I stood there, dumbfounded, the notes I had been holding fell to the floor. “Mrs. West?” “I’m here, sorry, I don’t have the appointment on my calendar. Tell her I’ll be down in five minutes.” I picked up the fallen notes, went to my private bathroom and checked my make-up and outfit. I looked composed, but my hands were shaking and my heart was racing in my chest. “No good can come of this” I thought as I walked to our reception area and lobby. Madison was not the dumpy or plain woman I remembered from the cruise. She was wearing a smart black pantsuit with a crisp white blouse. Her hair was stylish. Her make-up was expertly done and she had lost at least forty pounds. I smiled at her, “Madison”, it came out like a question. She rose, didn’t speak, “this way, can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Water?” I was rambling and mumbling, barely enunciating my words and each word running into the next. She had the upper hand and from her cool demeanor, she knew it. She followed me silently down the hallway and the elevator. The ride up three floors lasted forever in the silence. I resisted the urge to make small talk, I knew what her arrival meant, we were busted. Something we had discussed in great detail over the course of our affair. What would we do when either Madison or Robert found out, what was our game plan and our exit strategy. You had always told me that when the time came you would tell her the truth and admit that you were in love with me and that you would then let the chips fall as they would. In hindsight, I realize this wasn’t a declaration that you would leave her, in hindsight, I realize this was your way of saying, “I’ll come clean, but what happens next will be entirely up to her.” The fact that she was here, instead of you, was telling. She had found out, somehow, and rather than telling me, rather than leaving her, you stayed and now here she was, eighty-four days post your disappearance, to what purpose I had yet to figure out. Was she going to tell me she knew? Was she going to scream at me in the office? Was she suing me? I had heard that was possible, that an estranged spouse, a victim of an extramarital affair sometimes sued the offending party for damages and sometimes they won. My mind was contemplating every possible scenario at breakneck speed. I was dizzy from the thoughts that kept colliding and rearranging in my head. What was she doing here? What was about to happen?
I opened my office door and stepped aside to allow her in. She walked by me and moved to the left. I walked to the right, coming to stop beside my desk, but not behind it, I wanted to put some space between us but I didn’t want to look like I was hiding. “Ma…”, we spoke at the same time, “Thomas is dead.” I stopped mid-Madison, mouth hanging wide open, eyes widening, breath catching. “Car accident, on the way to the airport, a truck jack-knifed and he couldn’t stop in time.” I moved, or rather lurched behind my desk and fell into my chair, dumbstruck and in shock. This couldn’t be true. This was a cruel game she was playing. She was punishing me. “I don’t believe you”, to this day I can’t believe that was my response to a grieving widow whose husband I had been having an affair with for over a year, but there it was, out in the open. “It’s true”, she pulled a newspaper clipping from her purse and set it in front of me on my desk. Local Businessman and Philanthropist Dies in 16 Car Pile-up on I-285. Thomas was a philanthropist? How had I not known that? What else didn’t I know? He’s dead? What the fuck is going on? I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think and couldn’t stop thinking. I sat there, staring at the article, hands shaking, brow sweating, disbelieving. I almost forgot Madison was there, standing over me, staring at me. I looked up.
She was watching me. I couldn’t read her expression. I was so intimidated by her at this point and so heartbroken for her at the same time. My first thought was to get up and hug her, to tell her how sorry I was for her loss, to just hold her and let her cry. I must have moved to stand or speak because she said, “don’t, just, don’t. I thought I lost everything that day. My world ended and came crashing down around me. I lived for weeks in a fog, I barely remember the funeral or the weeks after, but as the veil lifted, as I came back to the world I began tying up loose ends. Imagine my surprise when I learned that one of those loose ends was you.” “Madison, I, we, I…” I sounded like an idiot, I had no words for her, I felt ambushed. Not only was the widow of my lover in my office, not only was she standing before telling me she knew what we had done, she had just delivered to me the news that Thomas Hunter, the man I had come to consider the love of my life, was dead. That he had been dead, for 84 days. It hit me, all of a sudden, the reality of it, I started sobbing, I put my head down and my face in hands and just let it go. I had spent 84 days getting over you. I had spent 84 days feeling rejected and angry and confused. I should have known. I should have figured this out. I shouldn’t have spent so much time hating a man who didn’t choose to leave me. She let me cry, for how long, I don’t know. When I finally looked up I half expected her to be gone from my office, but she was still there, sitting now in one of the two chairs I kept in front of my desk. Still composed, hands clasped on her lap, still watching me with a cold and calculated stare.
