A medic yelled from the sidelines, “Don’t move her! Let her lie still until we get help.”
Caroline and Annabelle also ran into the ring, partially to help, but also to keep Gigi from touching her friend. Caroline picked up her daughter as she cried and hid her eyes, fearing the worst. “Don’t talk to her, honey. She’ll be okay.” Gigi struggled to get down, but Caroline held her firmly. Rosie started to move her head left and right and bent her knees up, wincing from pain.
Caroline watched her husband tend to Rosie. He immediately lay in the dirt on his stomach, the obsessive-compulsive neat freak getting his clothes filthy. He set his arm on her tummy and began speaking softly into her ear. “It’s okay, baby. Don’t move. You may be hurt, so lie still. I’m here, honey. I’m always here for you, baby.”
“I’m okay,” Rosie whispered back. “I’m okay. I promise.” She pushed on the mud with her elbows and sat up.
The medic said, “Just lie here, Rosie. Catch your breath. You got the wind knocked out of you. Did you hit your head?”
She shook her head no. Caroline thought it was strange that Thierry stood back a few feet, letting Eddie handle Rosie. Caroline knew this wasn’t an issue of rank; the kid was Thierry’s niece after all.
It was something else.
She listened to Eddie’s distinctly parental tone.
He sounded just as he did when he comforted Gigi or Theo.
Rosie wiped away tears and smiled, embarrassed by all the attention. Eddie helped her sit up, and the crowd clapped for her.
“You’re fine, baby, you’re okay,” Eddie said softly, rubbing her cheek.
Was he crying?
Eddie got to his knees, filthy with dirt, and then picked Rosie up, hugging her tightly. “C’mon, baby, lemme hold you now.”
And with the way he held her, the way he talked to her, Caroline knew: Eddie had uttered these words as if Rosie were his own.
Part IV
Summer Thunder
Chapter 50
And So the World Crumbles
The next morning
Caroline peeked in on her husband snoring in the guest room, and then quietly left the house. Waking up alone in bed made her jumpy in the mornings, and she got up earlier than she normally did. In shorts and a sweatshirt, she headed down the street for a dawn walk on Wiborg Beach from her home on Pondview Lane.
Once at the beach parking lot, Caroline could see the mist lingering from the cool night. The sun, rising in the distance, cast a pale pink glow over the dunes. Caroline left her sneakers at the edge of the lot and walked down a path between stalks of sea grass. Closer to the water, a lifeguard stand lay tipped forward, waiting for the guards to come to work and put it back upright. The sea was calm, more like a lake, with small waves lapping gently on the shore.
She placed her towel on a sandy ledge that a storm had created the week before. She sat on it, and when she poked at the edge with her fingers, several large chunks of solid sand crumbled like glaciers in a warming climate.
Her suspicions about Rosie had now marinated for the entire weekend. The young girl walked like Eddie Clarkson. Their feet were the same. Her chin, her eyes, the same. They were two paper dolls cut from the same Clarkson fold. How blind she had been; Rosie looked more like Eddie than even Gigi and Theo, who were much smaller in build, more like their mom.
Rosie, always the leader of the gang, rarely walked; she ran excitedly from one activity to the next, a wide smile plastered on her broad little face. She scrambled into a back seat or dining chair as if she were climbing Everest. Eddie was that way too, roaring headfirst into every situation.
The LIRR honking in the distance, and spooking that expensive horse, resonated in Caroline’s head.
“You’re okay, baby. I’m here, and you’re okay,” Eddie had said, over and over.
Not just “baby.”
His baby.
The Atlantic blew its familiar salty mist at her, a hint of bluefish in the air today. In the distance seagulls swarmed a trawler, its nets pulled up. The foam from the waves sparkled like a line of white diamonds in the morning light. Piping plovers played chicken with the water line. Although her beach, her sea, her sand looked, felt, and smelled as it always did, Caroline knew everything in her life was different. She was now at a breaking point.
