by Emily Giffin
“Where’s Matthew?” Amy asks, peering past me. “Is he running late?”
“Um. He actually can’t make it,” I say, my stomach churning as I sit in the chair across from her with my coat still on and my purse still over my shoulder.
“Is everything okay? Is he okay?” she says. “Weddings can be so stressful—”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “But I…uh…have to talk to you about something…kind of personal.” I shift my gaze to Chad, who immediately takes the hint.
“No problem,” he says, getting to his feet again. “I’ll just…be at the bar. Take your time.”
I thank Chad, resisting the urge to apologize, staying focused. The second he’s out of earshot, Amy gives me a deer-in-the-headlights look. “What’s going on?”
I take a deep breath and say, “Okay. So this is really, really hard…what I’m about to tell you.”
“Oh, God. You and Matthew didn’t break up, did you? That’s not why he didn’t come, is it?”
I shake my head, and say, “No. Although he does know what I’m about to tell you.”
She gives me a blank stare, looks down, then meets my gaze again. “Well, if it helps…I think I know what you’re going to say.”
“I don’t think you do,” I say.
But then her eyes narrow and she says in a steely voice, “It’s about you and Grant, isn’t it?”
I stare back at her, floored. “Yes,” I say. “It is.”
She nods, still expressionless.
“How did you know?” I ask, wondering if it was Ethan—or if Grant contacted her after I left the cabin.
“It was just…a sixth sense…women’s intuition,” she says. “I suspected it from that first day. You mentioned Byron’s name before I said it. At least I thought you had…but I told myself I had to be wrong. That I was just being paranoid….But you asked so many questions about him….And the way you looked at those photos…I just…I just wasn’t sure…until Matthew gave me a key to your apartment so I could take the dress to your place….I wanted to leave you a note. I wasn’t snooping, but I opened a drawer to find a piece of paper, and saw the postcard he sent you.” She closes her eyes for a second, and I think she might start to cry. But she doesn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I swear I had no idea he was married…no clue, whatsoever….I didn’t know until I found that flyer with his face—and Jasmine called you. But regardless, I know I should have told you sooner.”
She leans across the table and says, “You’re telling me now….I knew you would…eventually,” she says.
“I’m sorry for lying to you for so long.”
“I lied to you, too. I should have told you that I knew.” She tilts her head and picks up her wineglass, then she puts it down without taking a sip.
There is a long stretch of silence before she says, “I wasn’t nice to him the last time I saw him. We were in such a bad place in our marriage….I was angry that he hadn’t told me he was coming home….I know he was in Europe to try to save his brother. But still. He always put his brother first, ahead of me.” Her voice is a flat monotone, as if she’s talking to herself or taking notes into a Dictaphone. “But that night when he walked in…he told me he needed to talk to me, and I told him I was too tired—and that I was going to bed. God…I’ll always regret that….Forever.” She shudders, then gives me a funny look and asks, “Did he go to see you that night?”
I take a sharp breath, then whisper yes.
“Wow,” she mumbles, her eyes finally glistening with tears that she manages to blink back.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay….As shitty as that makes me feel, I’m glad to hear it, too.” She sniffs, then forces a smile.
“Why? How?” I say.
“I’m glad he had you…that he didn’t feel alone that night.”
I stare at her, marveling at her generosity.
“I just hope he didn’t die alone,” she says. “I hope it was quick—or that he was at least with someone.”
I stare at her, suddenly realizing that I still have to tell her the rest. That he’s not dead. That Byron’s the one who is dead. That Grant is still lying to everyone.
But right as I’m on the verge of blurting it all out, I stop myself. This particular lie isn’t mine to undo. Instead I tell her to go to the cabin. As soon as she can. I tell her that I was there today, and she needs to go, too.
“Why?”
“You’ll find answers there,” I say, suddenly desperate to leave this bar and this conversation—and sadly, even this so-called friendship, also built on lies. “Just trust me,” I say. It’s a most ironic statement.
“I do trust you,” she says, then glances over to the bar, as if remembering Chad. “But…come on, Cecily….Do you have to be so cryptic? Can’t you just tell me what you know? After all we’ve been through?”
Her guilt trip gets to me, and I start to fold, but somehow manage to stay firm. “I’m sorry. I really can’t….I wish I could be a friend to you—you’ve been a good friend to us.” I pause, wondering if that’s really true. Or if it was all about her own ulterior motives—different from mine, but ulterior motives nonetheless.
“So just tell me,” she says.
“I can’t,” I say. “I have to focus on the baby right now. And making amends with Matthew. I have to do what’s right, for us. And I just can’t be involved in this anymore.”
“Involved in what?” she says.
“In anything related to Grant,” I say.
“So…you mean…our friendship?”
“Yes,” I say. “Including our friendship.”
She looks sad, then a little pissed, then just sad again.
“I’m sorry. I just think…this is too hard.”
She nods, and says she understands. But I can’t tell for sure what she’s really thinking.
