Quiet as the Grave

To his surprise, she had stood up and was getting ready to edge her way down the aisle. She glanced back at him, holding her phone up as explanation.

God, she was absolutely unbelievable. Gavin was due up any minute—he was one of only about two or three kids who hadn’t performed yet. He reached out and grabbed her arm. He must have squeezed too hard, because she let out a cry loud enough to be heard up on stage.

“Sit down,” he whispered. He jerked his head toward the stage. “Gavin.”

He ought to let go of her forearm. He knew that. She was obviously strung out. She was humiliated because her son had a piddly part in the school play. She was mad at Mike for not caring. Plus, she’d had to repress all that resentment against Cicely Tillman, and self-control wasn’t her strong suit.

She was probably as hot and high-pressure as a volcano ready to blow.

But he didn’t let go. He was pretty damn angry, too. He knew who was on the other end of that cell phone. Her new boyfriend. The one she was going to be spending a month in Europe with, starting tonight. The guy was welcome to her, but, goddamn it, couldn’t she at least pretend to put her son first, for once in her life?

“Let go of me, Michael,” she said. Her whisper was so shrill it turned heads three rows away. “You’re hurting me.”

He hesitated one more second, and then he dropped his hand, aware that, in their section of the audience, they were now more fascinating than what was happening onstage. She rubbed her arm dramatically and then, with a hiccuping sob, made her way down the row.

Mike stared hard at the stage, ignoring the curious faces that were still turned in his direction. Gavin, who had just put on an old-fashioned hat, came forward.

“Our schoolroom is small, but it has to hold us all,” he sang in a horribly off-key soprano. “My students walk for miles, and I greet them with a smile.”

That was probably where Gavin was supposed to smile, but he didn’t. He finished his tiny part, and then he scurried, head bowed, back to his spot on the risers. Mike felt his stomach clench. Was this just stage fright, or had Gavin actually heard his parents squabbling?

Justine didn’t return even when the show was over, and Mike was fuming, though he managed to hide it fairly well, he thought. He ate cookies and drank fruit punch with the other parents until the kids joined them, enduring the awkward silences while everyone tried to figure out what to say about Justine’s absence.

Finally Gavin came racing out, beaming. He barreled into Mike, trying to knock chests like the professional sports figures, but instead hitting Mike’s ribs with his nose. Mike forgot Justine and his heart pounded a couple of heavy thumps of typical proud-daddy love. The kid was growing like crazy. In a year or two, that chest-bumping thing just might work.

Best of all, Gavin looked ecstatic now that his ordeal was over. He grinned up at Mike with those knockout blue eyes that were so like Justine’s. “It’s over!” He laughed. “I sucked, huh?”

Mike smiled back, relieved that the episode with Justine apparently hadn’t reached the kids’ ears. “Yep, you’re pretty bad, pal. You’re definitely no Pavarotti.”

This was the kind of candor that would drive Justine nuts. She had the theory that admitting any inadequacies was bad for the boy’s ego. But Mike knew that Gavin’s ego was perfectly healthy. Maybe too healthy. Gavin was as gorgeous as his mother, he lived in a six-thousand-square-foot mansion with his own boat and plasma TV, he pulled down straight As, and he boasted the best batting average in his Little League conference.

It would do him good to face the facts: Hugh Tillman was a better singer.

“I know,” Gavin agreed happily. “I can’t ever get the tune. Mrs. Hadley hates me. Where’s Mom?”

Mike felt the eyes of the other parents once again.

“She’s outside,” he said as casually as he could. “She got a phone call.”

“Oh, well, tell her I love her, okay? I gotta go.” Gavin and his buddies had plans to celebrate the success of the play with a pizza party at the Tillmans’ house. “Hugh’s mom is already waiting in the minivan for us.”

“Go tell her yourself,” Mike said. He knew if he let Gavin leave without saying goodbye, she’d carp about it all the way home.

The boy flew off, with Hugh and about four other boys trailing behind him like a pack of puppies. Mike grabbed a napkin, wiped cinnamon sugar off his hands and tossed his empty punch cup in the big trash bin.

