I straighten up and touch my trembling hands to my mouth. The fear in her eyes racks me with guilt.
“Shh, Ginge,” he says, coaxing her onto her side. Her eyes dart all around the room, as if she can’t see us. “Get out of the room,” he says without turning to me. “She can’t focus. You’re making it worse.”
I take a step back, more from shock than anything. To be shoved out like this when Ginger needs me breaks my heart. Nate buries his nose in Ginger’s furry neck, and after a few seconds, her whines soften.
When they’re both calmer, I say, “Nate—”
“Shh. It’s okay,” he says softly. “I just need to see your paw. Be a good girl.”
She’s shaking, and I just want to take her in my arms. We can help her better together, me holding her while he checks for glass. “Nathan,” I try again, “Let me—”
Ginger’s head shoots up, and she starts to writhe out of Nathan’s grip.
“God damn it, Sadie,” he says. “I need her calm enough to get her to the vet.”
“How?”
“I’ll carry her if I have to. It’s not far.”
“It’s ten blocks,” I say incredulously. “You need—”
“I don’t need. Not anything. The vet won’t be open yet, so call the emergency line, tell him we’re coming, and stay out of the way. We don’t need you.”
The rock in my throat is so big, it hurts when I swallow. In a daze, I leave the bedroom, but I don’t know where I’m going. Call the vet. I go to my purse. My phone isn’t there, and I can’t remember where I left it. I get Nathan’s from the coffee table. From a list we keep stored in the desk, I find the phone number and let them know we’re on the way.
Nathan comes out of the bedroom with Ginger in his arms. “Get the door.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. I can’t deal with both of you right now.”
“Nathan—”
“Christ, Sadie. I have to get a sixty-pound dog downstairs and into a cab. Can we argue later?”
Fuming, but more worried about Ginger than anything else, I walk over and open the door for him.
“Phone? Keys?” he asks on his way out.
I slide his cell into his jeans, which he somehow managed to get on while subduing her, and then his keys and wallet. “Will you call me when you know?” I ask.
He’s already halfway down the hall, and I have to fight the urge to go after them. My heart aches for Ginger. For Nathan. I know he’s hurt, and though my instinct is to make it better, I’m not sure if I should. Or, at this point, if I even can.
I get to work early, but Howie’s already in his seat next to mine, half hidden by his noise-canceling headphones. “Good look,” he says sardonically and with hardly a glance.
Any other day, I’d laugh. He’s right to call me out. After Nathan left with Ginger, I cleaned up the mess in the bathroom, showered, and packed a bag. My mind spun as I dressed blindly and slicked my wet hair into a bun. I don’t have any meetings today, so I find it hard to care.
Opening Outlook, I start mindlessly e-mailing clients their blog features from the week before. I copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste until there’s enough to prove I did my job—last week, at least. I should be excited that an Instagram celebrity posted a picture using IncrediBlast mascara over the weekend. Instead, I catch myself wondering whom she’s getting ready for. Is she married, and if so, does she flaunt her husband like her lashes? Or did she go out with friends, teasing boys, sipping martinis? Ten minutes of scrolling through her Instagram feed, and I’m more caught up on her life than I want to be.
At a quarter to eleven, Amelia arrives from a breakfast meeting. I’m the only one unfocused enough to notice her breeze in. We’re all on our second and third cups of coffee. With a once-over, Amelia nods me into her office.
Without needing to be told, I close the door to give us privacy. I’ve done something wrong—I just don’t know what. Maybe it was simply being the first person to make eye contact with her.
“What’s this?” She drapes her red, check-plaid cape and cashmere scarf over a brass coat rack.
I shift feet. “What’s what?”
“Outfit. Hair.” She sits on the edge of her desk. “Are you even wearing makeup? Not acceptable for this office, Sadie.”
I could argue that I don’t work any harder in cosmetics than I do out of them, but this is the job I signed up for. This morning, I wrote a blurb for US Weekly about a pop star who stays camera-ready by carrying lip-pumping gloss in her cleavage. “I’ll visit the closet,” I say, referring to a small room with emergency designer apparel and sample beauty products.
“Please do,” she says. “I’d have almost preferred you’d called in sick again. Will this thing with your husband affect your work today like it has your appearance?”
I hesitate, which is a mistake.
“I recognize this. I was this,” she says, wiggling a finger up and down my outfit. “The day his affair finally hit me over the head, I fell apart too, but I did it in private. Image is everything in this industry.”
“I understand. I’ll go change. It won’t affect my work.” I go for the door.
“Wait.”
I turn back. “Yes?”
She looks closely at me. Despite her bluntness, I know she cares. “I hope you did the right thing and kicked him to the curb.”
I let my eyes fall. Why, when I was planning to leave Nathan, does it feel like I was kicked to the curb?
“Don’t look at the floor, Sadie. Be strong. Excuse his behavior, and he’ll do it again, believe me. Cheaters are selfish. Egoists. You give him another chance, and he’ll walk all over you the rest of the marriage.”
