A Million Reasons Why

by Jessica Strawser

  “That’s the problem,” Walt granted. “What’s the better solution?”

  It would seem crazy even to her, looking back, but she’d liked the way he said it. Plainly, without judgment. And intimately, as if they were the only two people smart enough to recognize the importance of the question, so they might as well stick together in figuring out the answer.

  They got refills, started to brainstorm. A good marriage, they decided, would prioritize the needs it should meet. Partnership was key—an equal share in responsibilities, open communication, trust. “A sacred commitment to trust,” Caroline clarified. Both partners should maintain close friendships outside the marriage and not just through couples they doubled with. Neither would ever begrudge the other a night out, and in fact, if someone was becoming too much a homebody, the other should call them on it. As two only children, they agreed family was a big part of the package, and both spouses should make an effort to form genuine bonds with the one they married into, make whole-family time a regular thing and not drive wedges with resentment.

  A wild sex life didn’t seem realistically sustainable under even the best circumstances. “I feel like ten years into a marriage, if you have kids and you both work and you’re in the trenches, a date night would be more of a break without the subtext of—oh gosh, tonight’s the night, and it’s been a while, and we’re not what we used to be.” Walt laughed at himself, as if realizing this was not a very player thing to say.

  “I’m not sure you can have romance without expectations,” Caroline mused. They were sitting, after all, in a house of divorce, as guests of the next woman in line. She wondered: How did Seth plan for things to be different with Mo? Or did he? Everyone thinks the next time will be better and starts on their best behavior. But how often do things turn out exactly the same?

  “I read this article about how by some standards, arranged marriages are actually happier, and the takeaways were more like … What about redefining romance as paying attention to the relationship? Don’t stop making the other person feel special. Treat yourself by treating the both of you. Don’t hold it up to some ideal of what other couples are doing.”

  “Okay, but for the physical aspect, are you saying open marriage?”

  By this point they were upright on their loungers, feet flat on the floor of the deck, hunched together intently. The swimmers were toweling off and heading inside for fresh snacks, but Walt had commandeered the tequila bottle, all the sustenance they needed.

  “That’s tough. You’d have to all but guarantee you could leave emotion out of those other beds.” He snapped his fingers. “One-night stands only? And cone of silence—no talking about it.”

  “Wouldn’t that be weird, every time the person comes home from a business trip? You’re looking at them wondering if they got any to hold them over?” Caroline pantomimed a suspicious once-over, head to toe, and he cracked up.

  “What’s the alternative, though? Deciding you don’t need sex in your life?”

  “Millions of married people have given up on mind-blowing sex.”

  “But they haven’t admitted they gave up. If you’d asked them to give it up going in, they’d have said, forget it.”

  “So go in thinking of it as, what? More like friends with benefits?”

  The conversation was … well, they both knew it was weird. But it was also fun. For the first time since Keaton had left her, Caroline wasn’t thinking about the things she’d lost, the things she might never recover. She was thinking about what she wanted, what she needed in order to move past this hurt and be happy with someone again, in abstract terms she found oddly empowering. In spite of having never said more than two words to each other before that night, they’d bypassed small talk in a way that was secretly thrilling. It was possibly the most honest conversation she’d ever had. They challenged everything, from conventions to their own misconceptions and fears. It was a little embarrassing, and a lot thought provoking, but somehow they emerged in agreement, and with that came a feeling of triumph, of awe.

  That night, she slept better than she had in almost exactly a year.

  When Walt called a week later, she briefly wondered if he was joking—putting her on by asking her out. He made no mention of their talk, or of the date being serious or just a way to kill time. He merely invited her to dinner and a concert—a local band she liked. And, with a tight grip on the danger of having too many expectations, she said yes.

  It never felt like dating. From the start, it felt more like a test run of something so crazy, it just might work.

  Before they decided what to call their relationship, the people in their lives did it for them: a surprisingly perfect match, that’s what. How had no one thought to set them up before? Anyone could see they were big on mutual admiration, low on pressure. Natural. And how nice to see Walt settling down and Caroline happy again. Such universal joy abounded on their wedding day, no one would have suspected they were not in love.

  At least, not the way anyone thought.

  They were great friends, though. And the benefits ended up being pretty good, too.

  She knew it might sound like a regimented, lifeless approach, to lay out the rules for a new kind of self-arranged marriage and then go ahead and self-arrange it. And maybe it would have been, had she and Walt both not been so committed to holding up their ends of the bargain. The guidelines were really just conversations they’d gotten out of the way, battles they’d agreed not to fight—rules had never been so freeing. You didn’t have to take her word for it: Ask any of the people who outwardly envied their relationship. They’d have been shocked to learn Caroline and Walt played by their own rules.

  Which was the way they liked it.

  Explaining themselves would only invite debate, defeat the purpose.

  Were there days Walt pushed the wrong buttons? Days pettiness got the best of her? Everyone had those. But there was no Can you believe we ever thought that would work? There was only a good life together, a partnership that even Caroline thought worthy of the envy it drew, three kids whom she and Walt would both lay down their lives for.

