The Other Wife

Susan shifted on those heels and bit her lip. Her lipstick was darker than mine, I noticed, a shimmery cranberry compared to my muted coral. “Well…I have a favor to ask you,” she said.

“A favor? You’re asking me for a favor?” The whole day had become as surreal as a Jackson Pollock painting. I wanted to hit the wall, hit the mums, anything. Hit her, actually. “I want a favor, too. I want to know what you were doing with my husband.”

“I can’t—” She pressed a hand to her eyes, then fluttered her fingers. “I can’t talk about that right now. I need a little space. I just found out about you, too, you know. You have to give me some time.”

I didn’t want to feel sympathy for her. I wanted to hate her. Right now, anger was a lot more comfortable to wear than grief.

But damn it all, she had that nice name and big blue eyes and looked like the kind of woman I’d have coffee with. Not someone I could give a permanent placement on my shit list.

“Later, I promise,” Susan said, and for some reason, I believed her. “But for now, I need you to take care of something for me. It’ll be easy, I’m sure.” She smiled, then stepped back and gestured into the shadows of my porch. When she did, I saw a cage.

It was small and tan, and filled with something that was so excited—or so vicious—it was shaking the plastic crate, causing it to tap-tap-tap on my wooden porch.

“What the hell is that?”

“Harvey the Wonder Dog,” Susan said with a burst of enthusiasm, as if she’d just given me a long-awaited Christmas present. She backed down my stairs and onto my walkway. “And he’s all yours.”

“He’s what? But—”

“I can’t take care of him,” Susan was saying, still moving very fast, considering her shoes. “Dave had left him at my house while we went into the city and then…” She left off the rest. “Anyway, I’ve brought all his things. You’ll love him. Really.” Then she was reaching for the door of her black Benz, a car much like mine.

What had Dave done? Bought everything in pairs?

“Wait!” I shouted, barreling after her. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.” Susan withdrew a set of keys from her pocket and thumbed the remote. “Sorry.”

“You’re sorry… Sorry you married my husband? Sorry you showed up at his wake? Sorry you were on my porch, waiting for me to come home from burying him? Or sorry you dumped an animal on me that I don’t want?”

Susan wheeled around, her hand on the door handle. “Sorry. But I’ve had him since Thursday and I can’t take care of him anymore.”

“He’s your dog. Yours and Dave’s,” I said, the words thick as a turnip in my throat.

“No, he’s not. I’m not even a dog person. He was Dave’s. I never even met Harvey or knew Dave had a dog until Thursday. Now, he’s yours.” Susan let out a sigh. “Think of Harvey as a part of Dave, left to you.”

Then, before I could ask her anything else, Susan had climbed inside her car, slammed it into gear and left, leaving me choking in her exhaust.

And apparently with one more member of the Dave Reynolds fan club.

CHAPTER 3

Harvey the Wonder Dog came with his own bed, a backpack of toys, his own special food and a rather vague set of notes, written in a six-by-nine composition book in Dave’s tight scrawl.

The book had plenty of information about Harvey’s tricks—balancing a beach ball on his nose while standing on his hind legs, barking the “Star Spangled Banner,” complete with the high notes—and data on where he had appeared—Letterman twice, Animal Planet seven times, and Good Morning America once.

But not a word about why Dave had kept this circus side of himself, or the extra wife, secret. After Susan left, I brought the dog into the house, opened his crate to let him out, then sat down to read. Three hours later, I looked up to find Harvey the Wonder Dog still in his cage, shaking like a leaf, apparently not wonderful enough to conquer his fear of my kitchen.

How had he ever gotten up the gumption to appear on Letterman?

Then I remembered the note on page three. For every good deed he did, Harvey received a treat.

As I went to retrieve the bag of Beggin’ Strips that had come with the dog, I wondered if that had been Dave’s philosophy for everything. The new house, the tennis bracelet on my wrist, the love seat I’d admired in the showroom window of Newton Furniture—each thing bought after I’d done something that Dave decided needed a celebration. A new promotion, landing a big account—

Accepting his proposal of marriage.

I hated my husband right then, hated him as much as I had loved him. I felt the hatred boiling up inside of me, choking at my throat, begging for release. I wanted to tell him he’d screwed up my life but good by dying and then springing a secret existence on me at his funeral.

