“What's she like?” Page started to feel sick as she asked, but she wanted to know everything now …eight months …eight months} How could she have been so stupid?
“Stephanie's very different …from you, I mean … I don't know …she's very independent, very free, very much her own person. She's from L.A., she came up here to go to Stanford, and stayed. She's twenty-six. She's just …I don't know … we talk a lot, we like the same things. I kept telling myself I had to stop …but I just couldn't.” He looked at her helplessly, and she would have felt sorry for him if he hadn't been killing her with what he was saying. She wanted to ask him if she was beautiful, if she was great in bed, if he really loved her. But how much more could she ask? And how much more could she bear hearing?
“What were you planning to do about her, Brad? Leave me eventually?”
“I just don't know. I knew it couldn't go on like this. But I've just been so confused.” He ran a hand through his hair as he looked at her. “It's been driving me crazy.”
“And where was I during all this? Why didn't I see what was going on?” She stared at him, unbelieving. It was all too incredible, and too awful. Her worst nightmares had come true. Allyson was nearly dead, and Brad was in love with another woman. “What's happened to us, Brad? Why have we gotten so involved with our own lives? Why are you always out of town, or playing golf, and I'm always driving car pools? Is that what happened? We just drifted away from each other while I wasn't looking?” She wanted to understand what had happened to them, but for now, she just couldn't. Too much had happened.
“It's not your fault,” he said gallantly, and then shook his head again, visibly confused. “Maybe it is your fault …maybe it's both our faults. Maybe we just let something happen that never should have. Maybe we got caught up in all the unimportant bullshit. I wish I knew. I just don't have the answers.” He hadn't in eight months, which was why he hadn't left her, or told her.
“Would you stop seeing her?” she asked him openly, and he hesitated for a long time, and then slowly he shook his head, as she felt the air go out of her body. “And what am I supposed to do? Just look the other way while you go on f*cking Little Miss Creative?” She was suddenly overwhelmed with anger as she looked at him, and out of nowhere came an almost uncontrollable desire to hit him, with words if not her fists, and Brad looked as though he understood it. He had reproached himself a lot of the time, for the past eight months, particularly when Page was good to him, or did something nice for him, or wanted to make love. He had spent the last months feeling unbearably guilty whenever he was with her. And yet he couldn't stop seeing Stephanie. He wasn't ready to give up either of them. He told himself that he was in love with both of them, but the truth was, he wasn't. He still loved Page, but he wasn't in love with her anymore. He hadn't been for a while, he didn't know why, but he knew he wasn't. He loved her, and respected her, she was a terrific mother to their kids, and a great wife to him. She was a great friend, and a great person. She was everything any man would want …and yet, she didn't set his heart and his mind on fire the way Stephanie did, and nothing he could do or say would change that.
“What am I supposed to do now? Just disappear? Make life easy for both of you?” She suddenly panicked, wondering if he expected her to move out, or if he was planning to now that she knew about the affair. And what about Andy? She started to cry, just thinking about it, what lay ahead, and now all of it compounded by their anguish over Allie. “What do you expect of me?” she said, looking and sounding as distraught as she felt. He wished he could reassure her, but he couldn't.
“I don't expect anything. Let's just get Allyson through this, and concentrate on surviving. Why don't we deal with this afterward? We just can't do both things at once.” It was a rational suggestion, but Page was too unnerved to be reasonable at this point, and he understood that.
“And then what? You move out when Allie wakes up … or after the funeral?” she asked, bitter and frightened again. She was bordering on hysterical, but he made no move to console her. He just couldn't. He was too upset himself, and he knew that anything he tried to do would just make it worse now. Now that she knew about Stephanie, he felt he needed to keep a certain distance.