He does not flinch. He does not even blink. “Why don’t you tell me, Tessa? Since you seem to have all the answers.”
“I don’t have that answer, Nick. In fact, your little friendship was news to me. A great, big newsflash. While I’m trying to have a good time in New York with my brother and best friend, I’m getting a text that you’re with another woman, sharing a cozy moment in the parking lot.”
“That’s great,” he says with hushed sarcasm. “That’s fucking great. Now I’m being watched—followed—like some kind of a bad guy.”
“Are you?” I shout. “Are you a bad guy?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask your posse of friends? Why don’t you take a poll of all the Wellesley housewives?”
I swallow, then raise my chin with a self-righteous flourish. “For the record, I told April that you’d never cheat on me,” I say.
I study his face, bearing an expression I can only describe as guilty.
“Why are you discussing me with April?” Nick asks. “Why is our marriage any of her concern?”
“She’s not part of this discussion, Nick,” I say, determined not to be sidetracked. “Other than the fact that she’s the one who told me you were at Longmere with Valerie Anderson. When it was you who should have filled me in.”
“I didn’t know you wanted a report of everything I did,” Nick says, standing abruptly and heading for the kitchen. A long moment later, he returns with a bottle of Perrier, refilling his glass as I pick up where we left off.
I shake my head and say, “I didn’t ask for a report. I didn’t want a report.”
“Then why do you surround yourself with people who would give you that report?”
It is a fair question, but one that I feel is completely ancillary to the bigger picture, the one he is blatantly avoiding. “I don’t know, Nick,” I say. “You might be right about April. But this isn’t about April and you know it.”
He remains infuriatingly silent as I sigh and say, “Okay. Let’s try this again, another way. Would you mind, now that we’re on the topic, telling me what you were doing at Longmere?”
“Okay. Yes. I’ll tell you,” he says calmly. “Charlie Anderson, my patient, called me.”
“He called you?” I say.
He nods.
“Was it a medical emergency?”
“No,” he says. “It was not.”
“Then why did he call you?”
“He was upset. There was an incident at school. A little girl teased him and he got upset.”
“Why didn’t he call his mother?”
“He did. He couldn’t reach her. She was in court. She had her phone turned off.”
“And his father?” I ask, even though I know the answer—that there is no father, perhaps the most unsettling fact in all of this.
Sure enough, Nick looks more impassioned than he has in the entire conversation as he says, “He doesn’t have a father. He’s a scared little kid who has been through hell and called his doctor.”
“He has no other family?” I say, unwilling to feel sympathy for anyone other than myself—and potentially my children. “Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”
“Tessa. Look. I don’t know why he called me. I didn’t ask him. I just went. I thought it was the right thing to do.”
You are so fucking noble, I think, but instead press on. “Are you friends with her?”
He hesitates, then nods. “Yes. I guess you could say we’re friends. Yes.”
“Close friends?” I ask.
“Tessa. C’mon, Stop.”
I shake my head and repeat the question. “How close are you?”
“What are you getting at here?”
“What I am getting at,” I say, pushing my plate away, wondering how I possibly thought I could be in the mood for raw fish, “is what is going on with us. Why we don’t feel close anymore. Why you didn’t tell me that Charlie Anderson called you. That you’re friends with his mother . . .”
He nods, as if granting me a small point—which has a way of softening my next words. “And maybe, just maybe, this nagging worry I have about our relationship . . . maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe I need to take some antidepressants or go back to work or something.” I pick up my chopsticks, holding them skillfully in my hands, remembering how my father taught me to use them when I was a little girl, about Ruby’s age.