I didn’t even want to think about what his dual marriage was going to do to our finances. To the life insurance, the 401(k) money. The house. Not to mention to my plans, my life.

“I hate you,” I screamed at the walls. “I hate what you did. I hate how you left me. And I hate that you left me a dog instead of a goddamned explanation.”

Harvey let out a bark and raised himself onto his hind paws, begging.

My sister, who’d always been a bit on the flaky side, would have said it was Dave’s spirit, communicating through his canine counterpart to offer contrition. To me, it was a dog who’d spied the bag of treats in my hand and knew when to put on his sad face.

“Sorry, Harvey. I wasn’t talking about you.” I withdrew one from the package and waved it in Harvey’s direction. “Here, puppy.”

He bounded out of the crate, snatched the strip from my hand, then sat down in front of me, tail swishing against the floor. He didn’t eat it, just held it between his teeth, his mouth spread so wide it looked as if he was grinning. His pointy brown-and-white ears stuck up, tuned to my every move.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” I said. “I’ve never even owned a dog, for Pete’s sake.”

Harvey wagged his tail some more.

“And I can’t take you to…” I looked down at the book, flipping to the page of upcoming appearances, “the Dog-Gone-Good Show on Thursday. I have a job, you know, and it’s not puppy chauffeur.”

Harvey stretched his front paws across the floor, then laid his head down on them and let out a sigh. The Beggin’ Strip tumbled from his mouth and landed on the beige ceramic tile.

“I’m just going to have to find you a good home.”

Harvey looked up at me, wide brown eyes in a tiny, triangular face, and waited. He wasn’t an ugly dog, I reasoned. Why had Dave bought him? Trained him? Toured the country with him?

And most of all, why had he kept him secret?

A snippet of a conversation came back to my memory. Years ago, Dave had asked about getting a dog. I had turned him down, afraid that adding one more thing into my perfectly balanced life would make everything topple.

It was why I had gone into accounting. Nice straight lines, perfect columns of numbers. Everything adding up at the end.

Before I put one foot on the floor of my bedroom, I liked knowing what was coming each day and how the day was going to end. And yet, I wanted more. Wanted to have a taste of spontaneity, which was what had attracted me to Dave.

He was the Mutt to my Jeff, the Felix to my Oscar. I’d married him, thinking he’d help me loosen up a little, and he’d said he’d married me to keep him on track. But once we had the joint checking account and the mortgage to pay, it seemed those plans were dampened a bit.

I had liked our life just fine. Dave, clearly, had not.

The fact that I could have been so wrong hammered away at my temples. How could I have let details like this slip past me? What had I missed?

I looked again at the book, flipping back to the prior appearances page. Harvey had been at the Dog-Gone-Good Show last year. And the year before. Where had I been then? Where had I thought Dave had been? I tried to think back, but my mind was as jumbled as a bag of jelly beans. “Maybe there are some people there who knew Dave,” I said aloud, talking to the dog, for God’s sake. He barked, as if he agreed that it was about damned time I tried to sort this out and restore order.

He was right. If I was ever going to move past the shock of Dave’s second wife—and his well-trained dog—I had to find out where things had gone so totally wrong. “I need to find some people who can give me some answers.”

Harvey perked up, his ears cocking forward. His tail began again.

“And maybe I’m just nuts for talking to a dog about my cheating late husband.” I tossed the book onto the sofa and crossed into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine.

The knock on my back door made me jump and nearly spill the Chardonnay. Through the glass oval I saw my sister. I groaned.

I love my sister Georgia, and though we’ve always been close, our personalities couldn’t be more distant. We were as far apart as Venus and Earth. She’s the Venus, I’m the Earth. Georgia believes in taking life as it comes, living by the seat of your pants and saving for retirement when you get over the hill, not while you’re still climbing it.

The most spontaneous thing I ever did was buy Tide without a coupon.

I looked down at Harvey and realized I hadn’t managed to avoid a damned thing.

“Hi,” Georgia said, letting herself in. “I figured you could use some company tonight. I brought wine.” She hoisted a bottle of Lambrusco.

I have told my sister at least seventeen times that drinking a sweet, full-bodied red is the equivalent of downing sugar straight from the box. Give me something dry, unadorned and I feel I’m actually having a drink.

Georgia never listened. She’d probably gone and bought the bottle because it was the prettiest one in the aisle at the Blanchard’s liquors.

