The Goddesses Read online

  Also by Swan Huntley

  We Could Be Beautiful

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Swan Huntley

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Cover design by Emily Mahon

  Cover illustrations: photograph of woman by Mint Images / Gallery Stock; tendrils by Shutterstock

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Huntley, Swan, author.

  Title: The goddesses / Swan Huntley.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016045701 (print) | LCCN 2016035886 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385542210 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385542227 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385542982

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.U5958 G63 2017 (ebook) | LCC PS3608.U5958 (print) | DDC 813/.6–dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016045701

  Ebook ISBN 9780385542227

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Swan Huntley

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Earth

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Water

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Fire

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Wind

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Sky

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  FOR FLANNY, ZARA, AND FLETCHER

  Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

  —ANAÏS NIN

  Earth

  1

  We came here to escape. Escape our mistakes, our boring selves. Escape the constant feeling of being half-asleep, escape our house—the tedious moan of that garage door, the roof we promised to fix every time it rained. Escape dry heat and coyotes and the roads we knew by heart—we knew where those would take us. In paradise there would be new roads and new routines. Different friends, a different house. A different life. In paradise we would be different.

  Chuck had cheated on me with his assistant manager. That was the main reason we left. Her name was Shelly and Shelly was blond and Shelly was everywhere. Every blond woman in San Diego was Shelly until something confirmed it wasn’t—wrong car, wrong walk, wrong face. The real Shelly—I never saw her again after the affair, but it was bound to happen at some point. She lived close by.

  I probably never would have found out if Shelly hadn’t called to confess. She just had to get this off her chest, she said; it was eating her alive. She swore it had only happened that one time. She’d quit the job right afterwards to make sure it would never happen again. She was so so so so sorry and she was crying very hard.

  Chuck was sorry, too. He hadn’t been thinking clearly. They’d been drinking; one thing had led to another. He actually said, “It’s almost like someone else did this, not me. It’s hard to explain.” I said, “But it was you, Chuck. You did this. After eighteen years, this is what you did.”

  When the transfer opportunity for Costco Kona came up and Chuck was elected for it, he said, “Maybe Hawaii will remind us why we love each other.”

  When he said that, it was hard not to imagine Hawaii in the way it’s always advertised—a fit couple at sunset under a neon-pink sky—and this was very stupid. I also wondered if it could be us. Later, after the anger passed. Later, after I forgave him. Later, after I could trust him again. If any of that was possible.

  The twins were stoked. That’s how they said it, one right after the other. “Stoked,” Jed said. “Stoked,” Cam said. They’d miss their friends, but their friends could visit. They’d miss their team, but the incoming coach that year was supposed to suck anyway. Kealakehe’s water polo coach had been a big wave surfer—that was rad. And they could start surfing. And when their friends came to visit, they could take their friends surfing. It was all just going to be totally sweet. “Plus, Mom,” Cam said, “you love mangoes.”

  There were reasons other than Shelly to leave. I did love mangoes. And I’d only been to Hawaii once, when I was ten, which barely counted anymore. I’d lived in San Diego my entire almost fifty years of life, and my days had begun to feel like the same spin in the same hamster wheel. Same postman at the same time delivering the same bills. Same grocery store, same place I always parked. Same minivan under the same tree. I’d been trying to lose the same five pounds for the last thirty years. When had I become so redundant? And joyless? Was it normal that everything I did had the same tone as flossing? I don’t want to do this, but I should do this. I wasn’t ready to call myself depressed—my mother had been depressed and killed herself, and I was nowhere close to that—but I strongly felt I could be happier. Still, a part of me wanted to say no, wanted to hang on, wanted to clutch my little hamster claws to the familiar wheel and stay. But I knew I couldn’t do that. If I said no, it would prove I had truly lost hope that life could be better than this.

  “One year,” Chuck said. “If things aren’t going well in a year, we can always come back.”

  •

  We rented a place up on Kaloko where the land was green and lush. Two acres with a house and a guesthouse, which people called an ohana here. With the money we’d make renting the San Diego house, it was a wash. Brad, who’d also transferred from San Diego, knew someone who knew someone who knew the owner who gave us a good deal. Brad and Marcy had been ripped off at their first place in Kona, and Brad wasn’t going to let that happen to any friends of his! Especially not Chargers fans! Brad hit Chuck’s arm when he said that, and Chuck chortled and looked at his poor arm as if it were bruised already. Chuck never watched football. But he didn’t say that to Brad. Because he was a liar.

