The Husband Hour

by Jamie Brenner

  Stephanie sighed dramatically and tapped her phone before handing it over.

  “That’s his number. But don’t expect too much. He’s kind of an arrogant asshole.”

  Maybe so. But as she sat in the school library waiting for him to show up for the interview, her body hummed with anticipation. She had typed up her questions and printed them out, and now she unfolded the paper on the library table. She reread the list for the umpteenth time.

  “Preparation. I like that,” a voice said behind her. She jumped and covered the questions with her hand, feeling kind of busted, though in what sense, she wasn’t exactly sure.

  “Hi. I’m Lauren,” she said, standing and almost knocking over the chair.

  “I know,” he said.

  He pulled out a chair, sat next to her. She felt dwarfed by his size. She pulled the questions onto her lap.

  “Okay, so like I said, I was assigned to write an article about the hockey team.”

  “You like hockey?”

  She nodded.

  “Have you ever been to see one of the games?”

  “Um, no.”

  “I thought you just said you like hockey.”

  “I do. I watch the Flyers. Do you mind if I tape this?” She positioned her mini–cassette recorder between them.

  “Very professional.”

  Was he teasing her? No. His expression was serious.

  “So who’s your favorite player?” he asked.

  “On your team?”

  “No. The Flyers.”

  She thought quickly. “Éric Desjardins.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Not a bad choice, though I’d have to go with Primeau.”

  Lauren nodded. She needed to get control of this conversation. “Okay, well—we should get started because I know you don’t have much time.”

  “What do you think their playoff chances are this year?”

  She looked at him, his dark eyes and square jaw. Something deep inside of her twitched.

  “They’ll make the playoffs,” she said. “I just don’t know if they can go all the way.”

  He smiled. “I’m with you on that.”

  She felt her heart might stop.

  Focus.

  “So what do you think is making your team successful this year?”

  “Well, we haven’t succeeded yet.”

  The comment threw her for a second. She recovered with “But you’re leading the division.”

  “We are. Today. But success is winning the league championship, and real success is states.”

  “Okay. So I’ll ask you what you asked me about the Flyers: What do you think of your chances?”

  “Cutler’s been strong in net. Everyone’s working really hard. I think if we’re focused, we can do it.”

  She checked the recorder, praying it was working. She glanced at her notes and said, “You have the most goals and most assists in the western division. You have to see that as some kind of success.”

  “Doing your job isn’t success. It’s doing your job. Right? I mean, you’re going to write this article and it will run in the paper, but is that success?”

  “It feels like success to me,” she said.

  “All right, well. Maybe it’s different for writers.” He looked at her hard. “You sure you’re Stephanie’s sister?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You just seem so much more serious.”

  “I’m not that serious,” she said defensively.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m all for serious. If you’re not going to do something with intensity—with intent—why do it at all?”

  His eyes met hers. She forgot her next question.

  “We’re playing Radnor Friday night. You should come,” he said.

  She nodded. “Yeah, I was planning to go to a game before I finished the article.”

  “This will be a good one. We’re going to win.”

  “That’s confident of you.”

  He smiled. “I think when you want something badly enough, you make it happen.”

  They won the game. Rory had a hat trick that night. Back then, Lauren had believed what he said, that personal will was strong enough to make something happen, to direct fate.

  She wondered how long he himself had continued to believe it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Matt’s strategy was to run in circles on the boardwalk within the boundaries of Margate. He knew Lauren had to cross through Margate to get back to Longport, so unless he’d already missed her, it was inevitable they would cross paths. Stephanie told him Lauren usually got home around six in the morning, and if it was an hour-and-a-half round-trip run, she should be hitting Margate by a quarter of six.

  Pathetically winded, he had slowed to a trot by the time he spotted her in the distance, her brown ponytail waving. He had the luxury of watching her for a few seconds, noting she had, truly, an incredible quiet beauty. She would look great on camera. And then she was in shouting distance.

  “Lauren, hey—wait up,” he called, picking up speed to keep up with her. Praying he could summon some unknown reserve of stamina.

  She did a double take, then ignored him. Undaunted by her lack of welcome, he ran up beside her.

  “What a surprise,” he said.

  “Give me a break.”

  “What? I’ve been totally out of my running routine since coming here. And I usually run with a partner, so this is great luck.”

  She glanced at his feet. “Your sneakers look like they’ve never seen the light of day.”

  Busted! He glanced at hers, and the thing was, they seemed pretty new.

  “So do yours.”

  This seemed to take her aback. “I have to replace mine every few weeks. I run twelve miles a day,” she said.

  “Me too! Gets expensive, right?”

  “Go away, Matt. I want to be alone.”

  He matched her pace, breathing too heavy to talk. She glanced at him and increased her speed. By the time they reached Longport, his heart was pounding so hard, he was certain it was going to give out. He dropped to the ground and looked up at the sky. The light suddenly dimmed, and he thought, This is it. Going out in a blaze of physical and professional failure.

  “Are you messing around or are you having a heart attack? You better tell me now before I call an ambulance.”