Eddie had admitted to an affair when she was pregnant with Gigi. He had neglected to inform her (minor detail) that he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant as well, and that they had created Rosie. Thierry, that kind man in that ever-present colonial ponytail, was her uncle. He was the brother of the woman Eddie had been sleeping with.
Over the last four years, Eddie had often taken Rosie for her lessons at the barn Thierry used to manage, and for treats afterward. He and Thierry did talk back then when Thierry was handling all the ponies. But they had been in touch for the six years before that, when Rosie was born and then a younger child.
Eddie had never shown particular attachment to Rosie, except to be nice to a friend of his daughter’s. Or had he? Not that she thought about it, he did take them into town a bunch of times over the years, and he always jumped at the chance to watch a Disney movie with them. But Eddie spent all weekend with the kids and their playdates, taking them to play mini golf, and making forts out of old sheets. Eddie was just being himself, excited and game. Caroline could not hate herself now for not seeing it earlier. Earlier had meant just watching The Incredibles for the hundredth time, Eddie and kids with their friends all snuggled up on that TV room’s enormous sofa. Earlier was undetectable, all before that moment he cried in that wet, filthy mud, cradling his hurt baby in his arms.
There were other discreet parental things she had overlooked. Now that the girls were competing, earlier in the summer, Eddie had bought Rosie a show jacket too when he ordered one for Gigi. “Just to even things out,” he told Caroline. She’d chalked it up to Eddie’s boundless generosity.
Now she knew the attention was his fatherly duty.
When Rosie tumbled off Cashmere, Eddie was the real first responder, the one lying with the child, whispering comfort in her ear. In the twenty years since Caroline had met Eddie, she’d never seen him get so dirty. Thierry, who’d raised the child, had given Eddie some space with her.
Thierry knew.
How could Thierry not have known all along?
Rosie was prideful, obstinate, and impatient, like her father. The facts were clear, her husband had another daughter, and her children had a half-sister.
Would Gigi squeal in delight at the news? Or would she be furious that she was only finding out now? It was a double betrayal on Eddie’s part: of his wife and of the kids who’d played together for so many summers. Gigi would have to ask, “Why didn’t you tell me before? Does Daddy have another wife too?”
Looking out at the horizon, the pink fading to bright blue, Caroline considered Rosie’s complexion; it was a little more olive than Gigi’s, and she had darker eyes. Who was the mother? How did Eddie meet her, and where? How long did it go on? And how did the mother die exactly?
Caroline’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She looked at it and rolled her eyes.
It’s the Upholsterer. I have a question about an armchair. Sorry to ask on a Monday morning. Is now a good time?
Caroline typed forcefully: No. Definitely not a good time.
Thirty seconds later, Caroline grabbed her phone out of her pocket and added: Sorry. Not you. Just me and things.
She placed her fingers, a bit sandy, behind the lower part of her skull and massaged it. She and Ryan had another full night and day until they’d meet for drinks. She couldn’t bother to do the math: Was it thirty or thirty-five hours? It didn’t matter. She could wait. She now felt like she could wait forever.
Caroline piled sand next to her and smoothed out the sides into a teepee shape. When Eddie had asked about Ryan, she’d balked, like Cashmere the pony, if only to protect Eddie’s feelings. But another child? In the bad behavior book of marr
iage, that was not something one protected a spouse from.
And when she would confront him with the fact that Rosie had his waddle, his toes, his eyes, his bullish instincts, his bossy personality for God’s sakes, Eddie would go on the offensive. He would argue he hadn’t outright lied to her. He’d say he technically committed a crime of omission. She could see his arms flying up in the air out of exasperation. As if she, Caroline, were a little off.
She would calmly explain that he hadn’t merely neglected to tell her about a woman he was texting. (Who was Brittany, by the way!) He had outright lied about a child he’d fathered—who also happened to be the living, breathing best friend of their daughter!
Caroline grabbed a large clamshell with jagged edges and threw it at the shoreline. It cartwheeled a few times along the sand. When the next wave came in, the sea inched it back home, and her mood sunk even deeper.
