“No,” she says, as a vision of him weakens her knees.
“So he always makes house calls? Late at night? Unannounced? Wearing cologne?” Jason rattles off the questions.
“He wasn’t wearing cologne,” she replies a little too quickly, then attempts to cover up her intimate knowledge with a sidebar about how she has never trusted guys who wear cologne. “Lion wore cologne,” she finishes.
“Aha!” he says, as if this is all the evidence he needs. Why else would she compare a man to Lion—the love of her life so far? Which isn’t saying much. But still.
“Don’t aha me,” she says as Rosemary walks into the kitchen.
“What are you two all whispery about now?” she asks, opening the refrigerator.
“Nothing,” they say in unison, clearly hiding something.
Rosemary shakes her head, as if she doesn’t believe them but doesn’t much care, returning to the family room with a container of Cool Whip and a large serving spoon.
“Carry on,” she says over her shoulder.
Which Jason does, switching tactics, slipping into his straight-shooting mode. “Val. Just tell me. Is something going on?” She hesitates, making a split-second decision that she does not want to layer a lie on top of everything else.
“Yes,” she finally says. “But it’s not. . . physical.”
She thinks of their embrace last night, as intimate as any moment in her life, but decides that she is still telling the truth. Technically.
“Are you falling in love with him?” he asks.
She gives him a bashful smile that is more telling than anything she could say.
Jason whistles. “Wow. Okay . . . He is married, correct?”
She nods.
“Separated?”
“No,” she says, answering questions the way she instructs her clients—as simply as possible, offering no extra information. “Not to my knowledge,” she adds, entertaining the hopeful thought that this could be the case.
“And . . . ?” he says.
“And nothing,” she says.
She has thought about his wife a thousand times, of course, wondering about her, their marriage. What does she look like? What is she like? Why did Nick fall in love with her? And more important, why has he fallen out? Or maybe he hasn’t. Maybe this is only about the two of them, the feelings they share, the uncontrollable force bringing them together—and nothing else.
Valerie doesn’t know which scenario she prefers, whether she wants to be a reaction to something that has already soured or to be something that has taken him by storm, out of the blue, overriding his contented existence with an offer of something more. Something better. All she knows for sure is that he isn’t the kind of man who has done this before. She would swear anything on it.
Valerie sticks to the facts now. “He’s married with two kids . . . And he’s Charlie’s doctor. It’s an all-around big problem,” she says succinctly.
“Okay,” Jason says. “Now we’re getting somewhere. I thought maybe it was just me.”
“No. It’s not just you. I am perfectly aware that there is nothing about this situation that is right,” she whispers resignedly. “And for the record, he knows it’s wrong, too. But. . .”
“But you’re not going to stop seeing him?” Jason says in the voice of a brother, a best friend, a therapist, all rolled into one. “Are you?”
“No,” she says. “I can’t
Tessa
That night, shortly after Nick’s parents leave for home and my dad and Diane depart for Fifteen Beacon, their favorite hotel in Boston and where they always stay when they come to town, Nick pokes his head into the kids’ bathroom where I am stripping off their clothes and corralling them into the tub.
“I’m going to run out. Be back in a few,” he says.
“For what?” I ask, my heart sinking as I glance at my watch and note that it is nearly seven o’clock.
“Cherry Coke,” he says.
Nick has always insisted that cherry Coke is more effective than Tylenol in curing headaches, which he claims to have tonight. And maybe he does. I desperately hope that he does, hope that he is on the brink of the worst migraine ever. “You want anything?”
“No, thanks,” I say, frowning as I adjust the temperature of the bathwater. I add more liquid soap, and a hill of bubbles appear as Ruby climbs in and I heave a squirming, giggling Frank over the edge. I sit on a stepstool, watching my children play, admiring their perfect pink bodies—their potbellies, their round, little bottoms, their stick-figure limbs. As Nick turns to leave the bathroom, I keep my eyes fixed on my children, telling myself that he would never do anything to hurt them or jeopardize our family.
Yet, the second I hear the garage door open, I race to our bedroom and, with a heavy heart, confirm what I already knew: Nick’s phone is gone from the dresser. I tell myself that it’s natural to take your phone, even on a short errand, yet I can’t shake the image of my husband, in his car, speed-dialing another woman’s number.