  Lauren loomed over him, blocking the sun.

  “I am not messing around, but…I’m not having a heart attack. Just an acute case of humiliation.”

  “Are you dizzy?”

  “I’m not sure. Is the sky full of dots, or is it just me?”

  She knelt next to him. “You just overexerted yourself. You should be more careful. That’s how men your age drop dead.”

  Men his age? How old did she think he was? “I’m thirty-four.”

  “Exactly.”

  Okay, this was more than his already bruised ego could take. He sat up—too fast. He sank back down. People walking by turned to look at him.

  She crossed her arms. “I have things to do, but I feel like if I leave you and something happens, I’m being negligent or something.”

  “True. I still could have a heart attack. That might be manslaughter.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Lauren, if you think I am amused by this, then you know absolutely nothing about male pride.”

  That silenced her. He felt his heart rate begin to normalize and he sat up. She shifted impatiently.

  “Can I go now?” she said.

  “I just want to say one more thing.”

  She sighed and looked around.

  “Lauren, before I was a documentarian, I was a war photographer. I’m not a carpetbagger trying to make a buck off your tragedy. I’ve been over there, okay? I worked as an overseas correspondent. I know what those guys went through.”

  “You’ve been where?”

  “Iraq.”

  “Can you eat the butterflies?” Ethan flipped ba
ck a page in the photo album, awed by a three-tiered wedding cake decorated with wafer-paper butterflies.

  “Yes, the butterflies were edible,” Beth said. “I remember that cake. No one wanted to cut into it because it was so beautiful.”

  “Did you really make that?”

  “I did,” Beth said. “A long time ago.”

  She glanced out the kitchen window at Stephanie, sunning herself on the deck. As much as she enjoyed showing her grandson the photos of her work, she thought that surely there were better things for a six-year-old boy to be doing on a beautiful day on the beach. What was her daughter thinking? Clearly, only about herself.

  “Can you make one now?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked, distracted.

  “One of these cakes. Can you make it again?”

  “Oh, honey, it’s a lot of work. And I’m out of practice. I can bake something fun, but probably not that elaborate. Let me think about it.” She patted him on the head. “I’m going to talk to your mother for a minute.”

  She opened the sliding-glass door to a wave of humidity. Sunglasses covered Stephanie’s eyes, and Beth wondered if she was even awake. Standing at the foot of the chaise longue, Beth crossed her arms.

  “Stephanie, I need to speak with you.”

  “What’s up?” Stephanie barely stirred.

  “Can you take off those sunglasses, please,” Beth said. Stephanie sighed, removed them for a second, squinted against the glare, then put them back on her face.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I listen with my ears.”

  “I want to know what your plan is for Ethan this summer. He can’t just sit around all day. The poor kid is so bored, he’s looking through my old catering photographs.”

  “Oh, please. You’re the one who dragged him into the mess of boxes upstairs. If he’s looking at your old crap it’s because you’re forcing him to. Don’t blame me.”

  Beth had the urge to grab those mirrored lenses off her face and toss them into the pool. You’ve always indulged them, and now…

  She pushed Stephanie’s outstretched legs aside and perched on the edge of the chair. “I’m not kidding. This isn’t a vacation for you. You’re still a mother. I don’t care what turmoil you have going on in your personal life. You have responsibilities.”

  “Mom, relax. Okay, he has two weeks left of school after this break. When I get back here in the middle of the month, I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, he doesn’t have to be entertained every second. Just chill.”

  Shaking her head, Beth retreated to the kitchen.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lauren locked the café door behind her and bent to lace up her sneakers. After a full day of work and the pent-up agitation from her morning encounter with Matt, she couldn’t wait to burn off her frustration.

  He had some nerve. Okay, so he’d been to Iraq—as a journalist. Did that give him the right to get into her business? Rory’s business? And to hound her during her morning run! What was next—showing up in her bedroom?

  With the wind at her back, she thought of a morning a decade and a half ago when another man had interrupted her run. Well, a boy.

  It had been a Saturday, the morning after watching her first LM hockey game. She was running around the track at Narberth Park, close to her friend’s house, where she’d spent the night. Halfway through her second lap, just as she was starting to break a sweat, someone called out her name.

  She turned, jogging in place.

  It had been barely twelve hours since she had watched Rory Kincaid win the game against Radnor, and now he was in front of her.

  He was dressed in an Aces sweatshirt and white Champion running shorts, and he had an iPod strapped to one arm, the earbuds in his ears. His cheeks were ruddy, his dark eyes flashing. She, unfortunately, was wearing baggy sweats and a Britney Spears Baby One More Time concert tour T-shirt that she’d slept in.

  “Oh. Hey.” She was amazed at how casual it came out.

  “What are you doing around here? I know this isn’t exactly your neighborhood.”

  The way he said it made her feel embarrassed. Not exactly her neighborhood; no, that was true. In her neighborhood, the houses were about three times the size, spaced some distance apart, with wide backyards and manicured hedgerows. She ran on private, winding back roads that invited very little vehicular traffic because most of them ended in cul-de-sacs.

