The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [80]
My God, Kathryn thought.
“I saw your photograph,” Muire said. “In the papers. The FBI is assembling its case?”
“So I’m told.”
“Do they talk to you?”
“No. Did they call you?”
“No,” Muire said. “You know Jack would never do this.” “Of course I know that,” Kathryn said.
After all, Kathryn had been the first wife, the primary wife, had she not? But she wondered then: In a man’s mind, who was the more important wife — the woman he sought to protect by not revealing the other? Or the one to whom he told all his secrets?
“The last time you saw him...,” Kathryn began.
“That morning. About four A.M. Just before he left for work. I woke up . . .” She left it there.
“You’d been out to dinner,” Kathryn said.
“Yes,” Muire said, looking slightly surprised that Kathryn knew this. She did not ask how.
Kathryn tried to remember if there had ever been an occasion when she had seriously suspected Jack of having an affair. She didn’t think so. How devastatingly complete her trust in him had been.
“You came here just for this?” Muire asked, picking a stray sliver of tobacco from her lower lip. She seemed to have recovered her composure.
“Isn’t that enough?” Kathryn asked.
Muire exhaled a long plume of smoke. “I meant will you be traveling on to Malin Head?” she asked.
“No,” said Kathryn. “Have you been?”
“I couldn’t go,” she said.
There was something more. Kathryn could feel it.
“What is it?” Kathryn asked.
The woman rubbed her forehead. “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head lightly. “We had an affair,” she added, as if to explain what she had been thinking. “I became pregnant and took a leave from the airline. Jack wanted to be married. It wasn’t as important to me. To be married. He wanted to be married in the Catholic Church.”
“He never went to church.”
“He was devout,” Muire said and looked steadily at Kathryn. “Then he was two different people,” Kathryn said incredulously. It was one thing to be married in a Catholic church because a lover wanted it, quite another to be devout oneself. Kathryn intertwined her fingers, trying to steady them.
“He went to mass whenever he could,” Muire said.
In Ely, Jack had never even entered a church. How could a man be two such different people? But then a new thought entered Kathryn’s mind, an unwelcome thought: Jack wouldn’t always have been two different people, would he? As a lover, for example. Mightn’t some of the intimacies he shared with Kathryn have been the same as those he shared with Muire Boland? If Kathryn could bring herself to ask, wouldn’t there be some recognition on the part of the woman sitting across from her? Or had there been an entirely other play? Another script? Different dialogue? Unrecognizable props? Kathryn unlinked her fingers, pressed her palms against her knees. Muire watched her intently. Perhaps she, too, was speculating.
“I have to use the bathroom,” Kathryn said, standing up abruptly. The way a drunk might do.
Muire stood with her. “It’s just upstairs,” she said.
She led Kathryn out of the sitting room and through the hallway. She stood at the bottom of the steps, gesturing with her hand. Kathryn had to pass in front of her, and their bodies almost touched. Kathryn felt diminished by the woman’s height.
The bathroom was claustrophobic and made Kathryn’s heart race. She glanced into the mirror and saw that her face had taken on a hectic flush and was mottled. She pulled the pins from her hair and shook it loose. She sat down on the toilet lid. A floral print on the walls made her dizzy.
Four and a half years. Jack and Muire Boland had been married in a church four and a half years ago. Perhaps guests had gone to the wedding. Had any of them known the truth? Had Jack hesitated when he said his vows?
She shook her head roughly. Every thought bore with it a pictorial image Kathryn didn’t want to look at. That was the difficulty — allowing the questions but holding back the images. Jack in a suit, kneeling in front of a priest. Jack opening a car door, slipping into the passenger seat. A small girl with dark curls