The Secret Between Us

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Denial of what?”

  “Responsibility. My own ability to make things better. Some things I can control, like not drinking, doing my job well, having brunch with my grandchildren. Blaming Ruth’s death for not doing those things is a crock of you-know-what. There are too many things that I truly can not control, like your aunt and your mom. Hell, I couldn’t even control your grandmother. She loved that bakery, just like your aunt does. And as for your mother, I’m not sure she likes practicing with me. Maybe she needs space.”

  “She loves you.”

  “That may be the problem. She feels obliged.”

  “Obliged to do what?”

  “Be what I want. Maybe not see that I’m doing something wrong, like drinking.”

  “Are you an alcoholic?”

  He considered it. “Not yet.”

  “Do you think you’ll become one?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “How do you keep from becoming one?”

  “First, face the truth. That can be hard.”

  “Not always,” Grace said. “When the truth comes out about the accident, I don’t think they’ll send me to jail, but there will be things on my record forever. That may make my life easier.”

  “How so?”

  “Once you mess up, expectations lower. I hate always having to be the best.” Her cell gave a muted jingle.

  “Who expects that?” her grandfather asked.

  “Mom. You. And my father. If anyone hates me for what I did, he will.” The jingle came again.

  “Do you think he never drank?”

  “I know he did, but he’s totally into pure living now. He and Rebecca are vegetarians. They grow most of what they eat.” There was a third muted ring.

  “It’s a pastime. Grace, get that phone, will you?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Get it, please.”

  Grace pulled the phone from her pocket, glanced at the panel, and opened it. “I’m with Poppy,” she told her mother.

  Deborah sounded frightened. “I got here, and no one knew where you’d gone.”

  “We’re talking. I’m okay, Mom. Really.”

  “How long will you be?”

  “Not long. Poppy’s gearing me up to see Dad. I’m okay. Really.” And she was. Her grandfather wasn’t lecturing. He wasn’t ignoring how she felt. He was talking to her like she was an adult. It helped that he had problems of his own. He wasn’t perfect, either.

  “Why do you need to be geared up to face your dad?” Poppy asked when she closed the phone.

  “I have to tell him what happened the other night, too. But I don’t know how he’ll react. I mean, like, he flipped out, didn’t he? He just picked up one day and left. If a father loves his children, he wouldn’t do that, would he?”

  “I drink. Your father left. Some would say there isn’t a lot of difference.”

  Grace shook her head. “People don’t just throw away everything they have unless those things aren’t worth having. So either Mom, Dylan, and me aren’t worth having, or he threw away something good.”

  “Your father is obsessive, is all. When he does something, it totally takes over his mind. Before he met your mother, he was totally into alternative lifestyles. Then he was totally into being a businessman. Now he’s totally into dropping out.”

  “Except when he talks with us,” Grace groused. “He wants to know if I’m doing well in school. He wants to know if I’m studying vocab flash cards and taking practice PSATs. He wants me to keep running personal bests. But I can’t do that all the time. What if I do lousy in school? What if I do badly on my SATs, and have a police record, and can’t get into a good college?”

  “You’ll still get into a good college.”

  “Will you love me even if I don’t?”

  “Of course I’ll love you.”

  “Poppy, there’s no ‘of course.’ Look at Aunt Jill. You’re still furious at her for not going to college.”

  That got him. He thought for a bit and said, “That doesn’t mean I don’t love her.”

  “How can you love her and never even taste what she bakes?”

  His cheeks reddened, and he looked sheepish. “Your mother left a sticky bun at the house yesterday morning. I ate it.”

  Grace was a minute taking that in. “Did you call Jill and tell her it was good?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “See? That’s what’ll happen to me. Once my dad learns the truth about the accident, he won’t want to talk with me at all. He’ll really hate me then.”

  “He doesn’t hate you now.”

  “Look who’s in denial,” she cried, but her grandfather was pointing at her again.