  “I slept at my friend’s house last night. You live around here?”

  He nodded over his shoulder. “Yeah. On Conway.”

  Silence.

  “Good game last night,” she said. They had beaten Radnor, 3 to 0. Rory had scored every goal.

  “You finished your article?”

  She nodded. Almost finished. It took a lot of effort to craft the article so it was more about the team and not a profile of Rory Kincaid. And the truth was, it probably wasn’t going to make the cut anyway.

  “Look, I have to tell you—it might not even get published.”

  “Why wouldn’t it get published?” He seemed genuinely outraged.

  Great. Now it looked like she’d wasted his time.

  “I mean, that’s just how it is at the Merionite. A lot of articles get submitted and the editors decide which ones make it into the paper. And I’m just a sophomore. Most sophomores don’t even get to submit.”

  “So you’re special.”

  She turned red. “No, I’m just saying, there’s a good chance that it won’t—”

  “How much do you have left of your run?”

  “My run? Oh, a few more laps.”

  “Good deal. Let’s go—if you can keep up with me.” Typical alpha-male competitive bullshit. Of course she could keep up with him. But running laps was not the world’s most attractive pastime. Was it too late to say that, actually, she was finished running?

  They started out at a moderate pace, passing the basketball court. He picked up speed and she matched his stride. Two, three, four…seven laps around, and he showed no signs of stopping. Lauren wasn’t going to be the one to quit.

  She’d lost count of their mileage when he looked over at her and said, “You’ve got some stamina.”

  “I run track,” she said.

  He laughed, then stopped running, leaned over, and braced himself with his hands on his thighs. “I actually knew that. I knew it, and I forgot.” He straightened, and she looked up at him. It was like staring at the sun.

  Lauren reached the Green Gable, hoping no one was home. When she got upstairs, she called out, “Mom? Steph?”

  With the coast clear, she headed up to the attic with a pair of scissors.

  Lauren found her boxes sequestered in their own corner.

  After Rory’s death, her mother had offered to shut them up in storage. But ultimately, it didn’t sit right with her; locking away the remnants of her life with Rory felt disloyal. Now the best thing for her to do was to move the boxes into her bedroom until the house was sold. She still couldn’t quite believe that was happening.

  The first box, marked House/Stuff, was secured with so many layers of packing tape, it would be a project just to get it open. The smallest box, the one that would be easiest to move, was marked with her name and the years 2002 to 2006. All of her high-school things were packed inside, but it was difficult to remember exactly what she’d saved. She wondered if she still had that issue of the Merionite. Should she…

  Before she could second-guess herself, she found an X-Acto knife and sliced through the taped center of the box.

  The pile of old newspapers was on top. She hadn’t packed them in plastic or anything to keep them preserved, so the edges were yellowed. She had, however, been careful enough to store them in reverse chronological order, so the top edition of the Merionite was the final issue she edited her senior year, and the bottom of the stack was the issue with her first article: “LM Hockey Skates to the Finish Line—State Title Is Within Reach.”

  She pulled it out gingerly. Sometimes, it see
med like she had imagined a lot of the things that had led up to her falling in love with Rory. It had taken on a fairy-tale quality in her mind. But touching the faded newsprint in her lap, she thought, It was real, it was real, it was real…

  She remembered how proud she’d felt seeing her byline for the first time. It was the lead article in the sports section. And just when she thought she couldn’t be any happier, a text came from Rory: Congrats.

  She hadn’t responded right away. She wasn’t trying to be coy; she really just couldn’t think of an adequate reply. Thanks seemed too curt. I hope you liked it, too needy. Great quote from you, kissing ass. Maybe it was her silence or maybe he would have suggested it anyway, but an hour later a second text vibrated in her book bag. We should hang sometime.

  Lauren, stunned, stared at her phone, completely at a loss as to how she should respond. She was distracted by hearing her name shouted from across the hallway in the confident bellow of a born cheerleader.

  “My sister is famous! She’s the next J. K. Rowling!” Stephanie swung her arm around her.

  “J. K. Rowling is a fiction writer,” Lauren said.

  “I just have one critique,” Stephanie said. “You gave too much ink to that asshole Rory Kincaid.” That settled it. Lauren would not respond to the text.

  The sound of footsteps brought her back to the present day, to the attic, the boxes.

  “What are you doing up here?” her mother asked from the top of the stairs.

  “You startled me. I didn’t think you were home.”

  Her mother’s face was red; she had a streak of white zinc oxide on her nose.

  “I just got back from the beach with Ethan,” she said.

  “I thought Stephanie was taking Ethan back to Philly.” He still had two weeks left of the school year.

  “Tomorrow, apparently.” Her mother crossed her arms, her face tight with consternation. “I feel so bad. She does nothing with him.”

  “Well, he’s a great kid. Maybe she’s doing something right.”

  Her mother looked unconvinced. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you take him for ice cream? I have to make some progress up here, and Stephanie is too busy working on her tan.”