Still, she was here, and no one else was. I had to appreciate her for trying. “Come on in,” I said, gesturing inside. “And meet Harvey.”

She halted inside the door, blinking at the Jack Russell terrier. “Harvey’s a…dog.”

“Dave’s dog, to be precise.”

“When did Dave get a dog?”

“According to his notes—2000.”

Georgia’s eyebrows knitted together. She laid the unopened wine bottle on the counter. “Notes?”

“It’s a long story.” I suddenly felt tired, so tired. I wanted to collapse onto the floor and stay there until a different day dawned. One without a dog looking at me expectantly, waiting for his road trip to Tennessee. One where everything was as regular as a clock and I didn’t have to face a new question around every corner.

“Here,” Georgia said, pressing me into a chair. “You look like hell.” Once I was situated, she crossed to the counter, opened the Lambrusco and poured each of us a glass. I thought of protesting, but the energy to do it had left me a long time ago.

“Thanks,” I said, and took a long swig of the wine, forcing myself not to gag.

“Harvey is Dave’s dog,” she repeated. “And he—”

She cut herself off. I looked at her face, noticed her staring at the dog, and turned my gaze to him. He was balancing on his hind legs, that silly Beggin’ Strip on his nose. “And he does tricks,” I finished.

“Oh my God,” Georgia said. “I recognize him now. I saw him on the Late Show once. He’s, like, famous.”

“And now he’s mine. Surprise, surprise.”

Georgia ran a hand through her riot of blond curls. Last month, she’d had it straight and red. The month before, it had been black and spiky. I was surprised Georgia’s hair hadn’t mutinied. “Wait a minute. You didn’t know Dave had a dog?”

“I didn’t know a lot of things.” I took a second swig of wine. A third. “Like that he also had another wife.”

There. I’d said the words out loud. Now it was real.

All I had to do now was figure out a way to make it all go away.

Georgia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Another wife?”

“And apparently a road show with Harvey at the center.” I shook my head. “I swear, I’m in The Twilight Zone.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do?” I shrugged, then tipped the rest of the wine into my mouth. “Go to work. Try to lead a normal life again. And find a home for Harvey.”

At that, he slid back down onto the floor and let out a whine.

“You can’t do that. He’s like—” Georgia gave the canine an indulgent smile “—a lost spirit himself. He’s been through a lot, too.”

“He’s also, like, a reminder of a husband who betrayed me,” I said to Georgia, “then left me with a mortgage and a funeral bill I can’t afford because God knows Dave was way too cavalier and happy-go-lucky to invest in something like long-term planning.” I drew in a breath, tried not to choke on it. “Or a marriage.”

Georgia let the heated words roll away. “But aren’t you the tiniest bit curious? Like about why Dave did it?”

“No.” I paused, finally listening to the thoughts and feelings that had been waiting behind Curtain Number Two in my head. “Okay, yes. I am.”

“Then I say you investigate.”

I shook my head, toying with the empty glass. “No. No way. I don’t go running around, investigating. I go to work, pay my taxes and balance my checkbook. Like a normal American.”

“Who happens to be married to a bigamist.”

The word hung in the air, heavy, fat. I wanted to pluck it up and toss it away, bury it under the brown carpet I’d never liked but agreed to because Dave had thought it was homey.

I shook my head. “All I have to do is talk to Kevin. He and Dave were closer than anyone I know.” Or at least, they’d seemed to be. Of course, I’d thought I was pretty close to my husband. But apparently knowing the man’s inseam length and his favorite brand of shaving lather wasn’t intimacy.

“What about the other wife? Did you meet her?”

“She was at the wake.”

“She was?” Georgia let out a couple of curses. “Which one?”

“The one with the rhinestones on her shoes.”

“Oh, those were cool shoes,” Georgia said. “But on her, totally inappropriate.”

I loved my sister for adding that, for saying the words she knew I was thinking.

“Did you talk to her?” Georgia asked.

“For about five seconds. She was here when I got home, but only stayed long enough to ditch the dog and run.” I got to my feet, poured Chardonnay into my empty wineglass and returned to the table. “I don’t know where she lives, and with a last name like Reynolds, I’ll be banging on a thousand doors trying to find her.”

Georgia thought for a minute, twirling the glass between her hands. “Did you check Dave’s cell phone?”