  “Grace, you’re making a mistake. It’s easier to pretend he hates you than to acknowledge that he might have had a legitimate reason for doing what he did.”

  “But he left,” Grace said, needing to make her point. “If he left when everything was going great, what’s he going to say now?”

  Her grandfather smiled. It was a while since she’d seen that gentle, only-for-Grace smile. “You’ll have to ask him that, pumpkin. The best medicine for denial is talk.”

  Chapter 20

  Deborah had a perfect excuse for watching the street. She wanted to be with Dylan, who was at one of the bakery’s window tables, looking for his dad. Greg had said he would be there by five. He claimed that he wanted to miss the Friday afternoon traffic, that he had no taste for traffic at all anymore, but the truth was that he had never liked it. More accurately, Deborah found herself thinking, he had never encountered it. He left home very early and returned very late.

  But that, she reminded herself, was irrelevant. Bitterness was self-defeating. Anger had outlived its usefulness.

  “Where is he?” Dylan asked impatiently. He was straddling one of her knees, with his elbows on the table and his eyes on the street.

  “On his way,” she replied, momentarily distracted by her son. Dylan had always been a cuddler, but those days were numbered. In another year or two, he would refuse to be seen close to his mom. Making the most of the moment, she slid an arm around his waist.

  “Do you think Rebecca will be with him?”

  Deborah hoped not. She and Greg needed to talk without anyone listening, particularly not Greg’s new wife.

  “Are you okay with Rebecca?” she asked Dylan.

  “She’s cool.” He looked back at her through eyes magnified with worry. “What if he was in an accident?”

  “He’d have called.”

  “What if he couldn’t?”

  “The police would have called. Your eye seems better.” He had been doing less squinting and blinking.

  “It’s okay. But what if Dad doesn’t carry our number around anymore, just Rebecca’s?”

  “She would have called.” Deborah squeezed his middle. “Sweetie, he’s okay.”

  Dylan turned back to the street just as a blue Volvo wagon pulled up at the bakery. Other than a faint coat of road dust, it looked new. The boy, still searching the end of the street for the Volkswagen, was slow seeing his father climb out. Then, with a cry of surprise, he was off Deborah’s lap in a flash and out the door. Seconds later, he was on the curb, clinging to Greg like a monkey, just as he had done when he was three.

  “Whoa,” Jill said at Deborah’s elbow, “you do all the work, take all the responsibility, do all the worrying, and your ex is welcomed like he’s the Messiah? Why are you smiling?”

  “I love seeing Dylan happy. He’s been through so much.”

  “Is that a new car?”

  “Looks it.”

  “Maybe it’s Rebecca’s.”

  “No. She drives a truck.”

  “Greg looks different.”

  Deborah agreed. He wore his usual jeans and Birkenstocks, but he did look different. “It’s his hair,” she decided. “He cut it.” Last time, it had been straggling on his shoulders. Now it stopped at his collar.

  “And combed it,” Jill remarked. “An
d stopped coloring it. Look who’s gone gray all of a sudden.”

  “He never colored it. Sandy to gray isn’t far. You just haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Who’s he trying to impress?” Jill asked.

  Deborah snorted. “I don’t think he’s into that anymore.”

  “Then why cut his hair? Why buy a family car? And why are you defending him? He’s still the guy who walked out on you.”

  “He’s still the father of my kids.” She shot her sister a glance. “I asked him to come here, Jill. Maybe he fixed his hair as a gesture of goodwill, maybe it’s an acknowledgment that life is different here, I really don’t know. But Dylan needs him, Grace needs him, I need him.”

  “What about independence?”

  “I am independent. Right now, though, I need the help of my kids’ father.”

  “What about all your anger?”

  Deborah sighed. “Oh, Jill, it’s just worn me down.” On that note, she followed Dylan outside.

