I cross my arms as I hurry toward the office. I let myself into the reception area, expecting to see Natalie. She’s not at her desk, though, and I’m not sure why; business hours aren’t over for another thirty minutes. Also weird: The heavy oak door leading to Dad’s personal office is closed.
I walk a slow circle around the small space. The air’s thick with perfume, heavier and muskier than Meredith’s signature scent, but oddly familiar. Trying to place it, I step up to Natalie’s workspace. On her desk, there’s a blotter covered in doodles (butterflies and hearts and stars—how trite) and a tube of lipstick (deep, deep red—I’ve never seen her in anything else), but otherwise there are no personal touches. No pictures of family or boyfriends or pets, no day planner, no potted plants or dish of candy. It hits me then, how little I know of Dad’s perky blond secretary, this girl who fetches his cappuccinos, and who’s also really pretty.
What if…?
No. Natalie’s only a few years older than me, and my dad’s not a secretary-screwing cliché. I’m shaking that thought right out of my head when I hear laughter coming from behind his office door: a coy, feminine giggle, and a deeper chuckle.
My stomach lurches.
I stand statue-still, listening to the rhythmic pounding of blood in my ears and the voices, his and hers, murmurs drenched in bliss and beatitude. I think back to Valentine’s Day and the Yellow Door. The woman Dad was with had daybreak hair, peachy blond, a lot like Natalie’s.
Comprehension hits me like a football to the face—she’s not at her desk because she’s with him, behind the closed door of his office.
Dad vowed to work things out with Meredith. He promised Ally would grow up in a house with two parents. He swore the affair was over.
What a liar.
I fight my immediate impulse to shove the office door open, only because the thought of what I might interrupt disgusts me. I will be a grown-up about this—somebody has to. But as I step forward, raising my hand to knock on the tall oak door, my phone comes alive with a text, the silly, very loud banjo riff Max programmed as a joke.
The giggling in Dad’s office screeches to a halt. In fact, the entire building has gone eerily quiet. They’ve heard my phone. They’re onto me, just as I’m onto them.
My voice shatters the quiet. “Dad? I need to speak with you.”
After a moment of shuffling and frantic utterances, the door swings open. Bile ascends my throat as my already-queasy stomach makes the leap to full-fledged nausea because …
It’s not Natalie who stands beside my father—it’s Mrs. Tate. Her strawberry-blond hair’s tousled and her lipstick’s smudged—smudged across my father’s mouth. God. I can hardly look at him. His hair appears windblown, his tie’s been removed, his shirt collar unbuttoned, and his expression is a landscape of dread.
Robin Tate: hospice nurse, police officer’s wife … mistress.
She comes to our house to drink coffee and gossip. She plays Bunco in our basement. After Ally was born, she helped Marcy tie those damn balloons to our shrubs. She and her husband brought a freaking casserole.
She’s Meredith’s friend.
The first thing out of Dad’s mouth is the last thing I want to hear. “Jillian, this isn’t what it looks like.”
“Don’t lie to me.” My voice is steady, restrained, my anger barely eclipsed by grief. “It’s exactly what it looks like.”
Mrs. Tate’s eyes are puddles. She looks at my dad like she’s a helpless little girl instead of a middle-aged, married woman. Like it’s his job to bail her out. How dare she turn to him for reassurance? I’m the one who needs reassuring. I’m the only person in this room who has a right to ask Jake Eldridge for anything.
My hurt spills out in a frustrated cry. “How could you?”
“It just happened!” Mrs. Tate says, and I’m struck momentarily speechless by how readily she’s confessed to shattering a family.
“It just happened?” I repeat. “You admit it? You two-faced home wrecker.”
My dad steps forward. “Jillian—”
“Don’t! You don’t get to parent me. You said it was over. You swore it was over!”
His posture sags, and he presses his lips together. The simple show of weakness sickens me. “How?” I ask. “When? Why?”
“I don’t think you want the details,” Mrs. Tate says. My dad reaches out to give her arm a warning touch, but jerks his hand back when he remembers himself—when he remembers me.
“I guess I already know the whens,” I say. “Valentine’s Day. Ally’s birthday. Every late night, every lengthy Saturday. How long have you been lying to everyone?”
They glance guiltily at each other.
“Since just before Christmas,” Dad says. He lets his confession fester for a moment before adding, “Life is short, Jillian. I don’t expect you to understand my choices.”
I snort. “Good, because I don’t. Choosing to cheat with the neighbor—your wife’s friend—will never, ever make sense to me.”
Mrs. Tate says, “We care about each other.”
It’s infuriating, the pointed manner in which she speaks, the way she emphasizes her syllables like she’s teaching me a lesson. It pisses me off, and I’m in her face before I process the movement. “You’re a bitch!”
Panic flashes in her eyes, but she’s not without a retort. “And you’re a child.”
Dad shoves an arm between us. “Jillian, stop it. Robin, for God’s sake. Shut up!”
I blink, trying to clear a wave of vertigo; this whole exchange is so surreal. “Meredith knows you’re having an affair,” I tell my dad. I pause to glare at Mrs. Tate—Robin. “She might not know that you’re involved, but she knows something’s wrong.”
Dad takes a step forward, like he might want to join my team. Or, at the very least, use me as an ally. “Jillian, are you going to tell her?”
I pause, because in all my fury and resentment and sorrow, it hasn’t dawned on me that, yet again, the responsibility of passing on this news will fall to me.
I whisper, “I have to.”
“God, Jill. Don’t. Please let me handle it.”
He won’t. He’s not reliable, and he’s not honorable. He’s a liar and a fool, and I can’t fathom a day when I’ll see him as anything but. My throat constricts as I mourn the decent man I used to idolize. I stare at my father until my eyes flood with tears. “You’ve broken us—ruined us—and I will never forgive you.”
I rush through the door, out of the office, into rain that pelts my face, mingling with the tears that stream down my cheeks.
35