Rachel can’t help but put an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “I really didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s not you,” says Kimberley. “It’s just the situation. I just feel so sad that she felt the need to lie. It’s my fault. I made her do it.”
“What do you mean?” asks Rachel. “How can her lying to you be your fault?”
Kimberley takes a deep breath. “I lost my baby six months ago.”
“Oh my God,” gasps Rachel.
“I was almost full-term, but for reasons we’ll probably never know, it wasn’t to be.”
“I’m so sorry,” says Rachel, feeling gut-wrenchingly horrified that she’s making this woman, who she barely knows, recall the most unimaginable pain possible.
“Ali was with me when it happened, and she stayed by my side until my husband was able to get home from where he was stationed abroad.”
Rachel can feel a tightening at the back of her throat, but she doesn’t know whether it’s in response to what Kimberley’s been through or the realization that Ali might have had a reason for lying.
“She’s been truly incredible ever since, making me laugh with her escapades and crying with me when I needed her to. I’ve been a limpet on her resources, selfishly draining her boundless optimism, when she should have been looking forward to this.” She looks around. “Of course she wants children—she’s always wanted them—I’ve just made it very hard for her to admit that lately.”
A panic is beginning to engulf Rachel, a vise-like grip that is snaking its way around her chest, making it difficult to breathe. “So…” she manages. “She lied to protect you?”
Kimberley nods. “Yes, but that doesn’t make her a bad person.”
No, it doesn’t, thinks Rachel as she numbly walks away. In fact, it makes her an even better person than most.
She looks out onto the terrace and sees Jack and Paige together, as if through new eyes. Jack’s face is intense as he looks at her, dragging hard on a cigarette, before tilting his head up skywards to exhale a perfectly straight line of smoke into the night sky.
Paige is more pensive, surprisingly unconfident in her own skin, taking small furtive puffs and expelling them quickly. They look like a couple with a big problem. Rachel can’t help but wonder if it’s her.
“What the hell’s going on?” asks Noah, coming up beside her. They both silently look out at Jack and Paige for a moment.
Rachel turns to look at him. “I don’t think she’s told them,” she says, unable to believe Ali might have kept her mouth shut.
“She definitely hasn’t,” says Noah. “Because Paige has just apologized and told me she loves me.”
Rachel doesn’t know which of those anomalies leaves the bitterest taste. She pulls herself up, surprised by her own feelings.
“Apologized for what?” she asks.
“I don’t know yet,” says Noah. “That’s all she said when she came back in.” Rachel raises her eyebrows, and Noah smiles. “I know, it unnerved me too!”
“Seriously,” she scolds. “You don’t think there’s anything in this, do you?”
“What, between Jack and Paige?”
Rachel nods.
“Why would you even think that?” he asks, as if it’s the most preposterous suggestion he’s ever heard.
She looks at him as if to say, “They’d probably say the same about us.”
“The impression I get is that Ali lies about everything,” says Noah. “So, no, I don’t think there’s anything going on. Though, why she’d feel the need to say there is, I don’t know.”
Rachel bites on her lip, wondering how she could even think to ask the question, but for some reason she can’t let it go. “How has Paige been?”
Noah looks at her over his glass of wine, as if he can’t quite believe she’s asking it either. “In what way?”
“Has she been her normal self?” asks Rachel. “Or has she seemed … I don’t know, off?”
“Are you asking me if I think my wife is having an affair with your husband?”
“I’m asking you if anything has been amiss recently.”
Noah shrugs his shoulders. “She’s had a lot of work, but that’s nothing new.”
Rachel nods. “Late nights?”
“Yes, but like I say, that’s nothing new.”
Rachel thinks back to all the late-night shifts Jack’s been putting in at work recently; the dinners that have had to be put back in the oven; the plans that have had to be canceled; the nights where the Christian Louboutins have gone back in their box because she was tired of waiting.
“Jack had to stay in town the Wednesday before last,” she says, as if to herself.
Noah’s face suddenly changes, as if the enormity of such a possibility is dawning on him for the first time.
“It’s nothing,” she says, shaking herself down, unable to believe she’s allowed her mind to go there. “It’s nothing.”
“I think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” says Noah gently. “Though that’s not to say that I would put it past Jack…”
“To have an affair?” she asks.
Noah’s silence speaks volumes.
“So, you’re saying you think he is?” she asks.
“I just wouldn’t be surprised” is all he says, but it feels like he’s forcing himself to stop there in case he divulges something he shouldn’t.
“If you know something…”
“Come on, Rach,” he groans. “You’re putting me in an impossible position.”
“You’re supposed to be my friend,” she says.
He tilts his head to the side, as if offended by her questioning his loyalty. “You know better than to ask which side of the fence I’m on.”
“Do I?” she asks, knowing she’s playing devil’s advocate. “Because from where I’m standing, it’s not looking too clear cut.”
Noah smiles wryly. “Don’t make this about you and me. You know my stance on this. You know how I feel about Jack.”
Rachel looks at him, taken aback. She has no idea how he feels about Jack, because they’ve never discussed it. “Wouldn’t this be a good time to tell me?” she asks.
He looks down at his feet, as if weighing the pros and cons of divulging what he’s clearly been keeping hidden. Rachel wonders if it’s based on just the last few days, or whether he’s got years of disclosures to make.
Noah confirms it’s the latter when he says, “I’ve never thought he was good enough for you.”
Rachel laughs tightly at the sweeping statement. “Is that Jack specifically, or would that judgment befall any man I happened to fall in love with?”
“I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy,” he says.
“And until I came here, I was!” she says, her voice high-pitched.
“Exactly,” says Noah. “That’s why I’ve always kept my opinion to myself because you would only have held it against me.”
“Jack’s treated me well,” she says.
“Until he didn’t,” he says, finishing the sentence for her.
Rachel feels the sting of tears in her eyes as she looks at him. Good, dependable Noah, who always gives it to her straight. Except now, just for once, she wants him to sugar-coat it and lie, because that feels like the only way she’s going to get through this.
“Do you think he knows what we did?” Rachel says, feeling like she can’t breathe.
“What we did?” repeats Noah. “You say it with such disdain, as if it was the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
“It was!” she snaps, as a tear falls onto her cheek. “I’ve never regretted anything as much as I regret that.”
The shock on Noah’s face makes her feel sick, as if she’s been punched in the stomach. The hurt in his eyes is decades old, and since the beginning of time, when he’s hurt, she’s hurt. To know she’s caused his pain breaks her. She wants to take it back, to tell him the truth: that that night was incredible, that he’d made her feel the most special she’d ever felt, that it was everything she had imagined it would be. But that would only fan the fire that’s burning precariously close to their fingertips—the ones that are clinging onto a perilous ledge, desperately trying to hold on.
“Well, just for the record,” says Noah quietly. “The only regret I have is that I couldn’t persuade you to come away with me.”
“Just because you didn’t get what you wanted doesn’t give you the right to question Jack’s loyalty. I made the decision to stay.”