“Are you done?” It was so callous, she was seething, I could see that now. Her composure was an illusion, this was a woman scorned. She had been able to prepare for this since his death. Her emotions mirrored mine in the opposite direction, first grief and now anger, I was only getting to grief in this moment and had wasted over two months on anger. I was only truly feeling the loss of you now. What I had felt before, what I had thought was loss, was nothing compared to the emptiness that filled my entire being. I had always thought that you would turn up again, on some idle Tuesday afternoon, months down the road, I would get a text from you, “hey baby. I’m sorry, life has been crazy” and we’d pick up right where we left off. The reality that you were gone from this world and my arms forever was not something I had imagined or entertained and it was not something I was prepared to deal with. “Lana?” I snapped back to the present. “Yes.” “Don’t you want to know how I found out about you?” She was baiting me. I didn’t want to know, I didn’t care. You were dead. What did any of this matter now? Why couldn’t she just leave me to my grief? I said nothing but met her gaze. “It started with his phone, there was only one text from him to you, he must have been meticulous in clearing his history, he must have been so cautious, but he didn’t erase that last text before he crashed, and then you texted the next day, and called.” I tried to remember the last text you ever sent me. You had told me you loved me, that you couldn’t wait to see me and hold me in your arms again. I had deleted it. I had deleted everything. My heart broke again as I realized I had nothing to remember you by, unless she left the newspaper article which had a ridiculous headshot of you at the bottom of the article, grainy, black and white, fake, but it was better than nothing. I looked at it now and fresh tears started flowing. “You loved him, didn’t you?” I nodded stupidly. I did love you. I loved you so much. I used to send you these videos in the morning, I knew you couldn’t watch with sound so I used sign language, I learned it just for that purpose. I’d lay in bed, sleepy eyed, hair askew, and I’d sign “I love you. V.S.V.T.”, which stood for Very Simply. Very True.” It was my ‘thing’ for you. It started the first month we met. I wrote you a letter and I signed it, “I love you, very simply, very true, L.” It stuck after that and was my way of telling you how much you meant to me. You never said it back to me, you had other ‘things’ for me that let me know how much you loved me, but that was mine and I meant it, more and more with every passing day and with every breath I took.
“I didn’t even get his phone for two weeks after the accident, they returned it with the rest of the things that had been in car, it was dead, I don’t know why but I put it on the charger.” This was happening, I was going to have to sit here and listen to her tell me about her days following your death and I didn’t think I could handle it. I wanted to scream at her, “stop, just stop, I can’t take this, just let me be, just let me grieve” but I knew this was what I deserved. I knew that no matter how badly it hurt, I was going to have to hear her out. “It took me a few days to get into it, he had changed his passcode, probably to hide what he was doing. He had changed all his passwords, email, Facebook, I couldn’t access anything, he was so good at covering his tracks.” Was she insinuating you were an expert at this? Was this not your first affair? Had I been one of many? God this was painful. “The phone company couldn’t unlock the phone for me. Apple could only reset it, and everything would be lost. It took me a week but I finally was able to trick the face recognition with a photograph. I felt so clever and so shocked that it had worked, but it did. And there it was. His secret life, available to me for the first time in all our years together.” Again, she made you sound like a veteran adulterer; had there been others? Was this a lifetime of infidelity and was I simply one of many in a long line of affairs? “Your number wasn’t saved under a name, but the message was clear. I knew in that moment he died going to see you. He died on his way to cheat on me, with you.” She let that statement linger, hanging there between us, she wanted me to know it was my fault you were dead. That if I hadn’t pulled you away from your home and your wife that you would still be alive. If I hadn’t agreed to meet you in New York City, you would still be here. I hung my head, in sorrow, in shame, in regret. I had never felt so small, I had never felt so defeated. “Then there was this.” I looked up, she was holding a key, it was small and gold, a safe deposit box key. “I went to the bank in New York but without the second key they wouldn’t open it, even though he was dead and I had this key. They said the other key belonged to a Lana West, but that you had never picked it up.” I hadn’t picked it up because I hadn’t known about it. Was this the