Saltwater taffy.
I sat up in bed.
There’s no saltwater taffy at a lake in Michigan. I’d never once thought about that. I’d eaten the taffy and said thank you and put the empty bag in the trash.
I got out of bed very quietly and took my phone into the bathroom. I closed the door. I sat down on the edge of the tub.
It was almost midnight. I called June anyway.
June is Walt’s wife. We’ve known them for thirty years. Our kids went to school together. We used to play cards on Friday nights until Walt’s hip got bad.
She picked up on the fifth ring, sounding groggy.
“Maggie? Is something wrong?”
“No. No, I’m sorry. I know it’s late. I just… I wanted to ask you something silly.”
“At midnight?”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I took a breath. “When did Walt and Robert last go fishing?”
There was a pause on the line.
“Fishing?” June said.
“Up north. Their trips. Twice a year.”
“Maggie, honey.” I could hear her sitting up in bed. “Walt hasn’t been fishing in five years. Not since his hip surgery. He can’t sit in a boat. You know that.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Maggie? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Is everything okay with you and Robert?”
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. A sixty-three-year-old woman in a nightgown, sitting on the edge of a hotel bathtub at midnight, with her hand over her mouth.
“I’m sure it’s a mix-up,” I said. “Go back to sleep, June. I’m sorry I woke you.”
I hung up before she could ask anything else.
Then I sat in that bathroom for a long time with the light off.
The next morning, Robert said he wanted to go for a walk into town.
“Come with me,” he said. “We’ll get coffee at that place on the corner. If it’s still there.”
“I’m tired,” I said. “I didn’t sleep well. You go.”
He looked at me for a second too long.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. Just old.”
He laughed and kissed my cheek. “You’re not old.”
I watched him from the window. I watched him walk down the long driveway and turn left toward town. He was walking fast. Faster than usual. He had his phone out.
I waited until he was out of sight.
Then I went downstairs.
The same receptionist was behind the desk. Denise. She was helping a family with three little kids check out. I waited by the potted plant until they were gone.
Then I walked straight up to the counter.
“I need you to tell me when my husband stayed here.”
Her face changed. I watched it happen. Her polite hotel smile slid off, and underneath, she looked tired. Almost sorry.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said. “I can’t discuss a guest’s stays.”
“He’s my husband.”
“I understand.”
“Was he here with someone?”
She wouldn’t answer. She looked down at her keyboard.
“You said he usually requests the same room,” I said. My voice was getting louder. A man reading a newspaper in the lobby looked up. I didn’t care. “How many times has he been here?”
She lowered her voice.
“Please,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything.”
“Why?”
She glanced toward the elevators. Like she was afraid he might come out of them.
“Your husband already asked me not to discuss his previous visits with you.”
I stared at her.
“Asked?”
She looked away.
The word hung there between us. Asked. Robert had stood at this desk, at some point, and asked this woman not to tell his wife something. He had planned for this. He had known I might ask.
“Did he pay you?” I said.
Silence.
“Did he pay you to keep quiet?”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at the counter. Her ears were turning red.
“I’ll pay you more,” I said. I was already reaching for my purse. My hands were shaking. “Whatever he gave you. I’ll double it.”
“No.”
She said it firmly. Not angrily. She looked up at me, and for a second, I thought she was going to say something else. Something real. Her mouth opened.
Then the phone on the desk rang. She picked it up.
“Harbor View Inn, this is Denise.”
She turned away from me.
I stood there for a moment longer. Then I walked away.
I walked away with more questions than answers. But one thing was clear.
Robert was hiding something from me.
I went out onto the back porch and sat in one of the rocking chairs. The ocean was loud below the cliff. The wind smelled like salt and seaweed.
I kept thinking about the strangest things.
Like the time in 1997 when Robert stayed home from work for three days because I had pneumonia, and he made me chicken soup from a can and burned it, and we ate it anyway.
Like how every year on my birthday, he gives me the same card. The exact same card. He bought a box of them in 1988 because he said he’d found the perfect one and didn’t want to risk not finding it again. There are only six left now. Every year, he writes something new inside.
Like the way he held our son Peter in the hospital, when Peter was born, with his big careful hands, like he was afraid he’d break him.
That man had gone fishing with Walt twice a year for three years. Except Walt hadn’t gone fishing in five years.
That man had stayed here, at our honeymoon hotel, so many times the receptionist recognized him on sight.
That man had asked her not to tell me.
I pressed my hands against my eyes.
“Ma’am?”
I looked up. It was the waiter from last night. Luis. He was holding a coffee pot.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“No. Thank you.”
He didn’t leave. He stood there for a moment, looking at me.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
He nodded slowly. He looked like he wanted to say something. Then someone called his name from inside, and he went back in.
Robert came back from town at noon. He had two coffees and a paper bag.
“They still have the bakery,” he said. “Remember? The blueberry muffins?”
I remembered. On our honeymoon, it rained every day, and every morning Robert walked into town in his raincoat and came back with two blueberry muffins in a soggy paper bag. We ate them in bed.
He handed me one now. I took it. I didn’t eat it.
“I thought we could walk down to the beach this afternoon,” he said. “If it doesn’t rain.”
“Sure.”
He sat down on the bed and looked at me. “Maggie. What’s wrong?”
I looked right at him.
“Nothing,” I said. “Why would anything be wrong?”
He held my eyes for a long moment. I don’t know what he saw.
Then his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He took it out. He read something. His face went still. He typed a quick reply and put the phone face down on the nightstand.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Peter,” he said. “Asking how the trip’s going.”
Peter is our son. He lives in Denver. He texts us about once a month, usually to ask if we’ve seen some article about the Broncos.
Later, while Robert was in the shower, I picked up his phone.
I’m not proud of it. In forty years, I had never once looked at Robert’s phone. I never needed to. I’d never even thought about it.
My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped it.
The passcode was our wedding date. It had always been our wedding date. It still worked.
The last message wasn’t from Peter.
It was from someone saved only as H.
She’s still not sure. I’m sorry. I’ll try again tonight.
And Robert’s reply:
Thank you. Whatever happens, thank you for trying.
I put the phone back exactly where it was. Face down.
When Robert came out of the shower, I was sitting on the window seat looking at the water.
He hummed while he got dressed. An old song. I didn’t recognize it.
We walked on the beach that afternoon. It didn’t rain.
Robert held my hand the whole way. He kept pointing at things. The lighthouse. A big rock we used to sit on. A little shack where they used to rent bicycles.
“We rented a tandem bike,” he said. “Remember? You made us crash it into a hedge.”
“You were steering.”
“You were in the back yelling ‘left, left, LEFT.’”
“Because there was a hedge.”
He laughed. I didn’t.
He stopped walking. He turned to face me. The wind was blowing his white hair around.
“Maggie,” he said. “I know something’s bothering you.”
She’s still not sure.
I’ll try again tonight.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Robert?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long time. I watched his face. I watched him almost say it.
Then he looked away, out at the water.
“Not yet,” he said. “Soon. I promise. Just… trust me for one more day.”
I pulled my hand out of his.
“I trusted you for forty years,” I said. “How much longer do you need?”
I walked back to the hotel alone.
He didn’t follow me.
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