Pauline shivered as the cool night wind picked up. She glanced toward the house but didn’t want to go inside yet. She pulled the zipper of her sweatshirt higher at her neck and pressed herself deeper into the sun lounger, hoping the rain wouldn’t start before she finally went in. Her gaze drifted to the upstairs bedroom window.
Rot in hell, you bastard, she thought, then squeezed her eyes shut.
She had suspected for a long time that something was off about Rob’s trips. Not only because the complex loved to chew on their marriage, but because she could feel it herself. Every woman knows when she’s being cheated on. Even if she doesn’t say it out loud or consciously think it through, it’s there. Lurking deep inside, silent but present. Sometimes it knocks, asking to be let out, but then it obediently pulls the rug back over itself. If it’s been swept under, it stays there for a while. As long as it can. Until something happens that rips away the thick layer of cover.
Like that damn receipt. The filthy little slip of paper that the idiot had felt the need to throw into their household trash after two years. Pauline wasn’t great at Spanish. But she had no trouble at all translating “18K yellow gold bracelet with rubies.” In fact, she didn’t even need to translate it. One glance was enough to understand what stood on the receipt before the obscene amount.
And Pauline hadn’t received any gemstone-studded jewelry. Even though she liked rubies. Or at least she used to. Now they had become a symbol of infidelity and betrayal. She hadn’t dared dig any deeper into the trash. She was terrified she might find something else alongside it. She grabbed that one slip of paper and kept it. Maybe one day she’d shove it in his face. Red with rage, fists clenched, screaming:
“Explain this, you piece of shit!”
And he would explain it. Just like he had explained everything else. The endless trips to the U.S. The scent of perfume on his jacket. The shirt she hadn’t bought him… Anything could be talked away. And that was Rob’s job. He talked holes into people’s heads and fed them from the palm of his hand. His style was overwhelming, his appearance flawless. If he didn’t disappear all the time, the complex would put him on a pedestal as the perfect husband and father. Instead, they looked at Pauline with pity.
She turned the sun lounger around so she wouldn’t have to see the house or the upstairs window where Rob was sleeping peacefully, while she was shivering outside by the pool. She already regretted taking out the receipt and looking at it. What was the point of that cursed certainty? What had it made better? There was nothing she could do anyway. She barely spoke Spanish, had completely fallen out of the workforce since the girls were born. As a musician—even if she managed to find work—she wouldn’t be able to support two little girls on a small island. Not at their current standard of living. Definitely not.
“Everything okay?” Bernard’s whisper tore through the silence around the pool.
Pauline’s body jerked, but she managed to suppress a scream. Her heart pounding, she stared at her neighbor. Shivering from cold and shock, she nodded.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Bernard dragged his sun lounger close to hers. Without asking, he spread the thick blanket he’d brought under his arm over both of them.
“Want a cigarette or something?” he breathed.
“I don’t smoke,” Pauline replied barely audibly.
Bernard rummaged under the blanket for a moment, then pulled out a small metal hip flask and held it out to her.
“Rum.”
Pauline took it silently and drank. She nodded, then handed it back.
“Better?” Bernard asked.
“No,” Pauline smiled, “but more bearable.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“What’s the point? Everyone already knows… and now I do too.”
They weren’t close. But both of them had reached a depth where it felt like there was no lower to fall—only that, for now, there was no handhold on the way back up either.