The tears were flowing now. She choked a bit as her chest convulsed, and used the sleeve of her sweatshirt to wipe her nose. Rosie was five months older than Gigi. Eddie had gotten two women pregnant in the same season, during the winter of 2008—they shared trimesters, Gigi born in October, and Rosie in late May. A sad, angry, humiliated spin cycle of emotions sped up inside her. It whirled out of control, banging in Caroline’s head and heart.
Caroline threw another large clamshell, this time harder. It plunked into the flat sea. Something about the ripples it created, something about the heavy thunk it made, caused her to stop feeling sorry for herself, and to forgive herself for her choices. She could, if she tried hard enough, turn off that horrible, revolving, self-pity machine.
If she lived out here this fall, she could more quietly leave Eddie. Thank God she’d signed the kids up for the East Hampton schools. Her children would finally be free, released from those constricting urban uniforms and rules. And if she did move, would she take Rosie part of the year? She was family, after all. Now it made perfect sense that Rosie’s father was not around—he had been here the whole time. Caroline couldn’t not mother Rosie now; she wanted to mother her. Rosie didn’t have a mother of her own.
Caroline’s phone pinged again: Tuesday fine, the project is very hard in the meantime. I know you can solve that.
Ryan was a good man, even if their affair hadn’t clarified as much as Annabelle had promised. The Rosie bombshell provided all the self-enlightenment she needed.
She answered Ryan’s text: I’m looking forward to a Tuesday meeting, but a lot is going on.
She wondered if the next time they’d be together she’d end it, and explain her heart and mind had too much occupying them now to allow room for an affair.
As she wrote, the three little dots pulsated on his side of the text conversation, indicating he was writing too.
Then the dots stopped. Ryan started again, typing: I’m not sure the project can wait until Tuesday.
She remembered Annabelle saying something about knowing the affair would be over when it was destined to be over. “It will be black and white, on or off, living or dead.” They’d discussed that little voice inside that had told them in high school or college that the relationship they’d been in had reached its expiration date. With this Rosie news and Joey in the truck, though she felt undecided in the middle gray, she wasn’t sure she had the mental energy for Ryan.
She threw a handful of pebbles into the sea. They landed on the shore, and the piping plovers pecked at them to see if they were food. Her family would take it slow, and focus only on the school move now. Eddie would come out on weekends, and stay in the guest room. She had to find a way to forgive him for the sake of her children, and for Rosie, who was motherless and so young.
She couldn’t co-parent the kids and despise Eddie forever; at some point, the fury of betrayal would have to subside. Remembering his childhood deprivations might help explain his behavior, but it didn’t change how she felt. She did not want to be married to a man who had to gorge on attention to fill a void, and who would lie, like an alcoholic, to cover up his binging.
Over and out.
Forgiveness is easier when you don’t love someone anymore.
Caroline’s phone pinged and vibrated in her pocket again. She was in no mood to handle Ryan’s growing attachment, nor his “hard” project she had to solve. It was almost the end of summer: time to wind it down, not rev it up.
Her phone pinged and vibrated more.
So stop fucking texting me, she thought.
Caroline had her kids, she had her work, and now she had her hometown, fulltime. Joey Whitten was alive, perhaps to stay, perhaps to leave again, but still, he was breathing. She had to concentrate on the good, rather than the messy. A flock of seagulls squawked and picked at a fish carcass ten yards down the shore. One flew away with a chunk of skin and flesh, and then five others chased after him until he dropped it, which sent them all diving to the sand like kamikaze pilots. It made her smile. She could now visit these birds every morning, with her children, if she wished, all year round.
It was 7:30 a.m., the sun now half an hour higher and burning her forehead. She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt to cover her fair skin to her eyebrows. Her body felt warm.
Caroline’s phone pinged and vibrated yet another time. This was too much. She thought to herself, Shut up, Ryan, please!
She pulled her phone out of her bag and shielded her eyes to see the screen.
From Thierry: seven missed calls that had never rung with the bad cell service on the beach, along with four texts.
CAROLINE, COME TO THE BARN RIGHT NOW.
