“Yeah, yeah. Totally fine. I have kind of a random question for you.”
“Okay?” His voice sounded like it was coming from a hollow room. Hen guessed he was driving.
“I’m doing a cover illustration for a new book, or hoping to, anyway. It’s about witches and they want a bonfire on the cover.”
“Cool,” Rob said.
“I looked online for photos of bonfires and didn’t find anything . . . I was wondering—”
“Yeah, I actually have some awesome shots. Want me to send you some?”
“Yes, that would be amazing. Very, very helpful.”
“Not a prob.”
“How are you? It’s been a while.”
“I’m all right. Getting old. Missed you guys at this year’s party.”
Hen felt an actual physical sensation move through the center of her body. “Oh, sorry about that . . . We just moved into this new house, and—”
“Yeah, Lloyd already gave me all your lame excuses. I didn’t buy it from him and I’m not buying it from you.”
“Who was there?”
Rob began to list names, most of which meant nothing to Hen. She pretended to listen, but all she really wanted to do was to get off the phone and absorb the information she’d just received. Lloyd hadn’t gone to Rob’s party, which meant that he’d gone on some romantic weekend away with whomever he was now involved with—there was no other possibility, was there?
Rob was finishing up his list. “. . . and Justin, of course, who never misses it.”
“Hey, sorry again. Next year for sure.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. Oh, fuck . . . Red light, lady.” Hen heard the bleat of a horn, then Rob continued: “Look, I gotta go. I’ll send you some sweet bonfire pictures.”
“Thanks so much, Rob.”
Hen dropped her hand to the top of her thigh, the phone gripped loosely, and just sat for five minutes. Lloyd wasn’t just having a fling; he was orchestrating weekends away. The thought was somehow so alien to her, as strange as hearing that Lloyd had once been a woman or that he was secretly employed by the CIA. She felt hurt, but she also just felt baffled, blindsided by this new information. Part of her bafflement was that she never really thought of Lloyd as someone who hid things, as someone with enough cunning, enough intelligence, really, to get away with a major affair. Suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to know more. She wanted to know everything.
Lloyd’s laptop was charging on the kitchen counter, and Hen went and grabbed it. It was password protected, but Hen knew almost all of Lloyd’s passwords. And unless it was the password for their bank account or credit card account, Lloyd almost always used ASDFJKL; (Hen had given him a hard time once about how easy that would be to figure out, but he’d kept it anyway). The password worked, and Hen went first to Lloyd’s internet history. He’d cleared it the night before, and the only sites he’d visited that morning had been a Red Sox blog that she knew he commented on and his email account. She quickly scanned his emails, looking for anything from a woman she didn’t know, but also looking for correspondence with Rob Boyd. She didn’t find anything in his inbox, but when she went to his Sent folder, she did find an email exchange with Rob in which Lloyd had said that they couldn’t come to the bonfire that year (“still got a shitload of unpacking to do”) and that they’d definitely make it the next year.
Hen went further back, looking at all the emails Lloyd sent, most of them to his parents or to his brother in North Carolina. Going back over a year, though, she found an email conversation that he’d had with Joanna Grimlund, Rob’s ex-girlfriend who still lived in Massachusetts.
The first email was from Lloyd to Joanna: “Hey, I had a really great time over the weekend.” This was from a year ago, also in October. Hen had skipped that bonfire party.
According to the time stamp, Joanna had responded to Lloyd about five minutes later: “Me, too. Too bad Rob has to be there at his own parties. Otherwise they’d be perfect. Just kidding! J.”
The next email came from Lloyd the following day and was five words: “Can you call me today?”
There was no response, or if there had been, it had been deleted. Whatever had begun that weekend had obviously continued without the benefit of email.
Hen opened up a new message box in her husband’s email