Margaret felt guilty. She knew she should feel guilty for what she had done, but she felt guilty for not feeling guilty. However, in her defense, when she had prayed to the universe to solve her Jody problem, this wasn’t what she meant. She just needed Jody to pull the trigger because she couldn’t. Margaret rationalized that her marriage would be less of a failure if it was completely out of her hands. She needed Jody to leave, plus she really wanted the house. And it is hard to keep a house if you willingly leave it.
That morning when she woke up and kissed Jody’s cold still forehead, she instantly knew it was her fault. She ran in horror because it’s freaky to have a dead body in your bed and it’s even freakier when you’ve kissed that body in your bed. And frankly, she was mad she kissed Jody’s forehead at all. Jody didn’t deserve her affection. Not any longer. She ran to the bathroom, drank some mouthwash, and immediately called Jim. He was level-headed, he would be able to make sense of it all. Plus, Margaret realized in her almost 50 years of life that she had never learned who you called when someone died in your bed.
“You know I did this, I wished for this. Well, not this, but basically this,” she said to Jim who rushed over as soon as he got her call.
Jim put his hands on Margaret’s shoulders, “I love your self-confidence Margie, but you aren’t that powerful.”
Margaret collapsed into Jim’s arms and cried. She cried big Hershey Kiss sized tears all over his sweater. Jim later regretted wearing his new cashmere sweater. He wasn’t a monster, he couldn’t tell Margaret not to get her tears on his expensive sweater, but they did do a bit of dance as he tried to get the tears to crash on the floor instead. She cried all the tears she should have cried six months before, to Jim’s dismay, soaking that poor cashmere sweater.
Six months before, Margaret had stepped outside on her back patio. The noise of her wife’s dinner party inside the house faded as she closed the French glass doors behind her. She stared at Jim in the swivel patio chair for a brief moment before she spoke.
“You know they’re sleeping together.” Jim turned and acknowledged her presence. “Look, at their pinkies, they’re touching,” she said, a disgusted look frozen on her face. Jim just stared at Margaret. Margaret continued, “Haven’t you ever noticed every time we have one of these parties, they both hug and kiss everyone hello, beside each other? And then somehow when we gather around a table or sit on a couch, they always end up next to each other. Every. Fucking. Time.”
Jim hadn’t noticed that, and he wondered what else he hadn’t noticed. “You know what I miss about smoking?” he asked. “I miss the freedom it afforded me. At any party, any gathering, I could always rely on the fact that I could escape without explaining myself. That somehow, the cigarette was explanation enough, and everyone conceded to that. It allowed me to have space all to myself. Nobody dared risk breathing in the cancer I expelled into the air. And maybe, maybe I escaped a little too much.”
Margaret looked around, noticing the empty backyard—the empty infinity edge pool, the empty gazebo, and the empty fire pit. She swirled her wine in her glass and took a sip. “Seems like you still have that freedom,” she said.
“I guess miss isn’t the right word,” Jim said.
“Maybe if Bill was so tired of you escaping, he should have talked to you about it, and not just stuck his dick in my wife.” Margaret polished off the rest of her wine and slipped back inside for a refill.
Jim began to ponder all those nights Bill and Jody had been working late to make partners at their law firm. He swiveled his chair to look at Jody and Bill through the bay window in front of him. They were standing next to each other picking at a charcuterie board on the kitchen island and sure enough, Margaret was right. They were touching fucking pinkies. The assholes had them intertwined in plain sight.
At the funeral, there were whisperings and wonderings about what killed Jody. Nobody wanted to believe it was a brain aneurysm, because that meant it could happen to them.
After the funeral service, Margaret decided to take a leave of bereavement from work. She packed up Jody’s ashes and headed to the little vacation home they owned in Malibu. Jody had bought Margaret the beach house she had been begging for after Jim confronted Bill about Jody. Jody never said anything to Margaret, and Margaret never said anything to Jody, but once Jim and Bill’s divorce was final, they both knew the other knew. This beach house was Jody’s guilt house and now it was filled with Margaret’s guilt too. The house sat right on the water in Paradise Cove. She planned to spread Jody’s ashes in the water. She grabbed a bottle of champagne they had been saving for their 20th wedding anniversary and made her way to the beach. She sipped the champagne, staring out into the ocean and as the sun began to set, she heard footsteps behind her.
“Would you like some company?”
Margaret turned around and saw the voice belonged to Jim. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she hugged him.
“I figured you needed a friend,” he said as he embraced her and smiled.
“Well, go get yourself a glass and join me. This view is gorgeous. I never get tired of it.”
Jim came back down, and they both sat in the coral Adirondack chairs Margaret had bought when they first got the house. Margaret filled his glass with champagne, clinked it, and said, “Cheers!” They watched as the sun slowly made its way below the water’s surface out on the horizon.
“Do you think they were ever really ours?” asked Margaret.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if we were ever really theirs,” Jim said.
Margaret stared into Jim’s eyes, and maybe it was the champagne or all the time they had been spending together lately, but something pulled her to kiss him. Jim returned the kiss and rested his hand on the side of her face. They instantly jerked away at the same time.
“That was kind of gross, right?” asked Margaret.
“Oh my god, so gross. What were those two thinking?” Jim asked while starting to chuckle. They both started to laugh and couldn’t stop till there were tears in their eyes.
“I almost forgot,” Margaret said, “the ashes.” Margaret ran back up to the house to grab the silver urn that held Jody’s remains. She made her way back down to the beach and walked close to the water. She took off the lid of the urn and poured all the ashes out just above the surface of the water. Jim followed behind Margaret and wrapped one arm around her. The wind carried most of the ashes further out before they finally rested in the calm dark ocean waves.
“Do you think she is finally at peace?” Jim asked.
“Oh, not at all, she hates the beach. That’s why I’m dumping her here. Would you like another glass of champagne?”
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