Chapter 1

Jack's heavy sigh was surprisingly loud in the confines of his car. He realized it was the first sound either he or his wife had made since driving away from the Water Club.

"Are you angry?"

Jack craned his neck to look as far up the Garden State Parkway as he could. It was a single, gleaming line of cars to the horizon. He sighed again, "Can't get mad about traffic on Memorial Day."

Fiona gave a sharp shake of her head, "Not about that ... obviously."

In the word "obviously," Jack could hear the echo of "deliberately obtuse." It was one of Fiona's favorite accusations to level at him. It wasn't true anywhere nearly as often as she thought it was.

He positioned his car behind a blue minivan with Connecticut plates and moved his foot to the brake. Strangely, he hadn't been thinking about the events of the night before. He hadn't even been thinking about the deposit slip, nestled in his shirt pocket behind his phone. Trying to think about either thing had been overwhelming. He'd retreated into focusing entirely on the mechanical task of driving.

Every word they'd said to each other this morning had been in the service of getting their luggage packed and into the car and the other necessities of checking out of a hotel. Over breakfast, Fiona had struck up a conversation with their waitress, but not spoken much to Jack. Not wanting to air their personal lives to the restaurant staff, he'd brought out his Blackberry and spent the meal checking mail.

Still, the question had taken him by surprise. He now realized he'd expected the subject to wait until they got home, a time that was now looking to come much later than he'd hoped.

"It wouldn't have occurred to me to be angry," Jack said honestly. "I am a man after all." He frowned, "Should I be angry?"

That got him an uncertain smile, "You'd be surprised."

"By what?"

Fiona fell silent long enough for the traffic to move forward a car's length. Eventually, she said, "The reality isn't like the fantasy, Is it?"

Jack wondered what sort of fantasy his wife had in mind. He would have considered his own imagination fairly rich. The image of his wife, her back arched, head on his shoulder, strawberry-blond hair cascading down his back, moaning in his ear and clawing at his neck and shoulder certainly mimicked a lot of fantasies he'd had.

True, he'd never combined the fantasies of Fiona losing herself to the throes of passion with the ones where he got to be with two beautiful women at once. But, that had been because it just seemed so unlikely. Fiona had been forthright about her own desires and never given a hint that they had included other women.

He wasn't about to explain that, though, "I'm not angry."

"Okay." Fiona turned to look at him. "On a scale of 'angry' to 'thrilled to pieces, ' where do you fall then?"

"Confused," Jack answered immediately. The traffic started to move, sluggish and fitful, but enough that he had to watch the road. "Nervous. I don't know the protocol for this sort of thing. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or say. I am, however, pretty sure that it would be impolitic to admit to being 'thrilled to pieces.'"

"Maybe being impolitic is the protocol," Fiona offered. "I want to know what you're thinking, Jack. I have no idea what's going on in your head right now. You say you're not angry, but you're not thrilled. Are you ... moderately happy, vaguely disappointed, or blase and indifferent? You're playing your cards so close to your chest, I can't begin to guess."

Jack frowned and shook his head. Once, he might have fallen into the trap of telling Fiona the answer to anything she asked. But, she didn't always want to know the answers to the questions she posed. Taking her at her word could lead to tears, recriminations, and bitter arguments. Their marriage had suffered enough from answers incautiously given. Besides, he had no answer. How was he supposed to feel?

He settled on, "I'm confused."

Fiona sighed and pushed her hair back away from her face. Even in a light summer dress, with the air conditioner wheezing to keep up, a hint of sweat gleamed on her chest and arms, "What are you confused about specifically?"

"About what happened last night." Jack stared at the blue minivan as if he could force it to drive faster with his mind. "Not the part I was there for. I've got that all clear in my mind and suspect it will be there to warm me in my old age. But, what was going on in your head? Was I even supposed to be there?"

"Of course." Fiona's words came out a shade too quickly. "I mean, I think so. Certainly from my perspective you were." She took a deep breath, "I knew you were coming back any minute. I thought you'd be there when we came upstairs. Myrcee wanted to meet you. I thought..." Her voice trailed off, "I thought we were just two old friends reminiscing about the past. I mean, it occurred to me that she might be interested in getting us into bed, but I didn't know..." She shook her head, "She kissed me right before I heard your key in the door. I didn't think she would do that."

Jack grunted. The blue minivan's tail lights came on. He hadn't noticed the long wave of cars braking in front of it right away. For a while, there was no sound in the car except the air conditioning. He prayed it would hold out. He had an eerie sense that losing air conditioning on this trip could end his marriage.

"What would have happened if I'd decided to stop and grab something to eat before I came up?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know." Fiona lowered her head. "There wasn't time for a single conscious thought between the kiss and the key."

"So, I might have walked in on you two..."

Fiona shook her head, still not looking at him. "I think I would have stopped it. Myrcee..." She took a deep breath, "Myrcee's view of men has always been a bit ... simplistic. I don't think she believes a man could react badly to finding his wife in bed with another woman."