surprise? Had you gone to New York prior to that fateful weekend and planned this out? Why hadn’t the bank called me? “I don’t know what is in it, there is a clause, that even with the death of one party, if the other party lives, no one else can access it.” “I didn’t know about the safe deposit box Madison, I don’t have the other key, they weren’t lying, he never told me about it.” “I’ve debated for weeks coming here, I didn’t know what good it would do and what it would accomplish, but in the end, I wanted you to know that I knew. In the end I felt you deserved to know he was dead.” I didn’t know what to say. Should I thank her? It sounded so hollow in my mind, gee Madison, I really appreciate you taking the time to deliver this news in person, thanks. So, I just sat there, dying inside and wishing this was over, wishing she would leave so I could crawl onto the floor, curl up in a ball and cry for hours. “I honestly don’t know what is worse Lana, that he had an affair with you, or that he loved you. You took everything from me. Well, his death took everything from me and then you took what little was left. I don’t even have a memory of my husband that I can recall without seeing the lies.” I felt horrible. I was crushed by the weight of this admission and the guilt that came with it but also by the fact that you were gone, really gone, forever, I had never known a despair and an emptiness as profound as what I felt in that moment.
Madison stood and made to leave. She turned back to face me, “I won’t destroy your life like you destroyed mine. I won’t tell Robert, but I think you should. Having experienced this from the perspective of a spouse betrayed, the kindest thing you could do would be to tell him.” She turned away, walked out of my office, closed the door quietly behind her and disappeared. I sat at my desk until after ten o’clock. I held the newspaper article she had left in my hands and sobbed, I laid my head on the hard, cold oak and sobbed, I wrapped my arms around my body and pulled my feet under me and as I cried I rocked myself back and forth in the chair like a child. I cried until I had nothing left in me. I cried until my eyes were so swollen that I couldn’t see. I finally got up, went to the bathroom to splash water on my face, collected my belongings, put the newspaper article in my desk drawer, changed my mind and slipped it into my purse, and as I reached for the desk lamp I noticed the tiny, gold key sitting on the corner of my desk. She had left the safe deposit box key in my possession, I picked it up and put it in my purse. I turned out the light, left my office, hailed a cab and went home.
The next few days were a blur. I called in sick to work the following day. I didn’t get out of bed. I told Robert I had a migraine. After he left I got up and opened a bottle of wine. I started drinking at around seven in the morning, as soon as I heard his car leave the driveway. I curled up on the couch, wine in hand, and pulled the newspaper article from my purse. I stared at your picture. You looked like a staged version of yourself. Hair perfectly styled, not carefree and messy like I remembered. Your smile wasn’t the easy going, haphazard, lopsided grin, but a carefully crafted, big tooth smile that said, “I’m posing”. It was a semblance of you, but not the you I knew, not the you I loved. In my anger and despair, I had deleted every picture, every text, every memory of you, from my phone and my own memory and now all I had left was this newspaper photo that hurt my soul to look at. Robert came home at six as always, I didn’t have dinner made, I had retreated back to the bedroom and pretended to sleep. He was leaving on Friday for a work retreat that would take him away for the next five nights. I sent an email to work saying I needed the week off for a family matter. I’m pretty sure I stayed in bed for those five days. I kept the newspaper article under my pillow when I wasn’t looking at it. My hands were blackened from the ink, the picture was faded and distorted from my tears and my fingers. I actually had rubbed a hole in the article where I had held it so much. I couldn’t imagine a world without you. I had tried. For almost two months my world had not included you, but I still imagined you out there, living, going about your day to day as I did mine, I never imagined you were gone. I never imagined that there wouldn’t be a text one day or a call, I never imagined that I would never see you again. I never imagined a hurt and a grief this deep. I never imagined that I would feel so empty, so hollowed out, and so struck by depression that I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t shower for days. I didn’t eat. I didn’t drink. When Robert came home on Thursday afternoon he was shocked by my appearance and being, he wanted to take me to the hospital, he was convinced I had some rare version of the flu and that I needed immediate help. I burst into tears and I told him the truth. I didn’t want to. It just came pouring out of me.