“Three points,” Phil Stott, Judy’s husband, said with a smile. Mike appreciated that. He knew that Phil, a nice guy who didn’t have kids but was here to support his wife’s school, was trying to bridge the embarrassment gap.

Gavin was back in a flash. “Found her! She says to tell you she’s waiting for you in the car.” He held up his hand for Mike’s goodbye slap. At home it would be a hug and a kiss, but with Hugh and the other “dudes” standing by, a high five would have to do.

Mike obliged, and then did the same for all the other boys, who were accustomed to parading by him this way after every Little League game. He’d coached these boys since they were in T-ball. They were good kids. But he couldn’t help thinking his own smart, silly son was the best.

He wished Gavin were coming home with him right now, but he realized that was pretty cowardly. Yeah, the ride home would be a bummer, with Justine pouting or ranting, but he could handle it. He didn’t need to use his son as a buffer.

By the time he got to the car, Justine wasn’t speaking to him. Good. Pouting was ridiculous, but it was easier to ignore than the ranting.

She’d rolled back her silk sleeve and was rubbing conspicuously at the discoloration just above her wrist. He checked it out of the corner of his eye, just cynical enough to wonder which way the finger marks were facing. He was pretty damn sure he hadn’t been rough enough to bruise anything. She’d probably done it herself, while she waited for him to come out.

He considered trying to make conversation, but it seemed like too much trouble. Woodcliff Road was kind of tricky, with a twenty-foot drop through wooded slopes on the passenger side. He needed to concentrate.

Let her sulk. She loved that anyhow.

Finally, though, her resentment simply had to bubble out in words. She swiveled in her seat and glared at him. “So? Don’t you have a single thing to say for yourself? After what you did to my arm?”

Damn. He’d almost made it. They were only a couple of miles from Tuxedo Lake. He negotiated a curve through some overhanging elms, which were just beginning to go yellow. He glanced at her face, which looked slightly jaundiced in the glowing light. The shadows of the trees passing over her made it seem as if her mouth were moving silently, though he knew it wasn’t. It was a disagreeable sight.

He turned away and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe you were actually going to leave right when Gavin’s part was coming up.”

She waved her hand. “You call that a part? I can’t believe he dragged us all the way out there for that. He made a fool of me, that’s for sure.”

Clenching the steering wheel, Mike tried not to react. This was pointless, and he knew it. He’d tried for years to make Justine think about any situation, anywhere on this earth, without viewing it through the prism of her own self-interests, but she simply couldn’t do it. He’d looked up sociopath once, and it fit perfectly. It was kind of scary, actually.

But, like an idiot, sometimes he just couldn’t stop himself from responding. He accelerated, whipping the passing trees into a batter of lemony green.

“He made a fool of you? Sorry, but you’re going to have to explain to me how Gavin’s school play can possibly end up being all about you.”

She didn’t answer right away, and he knew that was a bad sign. She was lining up her ammunition, which meant this wasn’t going to be just a skirmish. It was going to be war.

“That’s just so like you,” she said. “The perfect Mike Frome can’t make mistakes. If anyone dares to point out that you’ve done something wrong, like rough up your own wife, you just launch a counterattack, trying to change the subject. Well, I won’t be put on the defensive. You manhandled me, and I ought to go to the police.”

“You’re not my wife,” he said. That was stupid, too. That wasn’t the point. But she did that to him. She made him so mad his brain shut off.

“I’m your son’s mother. I think that is just as important, don’t you?”

“No. I think it’s tragic.”

“God, you’re so melodramatic.” She narrowed her eyes. “Tragic? Because I took a call on my cell phone? I’m sorry to tell you, but that doesn’t make me a bad mother.”

He’d had enough. “No,” he said. “What makes you a bad mother is that you’re a raging bitch. You’re the most self-centered, foul-tempered bitch in the state of New York. That’s what makes you a bad mother.”

He half expected her to slap him. He definitely expected her to start yelling epithets at him. But she didn’t do either of those things. Instead, she did something that shocked the hell out of him.

She opened her car door.

“Justine—”

“Stop the car.”

“Damn it, shut the door.”