“Did you try the supermarket cashier and the guy who does your gutters?”
“Noreen, come on, this isn’t a joke. I need you.”
Hearing the vulnerability in her sister’s voice, she softens. Just a little. She perches on one of the two waiting room chairs and begins straightening the pile of magazines between them. “Tell me. I’m listening.”
“Do you remember what I told you years ago? About . . . something I almost did?”
“The affair with your neighbor?”
“Shh!”
“I told you, I’m alone—-and even if I weren’t, no one here would have any idea who I’m talking to or what I’m talking about.”
“I know, but still . . . for once can’t you just be . . .”
“Warm and fuzzy? Is that what you want?”
That gets a laugh out of her sister—-not a long or remotely merry one, but at least it defuses the tension.
“Forget it. Warm and fuzzy isn’t you. And . . . I need you. Do you remember what I told you that day when you asked me why Jake and I moved back to Mundy’s Landing?”
Noreen does, very clearly.
“I know you thought I was taking a step backward and that I might get myself into trouble again,” Rowan said that day, “but . . . I was actually trying to keep myself out of trouble.”
It was then that she confessed the real reason she’d wanted to leave Westchester.
“I was worried about my marriage,” she told Noreen, who at that point would never have dreamed that she should have been worried about her own.
“Why? Did something happen? Did Jake have an affair?”
“It wasn’t Jake.”
“You had an affair?”
“Almost, but I stopped it.”
Here we go again, she thought. Just when she thought Rowan had her act together and was going to be okay.
“With whom?” she asked her sister.
“Wow, even when you’re completely scandalized, you use perfect grammar,” Rowan commented, shaking her head. “Do you remember my neighbor Rick? You met him and his wife, Vanessa, that time you and Kevin came over for Mick’s first birthday.”
Noreen couldn’t have picked Rick out of a crowd, but she remembered the party. It was a sprawling backyard affair complete with a rented bouncy house and a cotton candy machine. Hordes of bouncing, sticky, screaming kids on a sugar high.
She remembered Rick’s wife, too. She was attractive, with dark hair and porcelain skin, but a little uptight. She seemed uncomfortable with the other women at the party, most of whom were in full--blown stay--at--home--mom mode. Noreen found herself relating to her, but it was Kevin who spent a lot of time on the deck talking to her while Noreen shielded their children’s fragile skulls from the baseball bat her sister kept handing to frenzied toddlers to use on the pi?ata.
She opted not to pick a fight with Kevin about it on the way home. When it came to their marriage, she chose to let a lot of things go over the years.
And now you’re second--guessing them all.
At least she isn’t the only one whose marriage is less than perfect. Then again, her sister had gone to great lengths to save hers, moving upstate just to get away from temptation.
“That’s a little drastic,” Noreen commented at the time. “Couldn’t you just have avoided him?”
“No. I didn’t trust myself to do that. Sometimes I can be . . . you know.”
Yeah. She knew. Self--control had never been Rowan’s forte.
Not about to relinquish her long--held role as her sister’s moral compass, Noreen felt obligated to scold the weakness and near indiscretion. They never discussed it again.
“Did you tell anyone about it?” Rowan asks her now.
Noreen stops straightening the magazines. “You made me swear I wouldn’t, remember?”
“I do remember. That’s why I’m asking. Did you tell anyone?”
She hesitates, not wanting to admit the truth.