The thumbnail files lined up, still images of Stephanie but also of Ethan. She clicked on Ethan on the beach, running with a soccer ball. He dropped it to the sand and dribbled it with considerable deftness before kicking it to the edge of the water.
“Score!” he said, raising his arms in victory and then pulling his right elbow sharply in toward his rib cage, a gesture so familiar, so precise, she gasped.
The video kept going, but she was watching a different scene, a scene in her mind’s eye. An argument, long ago, interrupted by a phone call.
It was two months into her life in LA with Rory. The stress of the new season was already bearing down on them, and she’d just found a bottle of Ambien in his nightstand.
“Since when are you taking Ambien?” she asked Rory.
“Since when do you go snooping through my drawers?”
“I wasn’t snooping. I was trying to find a phone charger. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Probably because I knew you’d overreact.”
His phone rang. He checked the incoming number. “It’s your mother. Why is she calling my phone?”
“Probably because mine is dead—because I can’t find my charger!”
He tossed her the phone.
“Mom, this isn’t a good time.”
“You don’t have time for family news?” her mother said. Lauren sighed. Okay, she’d take the bait.
“What’s the news?”
“Your sister is pregnant.”
“Pregnant? Who’s the father?”
“Well, Lauren, that’s not something she’s talking about. I get the feeling it was a one-night stand. But let’s focus on the positive. You’re going to be an aunt!”
Only after Lauren hung up did she think to wonder why Stephanie hadn’t called to tell her herself.
Of course she hadn’t told her.
Because she was carrying Rory’s baby.
Lauren screamed, then pulled off her wedding band and threw it against the wall. She ejected the disc, tossed it onto the floor, and—driven by a rage so pure it showed there was, in fact, an emotion stronger than grief—she grabbed the picture frame holding the image of herself with Stephanie and used it to pound the plastic disc into pieces.
Beth waded into the pool up to her waist, then found a nice sunny spot and leaned against the wall. She adjusted her wide-brimmed hat, knowing it was a losing battle because of the reflection off the water. Don’t worry about your skin, she told herself, enjoy the moment. She exhaled deeply.
Across the deck, Stephanie flipped through magazines on a lounge chair, temporarily relieved of mothering duty. Ethan, worn out from all the eating and swimming, was inside napping.
Beth closed her eyes. She could use a nap herself, but in a good way. She felt relaxed instead of exhausted.
“You’re a monster!” Lauren screamed.
Beth pushed up the brim of her hat and saw Lauren looming over Stephanie’s chair. She stood up straight, shocked by the sudden rancor between the two.
“What did Matt say to you?” Stephanie said.
“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m wrong, Stephanie.”
Stephanie sat up, hugging her knees to her chest.
“It was a huge, huge mistake. But it was that summer the two of you weren’t together—”
“That’s just geography! Of course we were together!”
“That’s not what he told me.”
“Well, that’s convenient. He’s not exactly around to defend himself.”
Stephanie looked stricken. “I don’t mean that as an excuse; I’m just trying to explain my thinking at the time. I was just—I rationalized that you had done the same thing to me.”
“In what universe? Do you even hear yourself?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense now. But back then…I was young. I was drunk. And I was jealous of you. It just…happened. A onetime thing.”
“And Ethan?”
What about Ethan? Beth waited for Stephanie to respond, but she didn’t.
“I hate you,” Lauren said, sobbing.
Stephanie covered her face with her hands, and Beth rushed out of the pool, almost tripping over the flip-flops she’d left at the edge.
“Girls, what is going on?”
Lauren didn’t take her eyes off Stephanie. “Are you going to tell her? Or should I?”
“Lauren, don’t—”
“I want you out of the house by the end of the day,” Lauren said to Stephanie, then turned to Beth. “I need you to get her out of this house. I never want to see her again.”
“Just…everyone calm down. Lauren, whatever the issue is between the two of you, you have to work it out. Stephanie isn’t leaving.”
Lauren walked back into the house. Beth, feeling the crisis temporarily on hold, sat on the edge of Stephanie’s seat.
“Sweetheart, tell me what happened.”
Stephanie cried, and Beth tried not to panic. She hugged her, wishing for magic words that would unlock whatever wasn’t being said.
“Oh my God,” Stephanie said, sobbing.
“Hon, it’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not,” she said in a voice filled with resignation, not her typical drama.
A tornado of clothes flew at them.
Lauren, back on the deck, scattered Stephanie’s belongings all over the ground.
“Lauren, stop that this minute! What’s gotten into you?” Beth said.
“Tell her!” Lauren said to Stephanie. “Tell her, you coward.”
Stephanie picked up a pair of her jeans and a pair of shoes but said nothing. Beth ran over to Lauren and grabbed her by the arms.
“Stop this, right this minute. Ethan is going to come down here and be scared to death!”
“Funny you should mention Ethan,” Lauren said, looking at Stephanie. Beth turned to her older daughter, who looked…well, she looked terrified.