  Greg had been saying something to the boy. Now he looked at Deborah, and she was at a loss for what to say. For the last few years, bitterness had colored her speech. Anger had given her strength. Now it seemed to have disappeared.

  Greg gave her a tentative smile. “Hi.”

  She returned the smile. “How was the drive?”

  “Not bad.”

  Excitedly, Dylan said, “It’s a new car, Mom. Dad got it to use in Vermont.” He looked up at his father. “I’m getting in, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he ran to the driver’s side, opened the door, and climbed in. His head barely hit the top of the seat, but he set his hands firmly on the wheel.

  “He looks good,” Greg remarked. “How’s the eye?”

  “The minute it was diagnosed, he stopped complaining,” Deborah said. “He can deal, as long as he knows. That’s pretty much where we all are right now.”

  “Any more word on the lawsuit?”

  “Not yet.” She hadn’t seen the detectives’ car today.

  “Where’s Grace?”

  “She’s talking with my dad.”

  “About how bad I am?”

  “Actually,” Deborah said, “she hasn’t seen him since the accident. I suspect she’s telling him about it.”

  “Mom,” Dylan called with his head half out the window, “come in here!” He jabbed a finger toward the passenger’s seat.

  Eager to please, she joined him in the car.

  “Do you love this smell?” he said excitedly. “And look, look at the wood here, is this cool?” He moved a reverent hand over the panel. “There’s leather even on the steering wheel. And this gear shift is like a race car.”

  Deborah didn’t think a Volvo wagon was anything like a race car, but she wasn’t popping his bubble.

  “Watch this,” he ordered and made his seat rise. “And this.” He put the back of the seat down, then up, then leaned over to study the music system. “Dad says there’s an antitheft device just for the audio. This is so neat.” He yelled out the window, “Can we go for a ride, Dad?”

  Greg came over to the car. “We’ll go for a ride later. Right now, I need a drink. Is there anything in your aunt’s bakery that’s cool?”

  Dylan listed the offerings as only a boy who spent afternoons at the bakery could do. His father named a variety of iced latte and said, “Bet you can’t fix it yourself.”

  “Bet I can,” Dylan replied and was instantly out of the car. Greg took his place behind the wheel and closed the door.

  “It may take him a while,” Deborah warned.

  “That’s the point.” He turned to her. “You look okay.”

  “So do you.”

  “I wasn’t the one crying on the phone last night. Why did you want me here?”

  He wasn’t wasting time. This was the Greg she had lived with for the final years of her marriage. All business. Brusque to the extreme.

  “The accident is a problem,” she said, pushing her hair away from her face. “I need your help deciding what to do.”

  “What’s the latest?” he asked.

  But Deborah wanted to wait for Grace. It was her story to tell. Deborah also wanted a more private setting. Looking out at the crowded sidewalk tables, she said, “This isn’t the best place to talk.”

  He turned on the car and rolled up the windows. Air-conditioning blew from the vents. “There. No one can hear.” He looked away. “You asked me to come, so I’m here, but it isn’t easy, Deborah. I knew it wouldn’t be. The closer I got, the more I felt the pull of the life I had here.” He leaned his head against the headrest. “It wasn’t all bad.”

  She felt a glimmer of her anger return. “You said you were miserable. You said that you’d sold out, that what you were doing was immoral, and that if you didn’t make a change, you’d die.”

  “I believed all those things.”

  “And now you don’t?” she asked, her anger growing.

  “Those things were all true.” He turned toward her. “I’m just saying that back then, they were all I could see.”

  Deborah wanted him to continue. “Why did you marry me, Greg?”

  He didn’t blink. “I loved what you stood for.”

  “Did you love me?”

  “Yes, because you were what you stood for. Stability. Constancy. Family.”

  Pushing her hair back again, she tried to understand. “I was a lifestyle.”

  He considered that. “Basically. I wanted to be what you were. The business was starting to build. You fit the life that went with it.”

  “You used me,” she said, hurt in spite of herself.