I told him everything about us. How we met. How much I had loved you. All the times we were together. All the secret rendezvouses. That you were dead. I probably talked for an hour, just rambling, manic, incoherent. I realize now I wasn’t repentant. I wasn’t begging for forgiveness. I just needed to get it all out. I needed to tell someone. I had lived for so long with this secret and now this secret was killing me and I had to let it out. His calm surprised me. He listened, for as long as it took, then he stood up from the bed and without a word collected his unpacked suitcase and left. I never saw him again. I was served with divorce papers a few weeks later in my office. He wasn’t being vindictive. If I sold the house and the rest of the assets we could split everything 50/50 and go our separate ways. I signed them without hiring a lawyer of my own and put the house on the market that evening. I moved into a small loft apartment in Hyde Park. He had left the cats with me and the place was too small for us. Two weeks later I put in for a transfer to our Seattle office and was granted it. I moved from Boston, the life I had known for years across the country. I look back now and know I was trying to put as much space between me and what we had done as I possibly could.
Life in Seattle was good for me. The atmosphere is a weird gloomy all the time, which matched my mood, but was good for my soul. I lived in an area called Capitol Hill, I had a cute three bedroom, two and half bath brick house on a quiet, shaded street. I ran through my neighborhood in the evenings, I mowed my lawn, I tended a little garden I had planted. At night I settled onto my couch with a glass of wine to watch television or a movie on Netflix, my cats curled up at my feet and my favorite chenille blanket covering me. At first, I missed you and cried for you daily. I would pull the tattered newspaper article from the book I kept it in and cry clutching it. Eventually that urge passed. I could go days without thinking about you, without mourning you. I would actually find myself surprised on a random Sunday afternoon that I hadn’t thought of you or cried over you in a week. Each day, each month, it got easier. I knew that I would never forget you, but I knew that I was healing.
Slowly I came to accept that you had opened something in me I didn’t know existed. You had shown me a world of possibilities and you had shown me a love that I had never known before. I came to appreciate the opportunity you presented me and I learned to embrace the me that emerged from the other side. I know I will never love anyone like I loved you, but I know that you were a gateway to a world I didn’t know was possible. You gave me hope for a life I didn’t know was possible.
Almost a year after Madison visited me in Boston I had a meeting in New York City. I brought with me the gold key she had left on my desk. I didn’t know if I would actually visit the bank, but I wanted to keep the possibility open. On my last day in New York I found myself standing in front of Chase Bank on Wall Street. I entered and asked to speak to a manager. When I was seated in his plush office I explained who I was, the situation and presented the small key I had been holding onto for a year. He disappeared for a few minutes and returned with an envelope that held my key, with both keys in hand I allowed myself to be walked to the vault and shown the safe deposit box you had opened for us. The manager took both keys, opened the door, removed the box and beckoned me to follow him down the hall to a private room. I stood for ages in front of the small, metal box before I opened it.
I lifted the lid. The box contained two items. A small velvet box and a white envelope. I picked up the envelope first, held it in my hands and then turned it over. On the front it read, “Lana”, I recognized your handwriting immediately. It shocked my soul, I felt tears welling in my eyes. I was so afraid of what it said. I picked up the velvet box and opened it. In it was a simple white gold band, thin, feminine. I opened the envelope, inside was a folded letter a photo of us you had taken in Sedona on your phone.
