Safe Harbour

She clung to the wall to help herself up, and stared blindly ahead, still holding the letter. And then as she knew, as she thought of it, as it came to her, she wanted to die. The baby spoken of in the letter had been born, if it had been, six months after he died. William Theodore. She hadn't dared name him Ted, but she had come close enough. And it was not the honor she had claimed it was for her dead friend. The baby had been named for his father. Ted's middle name was William. All she had done was reverse the names. The baby was his, not from a sperm bank. And the letter could only be Andrea's. The single signed letter “A” was her initial, and she had even manipulated him about Chad, played into his desperate need for denial, and criticized her. The letter had been written by the woman who had claimed for eighteen years to be her best friend. It was beyond belief, beyond thinking, beyond bearing. Andrea had betrayed her. And so had he. All it could mean was that when he died, he hadn't loved her. He had been in love with Andrea, and had fathered her baby. Ophélie was still holding the letter when she went into the bathroom and got violently ill. She was standing over the sink, looking deathly pale when Pip found her. And she could see that her mother was shaking violently.

“Mom, are you okay?” Pip looked panicked. “What's wrong?” Her mother looked frighteningly ill, and so pale she looked green.

“Nothing,” she croaked, rinsing her mouth out. All she had thrown up was bile and a little bit of turkey. She had eaten almost nothing. But she felt as though she had retched up all her insides along with her heart and her soul and her marriage.

“Do you want to lie down?” Pip offered. It had been a horrible day for all of them, and now she was desperately worried about her mother. She looked like she was going to die, and wished she would.

“I will in a minute. I'll be fine.” Even she knew it was a lie. She would never be fine again. And what if he had left her? What if he had done that and not died? And taken Chad with him. It would have killed her, and maybe Chad, if they both had denial. But he was dead anyway. They both were. It no longer mattered. And now he had killed her, as surely as if he had shot her. The letter made a travesty of their marriage, not to mention her friendship with Andrea. She couldn't understand how anyone could do that to her, how she could be so insidious and so treacherous, so dishonest and so cruel.

“Mommy, go lie down, please …” Pip was nearly crying. She hadn't called her mother Mommy since she was a baby. And she was very frightened.

“I need to go out for a minute.” Ophélie turned to look at her daughter, and this time the robot had not returned, she looked like a vampire, with icy white face and red-ringed watering eyes. Pip almost didn't recognize her, and didn't want to. She wanted her mother back, wherever she had gone to in the last hour. Whoever this was didn't even look like her mother. “Can you stay here alone?”

“Where are you going? Do you want me to come with you?” Pip was shaking now too.

“No. I'll only be gone for a few minutes. Just keep the doors locked, and keep Moussy with you.” She sounded like her mother, but she didn't look it. And suddenly Ophélie had a singleness of purpose, and a power she never knew she had. She could understand suddenly how people committed crimes of passion. But she didn't want to kill her. She just wanted to see her, to take one last look at her, the woman who had destroyed their marriage, who had turned her memories of Ted and what they had shared to ashes. She couldn't even allow herself to hate him. Everything she felt, all the agony and horror of the last year was now focused on Andrea in a single moment of time, like a bullet. But the bullet had struck Ophélie and run straight through her. And there was nothing she could do to them to equal what they had done to her.

Pip stood at the top of the stairs looking frightened as her mother left. She didn't know what to do, or who to call, or what to say. She just sat on the steps, and pulled Mousse close to her. He licked her face, and her tears, as they sat there and waited for Ophélie to come back.

She drove the ten blocks to Andrea's house without stopping. She drove through crosswalks and stop signs, and one stoplight, and left her car parked on the sidewalk. She had made no call of warning, and she ran up the stairs and rang the doorbell. She had worn no coat over her thin shirt, not even a sweater, and she felt nothing. It took Andrea only a moment to answer the doorbell. She was holding the baby in his pajamas, and they both smiled the minute they saw her.

“Hi …” Andrea started to greet her warmly, and saw instantly that she was shaking. She had put the letter in her pocket. “Are you okay? Did something happen? Where's Pip?”