  “No more than you used me,” he returned. “You knew you’d be coming back here to practice, and you wanted a part of the experience to be different. My past worked for you in that regard. Even my age worked for you. You knew I wouldn’t be cowed by your dad.”

  Deborah wanted to say he was wrong, only he wasn’t. She might not have been conscious of all of those things when she had agreed to marry him, but they were true. That left the issue of what had gone wrong.

  “Were you unhappy from the beginning?” she asked more quietly.

  He frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe after three or four years. Probably when the business took off.” He looked at her. “But it wasn’t you, Deborah. It was me. My work. My competitive edge just got sharper and sharper.”

  “I never pushed you.”

  “You never did,” he acknowledged. “I was the one who pushed. I came to expect things of myself that I couldn’t deliver.”

  “But you did deliver,” Deborah argued. “You were successful beyond our wildest dreams.”

  He was shaking his head. “Maybe I earned more money than we’d ever expected, but remember that dream I had of blending idealism and capitalism?” He laughed. “There was always more to do, always one more challenge. I was sucked right in like the worst of the businessmen I despised. I became manipulative and demanding. I was impossible to work with. I was impossible to live with.” He smiled. “Aren’t I right?”

  Deborah said wryly, “You weren’t impossible to live with, because you were never around.”

  “Touché,” he said, his smile fading. “Well, I saw me, and I didn’t like what I saw. But it had become an addiction. The only way I knew to break the cycle was to leave.” He touched her arm. “It really wasn’t you, Deborah. I needed to leave the man I’d become. You just happened to have been married to him.”

  Deborah was about to say something about vows and responsibility and love, when Dylan knocked on the window. Greg rolled it down, took the drink, and promptly passed it to her. “Now one for me,” he told Dylan. “Can you make it?” The boy nodded eagerly and ran off.

  Deborah didn’t want an iced latte. She was keyed up enough without it. Setting the cup in a holder, she turned to Greg. “You threw the baby out with the bathwater. Do you know how much that hurts?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  She took a breath to do just that but fe
lt herself deflate. “Actually,” she said sadly, “I won’t. I can’t do the anger anymore. It isn’t helping the kids, and it isn’t helping me.”

  His eyes went past her. “There’s Grace,” he said and was out of the car in an instant.

  Grace didn’t notice the blue Volvo until she spotted her father. She stopped short and held her ground. Though she didn’t return Greg’s hug, she let herself be guided to the car.

  He opened the rear door and settled her behind Deborah, then returned to the driver’s seat. Turning sideways to see them both, he said, “Okay. What’s going on?”

  Grace was appalled. “You want to talk here? In the car?”

  “Why not?” he replied.

  “Can’t we drive to the house?”

  “I wasn’t a very nice person there. This car is more who I am.”

  “I thought the VW was.”

  “The VW was me thirty years ago. Today I want heated seats. So that’s an honest response. Tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “Dad, Dad,” Dylan called outside the car.

  Greg opened the window and took the drink. “Now one for your sister?”

  Dylan’s shoulders sagged. “Another one? She doesn’t drink lattes.”

  “She does,” Grace declared loudly.

  Dylan stared at her, then turned and trudged back inside.

  What was troubling her? Grace didn’t know where to begin. But her father was here, and her grandfather had told her to ask, so she said, “I want to know why you left. I want to know what was wrong with us and what’s so great about Rebecca. I want to know why you talked about forever if you didn’t mean it.”

  “Grace,” her mother began, but her father held up a hand.

  “This is okay. She just said more to me than she has in the last six months.”

  That set Grace off. “What did you expect? Did you think we’d just make the switch from Leyland to the farm without blinking? Did you think we’d just accept that Rebecca was taking our mother’s place, like she didn’t matter anymore?”

  “Grace—”

  “It’s okay, Deborah.” To Grace, he said, “I didn’t think about those things at the time. I just knew I had to leave.”