When Tom and I got back from New York, we didn’t speak about what had happened. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t as if we came to an agreement or anything, only every time he tried to bring it up, I’d stop him. I couldn’t stand to hear about it. I almost couldn’t stand to be around him. So we made up some excuse to the kids about why we’d come home a day early, and then I concocted another story about how Tom had to go on a long business trip. Tom got the message and packed a bag and went to live in a hotel near his office.
He stayed in that hotel for two weeks. Two weeks of nights where I cried myself to sleep and missed his body in the bed next to me and his help with the kids, and where I tried not to think about the fact that she was probably there with him every night, though he swore he’d broken things off and that he was just going to “think.”
Like you’re in a time-out, I wrote. I couldn’t stand speaking to him on the phone, so we had taken to exchanging e-mails.
Maybe that’s not a bad analogy, Tom wrote back. I haven’t been thinking much lately about what I’ve been doing. Maybe it’s time.
And then I would go cry in the bathroom, worried the kids would hear me or see my reddened eyes. Before, they always seemed so oblivious to us, lost in their own worlds. But now, suddenly, they were both asking lots of questions about where was Dad and how come this trip was longer than the others and Dad would’ve loved this episode of whatever TV show we were watching.
It was torture, like I was trapped in someone else’s dream, and until they woke up, there was no escape for me. I have never felt so out of control in my entire life.
Talking to Kaitlyn helped. She was the one who told me it was okay to hate him. She was the one who told me it was okay to leave him. She was the one who told me that whatever I decided, to stay or to go, she’d support me. She was on Team Cecily, and Tom could go fuck himself.
That always made me laugh. “Tom can go fuck himself.” She always said it so emphatically. Was that all an act? Or was she mad at Tom, too, mad for letting whatever there was between them turn into deceit and sneaking around and . . . I don’t want to know.
When I told Kaitlyn I was letting Tom move back home for a trial run, she brought over two bottles of our favorite wine, and we sat up till midnight drinking it.
“Am I an idiot to be letting him come back?” I asked.
“’Course not. He’s your husband. The father of your children. And you love him.”
“But do I? Do I love him? Or am I just so used to having him around that it feels like love?”
Kaitlyn bit the rim of her glass. “I think you’d know the difference.”
“Maybe. I just hate him right now.”
“I know.”
“What’s he like at work?”
“I haven’t been talking to him.”
“But do people know? Does anyone suspect?”
“I haven’t heard anyone say anything.”
“But they wouldn’t to you, would they? They know we’re friends.”
Kaitlyn poured herself another glass, emptying the bottle. “I should’ve brought three.”
“I’m going to be so sick tomorrow.”
“Drink lots of water. Take some aspirin. Or Tylenol. Or whatever.”
“We’re so drunk.”
Kaitlyn laughed. “We’re not drunk enough.”
I agreed with her and went to find another bottle in the fridge, and we drank on, and on, until the wine made me turn nasty, bitter, a person I didn’t like or recognize living inside me, speaking through me about what I’d like to do to the woman who’d slept with my husband. Kaitlyn tried to reason with me, to talk me down. She reminded me that Tom was the one who’d hurt me, who’d broken his promises. He was the one who I should be directing my righteous anger at.
Even though she was right, I couldn’t help feeling a surge of hatred toward this unknown person who’d come into my perfectly okay life and turned it into a mess. And all the while she was sitting across from me, or rubbing my back, filling my glass, supporting me. I can have some sympathy for the cognitive dissonance she must’ve been living through. She was right that Tom was the one I had to decide if I could forgive and move on with, that this other woman, whoever she was, was nothing to that decision.
But I can’t forgive the act in the first place. Whatever it was between them, that betrayal isn’t something I can move past. Just like I couldn’t move past it with Tom.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” I tell Teo the next morning, back in the coffee shop. We’re sitting at the same table with the same drinks before us, and of course Teo’s wearing the same thing, or its sibling.
“That’s great.”
“But I want you to tell me something first. How did you know I was holding back? Was it just a good guess, or do you actually know something you haven’t been telling me?”
Teo takes a bite of his muffin. “I know some things.”
“Like what?”
“Tell me what you wanted to tell me yesterday, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“This is like the prisoner’s dilemma.”
“How so?”
“Neither of us trusts the other, even though acting together is clearly in our best interests.”
He smiles at me. I feel a tug at my heart, but I try to ignore it. This man’s already left me behind once. I don’t need to be chasing after him.
“You’re right,” Teo says. “Though I’m not sure why that is.”
“I have every reason not to trust you. I’m not sure why you don’t trust me.”
“It’s this narrator thing. I have to bring a level of distrust to my subjects. You can get caught out if you don’t.”
“How so?”
“It happened to me on my first film. I was hired to do a documentary about a historic football team that was going for its twenty-fifth championship. It had all the elements you’d want. Kids from two neighborhoods, so all the racial tension and overcoming circumstances and stuff, but the twist was that in this case, the black kids came from the more affluent neighborhood and the white kids were the ones being bused in to keep up the diversity. The quarterback’s dad had been the quarterback when they’d won the first championship. The coach was about to retire. It was all teed up.”
“So what happened?”
“It was bullshit. After the documentary came out, a reporter did this hatchet job about how I’d been snowed. Half the team was taking steroids, and I never knew. And the coach had this deal with the rival team to let them win. The whole thing was corrupt, and I’d made this puff-piece promo film. It nearly cost me my career. It took five years before someone would finance one of my films again. And even then, my reputation’s never fully recovered.”
“Is that why you were shooting a commercial on October tenth?”
“One of the reasons. Not that documentary filmmakers usually lead glamorous lives.”
“And that’s why you sold my picture? You needed the money.”
“I did.”
“You should’ve said something.”
“Perhaps. But maybe you’ve noticed? I’m not big on sharing.”
“No, I haven’t noticed that at all.”
We smile at each other, and a shadow lifts.
“Franny isn’t Kaitlyn’s daughter,” I say. “That’s what I came to tell you yesterday. She’s a fraud.”
“Yeah, I thought so.”
“What?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m going to get caught out like that again?”
“How did you know?”
“I have a very good investigator I work with now. And Franny didn’t cover her tracks all that well. For starters, Franny Maycombe’s not her real name.”
“That makes sense. We . . . I looked for her online and couldn’t find any trace of her. It occurred to me that she’d probably changed her name along the way.”
“But what made you start looking in the first place?”
“Nuh-uh. I told you that was off-limits, remember?”
“Can you at least tell me if it’s something that would ruin me if it came out?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone would assume you should’ve known this.”
Teo doesn’t look like he believes me, and I suspect he’ll be making a call to his investigator when we finish up. I’m going to have to move Kaitlyn. It’s already dangerous enough having her in my house.
“But I can’t tell you either way, and I hope you leave it at that, okay?”
“I’ll try. You mentioned wanting my help with something.”
“We need to expose Franny.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s supposed to marry Joshua, and those kids have been through enough.”
“Why don’t you simply tell him?”