  The house was small and lovely. Very basic—the shape of a rectangle. The ohana was the shape of a square. Alone, just as buildings, they weren’t very special, but the gorgeous backdrop made them special. The grass, how green it was, rolling softly up the hill. All these plants I’d never seen before. All these birds. The light. How it was thick and buttery yellow. How San Diego’s light in comparison was hollow, washed-out, drained.
How the humid air felt like a warm hug.

  We drove around the island and were in awe. The sky, the sun, the ocean. It was incredible how the landscape changed so quickly—from dewy rain forest up on our mountain to sun-bleached fields of lava down by the water. The lava fields were vast and magical and strange. “This is like Mars,” Cam said from the backseat. It was like another planet, but it was also this one in the most basic way. Oh, earth is formed by lava, and here it is. The two-lane highway that cut through the fields seemed equally uncomplicated. Oh, and then we built a road.

  We stopped to write our name in the lava with white chunks of coral by the side of the road because we saw other people doing that. MURPHY. Jed held out his long arm to take a picture of us in front of it. The three of them in matching Hawaiian shirts and me in a tank top. Chuck had woken up early to buy these shirts at Walmart. He’d gotten me a small—as a compliment?—and of course it didn’t fit. “I can go back to the store!” he’d said. I told him it was fine. “I don’t need a matching shirt, Chuck. Just keep driving.”

  We drove and drove. The Big Island was somehow much bigger than I’d imagined. Bigger than all the other islands put together, according to Chuck, who also told us that the clouds in the distance weren’t clouds but volcanic fog, which people here called vog. The volcano had been erupting since 1981. The flow was on its way to Pahoa now. Soon it would wipe out that town.

  We stopped at a beach. Chuck and the boys jumped in the water. I watched them dive into the curling waves. My boys, their strong, beautiful bodies. Chuck, he needed to work out. I found broken shells in the sand and put a few in my pocket. I overheard a woman say to her friend, “Fuck it, let’s move here,” and I smiled to myself.

  We were pink faced and giddy in the car. “Those waves were gnarly,” Cam said. “We should get a surfboard,” Jed said. Chuck looked more refreshed than I’d seen him in a long time. “You’re right,” he said, happily tapping the wheel, “we should do that.”

  Our first dinner at the new house was a Costco pizza, Hawaiian-style. We ate at the new table off our old IKEA plates. Chuck was excited to start work. Jed was excited to kill it at tryouts. Cam was excited they finally didn’t have to share a room anymore. “Only took seventeen years,” he said. Before they went to bed, Cam peered out from the doorway of his new room and said, “I’ll miss you, brother.”

  Jed said, “Me, too.” And then in unison, they shouted the same strange term: “Ass clown!”

  Chuck had been sleeping on the couch since the night Shelly had called to confess, so it was unclear where he would sleep in this new house. The ohana was empty. Maybe he’d sleep in the ohana. I kept waiting for him to leave. Dinner was done, the dishes were done, the boys were in bed. But he still hadn’t left, and his suitcase was still by the door. I could tell he wanted to say something and he wasn’t saying it. The way he kept putting his hands in his pockets, the way he was repeating himself: “Can you believe we’re here?” “I can’t believe we’re here.” Chuck was a bad communicator. He hated conflict. He’d always been that way. I peeled an orange slowly. Somewhere during the peeling, I realized I was giving him time, I was waiting for him to speak, and this was very generous of me. Too generous. I peeled faster while he pretended to care about the texture of the wall—he was sliding his palm up and down the wall now, saying, “I never thought we would live in Hawaii.” I couldn’t be patient anymore. With half the orange still unpeeled, I said, “I’m going to bed, Chuck, good night,” and walked past him.

  “Wait. I—” and when I turned, he whispered, “Where do you want me to sleep tonight?” The worry in his eyes. He scratched his neck just for something to do. I felt bad for him. He looked so pathetic. Oh, sweet Chuck, you are such an idiot.

  In a tone I hoped was emotionless, I whispered back, “Where do you want to sleep tonight?”

  Slowly, while contorting his face to show me that yes, he understood it was a lot to ask, he pointed to the bedroom.

  A long pause and then I nodded since we were speaking without words now. Chuck looked so relieved. He went to get his suitcase.

  The truth was I had wanted him to ask; I’d been waiting. Also I knew our sleeping apart really bothered the boys. They’d started sneaking out at night to light illegal fireworks from Mexico the same week Shelly had called to confess, which I didn’t think was a coincidence. Plus this was about trying now. Hawaii meant we had agreed to try.

