“You told the girls the rules, and they broke them. That’s what teenagers do.”
“Not Hannah, though.” Kim sniffled. “Hannah’s a good girl. She was a good girl. We talked about everything. About drinking and drugs and the problems they cause. I thought she understood . . . I thought I’d done my job. I feel like I failed her.”
“You didn’t.”
Kim let out a sardonic snort. “With a dad like Jeff, what did I expect?”
“You can’t put this on him.”
“Can’t I?” Kim was suddenly filled with an intense anger at her husband. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Last year, I found a vial of LSD in his pants.”
“Really?”
“It was just a little bit, heavily diluted. He got it from some hipster colleague from Austin. But still . . .”
“Is he a druggie?”
Kim sighed. “I don’t think so. He called it microdosing. I looked it up, and it’s a thing in the tech world. But I laid down the law. I mean, we all had fun in our twenties, but we’re in our forties now. We have kids and responsibilities. We’re part of the community. We can’t do crap like that anymore.”
Tony sipped his coffee. “Amanda would kill me.”
“I wanted to kill Jeff.”
“She used to work in family law. She saw some stuff. Parents with drug problems, kids abused and neglected . . .”
“That’s horrible.”
“It was. She couldn’t take it after a while, so she became a civil litigator. Less trauma.”
“Thankfully, the kids know nothing about Jeff’s indiscretion. No one does. We dealt with it ourselves. Quietly. But maybe Hannah inherited Jeff’s risk-taking behavior? Maybe she’s genetically predisposed to take chances and make bad choices?”
Tony smiled. “But half her genes are yours, and you never take chances or make bad choices.”
Kim bit her lip. “Sometimes I do. . . .” Their eyes connected. Three innocuous little words but the intention was clear: Kim was about to make a very bad choice.
Tony moved his hand, ever so slightly, so that his last two fingers rested on top of hers. It was a small gesture, and yet, so intimate. There was a table between them, a room full of people around them, but their four fingers were an electric point of connection. Tony’s voice was husky. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
No, she wasn’t sure. If she thought about it, for even a moment, she would change her mind. This wasn’t Kim. She wasn’t reckless or even particularly spontaneous. She lived her life according to a plan, following a code of morals and ethics; she always put her family first. But look where that had gotten her: her marriage was a sham, her daughter was sneaky and deceitful, her son refused to cut his hair and smelled of feet. . . .
Right now, Kim didn’t want to think. She wanted to plunge ahead, not knowing where they were going or what they would do when they got there. She wanted to indulge herself in the excitement and possibility of this moment, to forget everything that had happened—with Ronni, with Jeff, with all of it.
“I’m sure,” she said.
They moved outside without a word. “We’ll take my car,” Tony said. Kim liked how he was taking charge. It was manly and sexy. She felt like she would follow him anywhere, do anything he asked. He could take her to some cheap, by-the-hour hotel room, and demand she strip. “Take me in your mouth,” he would growl at her, and she would do it. With Jeff, she avoided blow jobs as often as possible. Her jaw clicked awkwardly, and it took him forever to orgasm. But in this scenario, the thought of it was positively thrilling! Of course, she may have been taking a leap from the innocent brushing of their fingers to oral sex in a tawdry hotel. Tony might just be taking her toward the beach for a scenic walk. But she knew it was more than that. She obediently followed him toward his Volkswagen hatchback.
Something made her slow her pace. It wasn’t that she recognized the vehicle that was pulling into the parking lot—in this neighborhood, the low-emissions Subaru was almost as ubiquitous as the reusable shopping bags draped over every other arm—but some Spidey sense was telling her to proceed with caution. So she was standing stock-still when the car parked beside her and the door opened.
“Coming?” Tony asked, just as Emily Banyen emerged from the silver vehicle. Jesus, San Francisco was a small town sometimes.
“Emily!” Kim said, a smile plastered across her lips.
“Kim! Hi!” Emily approached and squeezed both Kim’s hands. “How are you holding up?”
Emily had obviously heard what had happened to Ronni. She had been the girls’ fifth-grade teacher and Hannah and Caitlin’s volleyball coach. Hannah and her friends had adored Ms. Banyen. Kim had been in charge of the fifth-grade gift that year: a world’s best teacher T-shirt with Emily’s beaming face on the front and the entire class’s signatures on the back in indelible ink. Kim hadn’t seen Emily since she left teaching to have her baby. God, that baby must be four or five by now.
“Jeanette was delivering a baby on Saturday night when Ronni was brought in,” Emily explained. Of course . . . Emily’s partner, Jeanette, was an obstetrician at the California Pacific Medical Center. That was why Emily had been able to leave her teaching job so readily. Kim had admired Emily and Jeanette’s relationship more than once. Not that she found herself attracted to women (though she’d once felt something stirring between her and a bisexual colleague at the agency one drunken night years ago), but it had to be simpler being married to another woman, didn’t it?
“It was pretty scary,” Kim said.
“It sounds horrifying.”
“Hannah’s been really upset. She’s so sensitive.”
Emily squeezed Kim’s arm. “The poor thing. She’s a sweet girl. And Ronni is, too.”
Emily obviously hadn’t seen Ronni in a while. With her cleavage and pancake makeup, sweet wasn’t the adjective that sprang to Kim’s mind. But Kim smiled and nodded.
Emily continued. “When Jeanette told me, I was so upset. I sent Ronni’s mom some flowers. How’s she doing?”
“I haven’t seen her, actually. I sent flowers. And cookies.” Kim could feel her face turning red and she was eager to shift the topic of conversation. Her eyes flitted to Tony, still standing beside his car. “This is my colleague, Tony. We work together.”
“Hi,” Emily said.
“Emily was Hannah’s fifth-grade teacher.”
Tony nodded. “Hey.”
“Tony’s a designer,” Kim continued. “I’m copywriting now. Freelance. We have a contract with Apex Outerwear. We do their flyers.” Emily’s expression was bemused, mildly perturbed. Had Kim been babbling? Going on about herself? She had. She’d been rude and she would remedy it now. “How’s your little boy?” she asked.
Emily seemed taken aback by the question. “He’s good.”
“They grow up so fast. It seems like only yesterday Hannah was in your class and now she’s”—What was she going to say? Drinking? Taking ecstasy? Finally—“in tenth grade.”