Lana,
My love. I had a dream last night and it terrified me. We were on a boat, the boat you hope to retire on, and the seas were rough. We tossed and turned all night, and when I awoke you were gone. I searched high and low, but I couldn’t find you. I knew you were gone. Your loss broke me. I realized in that moment, upon waking, dream lingering, that if something ever happened to you or to me, no one would ever know our story. Would we lay awake at night wondering what had happened? Would we always be haunted by what had happened that the other simply disappeared? Would you spend your life questioning my affection and my devotion to you? I needed to find a way to reach you. I needed to make sure that should anything happen to me or to you, we would we would know. I was hoping to make this our secret repository when you met in me NYC, but I also realized that life is short and unpredictable, so I set it up months ago just in case. I am leaving Madison, I plan on telling her as soon as I return from this trip. I cannot live a lie anymore, it isn’t fair to her, to me, or to you. I only hope that when we meet in NYC that you will agree to leave Robert for me. I can longer imagine or live a life without you. I want to marry you and I want to spend my days growing old with you, even if you forget where your keys are and leave your purse in the fridge. I will find them for you and I will remind you to wear pants when leaving the house. I am in this for the long haul and I will love you for as long as you let me. As a gesture of my good faith I bought you a wedding band. I didn’t buy an engagement ring. I want to take you to Tiffany for that and I want you to pick out the biggest, gaudiest, diamond in the store, even though I know you won’t. But this band, this is my promise, my testament to our love, this is forever, if you’ll have me. I love you Lana West and I am so grateful that I met you. You have shown me what true love is and you are my future. I will see you soon.
I love you. Very Simply. Very True.
Thomas
I collapsed, right there at the Chase Bank on Wall Street. I sat there on the floor, holding your letter and the ring box and all of the feelings, all of the hurt, all of the despair I thought I was over came flooding back. Tears flowed freely. You loved me. You died loving me. You wanted to make a life with me. I felt validated and I felt empty. I took the letter and the ring and I left both keys sitting on the counter. I left Chase Bank and New York City and returned to Seattle.
Getting back to reality, life, and work in Seattle after my trip to New York was easier than I had anticipated. I toyed with the idea of wearing the ring, but couldn’t bring myself to wear it out of the house. I would wear it when I got home and to bed and then take it off each morning before showering and I would leave it on the counter until I got home. I set your picture on the coffee table and would pick it up every day when I got home. Sometimes I would kiss it. Sometimes I would cry. But the emptiness I felt after learning about your death, the hollow feeling I had lived with when you disappeared, those didn’t return. In the wake of these feelings was a dull ache, a subtle, throbbing pulse of remorse and regret that pulled at the back of my mind, but didn’t haunt me. I could sleep at night, I found joy in my everyday life, I ran, I lived my life. I didn’t forget you, but I knew I had moved on.
On the two-year anniversary of your death I had a meeting in Cleveland. Your hometown and gravesite were only an hour outside of the city. I rented a car and drove to the cemetery you were laid to rest in, I had found this information on Google. I wondered if I had just looked harder, if I would have found the news of your death on Google as well. I didn’t dwell on this thought. The cemetery was beautiful in that odd, serene way that graveyards often are. Hilly, green, tree lined. I drove through the gate and parked. I wanted to walk. I wandered for a bit. You always joked that I was a wanderer, that I traveled through life, just taking it all in and relishing in the splendor of the world around me, so I wandered, turning this way and that, believing I would eventually find you. You were laid to rest on top of a hill, a giant maple stood guard, the leaves had changed, the land was resplendent with the colors of autumn, red, gold, yellow, orange, lingering green, and imposing browns. Your headstone was simple, grey granite, Thomas Hunter, 1977-2019. I knelt in front of it and cleared the leaves from your grave. I wiped my hand across the top of the marker to remove any dust I imagined had settled there. I pulled the grass that had sprung up tall around you and had been missed by the last landscaper. I knelt in front of you and for the first time in almost three years I felt something let go. I had brought with me a single white rose, I laid it in front of your gravestone. I sat back on my heels and I told you about my life since you had been gone. I told you about Madison’s visit, about telling Robert, about moving to Seattle, I talked to you for over an hour. As I finished my story and rose to leave, the cold having seized my joints, my knees uncooperative, I put my hand on your tombstone to help me up. I stood and continued to stand there, hands upon that cold granite, heart heavy, white rose at my feet. The day had passed and it was growing dark, the air was cold and warned of snow. I pulled from my pocket your letter and the ring and set them on top of your marker. I bent and kissed your name and whispered “I love you, I always will.” As I turned to leave the snow began to fall. I walked down the path to my car and I didn’t look back.
Diary of A Kitten Addict 