The Second Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

to chat with her. Her pulse had raced, and she’d become so tongue-tied she was certain she’d made a fool of herself. But two days later he’d asked her out to dinner.
    ‘I don’t know. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot to start with,’ she hedged. ‘I was so young …’ Making excuses was easier than casting blame, she’d found.
    ‘We didn’t get off on the wrong foot. I did a stupid thing, that’s all.’ He corrected here, almost angrily.
    ‘I’m not punishing you, Robert.’ Maybe she owed him Jeanine. After all, it couldn’t have been easy for him those first few years, living with a drunk. But that was beside the point.
    ‘Really? Because that’s what it feels like.’ There it was again, that nasty, grating edge, like a rusty tin can poking up from a neatly tended flower bed.
    ‘I can’t help that.’ In her head she heard the clipped no-nonsense voice of Penny Cuthbertson, her therapist at Hazelden: Keep in mind, Noelle, it’s far more difficult to reclaim power than to hold on to it in the first place.
    But Noelle couldn’t remember a time when she’d taken a stand against Robert. From the very beginning he’d been in charge. First as her boss, then as her husband. She’d wanted the wedding ceremony to be held at St Vincent’s, but Robert had insisted on a grand outdoor affair at the country club instead. And when she was pregnant with Emma, he wouldn’t let her near kindly old Dr Matthews, who’d looked after her practically since she was a baby herself. (Never mind that the high-priced obstetrician in Schenectady was off skiing in Aspen when she went into labor.) Even when her drinking got so bad she could no longer hide it, Robert had stepped to the fore. He knew someone on the board at Hazelden, an old crony from Stanford. Within hours a room was available.
    But now she was taking the lead, and Robert wasn’t happy about it. Noelle could almost feel the seismic upheaval taking place in his mind, and as he moved toward her, she automatically took a step backward, edging off the driveway onto the lawn. In eight years of marriage he’d never once raised a hand to her but for reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she was afraid. She realized now that she’d always been a little bit afraid of her husband. Maybe that’s why she had never dared to challenge him; she didn’t want to know what he was capable of.
    The hand he lifted, though, was conciliatory. ‘Noelle, please. If you don’t care what it’ll do to me, to us, think about Emma.’ His voice was low, cajoling.
    She felt a hot flare of outrage. ‘Don’t you dare drag Emma into this. That’s not fair.’
    ‘Is it fair to tear a family apart?’
    Suddenly Noelle felt tired. Her head had begun to throb. ‘Let’s call it a draw, okay? It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s everything. Maybe Jeanine was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.’
    ‘It’s not too late. We could start over.’
    She shook her head. ‘Oh, Robert, you know I was never cut out for that lifestyle. All those parties and committees. If I’d had to listen to Althea Whitehead drop one more mention of her ski lodge in Telluride, I think I would have screamed.’ She didn’t add that her old friends from school, girls she’d practically grown up with, weren’t exactly comfortable with her role as Mrs Van Doren either. Over the years they’d drifted away, one by one.
    He shot her a withering look. ‘How do you think my dad built our business? Working nine to five like the poor slobs punching time clocks? He threw parties, joined organizations, invited the right people to dinner. It’s no different now. You think I’d have gotten the variances for Cranberry Mall without knowing Carl Devlin’s golf handicap or that Reese Braithwaite prefers Habana Gold Sterlings to Honduran Excaliburs?’
    ‘Stop.’ She put her hands over her ears, ‘just stop.’
    Robert abruptly fell silent, scrubbing his face with a hand that appeared less