  And the sad truth that if not for the deception that tore Caroline and Keaton apart, the arrangement with Walt would never have appealed—and she wouldn’t have learned ten years too late that the kind of love she’d sworn off had, possibly, existed after all.

  26

  Sela

  “Are you sure about this?”

  Sela pulled the thick white belt of her standard-issue hotel robe tighter around her waist and swiped her keycard at the glass door of the rooftop pool deck. The sensor blinked red.

  “If you’re appalled,” she said, not turning to catch Caroline’s eye, “I won’t admit how many times it’s worked for me before.”

  She swiped the card a second time, then a third, and waved it in the air, pantomiming frustration, hoping to catch the attention of a man sitting on a chaise just inside the door, talking on his cell phone. He was fully clothed, clearly there only to make the call, and paying them no mind.

  “Having trouble?” The voice came from behind them, and Sela turned to see a young employee clad in a hotel insignia polo shirt smiling pleasantly.

  Shit.

  “I must have demagnetized my key,” she said smoothly, curling her fingers around the card so he could not see that its logo didn’t match his shirt.

  “Allow me.” He scanned his own and held the door for them.

  “Thank you so much,” they said in unison, filing past in their robes, clinging to the canvas totes that held the clothes they’d just changed out of in the lobby’s restroom.

  Sela walked the open-air deck as if she’d been there before, perusing the trio of hot tubs at one end of the roof, the push-button firepits rimmed by cushioned chairs at the other. A group of laughing, splashing teenagers had filled one of the spas, so she headed for the open circle farthest from them and dropped her bag onto a chair. Turning, she saw through the glass that the employee had walked o
n, and exhaled a laugh.

  “That was a first,” she admitted.

  “I was worried he’d offer to call the front desk for you! ‘What room, ma’am?’ ‘Oh, whoops, turns out we’re at the Marriott down the street.’” Caroline stood hands on hips, taking a moment to admire the high glass walls rimming the deck, the fringe silhouette of the Smoky Mountains, and the cotton-candy sunset beyond. “This is worth the anxiety attack.”

  Sela helped herself to a stack of towels from the courtesy rack and offered two to Caroline. “Tell me again why you don’t use the amenities at your own hotel?”

  “When I’m running a show, almost everyone staying there is attending, or exhibiting—I feel strange about them seeing me in a swimsuit.”

  “No one expects you to be in the hot tub in a pantsuit.”

  “No one expects me to be in the hot tub.”

  “You stay for free at all these hotels, and never take advantage?”

  “I know, I know. I’m doing it wrong.” Something about the way she said it made Sela think she wasn’t referring just to hotels, but Sela laughed anyway, amused that her sister’s objection on professional grounds did not extend to their current antics a block away.

  Caroline dipped a toe in the water. “Ever check with your doctor about using these?”

  “As long as I don’t stay in long enough to get dehydrated, I’m good.”

  “What about a tiny toast?” Caroline pulled a split of champagne and two plastic cups from her bag, eyebrows raised. “No pressure.…”

  “As long as you don’t mind me nursing the same cup forever.”

  “I will too. That’s why I got the little bottle.”

  Sela eased into the water, savoring the rush of warmth as her sister poured. Much as she’d enjoyed the facade when Caroline didn’t know she was sick, needy, weak, maybe she’d been wrong to think pretending was easier. In the weeks of silence between them, mutual understanding had somehow bloomed where tension might have been.

  “To new beginnings,” Caroline said, flipping the wall timer for the jets and passing over a cup. As she settled in opposite Sela, the teenagers made their raucous, wet exit across the tile and headed for the gas fires flicking through tabletop stones, leaving them alone.

  Sela breathed in the chlorinated steam, the quickly darkening sky, the open face of the increasingly familiar woman sitting before her. Was a new beginning really warranted, if everything that happened so far had gotten them here?

  “To half sisters,” she said instead. The bubbles roared to life around them, drowning out the hollow sound of her plastic cup tapping Caroline’s.

  “This reminds me of a place Walt took me once.” Caroline tipped her head back, closed her eyes. She’d been working all day, setting up what turned out to be a cast-iron convention. Who knew such a thing existed? Sela had arrived a couple of hours ago and occupied herself—carrying her things into the suite, retrieving bedding for the pullout in the living room, while Caroline finished up something to do with an auction. When they were finally face-to-face, it was dinnertime, but neither of them had been hungry. And thus, this: an escapade of sorts, a reprieve. A chance to talk at last. To choose what to address and what was best avoided.

  Safe territory still felt … well, safest.

  “Here in the Smokies?”

  “Back home, actually. It was a few months after Lucy was born—Riley had this run of ear infections, and between that and a newborn feeding schedule…” Her voice began to sound far away, back there in her mind.

  “Oh, that stage,” Sela said, right there with her. “You don’t know if you’re drowning in love or exhaustion.”

  “That’s it. I wouldn’t’ve taken a break, but he arranged the whole thing. I had the nerve to be mad at first.” She laughed haltingly. “But he knew what I needed before I did.”

