something crazy? Why were they doing this to me? Defeated, and with a heavy drowsiness cloaking me once more, I succumbed to sleep and slipped back again to a territory just as harrowing. A week before Juan’s death.
The proof I had so dreaded came to me without my even having to look for it. I discovered a note in Juan’s pocket—well, not a note exactly, but a bar napkin, and scribbled on it, in black, was:
I am done with you, please stop trying to contact me I cannot give you what you want. Keep away from me.
It was in a suit Juan hadn’t worn for ages. There were also some sticks of old chewing gum, the wrappers all glued together. My discovery must have come several months later.
The note was a stab to my heart. Definitely a woman’s hand.
I remembered once seeing Princess Diana’s handwriting—a thank you card to a hat maker of hers, whom I had a chance meeting with when my mother wanted to splurge on a hat for a society wedding. The milliner had framed the card. The writing was similar to this note: girlish, curvy, and bold. Fun. The idea that Juan was chasing some “fun” woman, to this extent—and that she was rejecting him in such a final way—made me feel as if I’d drunk bleach. She was done with him? With Juan? Where did she get off being so arrogant? He was obviously pursuing this woman—no—worse, she was done with him, which meant they’d had something, and now it was all over. But he was being insistent… please stop trying to contact me.
Jealousy—neon, lime green envy, the poisonous kind that seeps into your veins—roiled in my guts at the thought of my husband chasing another woman, and her having the gall to reject him. Reject Juan? Was she crazy?
Of course I was glad she wasn’t interested.
But who the hell was this goddess, though, who could go around rejecting a man like Juan? I cannot give you what you want.
He wanted her. Wanted more of what he couldn’t have.
It made me puke.
Thirty-Two
I don’t know how many hours I lay on the mattress in the laundry room. I do remember hobbling to the sink to pee and frantically gulping down tap water, because I didn’t find any bottles of water by the bed. To quench my thirst I had polished off all the champagne in sight, and once back in bed again, I stayed there. I didn’t have the energy to drag myself back to the sink. I felt like hell. At some point, I must have put on a freshly laundered T-shirt of Dan’s, a bird with the word Liberty emblazoned on the front, an irony not lost on me, even in my foggy state.
I’d been a fool not to get rid of them when I had the chance. With my dodgy ankle and locked in here, I was hardly in the position to call the shots now. My wits were my only tools left to me. Three to one. They held all the power. And if my mother, Pippa or Mr. Donner called, who knew what lies the triplets might feed them about my absence? All I could think about was how gullible I’d been plopping myself right into the triplets’ honeyed trap. The freak with six fingers wanting to be part of the gang. Why hadn’t I learned my lesson from childhood? Popular people will only be your friend:
If you are cooler than they are.
If you’re wealthy and they think your riches could rub off on them.
If you have something of value to offer.
I wasn’t cool or wealthy at school, so I had offered up what I could: my intellectual services, letting the bullies copy my homework. Becoming their “friend.” My protection mechanism so they wouldn’t taunt and tease me.
History had repeated itself with the triplets. I felt such a sucker, such an idiot.
If only they’d release me from this claustrophobic solace! Screaming and pounding the door had done nothing to help me. At one point, I did hear a car coming down the driveway. Voices. Pippa? I heaved myself up to the slit of the window and yelled out, but nobody heard me and then the car drove off. Like the lump I had become, I must have crashed back down on the mattress and slithered back into my memories, which were now mixed with a medley of fantasies and dreams, thickened with fever. Sweat dripped from my body, the sheets soaked