Aubrey and Calder were having one of their afternoon poolside chats. Their physical relationship had ended, and Aubrey was now Calder’s confidante. To that effect, Aubrey no longer wore her robe for these encounters; she dressed in casual poolside clothing.
This afternoon, Calder was bursting to talk to her.
“Aubrey, Aubrey. You’ll never guess. I have a girlfriend!” Calder could barely contain himself.
Aubrey was setting out glasses of iced tea and white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies.
“Okay, Calder, calm down,” Aubrey smiled. Calder was the one bright spot in her week now, and she wanted to hear all about the new girl in his life. “Tell me all about her. Where did you two meet?”
“I did what you said to do, you know, join some activities. So I joined the track and field team. This one girl, one of the long-distance runners, is hot, so I chatted her up at practice, and the rest is history.”
Aubrey was intrigued. “Does this girl have a name?”
“Cassidy. And she’s from upstate. Get this, her parents own a farm.”
“Do you two do anything other than run?”
Calder was munching on a cookie. “Sure. We go out for pizza, hang out with the team, you know, college stuff.”
“Anything else?”
“Sure, we root around on the trail during practice. That part is great!” Calder winked at Aubrey.
“Good for you, Calder. You seem so happy.”
“I am.” Calder took a sip of tea. “And what about you, good Dr. Prentice?”
“I’m fine. The practice is going well, and I’m thinking of publishing a book.”
“What about?” Calder stopped snacking long enough to listen.
“About the case studies I’m working on. The patients I’m seeing.”
“Is that okay with your patients?”
“The names are anonymous. It protects their privacy.”
“I’d love to read it.”
It was a relaxing, quiet afternoon.
Until a car came screeching into the driveway. A car door slammed shut, and the front door banged open.
Calder and Aubrey looked at each other blankly.
The patio doors swung open, and there was Foster, looking furious.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Foster was red-faced and furious.
Aubrey and Calder both sighed in relief that they were sitting apart and both were clothed. As a matter of fact, nothing was going on except tea and cookies. Thank God.
“What are you talking about? And why are you so upset?” Aubrey stood while Calder cowered.
“What’s he doing sitting here with you, having refreshments?”
Aubrey had recovered from her shock and was now feeling cross. “If you must know, Calder finished the landscaping, as you can see, and I was offering him some refreshments before he went back to school to see his girlfriend.”
Foster put his hand to his forehead. He was clearly shaken up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m upset about something else, and I took it out on you. I’m never here. I forgot Calder did the landscaping on Wednesdays. I’m such a jerk. Forgive me. I had a rough day at work and needed to be alone. I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”
Aubrey looked at Calder. “Why don’t you go ahead, and I’ll pay you next week.”
Calder, relieved he had dodged a bullet, picked up his things and left.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” Aubrey asked, concerned. “I’ve never seen you like this. Work never bothers you. It’s the very thing that you live for.”
“I don’t want to talk about it out here,” Foster said. “Let’s go inside.”
Aubrey followed Foster into the living room, rolling her eyes upward, so thankful that Foster’s anger was not directed at her and Calder.
Foster poured himself a shot from the bottle of scotch sitting on the wet bar and knocked it back. Aubrey was surprised. Foster was not a drinker, not during the week, in the middle of the afternoon.
Aubrey sat on the couch. “Foster, please tell me what’s going on. You’re scaring me.”
“It’s that little bitch at work. She's what’s making me furious to the point where I want to kill someone!”
“Who are you talking about?” Aubrey couldn’t figure out who in Foster’s office would upset him so much. Everyone there was so nice. And boring.
“That little bitch Hollis, that’s who.”
“Hollis?” Aubrey was perplexed. “That teenage girl who files papers and answers the phone? What could she possibly do to you?”
“She quit today, that’s what she did. Walked out at lunchtime. No notice.”
“That’s odd and inconvenient, but she was a secretary. Just call a temp agency or talk to someone at the city for a replacement. I don’t understand why you are so upset.”
“That’s because you don’t know why she quit.” Foster poured himself another scotch.
“Did she find another job?”
“No, she did not find another job!” Foster was pacing now. “She’s going back to school.”
“Foster, what the hell is wrong with that? There must be something else.” Aubrey paused. “Is there?” Aubrey wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. She was getting a creepy feeling about why Foster’s secretary left so suddenly. Wasn’t she a blonde?
Foster sat on the other side of the couch. He crossed his arms and took a deep breath. “She’s made allegations.”
“Allegations?” Now, Aubrey was feeling dread in the pit of her stomach. “What allegations?”
Foster was defensive. “What she said isn’t true.”
“What did she say?”
“That I…that I…touched her inappropriately.”
“Are you serious? Foster what the hell?”
Foster didn’t respond.
Aubrey tread carefully. “Is it true? Did you sexually assault her?”
“Of course not!” Foster was quick to reply. “She made it up.”
“Why would she make something like that up?”