Of course. He’d undoubtedly stored her number in there, probably with a voice tag, because he’d been incapable of dialing while he was behind the wheel.

“I got the feeling she doesn’t want to talk,” I said. “Besides, I’m not so sure I want to know what went on between her and Dave. I’ve had enough information to last me a lifetime.”

“Have you asked the dog?”

“Asked the dog? Are you nuts? I can’t talk to a dog.”

“I bet Harvey is your key.” Georgia nodded. “And I bet he knows a lot more than he’s letting on with that little snout.”

“I am not asking the dog. Or anyone on his upcoming six-city ‘tour.’”

“He has a tour planned?” Georgia’s turquoise contact colored eyes grew bright. “Perfect! I see a road trip in your future, sis.”

“No, no, no.” But even as I said the words, Georgia was off and running, retrieving the road atlas from the den.

“You have to do it, Penny,” Georgia said. “Where’s Harvey supposed to go first?”

“The Dog-Gone-Good Show in Tennessee in three days.”

“How cool,” Georgia said, flipping the pages, moving us visually toward Tennessee. “It could be the key to solving the greatest mystery of your life.”

There’d been a reason I’d hated Nancy Drew books as a kid. I couldn’t suffer through two hundred pages of mystery. I wanted to know the end before I began. I didn’t want to take a path filled with unknowns. Dave was the one who would read Clive Cussler and Stephen King into the wee hours, who’d watch all eight weeks of an eight-week miniseries, content to wait a month and a half for the story’s resolution. Me, I went for the TV Guide recap, the fast way to cut to the quick and eliminate anything extraneous.

I thought I’d lived my life the same way.

Until this week.

But as I sat in my kitchen, looking around at the sage-green room Dave and I had painted on a sunny afternoon last month, I realized I was living in a house filled with questions, not memories. There wasn’t a corner of this house, a picture on the wall, that I could look at and not feel the doubts crowding in, jostling around in the spaces of my mind. Was any of it real? Or was I just clueless?

All I wanted to do was return to the life I’d recognized. Not run around the country with a dancing Jack Russell terrier, trying to figure out who Dave Reynolds had really been.

Even as I held back another round of tears, as reality slammed into me with the force of a nor’easter, I knew I had no choice but to start assembling this puzzle.

And the first place to start was with Susan.

CHAPTER 4

Susan Reynolds’s phone number stared back at me in rounded tiny numbers, displayed on the tiny screen of Dave’s Motorola phone. After my sister left and after two more glasses of Chardonnay, I’d finally gotten up the nerve to scroll through the listings in his phone book. I recognized only a handful.

What scared me was the names I didn’t know. There was an Annie, a Kate, a Mindy. Two Pats—which could have been men or women—and a Matt. I’d stopped scrolling at the S’s, too afraid to go farther. None of those names were familiar. They weren’t people I’d met at the Greendale Insurance Company Christmas parties. They weren’t names Dave had used in conversation.

I could, of course, call them and ask, Uh, how did you know my husband? And did he tell you he was married to a Susan or a Penny?

But no, I couldn’t do that—not yet, anyway. I wanted the truth, but I also didn’t want it, as if I could hold on to my fantasy that everything between Dave and I had been genuine.

Because if he’d duped me about being married, what else had been fake?

That was the real question I didn’t want to answer. The one that clubbed my heart and broke it into smaller pieces every time I gave it voice.

I put the phone down, avoiding it to dig through drawers and filing cabinets, searching for Dave’s will. I came up empty-handed and made a mental note to check his desk at work. Any man who was trying to hide multiple marital beneficiaries probably was smart enough to store that kind of evidence elsewhere.

Throughout it all, Harvey sat there and watched me, his little face jerking quickly with my every movement.

I found nothing. Not so much as a matchbook with a number scribbled on it. The only clues I had were in the Motorola.

I went back to the phone and scrolled through it again, leaving Susan down in the S’s and went to Kevin. I hit Send, then waited for him to pick up.

“’Lo,” he said. Behind him, I heard rock music playing in his bachelor apartment. Apparently Lillian was gone, because he had heavy metal going at full blast.

“Kevin, it’s Penny.”

