DITW 14-12: Odyssey 7 (Patreon)

For what seemed the hundredth time, Kimmy asked Hyun, “Why wouldn’t he call me?”

The “he” in question being Hyun’s ex-husband and Josh’s cousin Meyer. Why wouldn’t Meyer contact her? Why would he contact Hyun?

Josh was in the hospital. Josh had fallen in a lake somewhere up north and somehow had almost drowned and also was suffering from hypothermia. Who the fuck had been looking out for him? Who the fuck cared about him?

Kimmy and Hyun and Sophie were in the Leaf doing about a hundred and twenty east on the 401, headed out east to bum-fuck country where some assholes lead her husband to his drinking demise. With no one telling her, she knew Josh had imbibed too much and somehow ended up in the frigid water.

Fucking three months ago, he’d chugged most of a bottle of fine bourbon and left her alone with Devlin Stone. He was his own worst enemy. Always had been.

“And he’s not awake?”

Hyun said, “Kimmy, he’s going to be okay,” then looked into the backseat with that telltale expression of worry. Sophie was in the backseat. Yes, don’t frighten Sophie. She understood. But in not frightening Sophie, there were truths she was missing. Was Josh okay? Was he not awake or was he awake? If Meyer had texted her instead of Hyun, she wouldn’t have to rely on this filter of the messaging.

Hyun said it again, face turned, to include Sophie in the message. “He fell into the lake and he was rescued. He wasn’t coherent, and they warmed him, but out of an abundance of caution, they sent him to the ER in Peterborough—”

“Yeah, but who are they? Who is this they? Who was he with?”

“He was with Meyer. Some of his friends from work. Karina was there.” Hyun paused, then said, “And Meyer’s new girlfriend.”

“And who is she?”

Behind them, Sophie said, “Quinn.”

Kimmy took her eyes off the road for a moment to regard Sophie in the back, buckled into her big girl kid’s chair. “You know her? You’ve met her?”

Hyun said, “You’ve met her, too.”

“I did?” Kimmy recollected now a new woman with Meyer, some kind of friendship happening over the summer. “Okay,” she said. The information was slow in coming, and every time she heard something new, it was like starting all over again. So, Josh and Meyer went up north to have a good time, and Josh’s friends were invited, but she wasn’t. That fucking hurt so bad. And no one looked out for Josh? “How did he end up in the water?”

Hyun said she didn’t know. “It was this morning, Meyer said.”

“They were up all night?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

There were all these questions and no answers, and she was going to go crazy before they got to Peterborough. There were so many hefty thoughts crashing against her retaining wall right now. Her lovely man, hurt and endangered, pushed into an unexpected ordeal just when he’d faced his limit . . . and then off on the distant horizon, the threat of steeper waves thrashed her way, whipped into a frenzy under charcoal skies fattened by stormy rains. Things like how Josh could have ended up in the water, things she dared not even think about. Things like how sorrow proved too much for Josh Waters to bear. There were evil truths she didn’t want to face. She’d done awful things to the man she married. Awful things to a kind and considerate human, a man stronger than he even knew. But Josh’s strength could only bear so much, couldn’t it? Josh’s resilience was a webwork of scar tissue. The outside world had beaten him and he’d healed over and over for many years, creating a sturdy barrier to injury thicker than most. But it wasn’t impenetrable. And no one could cause more harm than the ones you showed your secrets to.

Kimmy squeezed the steering wheel, gritting her teeth. “I want to know how he ended up in the water.”

“Meyer says they don’t know how it happened.”

She shook her head and gritted her teeth harder. “I’m going to own that bitch’s cottage by the time this is over.”

Then she closed her eyes for a moment. There was no easier escape than an adversary. No better avoidance than turning the tables and going on the offense. But this morning the game clock had run out, and it was harder and harder to shield herself from the thrusting knives she sought to avoid.

You did this. This is you. You put Josh in the water. Josh tried to escape using the only path you’d left him after all the terror you caused.

The gritting teeth slackened their grip and began to chatter. Her jaw trembled, and she had to wipe her eyes. She sniffled, squeezing her eyes against tears. “How cold is the water right now?”

Hyun stared out the window. “I don’t know, Kimmy. It’s freezing.”

  *

On a cold and rainy-gray Saturday morning, Kimmy and Hyun and Sophie crossed from the hospital parking to the entrance of the Peterborough Hospital’s emergency department. An assemblage of familiar and unfamiliar faces greeted them in the quiet ER. The divide struck her hard. A congregation of somber-faced white people facing three Asian women. She’d never felt like an outsider before in her life, but a cultural, historical estrangement she’d never felt before slapped her in the face this morning. The expressions on the gathered faces weren’t ones of relief, seeing Josh’s wife arrive to comfort Josh, they were pale faces blooming with the blush of blame and reproach, and her knees weakened, feeling discovered and exposed, and her mind racing to imagine all the truths Josh could have told them, all the wicked things his evil wife had done to such an innocent, undeserving man. For the first time in months, wickedness didn’t rile some forbidden spirit in her, some impish demon that reveled in the maddening pleasure of sexual domination. This morning she froze, her interior frosting with the wet, dreadful wind sweeping across the waiting room’s confine. No charm or reliable resolve saved her; no lies danced on her tongue. She couldn’t even smile. Her heart galloped faster and faster, like it raced headlong to its cliff-side doom. Her shoes remained pinned to the scuffed linoleum, afraid to move closer, afraid they would seek revenge. Hyun looked back to see why Kimmy had stopped, and still Kimmy couldn’t smile. All those faces turned their way. Meyer, Karina, Steve, some girl she didn’t recognize, and the one named Quinn, who now that Kimmy saw her, she remembered. No one smiled or waved. Guilt washed up from Kimmy’s pinned feet like a sickly sheath, crawling up her back and over her shoulders. She felt sick to her stomach, and her cheeks blazed hot as a stovetop.

