A Pilot's Wife

Relief

I apologize for such a delay, life has really been in the way, but Im glad to have a new chapter up! Enjoy!!!

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As she watched Elliot drive, certain memories pricked at her, nagged at her. She knew it might be months or years before they stopped. The thought, for example, that James might have taken money from her and Julia to give to another family was insupportable, and she could feel her blood pressure rising in the car. Or the fight, she remembered suddenly, that horrible fight for which she'd blamed herself. The gall of him, she thought now, letting her believe her own inadequacies had been the cause, when all along he was having an affair with another woman. Was that what James had been doing on the computer that time? Writing to a lover? Is that why he'd been willing to escalate to hostilities so quickly when he'd asked her if she wanted him to go? Had he been flirting with the idea?

Or the lines of poetry, she thought. Had James relaxed his vigilance and allowed bits of his relationship with Muire Boland to seep into his marriage with Olivia? Had Olivia's life been invaded in ways she'd never noticed? How many books had she read or films had she seen that Muire might have suggested? How much of the Irish woman's life had leached into her own?

Again, Olivia would never know.

Elliot turned off the main road, following the directions they'd been given to the most northwesterly point in Ireland. Astonishingly, the road became even narrower, no wider than her driveway. She wondered as they drove why she had never imagined an affair. How could a woman live with a man all that time and never suspect? It seemed, at the very least, a monumental act of oblivion. But then she thought she knew the answer even as she asked the question: A dedicated adulterer causes no suspicion, she realized, because he truly does not want to be caught.

Olivia had never even thought to suspect; she'd never smelled a trace of another woman, never found a smear of lipstick on the shoulder of a shirt. Even sexually, she'd never guessed. She'd assumed the falling off she and James had experienced was simply the normal course of events with a couple who'd been married for years.

She rolled down her window so that she could breathe the air — a curiously heady mix of sea salt and chlorophyll. The land around her, she realized suddenly, was extraordinary. The texture of the landscape — its rich green hues, its density — gave a feeling of solidity she'd not felt in London. She breathed evenly and deeply for the first time since Muire O'Brien had appeared at the hotel dining-room door.

They entered a village, and would have passed through but for a sight she'd seen before: Only the old fisherman was missing. She told him to slow the car and they stopped. She sat parked along a common ring with shops and homes. She could see where the cameraman must have stood, where the reporter had conducted her interview in front of the hotel. The building was white and smooth and clean. She saw the sign above the door: Malin Hotel. She thought that they should get a room for the night. Their flight back to London didn't leave until the morning. Maybe she ought to get something to eat as well. Elliot stepped out of the car and opened the passenger door, following her into the hotel bar. 

It was several minutes before her eyes adjusted enough so that she could make out the scuffed mahogany of the traditional bar. She noted the scarlet drapes, the stools with beige vinyl tops, the dreariness of the room alleviated only somewhat by a fire at one end. Along the walls were banquettes and low tables and perhaps half a dozen people playing cards or reading or drinking beer.

Olivia sat at the bar and ordered a cup of tea. Almost immediately, a woman with blond sculpted hair claimed the stool next to hers. She sat between the woman and Elliot. Olivia turned her head away and examined the signs above the register. Too late, she understood that the people in the bar were reporters.