In the next instant, though, she is glancing over at Chad again. “God…I feel bad for keeping him waiting so long.”
“I know,” I say, just as I watch him turn and look at her.
She smiles at him, and he smiles back.
“Why don’t you go over there and talk to him?” I say.
She nods and says okay as we both stand.
It occurs to me that Ethan was right—Grant, too—when they both said that Amy is going to be just fine. She already is. It also occurs to me that the only way she could have handled behaving normally around me, after seeing that postcard, is if she didn’t truly love her husband in the first place. At least not in any deep way. Either that, or she was grateful for something to ameliorate her own guilt.
As we both turn to go—one of us to leave, the other to head to the bar—I say her name one final time.
“Yeah?”
“I’m really, truly sorry. For being so selfish. For lying to you.”
She stares at me for several seconds, as if thinking this over, then nods, and says, “Thank you, Cecily. I forgive you.”
I call Matthew as soon as I leave Dharma and ask if I can come over to talk to him. He hesitates, then says yes. It’s a hopeful sign, but I’m still nervous as I take the subway to the Upper West Side, knowing it will be faster than a cab—and also more soothing. I have always done some of my best thinking on the train, especially at odd hours when the cars are mostly empty.
When I walk into Matthew’s building, I exchange hellos with his doorman and say, “He’s expecting me.”
The doorman nods, having done away with buzzers since we got engaged, as I head for the elevator.
A moment later, I’m at Matthew’s door, debating whether to knock or just walk in. I compromise, knocking once, then opening the door. He is sitting at his table, typing on his laptop, and barely looks up at me as he says hello.
“Can I come in?”<
br />
“Sure,” he says tersely.
I walk toward him, noticing a rocks glass half-filled with bourbon, the bottle also on the table. “Are you working?” I say, standing at the edge of the table.
“Not really,” he says, still staring at his computer screen. “A little.”
“May I sit down?”
He shrugs as I sit across from him and say, “So I went to talk to Amy.”
He looks a little surprised as he says, “And? How’d that go?”
“I only stayed for a few minutes. Just long enough to tell her…” My voice trails off.
“What exactly did you tell her?”
“I told her that her husband was cheating on her…with me…but that I had no idea he was married while we were together.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she already knew,” I tell him, my mind still a little blown by this revelation.
“Seriously? She knew about you two?”
“She said she did. At the very least, she strongly suspected it…and then she found that postcard.”
“The one you said you were going to throw out?” he asks, sounding bitter.
“Yes,” I say, taking my punishment, determined not to lie anymore about anything.
“So what else?”
“That was it, really. I told her everything…except that Grant is still alive.”
“Why did you leave that part out?” he says, looking more curious than disapproving.
“Because that’s Grant’s lie. That has nothing to do with me….I told her I didn’t want to be involved anymore—and that we really can’t be friends.”
He nods.
“But I did tell her she should go to the cabin. That she would find answers there….She’ll know soon enough. He can’t hide forever. But that’s not my concern.”
Matthew takes a deep breath, then points to his laptop. “So this Grant guy…he’s a really bad dude. I called Tully—asked him to do a little digging for me.”
My stomach lurches as I nod, knowing that John Tully is his friend from law school who works in the DA’s office. “And?”
“And it turns out Grant is an unindicted co-conspirator in an insider trading scheme. He was involved with some guy by the name of Ned Pryor—a Goldman banker.”
“Wow,” I say, floored, the legal terms making everything more concrete. “Tully told you that?”
“Yeah. He found the court documents….Pryor was indicted in August, and I guess the only reason Grant hasn’t been indicted is because they couldn’t find him….And, of course, now they think he’s dead.”
I hesitate, then ask what crime they committed.
“Apparently Pryor was feeding Grant tips, and Grant was executing trades in an offshore account. They busted Pryor because the healthcare company they were trading in was his client—and he was traveling back and forth to the Caymans. Customs caught him with three hundred thousand in cash….They probably linked Grant to Pryor through phone records. Once they get the first guy, it’s never hard to find the rest of them.”
I let out a long sigh, then say, “Well, he had me completely fooled. What a con artist.”
“Total dirtbag.”
“Yeah. He is. But that reminds me of something else I wanted to explain. Something I was just thinking on the subway.”
“Yeah?” he says.
“Well, earlier, I told you that I thought I loved him…and you said that if I thought I did, I did….”
“Yes. I believe that,” he says. “And?”
“Well, I don’t believe that. I didn’t know him—not really—so I couldn’t have loved him.”
“You knew enough about him to fall in love.”
I start to reply—but he cuts me off. “You were wrong about the facts. But feelings are subjective. They’re feelings. And you can’t examine them in hindsight—and decide you just want to change what happened.”
I stare at him, trying to follow his logic while arguing back my own point. “But if the feelings are based on incorrect facts—then the whole thing is an illusion, isn’t it?”
“Okay, so what does that say about us?” Matthew says, his eyes flashing.
I freeze, then tell him I don’t know what he’s asking me.