Josh had told them. Josh had told them all what his wife had done. Josh had told them how his wife cheated on him, and how she’d slept with her boss, and how her boss had ruined Josh’s youth, had bullied Josh, and how she’d betrayed Josh, and lied and lied and lied, and how Josh had watched his wife have sex with his high school bully in a hotel room in Yorkville—all to fuel his wife’s hungry furnace of a sex drive.

At last Steve raised a hand and nodded to her, and Meyer rose to greet them. Karina turned away. The two other girls stayed seated, heads bowed. A glimmer of hope shone in this dismal tableau vivant; what she’d thought was reproach could be guilt; their somber expressions could describe not blame, but shame over their failure to protect her husband from harm. They bowed their heads to avoid the menace of the righteous and faithful wife whose husband they’d neglected. But then Karina walked away, following the direction in which she’d turned, heading down the hall and through a set of double doors. The cold returned, and with it the hard and racing pulse that had her head swooning once more.

Meyer greeted Hyun, taking her hand a moment. He looked her way then, eyes troubled, camouflaging the hate he might hold for his beloved cousin’s traitorous wife. Then Meyer stooped, hugged his daughter and stood up with her, Sophie clinging to her daddy. Meyer told her, “Josh, is fine, okay, baby? He’s going to be okay.”

Sophie nodded, a stoic little girl, patient to let matters play out so she could understand, polite enough not to buffet her father with a barrage of childish questions. Watching, waiting, learning. One corner of Kimmy’s mouth turned up in the attempt at a smile, proud and envious of what Hyun and Meyer had created. And bereft. Her hand went to her stomach, thumbing below her navel.

Hyun said, “What happened, Meyer?”

“We don’t really know. Karina found him. They were in bed together“—then to Kimmy, weary, saying, “Not like that, not in bed together. She went in to make sure he was okay. They were in their clothes. Then she woke up, and he wasn’t there and she looked for him and she couldn’t find him. She called out, and some of us got up, but Karina found him before we were down there. He was in the lake. On the shore, but, you know, unconscious.”

“How long had he been in the water?”

Meyer shrugged, unsmiling, eyes hooded, enfeebled. “Quinn’s a nurse. So’s her friend Emily. They said like no more than half an hour. I don’t even know how he got in there. He . . . They cut him out of his wet clothes, brought him up to the fire and dried him and warmed him and everything, but he was still, like...”

“We’re so lucky they were there,” Hyun said. She looked Kimmy’s way and showed a small smile that made Kimmy believe it was encouraging or instructive; a reminder that she should show gratitude. And now she felt guilty for the ire in the car on the way here, making claims of vengeance and punishment.

Kimmy didn’t smile, but she said, “Everyone was asleep?”

“Yeah, we had all gone to bed. Karina helped Josh to his bunkie and then stayed with him because Steve was staying up later with the rest of us.”

Kimmy said, “You guys were having a party.”

Meyer nodded, his mouth turned down in a way that showed he harbored no guilt for not inviting her.

“I guess he drank too much,” she said, and Meyer nodded. She added, “That made the hypothermia worse, didn’t it?”

“You can ask the doctor when he comes out. We’re all waiting here. He was here fifteen minutes ago, said Josh was doing good. Quinn probably saved him. Quinn and Emily. They airlifted him here to—”

Kimmy put a palm on her forehead. “Airlifted him? Are you serious?”

“We were up north. Far. There are only so many hospitals. The ambulance came and took him, but they wanted to warm his blood and they couldn’t do that in the ambulance. They took him wherever, and, uh, he came to Peterborough in a helicopter. The rest of us came down in my truck.”

There was nothing for her to say. Nothing for her to ask anymore. Nothing to add or subtract, no point in fighting and no urge to ingratiate. She felt emptied and distant and all alone. Meyer held Sophie. Hyun and Meyer were close. They’d been a family once, but now they weren’t. Sophie wasn’t hers. Hyun wasn’t really hers, either. Not so she could share their affection and consolation before others. The only person in the world that mattered was all alone in an emergency bed, having his blood warmed so he wouldn’t die. She had nothing of her own. No one. No one trusted her. No one should. Betrayal had elevated so much of her desire to mountainous heights, and while the view was nice at first, the oxygen was thin.

Josh beached on a frigid lake shore, and no one claimed to know how he ended up in the water. But she knew why. It was his wicked wife who had put him there, and everyone in this room was just afraid to say it to her face.