  That night, we slept on the farthest sides of the same bed. It was closer than we’d been in months.

  2

  Our cars arrived. We’d had them shipped. Chuck’s champagne Honda Accord. The boys’ blue Honda Accord. My gray Honda minivan. Chuck was a big fan of Hondas because they lasted forever. That was his line in defense of Hondas. “Well, they do last forever.”

  The sight of my minivan in the sunny lot should have delighted me. I had a car now; we didn’t have to share the rental anymore. But when I got in and smelled that old fake pine-tree smell and felt that old bald fabric on my legs, I wondered how long “forever” meant for a car. It was already ten years old. “And also,” I said to Chuck that night, “I don’t need a minivan now. Our children have grown up.” Chuck said once we got more settled, maybe we could explore other options. He said this carefully and with a forced optimism, his head bowed and his eyes looking up at me. This was his new submissive way of having a conversation. He was trying to please me now. He was trying to undo his mistake.

  And I appreciated this. I liked the little bit of power it gave me. But since the affair, I’d also begun to resent conversations like these. Conversations that pointed out how powerless I actually was, how much I relied on Chuck. I was a housewife who had to ask her husband for a new car. The word that kept repeating itself in my mind was weak. Nancy, you are weak. Other women would have left him. Other women would have found a good lawyer by now. Other women had careers to fall back on. Some women had chosen not to get married at all. Some women had chosen not to be mothers. Some women were movie stars or teachers or politicians. Those women had goals. They had direction. And meanwhile here I was, lost in an unfamiliar kitchen, searching frantically for the ice cream scooper—“I know I packed it!”—until Chuck opened the lucky drawer and proudly, too proudly, said, “Here!”

  I almost said, I hate how I rely on you, Chuck, but I wasn’t in the mood to fight. I pushed the tub of ice cream across the counter. “You scoop tonight,” I said.

  “Of course!” he agreed, joyfully peeling back the lid. He was happy I’d given him a tangible way to show me that he loved me.

  •

  Chuck had started saying “I love you” a lot, which was new. “You don’t have to say it back, I just want you to know.”

  Sometimes I said, “Thanks,” but that was awkward. Sometimes I smiled. Sometimes I thought he was being manipulative and other times I may have wanted to say it back, but didn’t.

  He was being his most perfect self these days. He went to work on time and came home early and he didn’t drink at all. He brought me the multicolored bouquet of roses from Costco and the three-pound bag of raw almonds I’d asked him to get because I was eating healthy now. He scooped the ice cream at night and made his side of the bed in the morning and told me my hair looked pretty. These efforts were nice, but they were also small deposits into the bank account of our marriage. Chuck would need to bank a lot more small deposits to make up for the huge withdrawal of his affair.

  He also started taking me on dates. One night he took me to a restaurant built on a wooden pier right over the water. Brad had told him it was fantastic. A view of the ocean, starched white tablecloths, the sound of waves crashing beneath us. We rushed to get there before sunset and made it just in time to see the last bit of orange disappear. “Did you see the green zap?” he asked me. He looked so eager.

  “No, did you?”

  “I think so. Maybe a small green zap.”

  His optimism these days was almost tiring, but it was better than the sull
en way he was when he drank.

  I ordered the salad with ono and Chuck ordered the lobster BLT and we didn’t talk about the past. It felt like an unspoken agreement, a part of moving on.

  We talked about the food. We agreed it was very good.

  We talked about how Hawaii was different from San Diego. How it was America but also another country. A country where people were in a better mood. An island mood. I told Chuck how chipper the baristas were at Starbucks. They offered me samples and said “Aloha” at the end. Chuck said the people at this Costco were more laid-back. “In an island mood, like you said. I hope it doesn’t mean they’re lazy.”

  We talked about the boys. We agreed they were adjusting normally. They’d made the varsity team—no surprise to either of us. Chuck thought they had a good chance at getting scholarships as long as they kept their grades up, and he couldn’t help but recite his own history here as if I didn’t know it. Chuck had gotten a water polo scholarship. He wouldn’t have gone to a good college like USD without that scholarship because he was a B minus student. I could have said: I know, Chuck, I met you at USD, remember? But I didn’t. I just looked at him across the table and let him talk. I let the sound of the waves drown him out. I might have been studying his face again, trying to find signs that I did or didn’t still love him.