“I don’t want to upset Mom,” Stephanie said.
“Yeah, right. As always, you want to cover your own ass. You don’t want Mom to know what a horrible person you are.”
“Lauren, what is it?” Beth tugged on her arm, forcing her daughter to face her. Lauren gulped.
“I can’t say it,” she whispered.
“Hon, I need you to talk to me.”
“It’s about Ethan.”
Beth glanced at the house, her mind racing. “I want to help.”
“You can’t. No one can. It’s done,” Lauren said, sobbing. “Ethan is Rory’s son.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Lauren knew where Nora kept her extra house key, under a loose board on the back deck. But she had one stop to make first.
Her phone had pinged all morning with texts and voice mails from Matt. She’d finally checked them just to see if he’d figured out that she’d taken some of his interviews. Apparently, he had not.
Whatever happiness she’d felt after her intimacy with him was destroyed. All she could think about was the fact that he’d known about her sister’s betrayal and kept it from her. She wanted to give him just the tiniest benefit of the doubt that he hadn’t figured out the truth about Ethan, but why else would he have filmed him?
She knocked on the door, and he opened it wearing headphones.
“Hey! Where did you run off to? I’ve been calling you all day.” He hugged her and she recoiled. Had it really only been a few hours since she’d left that room? She looked to the corner where Stephanie had sat for her interview and wondered if her sister had hesitated, even for a moment, before making her confession.
Lauren just didn’t understand it. Stephanie had seemed so upset, so shocked, when Lauren confronted her. What did she think was going to happen? Maybe she hadn’t meant to spill it. Stephanie had always been bad with impulse control.
Lauren glanced at the wall. The index cards were gone.
“What happened to all your work up there?”
“I’m packing.” He moved closer to her. “Are you okay
?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Stephanie?”
To his credit, he didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about.
“Aw, shit,” he said. “Come here—sit down.” She hesitated but then let him steer her to his desk chair. He sat opposite her on the edge of his bed. “Lauren, I’m just supposed to be an observer. I’m not in the business of getting involved in other people’s lives.”
“Well, that’s convenient,” she said.
“Did Stephanie talk to you? What happened?”
“I took your files, that’s what happened. I watched the second interview.”
He shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“I bet.”
“Lauren, the last thing I wanted was to see you hurt any more than you’ve already been hurt.”
“And you think letting me live with this in my face every day, oblivious, was doing me a favor?”
She looked up at him. He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about what Stephanie said in the interview. But on a professional level, it’s not something I would do. And on a personal level, it’s not something I wanted to do. Rory is gone. There’s no point in you feeling betrayed because there’s no way to litigate this, no resolution. It’s over.”
“Over? How is it over with Ethan in my life?”
“I don’t follow.”
“For God’s sake, Matt. Stop playing games with me!”
“Lauren, I truly don’t know what you’re talking about. I am not playing games with you.”
“What would you call it? Pretending to be my friend, sleeping with me, all the while knowing that Rory had a son with my sister?”
“What took you so long?” Beth said, ushering Howard into their bedroom and closing the door.
“Beth, it’s the middle of the summer. The turnpike was a parking lot. Why were you so vague on the phone?”
“I wasn’t vague. The word crisis isn’t vague. We have a crisis,” she said, deliberate in her use of the we. If there was ever a time they needed to be a unit, it was now.
“What’s the problem?” he asked impatiently, his hands on his hips.
She sat on the bed and picked up a framed photo from her nightstand: her mother with Stephanie and Lauren when they were little girls. She started to cry.
“Beth, for God’s sake, what is it? You said the girls are okay?” Alarmed now, he moved closer to her.
“Yes, yes.” She sniffed. “Physically, I mean. But the rest…I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“Just out with it,” he said.
“They had a terrible argument earlier, and I tried to intervene and then Lauren said…she said…”
Howard sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Beth, you can’t force those two to be best friends. Maybe not even friends. Haven’t I been trying to tell you this?”
She shook her head, pressing her fingers to her temple. “Lauren said that Rory is Ethan’s father.”
Howard shrank away from her.
Beth hated to tell him, hated for him to know what a terrible, unforgivable sin Stephanie had committed. She wished that she didn’t know. But when she looked at his face, she didn’t see shock or dismay…not even a little surprise.
“Did you…know about this?” she said.
Howard walked to the patio doors and looked out at the ocean. “Why do you think I was so against your plan to force the two of them—and Ethan—here under the same roof all summer?”
Beth jumped up. “You knew about this and you kept it from me? How? How did you know?”
He turned around. “Stephanie confessed to me after Lauren and Rory got engaged. She panicked.”
“Why didn’t she talk to me? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“She thought you would side with Lauren and that you would hate her. And she was terrified of Lauren finding out the truth. I gave her my word that I wouldn’t tell a soul, including you.”