GO TO LAETITIA von TATTENBACH’S TRUNK
SOMETHING BIG IS HAPPENING.
NOW.
Chapter 51
Get Your Titties There Fast
Caroline climbed back up the five feet of sandy ledge, which tumbled away in chunks beneath her. She ran back to the parking lot.
On the cement now, her mouth and throat raw, she regretted that today, of all days, she had decided to power walk to the beach to burn calories instead of riding her pale-green cruiser—the same bike she used in high school—as she usually did. Here was more proof that exercise messed up your life. Running now on the streets toward her home on Pondview Lane, she tried to speed-dial Thierry, but the call went straight to voicemail. She tried to text and run but only succeeded in dropping her phone when her bag slid down her arm. She screamed, “Fuck!”
In her driveway, parched and with her heart pounding, Caroline crept up her porch. Thankfully, she hadn’t closed the large wooden door on her way to the beach, because it always creaked. She pushed the screen door silently. No one was in the kitchen yet, though she knew her kids and Eddie might be brushing their teeth upstairs. Francis would arrive soon and help Eddie with breakfast. Caroline tiptoed into the back pantry, grabbed her car keys from a metal bin nailed to the wall, went into the armoire where Eddie thought he’d very successfully hidden his second office key, and sped back out to her car.
Her hands shaking, Caroline dialed Thierry again. Again, the call went straight to voicemail. She left a voice message: “Would you call me and explain? Are you okay?”
She flew down the back roads to Main Street in East Hampton, leading to Route 27 and Sea Crest Stables. In town, with the streets almost empty at this hour, she charged through a light that had changed to red two seconds before. She figured people in Manhattan did that all the time, the Hamptons’ cops had to be used to it.
Immediately, a police cruiser followed her with his siren on. From his car microphone, he asked, “Pull over, please.” Caroline hesitated for fifty yards, hoping he didn’t mean it. Again, the microphone bellowed, “Pull over immediately!”
She used the sleeves of her thick sweatshirt to wipe her face, now moist from worry and sweat. She yanked the sweatshirt half over her head, her T-shirt now coming off with it, exposing her bra on her bare skin.
A man’s voice said, “You do know it’s illegal to offer sexual favors to a police officer, ma’am?”
“No, I’m so embarrassed officer, I . . .”
“Haven’t seen those huge boobs since spin the bottle got out of hand in seventh grade!”
“Oh my God, James. It’s you.”
Officer James Vincent and his wife, Tracy, had had a beach barbeque with their kids two weeks before. Eddie had come, even though James never much liked him, and Caroline had always sensed that.
“Don’t you dare give me a ticket.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t. Ever.” James knocked on her roof and winked at her. “Caroline, you look kind of crazy right now. Your hair, the shirt half off your shoulder, what’s . . .”
“Can you give me a police escort to Eddie’s barn, to Sea Crest Stables, and let me speed?”
He shook his head, “Negative on that.”
“Can I go a little fast out of here and can you ignore it?”
Officer Vincent flicked the top of his police cap up to expose those warm brown eyes she’d known since middle school. “I can ignore you, but you also want to make sure the rest of the cops don’t see you. Take Route 114 in the back, then left all the way down on Stephen Hands to Route 27. Cops don’t monitor that whole section of town at this hour.”
“Got it, and thanks.”
Caroline careened like a race car driver down the back roads, the centrifugal force pulling her toward the door as she sped around curves. Arriving at the entrance to the stables at 32 Spring Farm Lane, Caroline punched in the Monday code at the gate. It was the off day. There was no riding, no lessons, no visiting. A few grooms would come in to feed and turn out the animals, but there would not be any Eddie, clients, or Philippe. Thierry knew this. She was pretty sure this was part of his plan.
Chapter 52
Horses Don’t Bite, or Do They?
A groom, far in the distance, walked a horse out to pasture as Caroline entered the stables through a trellised walkway. There were four corridors in the main stable, each connected to a rotunda in the middle with the blue mosaicked fountain where she now stood. To her left and right, front and back, there were long halls with stalls housing one horse each, twenty on each side.
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