After she comes home, with the dinner groceries and yard waste bags, she kneels in the front garden and pulls on the stubborn roots of prickly weeds while berating herself for not seeing it all before. Whitney’s affair with Rebecca’s husband, the extent of her selfishness. It’s hard to admit how much she loved her. How much she’d envied her life. It’s unsettling how a friendship as close as theirs can so quickly be diminished. How hurtful the end feels, and yet how uneventful. How little her life will change without Whitney, not in the way the loss of her marriage would turn herself and everything else inside out.
And yet losing Whitney feels more tender. More personal. Like a death. Their friendship was the only space where they both were better versions of themselves, and now Whitney has stolen this space and all that it held. But it wasn’t hers, alone, to destroy. Blair rips up forget-me-nots by the fistful. Why has Whitney done this to them? Missing Whitney will consume her. But Whitney has other problems to contend with, Blair thinks, stuffing weeds in the yard bag and swallowing the lump in her throat. Blair will be an afterthought, their relationship forgotten in the wreckage.
And maybe it’s for the best, given what Blair knows. She remembers, then, about the key that’s still in her pocket. About the explanation she never got.
She checks her watch. It’s almost time to get Chloe from school. She looks behind her across the street and sees that Jacob has opened the curtains at the front of their house. She shields her eyes from the sun and sees him moving around in the kitchen, maybe putting something together for Whitney to eat at the hospital. She’ll have sent Ben away by now, although it doesn’t look like he’s home.
She knows she should stay where she is, right there with her knees in the dirt. She shouldn’t go anywhere near the Loverlys’ house again.
But she feels the escalation of an audacity she’s never had before.
She thinks of the way Jacob places his fingers on his wife’s waist when she walks past him. The emphasis he puts on Whitney’s name when he speaks of her, like he’s saying the name of royalty. Whitney deserves none of it. And Blair can take it all away from her, in one conversation. The scale of their friendship had never tipped in her favor like this. She’s never felt this kind of power.
She stands in her garden, the opportunity becoming clear. She peels off her gloves and finds herself walking up Jacob’s driveway on legs that might wilt underneath her.
He opens the door and embraces her. She smells sandalwood in his neck. She lets her fingers run all the way down his arm as he pulls away.
Her own voice echoes in her ears as she speaks. She says she is so sorry, that she cannot believe this has happened. She asks how Xavier is doing that morning, what the status at the hospital is, as though she hasn’t been there that day at all. Jacob tells her about the flutters, about the small, subtle movements they’ve seen. That it could be a good sign, or it could be false hope. That surgery has been scheduled. He’s just come from a visit with Thea and Sebastian, but he’s about to go back to the hospital again now. He hasn’t slept since he got the call. Whitney won’t eat.
But Blair can only think of what she’ll say next:
I have something to tell you, and I know this isn’t the right time, but . . .
I’m only doing this because I respect you, and I think you should know . . .
I hope you’ll forgive me for this, Jacob, but it’s not right to keep this from you . . .
That simple. Like jumping into a cold lake. Just do it without thinking, is what she would tell Chloe. Just count to three and jump. Be more than they expect you to be.
She opens her mouth, she interrupts him, she says his name in a voice that doesn’t sound like hers.
“Jacob, I have to—there’s something . . .”
He puts his hand back on her shoulder. His tight grip. She thinks of how intimately she’s explored his things, how she’s held his underwear to her nose.
“I know. We should talk,” he says. His face grows red. “I didn’t want to have this conversation with you. I’m sorry. I think the authorities are satisfied now, but people might ask you some questions. And there’ll be rumors. And we need to be able to count on you to, you know . . . set things straight.”
Blair starts to nod because he wants her to understand what he means without having to say the words. But she doesn’t know what he means, not exactly. He seems uncomfortable. Are the police still sniffing around? Did Whitney admit to something? Did they see the broken mug, the coffee all over Xavier’s room? Or worse, did they speak to the school, have they found out about the incident with Chloe? They will—it’s only a matter of time unless a more damning rumor takes over.
He’s still gripping her shoulder.
She mumbles—of course, there’s no need to mention it. She’s there for them. She tries to smile. He leans in to hug her again and she feels his hand rub her back slowly, over the clasp of her bra. She thinks of touching herself on his bed upstairs. She replays Ben’s hand stroking Whitney’s neck in the hospital room.
“How did Chloe take the news?”
She pulls away to read his face. Did he emphasize Chloe’s name? Is she imaging that?
“Chloe, she’s fine . . . I mean, she’s devastated, of course. I dropped off a card she made at the hospital. Earlier today.”
“Oh,” he says. He looks confused, and she remembers she’d implied earlier that she hadn’t been to the hospital today. “I must have just missed you?”
“I guess so,” she says, and then shrugs, although it feels a beat too late.
“She’s a good girl. His best friend.” He nods as he says it, but he looks serious. Too serious. His face is still flush.
She feels like he can read her mind and she wants out from under him. She can’t find the bravado she came over with; instead, she feels threatened somehow. Is that what this is, a threat? Does he know how Chloe treated his son?
She’s flooded with the relief of having kept her mouth shut just now. What she knows about Whitney and Ben might have more value if she keeps quiet for the time being. Should she have her own family to protect from rumors.
She walks slowly across the street back to her house, trying to process what Jacob has just done. Or what else he might know about what’s going on. The devastating mistakes his wife has made. Maybe, in his own way, he’s just as weak as she herself is. She feels Mara’s eyes follow her all the way to her front door, even as Jacob is calling Mara’s name, jogging across his property toward hers.
She slips her phone from her pocket, opens the group chat with the moms from school, and starts typing.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard yet. There’s been an accident at the Loverlys.
She stares at the text. And then deletes the last sentence. She writes again.
There’s been an incident with Whitney and her son. I’ll let you know when I find out more. We’re all devastated, especially Chloe.
She presses send, and goes back to the weeds.
56
Whitney
The Hospital
She feels shaky until Jacob is back. He comes behind her and puts his cheek against hers, where Ben had touched her. She wonders if he can smell Ben in the room, like she still can. She squeezes her eyes closed and waits for him to notice something is different, to make an innocent comment that grows and grows in his mind until everything she has done to him becomes clear. She wonders when he’s going to pull her hands away from her face and finally say, Look at me. You need to be honest with me.
But instead, he talks to Xavier as though he can hear him. And maybe he can. His voice is tender, the voice of a dream. He puts his little toy airplane in his hand. He’s telling him about how much Thea and Sebastian miss him. About how they want to run through the sprinkler with him when he gets home. But the words hurt. The hope hurts, and she knows they can both feel it.
He turns toward her now. Who does he believe her to be? What does he think her capable of? She wants to tell him she never would have gone through with cutting off the oxygen. That she only wanted to see how it would feel. How it would almost feel. Like someone standing at the ledge, high up. Toes over. Looking down.