“Oh, hi, Pen.” His voice softened and he turned down the volume on his stereo. Kevin was the quiet one in the Reynolds family, who’d lacked the charm and sense of humor of Dave, but had the same studious way of watching someone while they talked, making them feel like the only person in the room. “How you holding up?”

“Fine. Ah, listen, I wanted to talk to you about Dave. About…well, what he did when he wasn’t with me.”

A pause. “I don’t know anything about that, Pen. Sorry.”

Across from me, Harvey started nosing at his little denim backpack, his name emblazoned in red glitter across the front. He pawed at it, then sat back and whined.

“You’re his brother. You knew everything there was to know about him. You guys went everywhere together. Fishing, hunting, you name it.”

“I didn’t go.”

The words lingered between us, made raspy by the cell-phone static. There hadn’t been an annual hunting trip to Wisconsin. Or the fishing trip to Maine each May. I’d never thought my husband was much of a sportsman, considering I was the one who baited the hooks at our lake vacation last August, but now I realized he hadn’t been out looking for elk at all. He hadn’t gone to any of the places he’d said he’d gone.

He’d been with her.

And Harvey.

It had all been a show. Another batch of lies. And Kevin had known, at least that Dave had been lying to me. The new betrayal slammed into me.

“I have to go, Kevin,” I said, the nausea lurching up inside my throat again. I closed the phone and tossed it onto the sofa, not wanting to touch it—and the dozens of names I didn’t know—for another second.

I curled into a chair and drew an afghan over my knees. The worn, multicolored blanket was as old as me, made by my grandmother when I’d been born, a blend of blues and pinks. I pulled its softness to my shoulders, then over my head, burrowing myself inside its comfort and darkness.

Here, the world was gone, quieted by the muffling weight of the thick, fuzzy yarn. Like I had throughout the rocky, tumultuous years of my childhood, I imagined staying right where I was until the worst was over. Harvey stuck his head under a corner, took one look at me and began wagging his tail.

The ringing of Dave’s cell phone forced me out of my cocoon. I threw off the blanket and watched the Motorola, its face lighting up in blue to announce the incoming call. For a moment, I hesitated, afraid to answer it. Afraid of who might be on the other end.

Eventually curiosity won out and I reached for the cell, flipping it open. “Hello?”

“Hey, is Dave there?” said a male voice I didn’t recognize.

“No. He’s…” I couldn’t get the words out. I tried, even formed them with my lips, but they refused to be voiced. It wasn’t bigamy I was afraid to say, it was dead. “He’s gone right now. But I’m his wife. Can I help you?”

“You’re Annie? Hey, cool to meet you. Dave talks about you all the time, you know.”

Annie? Who the hell was Annie? A nickname for Susan? Or worse…

Another wife?

“Who did you say you were again?” I asked the voice.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Vinny. I’m Harvey’s trainer.”

“Harvey’s…trainer?”

“Well, hell, you didn’t think he learned to dance and play the piano all by himself, did you?”

“He can play the piano?” I looked at the dog, sitting a few feet away, his tail swishing against the floor like a carpet clock.

“Not Mozart, but he can bang out a pretty good ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’ That’s what got him on Good Morning America.”

I’d entered an alternate universe. Dave, a musically inclined dog and appearances on national television. Not to mention Susan and Annie. And whoever else I didn’t know about.

“So, is Dave going to be at Dog-Gone-Good?” Vinny asked. “I was hoping he’d get here a couple days early so we can give Harvey a refresher on his dance routine. I tried calling Dave yesterday but he didn’t pick up.”

“He’s…” I closed my eyes, took in a breath. “He died on Wednesday.”

Silence on the other end, then an under-the-breath curse. “For real?”

“Yes.”

“Aw, Annie, I’m sorry. He was a great guy. We’re really going to miss him.”

I pressed a hand to my stomach, as if putting a palm against my gut would give me strength I couldn’t seem to find today. At least it would help me keep the soggy lasagna the church ladies made from making a return appearance. “And, my name isn’t Annie,” I said. “It’s Penny.”

A confused moment of silence. “But…but I thought you said you were his wife.”

“I thought I was, too. Apparently I was sharing the job.”

“Oh. Oh. Holy crap. Well, uh, I’m, ah, sorry.” I could practically hear him fidgeting on the other side. “Listen, I gotta go. You, ah, take care. And if you want to send Harvey down to me, I’ll make sure he does Dave proud at Dog-Gone-Good.”