The Whore's Child by Richard Russo

He’d been waiting for her in a rocking chair on the inn’s front porch, the sky growing blacker and blacker, when she came striding down the dirt path. She’d no more than sat down next to him than the air sizzled with electricity and the first bolt of lightning cleaved the sky.
    â€œYou forget I’m from Minnesota,” she said, pointing her fork at him. “I spent the first twenty years of my life watching storms. And how was your lazy afternoon, old man?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œJust fine?”
    â€œI visited a studio. Took some photos. Like I said.”
    â€œYou should’ve come with me. The path through the forest is strewn with fairy houses.”
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œLittle houses built of bark and leaves and pebbles. By children, I suppose, if you don’t believe in fairies. People leave pennies near the ones they like best. Isn’t that sweet? I can see why Laura loved it here.”
    Martin just stared at her.
    â€œWell . . . that’s why we came all this way, right? This island was your wife’s favorite place in the whole world, and this is your way of saying goodbye.”
    â€œI didn’t know you—”
    â€œI’m not
stupid,
Martin. I know how much you loved her.”
    But I didn’t.
The words were right there to be spoken, and for a heartbeat Martin thought he’d already said them. But if he did, how would he ever stop? How would he keep from adding,
Any more than I love you.
    They used Robert Trevor’s flashlight to wind their way up the narrow, pitch-black staircase to locate their room on the third floor. Undressing in the dark, they lay in the canopied bed and watched the sky through the open window. Though the storm had moved out to sea, it still flickered on the distant horizon, and every twenty seconds or so the beam from the lighthouse swept past.
    â€œWhat do you think?” Beth said. “Should we stay an extra day?”
    â€œIf you like,” he said. “Whatever you want.”
    â€œIt’s up to you.”
    After a moment he said, “I called Peter while you were out. He needs me to start work earlier, by the second week of rehearsal instead of the third, if possible. He didn’t come right out and say so, but that’s what he wants.”
    â€œWhat do
you
want?”
    â€œI wouldn’t mind heading back.”
    â€œFine with me.”
    â€œLet’s, then.”
    A few minutes later she was snoring gently in the crook of his arm. For a long time Martin lay in the dark thinking about Robert Trevor’s farm in Indiana, if there was such a place, and the countless versions of Laura he claimed to have stored there. And he thought too about Beth, the poor girl. She had it exactly backwards, of course. This trip wasn’t so much about saying goodbye to his wife as saying hello. He’d fallen in love with her, truly in love, the moment he’d uncrated the painting back in L.A. and seen his wife through another man’s eyes. Just as Joyce had known, somehow, that he would.
    What folly, Martin couldn’t help concluding, bitterly, as he contemplated the lovely young woman sleeping at his side; it was his destiny, no doubt, to sell her short as well. What absolute folly love was. Talk about a flawed concept. He remembered how he and his junior high friends—all of them shy, self-conscious, without girlfriends—used to congregate in the shadow of the bleachers to evaluate the girls at Friday night dances. The best ones were taken, naturally, which left the rest. “She’s kind of pretty, don’t you think?” one of his friends, or maybe Martin himself, would venture, and then it would be decided, by popular consensus, if she was or she wasn’t.
    That they were leaving in the morning was a relief to Martin. He preferred the West Coast, and he was looking forward to working on Peter’s new picture, which was to star an actress