The statement hung in the space between them. Jack considered it until the silence became oppressive and he wanted to lean on the horn or turn on the radio, anything to shatter the quiet.

"You talk about her as if you know her pretty well."

Fiona nodded, "I did."

"She's the one you experimented with?" Jack asked. "The one with whom it ended badly?"

Fiona seemed to stop breathing. Jack could almost hear her slicing some large truth into pieces small enough to fit in her mouth.

"We have a history. It was unfair of me to call it 'experimenting.'" She shook her head, "We were together almost two years. But, yes ... it ended badly."

The statement was still too big for Jack to take in all at once. It required him to unwrap the tightly-bound package of ideas marked "Fiona," consider each one, and decided which to bundle back up. He'd fallen in love with his wife in no small part because she was so frank about what she liked and wanted when they were alone. People who knew her only casually could believe her nearly asexual. She was so reserved and put-together that it could be hard to imagine her as anything else.

If Jack had met her somewhere other than the beach, he might have made the same mistake. She wore her everyday clothing like it was armor, but the first time he'd seen her, she'd been sleek and slick and nearly naked. Later, she would admit that it had been a moment of profound loneliness and a need to make any sort of human contact that had sent her outside so exposed.

By their first date, she was back in her armor, but Jack had fallen for the girl on the beach and would not be deterred from pursuit.

He watched Fiona out of the corner of his eye. The dress she wore today, light green with a daisy pattern, wouldn't look out of place at a church picnic. But, it was still one of his favorites. Bare limbs and more bare flesh beneath a thin layer of cotton were daring in public.

He hadn't commented when she put it on. He'd been too preoccupied.

"Did you wear that for me?"

Fiona looked down as if she'd forgotten what she had on, "I wore it because we were going to be driving through an oven." A faint smile parted her lips, "But, I packed it for you ... Is it still your favorite?"

Jack nodded, relief coursing through him, "It is."

The relief took him by surprise. Certainly, nothing was resolved between them. But he recognized the woman in the car with him now. She was still his wife, not some unfathomable, exotic creature.

Around the car, the Pine Barrens rose. Jack had grown up near here. As a boy, he'd once wandered too far into the pines and been lost. He'd found his way to a road shortly after night had fallen, but he'd never forgotten the feeling that he might never emerge. At eleven, he hadn't thought of starvation, dehydration, or animal attacks. He'd imagined himself growing to adulthood as some kind of reclusive forest-dweller.

Ever since then, when he walked too far into the woods, he would have a moment of fear as he lost track of landmarks and couldn't say exactly where he was. He'd moved to New York as soon as he could and not wandered the woods in years.

Just over the next rise would be the sign for the exit that led to his parents' house, the one he'd grown up in. He'd toyed with the idea of showing Fiona the place where the house had stood. It would have been a nice diversion, a chance to let the traffic peter out before they continued on their way. He knew now that he wouldn't suggest it today. Such a gesture would be fraught with unintended meaning.

It was probably a 7-11 or an auto body shop now anyway. Jack had never really thought about it. If he imagined going back, it was to a dead, black scar on green grass. The last time he'd seen the place, it had still been steaming in the summer sun, but he knew that the last embers would have long since been extinguished.

"So, what was that last night?" he asked finally, choosing to focus on the here-and-now. "An impulsive, one-time recapturing of lost youth? The beginning of something new? A going-away present?"

Fiona jerked forward so quickly that her shoulder-belt snapped into place as if she'd been in a collision, "Why would you even ask that?"

Jack scowled, "Because I have no idea what to make of it. I was literally gobsmacked."

"Literally?"

Jack shook his head and had to chuckle. He'd walked into one of his own pet peeves, "All right. I wasn't technically hit in the face with anything. But, I don't think I could have been more surprised."

Fiona gave him a sidelong glance, "That wasn't what this whole weekend was. Is it? A going-away present?"

Jack shook his head, "No, of course not. Why would you even ask that?"

"You've been so ... solicitous," Fiona said. "The ... gorgeous room, the spa treatment, that incredible dinner." Her hand went to the string of pearls at her throat, "The unexpected presents. I ... felt like I was being courted. I didn't know what to make of it."

Jack shook his head again, "The point of this weekend was to take an opportunity to make things better between us. We haven't had a lot of time to ourselves and it's hurt us." He sighed, "I would have liked to have a weekend where we could just relax and spend time with each other, but ... I saw an opportunity to get some time together and decided to take it. The presents were sort of an apology for my having to spend half our vacation playing poker."

Fiona stroked the pearls thoughtfully. Jack thought she would finally ask him the question that would let him give her the news that had been on the tip of his tongue when he'd walked in and found her in an odd tete-a-tete with another woman.

Instead, she asked, "You've never imagined me with another woman?"

Jack shook his head, "Literally, I don't think you could have surprised me more if I'd walked in and you'd told me ... you'd signed a contract to pitch for the Red Sox."

Fiona wrinkled her nose in a quirky smile, "I'd rather pitch for the Yankees."