Beth covered her mouth with her hands and began to pace. So many things that hadn’t made sense over the years started to come together. Stephanie’s refusal to talk about Ethan’s biological father. Her boycott of Lauren’s wedding.
“You should have told me.” Beth marched over to him, forcing him to look at her. “You didn’t tell me about the second mortgage on the house. You didn’t tell me about this. We clearly haven’t been partners in a very long time.”
He shook his head sadly. “Let’s not make this about us.”
Beth fought back tears. “Isn’t it, though?”
“No,” he said. “I think our problems are our problems and this is something else entirely.”
“Fine. So what do we do now?”
“The only thing we can do,” he said. “We have to put our issues aside and be parents.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Lauren huddled on Nora’s couch, surrounded by cats. She’d already texted Nora half a dozen times during the day, first saying she’d be late for work, then that she wasn’t coming to work, and finally that she needed to stay at her house.
A few hours into her self-imposed exile, Lauren was cried out and couldn’t stand to be alone. If she didn’t find some way to distract herself, she was going to lose her mind. She laced up her sneakers and ran over to the café.
Long past the three o’clock closing time, the front door was locked. Through the window, she saw Nora standing on a short ladder hanging something on the wall.
Henny opened the door for her. Lauren, surprised to see her, wondered if their feud had blown over. Maybe the laws of the universe healed one wound while another split wide open.
“Hey there, Lauren. I thought I saw you leaving my house earlier today. Oh—is that indiscreet of me? I’m probably breaking some sort of landlady rule.”
“Yeah, it’s not what you think,” Lauren said miserably.
Henny hoisted a box onto the counter. It was filled with signs painted pastel colors, each one separated by bubble wrap.
“What a blessing this summer, having Matt as a tenant. This online-sales thing has just changed my whole approach. You know I’m selling by category now? I’m doing beach signs, family signs…love signs.”
“I’m happy for you, Hen. But I really don’t want to talk about Matt,” Lauren said, thinking, One woman’s blessing is another woman’s curse. “And they’re going back on the walls here?”
“She’s got the beach signs going up right now. I have to head out, hon. Nora,” she called. “I’m leaving the extras here if you have space for them. If not, I’ll pick them up tomorrow.” She gave Lauren a quick hug before breezing happily out the door.
Lauren made her way into the dining room just as Nora was climbing down the ladder. On the wall, a fresh new sign: THE BEACH FIXES EVERYTHING.
Well, not quite.
“I’m sorry I was a no-show today,” she said. Nora unloaded her hammer and nails on a table and sat down.
“What’s going on?”
Lauren sat in the chair opposite her and tried to speak but found she couldn’t bring herself to admit what she’d learned. “I can’t talk about it. Would it be okay if I stay at your place for a night or two?”
Nora glanced at her in concern. “Whatever you need, hon. I won’t be home for a while tonight. Doing a little redecorating around here.”
“What happened with the photographs?”
“It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have worried about making an extra buck or two at the expense of Henny’s feelings. You know, I was trying to avoid dealing with what I knew deep down I should be doing but was afraid to, and that’s start dinner service. I’m so excited, by the way, that your mother is baking for the party.”
Her mother. Lauren didn’t want to think about the look on her mother’s face when she’d told her what was going on. She couldn’t imagine the conversation her mother and sister had after she left, and wondered how her mother would break the news to her father. But most of all
, she wondered how they would explain to Ethan that Aunt Lauren never wanted to see him again.
She bent over the table and rested her head on her arms.
Nora put her hand on her shoulder.
“Remember when you first started working here? You told me how much it helped to be busy every day.”
“It did,” Lauren murmured.
“It’s our instinct when things go bad to just stop, to curl up into a ball. But it’s a bad impulse. I’ve found the answer to most things is motion.”
Lauren looked up. “Motion.”
Nora slid the hammer across the table. “I could use some help with these signs.”
Beth sat across the kitchen table from her older daughter, barely able to look at her. Behind them, Howard paced in front of the counter. She’d never realized how loudly the kitchen wall clock ticked, but in the quiet of that moment, it was deafening.
“I’m just not sure what to do now,” Stephanie said.
Maybe you should have thought of that before you slept with your sister’s boyfriend, Beth thought. “I’m in a difficult position here,” Beth said. “I have Lauren to think about, you to think about, and also Ethan to think about.”
It was painful even to say Ethan’s name, as if her adoration of her grandson made her complicit in Stephanie’s betrayal.
After the blowup by the pool, when Beth had shut herself in her bedroom waiting for Howard to arrive, someone had knocked gently on her door.
“Hi, Gran,” Ethan said, his cheeks still flushed with sleep, one side imprinted with crease marks from his sheets. His dark eyes, bright with rest, were so utterly his father’s. How could she not have noticed?
How could she have?
“I’ll leave,” Stephanie said. “Of course I will. I’m just not sure where to go. I don’t have the job thing figured out—”
“Because you haven’t been looking!”
The doorbell sounded.
The Husband Hour Page 27