A Stranger on the Beach. Michele Campbell

boots, a sexy top. Had she come in here looking for company? Had he missed his chance? She had a great body for a woman her age. For any age, really. He caught her eyes, raised an eyebrow as if to say, Leaving already? She gave a half smile and a little nod and walked out.

      Nancy was busy in the dining room, so Aidan bussed the table. Cocktails were twelve bucks, and the woman had left a twenty. The big tip annoyed him somehow, like she was putting him in his place. He’d offered her a free drink, and then she pulls this? He had half a mind to follow her outside, but she might take that the wrong way. It wasn’t worth getting his boss pissed off, or having people say he was up to his old tricks. He pocketed the money and thought, what the hell, if he wanted to see her, he knew where she lived. Right?

      8

      On Tuesday, I drove in to the city to meet with the divorce attorney. But at the last minute, I got cold feet, and called to cancel from the street in front of her office. My marriage fell apart so fast that I hadn’t had a moment to think. Was this the right thing? Could we avoid it somehow? Jason and I had been married for twenty years. You don’t throw that away without a fight. Shouldn’t we try counseling first? Okay, he wasn’t exactly giving me that option. He wouldn’t even take my calls. You might say that was all the answer I should need, but I couldn’t accept it. Beneath my every thought was Hannah. Your average kid who’d gone off to college would be upset if their parents split, but they’d take it in stride. Hannah was fragile. And she was a Daddy’s girl. Jason was everything to her. I didn’t want to burden her with our marital problems just as she started college. But I also didn’t want her blaming me for abandoning her beloved father. That’s the truth. That’s why I didn’t meet with the lawyer. It had nothing to do with Aidan. We’d barely spoken at that point.

      I canceled the appointment. I went to our apartment in the city, pulled the blinds, drank an entire bottle of red wine, and passed out on the sofa watching Gossip Girl reruns. I was hiding my head in the sand.

      At midnight, the shriek of the phone woke me. I grabbed it, hoping it would be Jason. But it was the alarm company calling, to say that a motion sensor had been tripped back at the beach house. The police had been dispatched, and found no evidence of a break-in. The guy thought maybe the system wasn’t calibrated properly, which didn’t surprise me. I’d had it installed the day before, and I’d chased the technician out prematurely, so I could go sob in the bathroom.

      But this meant I needed to go back out to the beach. It was raining on Wednesday morning, and traffic on the LIE was a nightmare. But I was grateful to be back in my beautiful house, even if it had been the scene of my recent humiliation. I opened the French doors and sat listening to the rain, waiting for the technician to show up. I’d canceled the appointment with the lawyer, but I was obsessing over the thought of divorce. If we split up, I’d never go back to our apartment in the city. Jason could have it. I wouldn’t want the reminders of our life together, of raising our daughter. This house would be my future. I’d live here full-time. He claimed he wanted to play nice. Fine, then. He could give me a big settlement, one I could live well on. I’d walk on the beach, get a dog, plant a garden. Divorce wouldn’t be the end of the world. I’d survive. That was the Logan in me talking. We’re survivors.

      When the alarm company didn’t show, it took me hours to figure out that something was wrong. They’d given me a window of noon to two o’clock for the technician to arrive. When he wasn’t there by three, I called the alarm company and got the runaround from the receptionist. At four I called back and demanded to speak to a manager. At six, the manager finally returned my call.

      “I’m afraid we’ve had an issue with the payment, so I can’t dispatch a service provider at this time,” the manager, whose name was Shelley, explained.

      “Wait a minute. I was told you accept personal checks. I wrote a check for the installation fee and first year of service.”

      “Yes. But that check bounced.”

      “It—?”

      “It bounced. It was not honored by your bank,” Shelley said loudly.

      “I know what ‘bounced’ means.”

      Why the hell did the check bounce? As of Monday, when I wrote it, there was plenty of money in the account to cover that payment, and more. I was absolutely certain. This woman had to be wrong.

      Right?

      “No need to get snippy, ma’am,” Shelley said. “As soon as we receive payment, we’ll reinstate service and dispatch the technician.”

      “Reinstate service? You mean the alarm’s not working now?”

      “The sensors installed in your home should still function—”

      “It wasn’t functioning. It was going off for no reason.”

      “It will function to the level of installation.”

      “You mean it’s still broken.”

      “We’re no longer monitoring your signal, sending alerts or calling alerts in to the police. If your motion sensors get tripped, the alarm will go off in your home, but we won’t respond or relay the signal to the police. I’m sure you understand, we can’t provide service we’re not paid for.”

      “Look, I don’t know why the check bounced. It must be an error. Can I pay you some other way?”

      “Certainly. I can take a valid credit card over the phone.”

      “Well, why didn’t you say so? Hold on.”

      I went to get my wallet, telling myself to stay calm. But as I read off my Amex number and waited for the charge to go through, I had a sick pit of fear in my stomach. I’d logged into the joint checking account Monday, and there was over a hundred grand in there. Jason couldn’t possibly have spent so much in that short a time. For it to disappear, he would’ve had to move it somewhere. He’d told me I could have the money. But men lied to their soon-to-be-ex-wives all the time. They drained bank accounts, hid cash, ran off with mistresses. Was Jason better than other men? I’d thought so. But I was afraid to find out.

      “Ma’am?” Shelley said. “I’m sorry, that card was declined.”

      I went cold. I handled our household bills, and I saw to it that credit card balances were paid off monthly. No card of mine was ever declined. Something had happened, and Jason had to be behind it.

      “I’m so sorry. Would you mind trying a different one?” I said.

      We tried three more cards, and all three were declined. By the end, I was crying. When I hung up, it was nearly seven, getting dark, pouring rain, and the windows were all open. I got up to close them; then I sat at the kitchen table and logged onto my laptop in the darkness of the kitchen. My hands were shaking as I went through all the accounts. The brokerage account, the savings account, his IRA, my IRA—gone, gone, gone. He’d left me destitute, completely. Took every penny he could get his hands on, with one exception. He didn’t touch Hannah’s 529 plan. Her college tuition was still there.

      At least he had the basic decency not to rob his own child. But he’d robbed me. Jason telling me I could have everything—that was a lie. A ploy so I would let my guard down. I trusted him. I fell for it. I didn’t rush to see the divorce lawyer, or to freeze our joint accounts. I gave him the breathing room he needed to take everything we had.

      I called Jason’s phone. Got voicemail. I said a lot of things. I said I was going to kill him, but I didn’t mean it literally. The only person I was in danger of killing in that moment was myself. I could imagine life without my husband, but not if I was destitute. What would I do? How would I survive? My fabulous career as an interior designer existed only in my dreams. In real life, I didn’t have a single client. I didn’t have one red cent except for the money he’d just taken. I couldn’t bear it. I threw the phone down. I screamed. I pulled my own hair. I slapped myself across the face. I looked out the window at the dark waves and imagined walking into them. Imagined the briny water tugging at my clothes, up to