Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 18: Now

Smack. A large, heavy raindrop plummets into the soil at my feet. Another one plops down the back of my ear and into my collar. I quickly step back under the big tree where I was just spying on Carmen and Donny. There's dry shelter under the accidental trellis of the last, tarrying leaves overhead.

I look longingly in the direction Diana raced off moments ago, wishing I were the one who made it home first, carrying Thomas. But I can't go back inside now. Not when Diana knows that I've been out here long enough to have more information that she does about what Carmen was up to.

And of course, it's abundantly clear what Carmen and Donny were up to out here. Diana wouldn't have recognized Marcus's friend and collaborator, but I know the sound of his voice. The breathy moans I overheard, incidentally, sounded a little like his singing voice. I smirk at the thought, despite myself.

I wonder whether this was a one-time sexual encounter between the two of them. Something about the familiarity with which their bodies came together told me it was not. But then how long have they been doing this?

Was it going on last spring, when he brought his guitar up on the porch to play a song for us? I think back to the way Carmen tucked her bare legs up beneath her on the lounge chair, tossing her dark, cropped hair flirtatiously. Maybe Donny hadn't cared about my opinion of his new song at all; maybe the song was just a pretense to spend time with Carmen. At the time, I had been so distracted by my own misery that I might have missed something obvious between them.

Another, crueler aspect of what I've just witnessed occurs to me. If Donny is up here from New York, does that mean he is staying with the Dolans in their home for the week? I imagine Donny crashing with his friend Marcus, working on their YouTube videos most of the day, and then sneaking off whenever he can to have sex with Marcus's wife.

Is such behavior even possible of a person who can sing so sweetly?

And what about Carmen? At this point, I can't remember how I ever thought of her as a close friend. How could she do this to Marcus, when they are supposedly trying so hard to start a family together? Maybe I've been completely wrong about the power dynamic in their relationship. I assumed that if anything abusive was going on, it involved Marcus using his physical size against his wife. That look he gave her in the kitchen the night they brought the lasagna over for us – I assumed it was dangerous. But maybe it was suspicion that I'd seen in Marcus's eyes.

Does he know about Donny?

I press my palm against the bark of the tree to steady myself. It's taking an embarrassing amount of energy to stress out this much about the state of my neighbors' marriage.

But I dread going back inside my own house. It will be just as uncomfortable in the kitchen as it is out here, standing in the rain, and maybe more so because it isn't supposed to feel that way. Home is supposed to be where you take shelter from the storm.

My eyes scan across the windows that run along the back of our house; they glow yellow in the greying evening. That tableau is supposed to look like comfort to me, but right now it just looks like more loneliness.

So I don't move as the sky grows dark, until the wind picks up and seems to cradle my face in its wispy hands, sending a chill rapidly spinning down my spine. Turning away from its icy grasp, I blink, not sure of what I think I am seeing.

But there it is, a few yards ahead of me in the mud, at the base of the shed's low stoop.

My heart in my throat, I fly from under the cover of the big tree's branches and squat down beside the shed. There, glinting up at me, exposed by the rain's persistent pounding and the white glow of moonlight, now glaring through the trees, is my missing earring. I reach down to snatch it up with my trembling hand, which has been instinctively tugging at my left earlobe.

One word bubbles up into my mind, and I have no idea what comes next: How? How did one of my little golden earrings – from the pair I never take off, the pair Owen gave me years ago – how did it end up partially buried in the dirt by the shed?

The cold grips my spine as a possible answer surfaces in the form of another question. Could someone have taken it? Did whoever – or whatever – brought Thomas out here in the middle of the night also, somehow, steal one of my earrings? No; this earring has been missing since before I found Thomas out in the shed.

I want so desperately to talk about all these questions and to come up with satisfying, bearable answers with Owen. But my husband thinks I'm crazy.

I start to stand. Then suddenly I think better of it and kneel back down to the earth. I place the tiny gold bird back where I found it so that it peeks, gleaming conspicuously, from behind the lowest stair. The rain is letting up now, but even if it starts to downpour again overnight, the earring will be protected here.

Now I just have to get either Owen or Diana out here to the shed and make sure they notice the earring in the next few days. Then there will be another witness, someone to corroborate all the bizarre shit that's been going on with this shed so I look less insane. I can't expect them to just believe me if I say I found it out here.

The rain has stopped almost completely now, and I make my way back to the house.

I have to face them sometime.