Foster thought carefully before he spoke. “She’s blackmailing me for money to go back to school. I wrote her a ten-thousand-dollar check before she left. She said that wasn’t enough to keep her quiet. I think that boyfriend of hers is behind this.”
Aubrey didn’t know what to say.
Aubrey stared at him, trying to process every word while the room seemed to tilt slightly around her.
Ten thousand dollars. What would that pay for? Silence, pain and suffering, lost wages?
Nothing?
Aubrey fell on to the couch, almost fainting. When she recovered, she said, “Tell me exactly what happened today.”
“She came into my office, all upset about something,” he said. Then she said she was quitting, she couldn’t take it anymore, she had to do something, she wanted to quit. She was making a scene.
“What did you do?”
“I closed the office door and asked her what was wrong.”
“That’s when she said I did it, that she told her boyfriend and that I would be sorry. She said that I only hired her because she was sexually vulnerable and that I groomed her for more than what she was hired to do.”
“She sounds pretty specific about what went on.”
“She has a vivid imagination. She’s making it all up. She took a perfectly innocent situation and made it into something terrible. You know me, I’m not even interested in sex that much and certainly not a young, inexperienced girl.”
“What do you think is going to happen now?” Aubrey had to ask.
“This is all going to blow over. She got her blackmail money and it will all go away.”
“You were pretty quick to hand over money for someone who claims to be innocent.” Aubrey said.
“You would be to if it happened to you.”
“But it didn’t happen to me, it happened to you.”
“Don’t tell me, that with all those good-looking guys that you treat,” Foster said, “that you haven’t thought about it.”
“Don’t even go there,” Aubrey said, marking her boundaries. “How long did this go on?”
“She says since I employed her.”
“Why didn’t she say anything before it went this far?”
She was too scared to say anything. She said that I took advantage of her.”
Aubrey felt cold.
“Did you ever touch her?” she asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
Foster blew out a short breath. “I comforted her, Aubrey. She cried a lot. She was anxious about the job, about money, about her boyfriend. She asked for reassurance. So yes, I put a hand on her shoulder. Gave her massages to relax her. Maybe hugged her a few times when she was upset. Encouragement. That’s it.”
Aubrey just looked at him.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not some predator. She’s a kid with fantasies and daddy issues. She flirts. She bats her eyelashes. She lingers in the doorway. She wanted attention. I probably gave too much of it. That’s my mistake. Being kind. Being too trusting. Being…” His voice cracked. “Stupid.”
He went to the wet bar, poured another scotch, and didn’t bother to sit back down.
Aubrey took a deep cleansing breath and tried to empty her mind. “Did anyone else know about this? Did anyone see anything? Did she talk to HR?”
“There is no HR,” Foster muttered darkly. “I am HR.”
Another silence. Foster was pacing back and forth, grimacing, frowning, muttering unintelligibly.
“And her boyfriend?” Aubrey asked. “You think he’s behind it?”
“I think he filled her head with poison. I think he told her men like me are evil, that she’s a victim. That she deserves compensation. I think he wanted to be the hero. His girlfriend was upset at work, and I was an easy target.”
“Upset by what?” Aubrey said. “Your kindness?”
Foster ignored the jab. “Her boyfriend’s violent. He has issues. He’s unstable. You don’t have to be Freud to figure that out. Maybe he saw her crying after work. That’s when he put the idea in her head. Then he put her up to asking for money. If I didn’t give it to them, they would go to the police and make allegations.”
Aubrey closed her eyes, resigned to the situation. “Foster, this is serious. If she goes to the police—”
“She won’t,” he said before Aubrey could finish. “She promised. She took the money. She walked away. This is over.”
But he didn’t sound convinced.
Aubrey studied him. His bravado. His practiced outrage. His carefully chosen explanations. And beneath all of it, there was something only a wife could see.
Fear.
Real fear.
“Did you enjoy it?” she asked suddenly. The question shocked even her.
Foster’s head jerked toward her. “What?”
“Having attention from a teenage girl. Having someone who adored you. Someone young. Someone who looked up to you.” Her voice stayed level. Professional. Clinical. Terrifyingly calm. “Did it feel good?”
Foster had to think on his feet. His wife was a psychiatrist. Trained to spot a lie. He came up with another one.
“I liked that she admired me,” he admitted at last. “That she thought I hung the moon. So she listened to me. She needed me. I taught her everything she knows about the city planning office. But I didn’t touch her sexually. I swear to God, Aubrey. Whatever else you think of me, believe that.”
Aubrey stared at her husband. At the man she used to trust without question. At the stranger standing in their living room with whiskey on his breath and panic in his eyes.
She didn’t know whether to scream, cry, comfort him, or call a lawyer.
Instead, she said, “This isn’t over, Foster. It’s never over when something like this happens. And you need to prepare yourself for that.”
He sank on the couch, suddenly exhausted.
“What do I do?” he whispered.
“We’ll present a united front,” Aubrey said. “I’ll call our lawyer. It will sound better coming from me.”