, let alone drunk.
“Maybe if I drink some more, I’ll pluck up the courage?”
“No!” I almost yell, before lowering my voice. “You need to be sober to have a conversation like that with her. You owe her that much.”
“I guess… This is a disaster. Her. Me. Everything is screwed up. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Why wasn’t I good enough for you?”
Uh-oh. It looks the wine has already given Walter false courage because he’s dredging up the past and asking questions he should’ve bombarded me with back then.
“You were a great husband, Walt, and I cherished our time together. But we’re too different and ultimately, that led to us drifting apart.”
I can never tell him the truth. That I doubt I ever truly loved him. That he was a means to an end, a way for me to escape Gledhill and my parents, a way to never look back. When we married I cared about him a lot, may have even loved him a little. But I was never in love with him the way I am with Andre.
“You broke my heart.”
I wince and sorrow makes me tear up. He sounds so plaintive I wish I can offer him some comfort, but I can’t. It’s not my place.
“Walt, the wine is making you maudlin. It has the same effect on me. Why don’t you have something to eat, drink some coffee—”
“Is Luna mine?”
I freeze as a chill sweeps over me, raising the fine hairs on my arms, making me shiver. I sway a little and grip the table in front of me for support.
It’s taken him five years to ask the question and I should be prepared to answer. I’ve expected this long before now. And I hate the thought he’s been stewing over this for years and has only asked now because he has false courage from a bottle.
“No, Walt, Luna is Andre’s.”
He starts sobbing and I clench the cell so hard my fingers ache.
“I never wanted to make life difficult for you, Francesca, that’s why I haven’t asked before. But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, hoping it’s true, because that would mean we’d have a chance…”
Appalled by how much he’s clinging to the past, I say, “This is the alcohol talking. Please, eat something. Take a painkiller and lie down. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“I won’t. I was really hoping Luna is mine—”
“She’s not,” I snap, my patience wearing thin at his rambling persistence. “I’ll send you a copy of the paternity test if that’s what it’s going to take to get you to believe me. I had one done not long after her birth because of my slip-up with you and I wanted to be sure.”
“Whatever,” he mumbles, sounding like Luna at her recalcitrant best. “I’m sorry for laying all this on you. You’re right. I’m never drinking again.”
“Just take care of yourself, okay?”
“Hmm…”
The dial tone buzzes in my ear and I put the phone down, surprised to find my hand shaking. I have no idea if he’ll remember any of this in the morning but I know what I have to do. Seeing tangible proof of Luna’s paternity will put an end to any fanciful daydreaming.
I can’t send it to the house we used to live in because I’m not sure if Julia still has access, so I’ll send it to the beach house. I could email but I only have his work one and I don’t want to attach private stuff to an address that can be scanned by antivirus software and possibly alerted as spam for others to see.
Sending a copy of the paternity test alone is too heartless, so I flip open a notebook and start writing.
Dear Walt,
I have no idea what to say. I value our friendship, but I wonder now if keeping in touch, albeit annually, has done you a disservice. It sounds like remaining friends, even if we usually only chat once a year, has given you some kind of false hope. Perhaps the alcohol made you say a bunch of stuff that isn’t true or it could’ve dredged up feelings long buried, but whatever the reason, this needs to be addressed.
It was never my intention to hurt you. Our marriage was good but we grew apart and when it ended, you were upset but stoic and understanding too. It’s in the past but from what you just said on the phone, you’ve been clinging to memories and wishing for things that will never be between us.
I consider you a friend. And as a friend I’m going to give it to you straight.
If you’ve been holding back emotionally from Julia because of some misguided hope for us, that has to end. Our relationship is in the past and there’s no going back. You say you want to break up with her but you need to re-evaluate why. Is it because you can’t give her what she wants or is there more to it? Women are intuitive and you’ve been dating a long time. It’s not surprising she may want some kind of commitment. If your doubt over Luna’s paternity has held you back, you need to move forward. Now.
Luna is not your daughter and I’ve attached the test results. I’m hoping that seeing cold, hard proof will free you and enable you to move forward with your life. I just wish I’d done it sooner.
This is the last time I want to speak about this with you. I encourage you to talk to Julia and whether you ultimately break up or not, make sure it’s what you truly want in your heart.
I’m not sure it’s wise we keep doing our annual phone call?
Take care,
Francesca
I don’t sign off with “love” as I need to establish clear boundaries now. I’m saddened beyond belief that the man who’d once given me a fresh start has been dwelling on the past. I hope this letter and the paternity test will give him the closure he needs.
If anyone deserves all the good things in life, my kind-hearted ex-husband does.