“No.” Why don’t I get up and leave? I don’t want to talk about any of this. But I also don’t want them to talk about me. And I really don’t like the implications they made, as if Dean has terrible judgment because he married me. As if I’m worthless.
“So we’re thinking that Dean might get tenure at King’s soon,” I tell Helen. “Especially since he just received an IHR grant.”
Helen looks startled. “Dean got an IHR grant?”
Hah.
“Oh, didn’t he tell you? They sent him the letter before Christmas. The funding starts this summer.”
“Well, that’s great.” Helen takes another sip of wine.
I try to come up with some fabulous recent accomplishment of my own that I can brag about. “And I’m pregnant” doesn’t fit the bill. Maybe “And I can make an awesome soufflé”?
“I didn’t know you were here, Helen.” Joanna West enters the room. She somehow manages to look effortlessly elegant in a flowing caftan thing, even though it’s nearing ten at night. “Any word from the doctor?”
“I called earlier, and Dad’s sleeping,” Paige says. “We can visit in the morning.”
“Fine.” Joanna slants her cool gaze to me. “Hello, Olivia.”
“How are you, Joanna?” My stomach twists. I hate the evidence that she can still make me nervous, this sophisticated woman who blames me for taking her son away.
“We saved dinner for you, Joanna.” Helen rises and hands Joanna a glass of wine. “Liv made it. Come and have some.”
“Thank you, dear.”
The three women go into the kitchen. Although they’ve just snubbed me, I’m less hurt than I am relieved at the chance to escape their company. I stay seated for a few minutes, listening to the hum of their conversation.
I can’t help feeling a little envious at the knowledge that Helen still has a good relationship with Joanna West. Paige and Joanna have always been close, the two West women united, and Helen seems to be the third piece to their little conclave.
Pressing a hand to my belly, I go back upstairs. Dean is sound asleep, sprawled out on his stomach. I take my Liv’s Manifesto notebook from my satchel and sit at the desk, turning on the low lamp. I open to a fresh page and pick up a pen.
I put the book aside and go to slide beneath the covers. I press myself against Dean’s warm body and close my eyes, but it’s a long time before I’m able to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Olivia
side from a therapist, I had never told anyone what happened at Fieldbrook. Not even North, the one person before Dean whom I could trust. After a huge fight with my mother when I was thirteen, I left her to go and live with my aunt Stella, my father’s sister.
For five years, I stayed with Stella and her husband Henry in Castleford—classic small-town Wisconsin. Stella had strict rules for my stay—good grades, part-time job, church attendance, no drinking or sleeping around—and I was happy to obey those rules. After years of instability with my mother, it was a relief to have structure, rigid and stifling though it was.
For five years, no one had anything bad to say about me. No one had anything to say at all. I was quiet, contained, studious. I didn’t date and had only a few friends, choosing to focus on my studies and extracurricular activities like speech-and-debate that would look good on my college applications. When I was eighteen, I earned a full-tuition scholarship to Fieldbrook College, an exclusive private school near Milwaukee.
The day I got the acceptance letter, I stood by the mailbox with my pulse racing as I felt the past slipping away and the future opening up like an endless field in front of me.
Dear Miss Winter,
On behalf of the admissions committee and board of directors, we are very pleased to inform you that you have been selected as the sole recipient of the prestigious Fieldbrook College Merit Scholarship…
Finally I could stretch my wings, leave my self-centered mother and my repressed life with Aunt Stella far behind. Finally I could figure out who I was and what I wanted to be.
Three months later, I packed up everything I owned and drove across the state to start my future. That was it. Both the beginning and the end.
And then six years later with Dean… a beginning again.
Even in the early part of our relationship, I knew I would tell him before I slept with him. I had to. But I didn’t know how or when I would… until I had no choice.
The weekend after our strip Scrabble game, he came over to my apartment on a rainy Saturday afternoon. We spent a couple of hours working—he graded essays, and I researched a paper about information resources—before I took a break to put some dirty clothes in the washing machine. I gathered up a few quarters and my laundry basket, declining Dean’s offer of help as I went down to the third-floor laundry room.