“I mean, I had some facts wrong. About you. So…does that mean I didn’t love you, say, this morning? Before I knew all of this?” He answers for me. “No. Of course it doesn’t. That’s absurd.”
Even when I’m rested and not emotional, I can’t win an argument with Matthew. So I certainly can’t win a war of words with him now, as I sit here completely drained with a throbbing headache and sore back from driving all day. I remind myself that it’s not a war—or even a battle—it’s simply two people trying to understand each other. So I take a breath, and try to explain what’s in my heart.
“Look, Matthew. Here’s the bottom line. Maybe I did love him, maybe I didn’t. But knowing what I know now? I no longer do. The lies he told changed my feelings for him now. And that makes me question everything I felt back then, too. So can we please stop with semantics?”
He sighs and nods. “Okay,” he says.
“The bottom line, as I sit here right now, is that I truly believe I only loved the idea of Grant. Not the person.”
“And what idea was that?” Matthew asks, taking a sip of his bourbon.
“The idea of a passionate love—”
“Ugh,” he says, wincing as he cuts me off. “You thought you had that with him?”
I force myself to keep telling the whole truth. “At first I did. But I know now that love like that isn’t real….It’s just…infatuation. It’s a fantasy. I wanted that fantasy when I moved to New York. I wanted to fall hopelessly and utterly in love with the city…and my career…and a guy.”
“And?”
“And it doesn’t work like that. Not in the way I imagined.”
“Thanks a lot,” he says.
“You know what I mean….You know what I’m trying to say….That wasn’t our story. It was at first, maybe, but that feeling of being head over heels can’t sustain itself. And it certainly can’t last when someone is being so practical.” I give him a look.
“Someone has to be practical,” he says.
“Maybe. But when I was ready to take another step with you, and you wouldn’t even talk about any of that…it made me feel like I wasn’t good enough.”
Matthew shakes his head and says, “That’s crazy—of course you’re ‘good enough.’ ”
“Well, that’s how I felt….And it didn’t help that you move so effortlessly in this Manhattan and Hamptons world of lawyers and banker types and trust funds…and…have an ex-girlfriend who works at Sotheby’s.”
“Sotheby’s isn’t a big deal, Cecily. I’ve told you that so many times.”
“It’s a bigger deal than some third-rate tabloid paper,” I say.
“I don’t love you for your résumé. I love you for who you are,” he says.
“I know that now,” I say, looking down at my ring. “I just questioned it then. I always worried that I wasn’t the girl you or your family wanted you to marry.”
“Look, Cecily. I can’t speak for my family,” Matthew says. “And we both know my mom can be a snob…and maybe you aren’t exactly who I pictured marrying when I was in high school or college or whatever. You’re definitely not like the other girls I’ve dated….But that was always a good thing in my eyes. I liked that you were different.”
“Really?” I say.
“Yes, really,” he says. “How could you question that?”
“Because it didn’t seem like you’d have been keeping me at arm’s length if you knew I was the one.”
“Well, I’m here now. Look. Here we are,” he says, motioning between us. “And as much as
I fucking despise this Grant guy, he’s part of our story, like it or not,” Matthew says, staring into my eyes.
It’s the most healing thing I’ve ever heard, and for one second, I start to believe that everything will be okay. Until he looks at me and says, very slowly and unmistakably, “But I do think we should put the wedding on hold.”
My heart sinks, but I nod. “Okay. Why do you think that?”
“I just…I just want to know who the father is….You know…for sure,” he says.
I nod, and with a huge lump in my throat, I say, “So you want a paternity test?”
“Yes.” He swallows, pointing to his computer screen. “I actually just looked that up. It’s an easy, quick, inexpensive test.”
“Wow. You got a lot done tonight. You tracked down an indictment and looked up paternity testing. That’s some solid work,” I say, now getting a little punchy.
He rolls his eyes and says, “Seriously? You’re mad at me now? Don’t you think I have a right to know whether this baby is mine?”
“Well, yeah. Sure. Of course you do,” I say, regretting my sarcasm. “I want to know, too. But this is really turning into a Jerry Springer episode here.”
“Jerry Springer?” Matthew says. “What?”
“Well, that’s what a paternity test feels like,” I say, crossing my arms. “And I guess I just don’t understand why you need that test before we get married. Unless, of course, you’re saying you don’t want to marry me if you’re not the baby’s biological father?”
I know I’m not being fair, but feelings aren’t fair.
He lets out a long sigh, then says, “I just want to know. I want to know if this guy is going to be in our lives forever.”
“I understand,” I say again, trying to see things from his point of view. “But trust me. He’s not going to be in our lives.”
“Can you promise me that?” he says.
“I’m promising myself that. So yeah.”
“But what about the baby?” he says. “What if it turns out to be his—would you keep that information from your child?”
I stare at him, hearing “your child,” not “our child.” But I slowly realize that he’s right. That I actually can’t make him such a promise. That of course I’d tell my child the truth. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that secrets always turn into lies when they’re kept from the people we love.