  “I love a solid good-husband story,” Sela said. She felt oddly relieved, hearing that Caroline’s marriage had moments like those. That Hannah hadn’t chased away something irretrievable with Keaton after all. “People seem to think the opposite, that they should hold back around we divorced cynics. But I don’t want to believe that kind of love doesn’t last.”

  “If Walt had romance in mind, he didn’t get it. We did spend hours on a gorgeous penthouse pool deck, minus this mountain view. But the only thing we did in bed was sleep. And eat room service at all hours.”

  “Sounds like romance to me.”

  Caroline pursed her lips. “Maybe it was.” She gestured around them mischievously. “I take it you and Doug were more of the sneaking into hotels type?”

  “Hey, North Carolina mountains have a tourist season, and any self-respecting broke college student learns the loopholes. I could get you into a canoe on a private lake, no problem, and a continental breakfast after.” Her laugh faded. “It was always me egging him on, though, not the other way around.”

  He’d liked it, back then, being led into eclectic adventure. She could pinpoint the moment he stopped finding her charming: in the NICU, when she’d dared fantasize aloud about busting Brody out of there. She only wanted her baby boy to see the sky, feel the sun. Inhale unfiltered air. Weeks in, the life he’d known wasn’t much of a life at all, and it chipped away at her soul. Of course she knew he had to stay there, but Doug took her too literally.

  Once he started, he never stopped.

  “I’m drawn to instigators—my best friend Mo is a big one too. I think they’re intuitive,” Caroline said amicably. “No shame in being the one who knows what the other person needs.”

  Sela wasn’t sure anyone had ever given her so much benefit of the doubt, and was fairly certain she did not deserve it. But it moved her all the same.

  Across the galley, the teenagers started chanting some nickname or inside joke. “Hop-per Twins! Hop-per Twins!” Sela counted three girls and five boys, ranging from upperclassmen to innocents barely old enough to be included, and two of the girls jumped to their feet, on demand, and scrunched up their faces in an indecipherable impression of someone. They were not twins but did look like sisters a couple of years apart. Not just their matching braids, or their thick-framed cat eyeglasses, but the way they draped their arms around each other and moved as if they shared a brain. The boys howled.

  Caroline kept her back to them, unfazed by the commotion. She was on about the trade show now, briefing Sela on tomorrow’s schedule, the kind of small talk you might expect. But Sela couldn’t stop watching the teens joshing and jostling each other. Two men walked in, and more cheers went up—“Dad!” “Uncle Hank!” Ah, so this was a gaggle of siblings and cousins. Here for a wedding, maybe, or reunion.

  What had Caroline been like at thirteen? Sixteen? Nineteen? Had she, like Sela, sung along with the Cranberries at top volume in her room? Stacked rows of woven friendship bracelets thick on her wrists? Harbored a weakness for gas station slushies? Filled hot pink cases with bolder makeup than she’d ever dare use? Made her locker a shrine to Keanu Reeves? Been “just friends” with her prom date? Wished to grow up faster so she could be more independent than her mother wanted to let her be?

  Maybe this stage of adulthood was too late to acquire that kind of intimacy with a person’s past, to compare inconsequential notes, to bother constructing a timeline. It was more practical to accept that some things can’t be reclaimed. To start from now and move forward.

  But Sela wanted to know, all of it and more. She wanted to know if she and Caroline would have been sitting like the sisters she was watching now, closer than necessary, shoulders touching. Or if they’d have been more like these boys, slapping each other on the back with an arm’s length between them. Maybe she didn’t need to know, maybe she even couldn’t. But she wanted to.

  So when Caroline volleyed the small talk back, Sela set it aside.

  And instead, she began to ask.

  27

  Caroline

  Caroline had blended business and pleasure plenty of times before. She’d invited Walt along to
the more appealing locales, left him to sightsee, and tried not to envy his recaps when they finally met for a late dinner. She’d switched her room to a double so Mo could have a night off from being “step-monster” and save her self-care budget for the spa. She was happy to do it, even if she did find herself looking too longingly at her companions’ free hours, more distracted and less content than she would’ve been left to her own devices.

  This night, though, was a first. Their downtime was not the pause before the separate, purposeful days awaiting them both in the morning. It was the whole reason Sela was here, and the whole reason Caroline invited her, though they had no script to follow, no checklist or plan. They’d exchanged a few texts beforehand to confirm specifics—where, when—but didn’t get into how or why. That part went without saying and left so much open to interpretation at the same time. She decided going in to follow Sela’s lead.

  Caroline had watched a documentary not long ago, about triplets separated at birth as part of what turned out to be an ethically dubious psychological study. When the men located each other during college, they became a media sensation, doing interview after interview about how all three, miraculously, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, dated the same type of women, even had the same youthful troublemaking streak. The movie caused a stir, and Caroline got the feeling Sela had watched it, too, from the things she asked. But maybe these questions were just the low-hanging fruit now that their weightier first meeting was out of the way. Human nature was to find common ground. The triplets had latched on to those similarities, too, stabilizing their bond off-screen when the circus faded.