I should stop her, but I’m not sure I don’t deserve to hear the truth about Finn and me.
And Amelia is more than happy to be the messenger. “Do yourselves both a favor and pack your bags. Trust me. He’ll beg—it didn’t mean anything. He loves you, not her. Well, the son-of-a-bitch should’ve considered that when he had her on her back in my bed.”
“It was only a couple times,” I say defensively.
“So what if it was one time or a hundred? So what if they were strangers or if they shared their deepest, darkest secrets with each other? He made a fool of you. He betrayed you on the most basic level.”
It’s hard to swallow her words. She’s never held much back, but I think finding a common enemy has made her more candid. How could she know I’m the one she’s railing against?
“That’s the worst part, isn’t it? The lies? The sneaking around?” I ask, and I genuinely want to know. I want to try and understand Nathan. Why he feels I don’t need him. How my excluding him from decisions made him feel left out of our marriage.
She flaps her lips with a pfft. “People always say that. The worst part is that he put his dick in another person.”
Amelia paints a vivid picture. If the tables were turned, and Nathan had been inside someone else, I think I’d tear my hair out trying to get the image out of my mind. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I can tell,” Amelia says, happy to get in a jab whenever she can. “Now’s the time to lean on your girlfriends. Shit, lean on me if you need. I don’t do ice cream, but I’ll kill a bottle of Glenlivet with you.” She crosses her arms. “Whatever it takes, do it. Staying together never turns out well.”
Because it’s cold outside, the heater is turned up too high. I play with the collar of my sweater. I think of Finn, who’s made the decision to leave Kendra. Then, of my brother, who’s a single dad. Lastly, I remember all the times my parents brought the house down with their bickering, and how I wished they’d do whatever it took to make it stop, including divorce.
But is that Nathan and me? I thought we were the opposite of all that. I thought we were perfect. If Nathan hadn’t forced me to the edge without anywhere to turn, if I didn’t have Finn waiting in the wings, I don’t think our marriage ever would’ve ended. “I don’t know if
I believe that. There must be some couples who make it through infidelity.”
She doesn’t look surprised. “You think?” she asks, checking her nails.
“Maybe something like this can make a relationship stronger. I’m not saying it can ever be considered a good thing, but years down the line, if we’re better off . . .”
She waits for me to continue. “What? You’ll be grateful?”
“More like it’ll bind us in an unbreakable way.”
“I guess that could happen,” she says. “Or—the next time life gets rough, he cheats again. And then what?”
“Well,” I rub my palms over my hips, “it wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do it again.”
She laughs, but there’s nothing about the noise she makes that sounds happy. “That makes sense. You ride off into the sunset, never again to nag him about an unemptied dishwasher or spending too much time with his friends. Beautiful women never deign to tempt him again.” Amelia waves a dismissive hand, her eyes glinting with delight. “Let his mistress deal with him. She’ll be sorry soon enough.”
“Is Reggie dating the woman he cheated with?”
“Of course not!” Amelia throws back her head and howls. “Two weeks in, the bastard was back on my doorstep. She probably refused to clean his shit-stained underwear. Why should she? She didn’t love him. I’m better off.”
She’s better off. Is Reggie? Nathan won’t have any problem meeting another woman, and I’ll have Finn. We’ll all be better off—won’t we? I don’t know if it’s fair that picturing Nathan with someone else, with a whole new family, makes me physically ill.
“Sadie, if you hear nothing else, hear this. A man like that will never love you more than he loves himself. If he does—if he truly loves you—he’ll understand that, and he’ll let you go.”
Her words lay heavy on my heart. Nathan has used the word selfish more than once over the past few weeks. Up until recently, I soaked up his adoration without apology. He liked it that way, though. Wherever we were in life, he always made me feel special, and to have him turn around and call me selfish for that hurts. But if that’s what he wants—my selflessness—maybe walking away is the way to give that to him. I’m not going to change anytime soon, and Nathan is unhappy with me. Amelia might be right. My decision to leave Nathan may just be best for all of us.
THIRTY-FOUR
When the door to Andrew’s house opens, I have to drop my gaze about three feet, because it isn’t my brother behind it. My niece, Bell, is undoubtedly a Beckwith, with purple-blue eyes and dark hair like Andrew and me.
“Aunt Sadie,” she screeches at a pitch that sends Andrew sprinting from the kitchen.
“What’d I tell you about answering the front door at night?” Andrew asks her, hitching up his sagging sweatpants.
Bell shrugs up at me. “That if I didn’t recognize the person, I should kick their—”
“All right,” he cuts her off, palming her small head like it’s a basketball. He raises his eyebrows at me. “What’re you doing here?”
I drop my duffel bag at my feet. “I needed a place to stay for the night.”
“You know Nate’s looking for you?”
I sigh. I haven’t spoken to him since he walked out the door with Ginger, although I did call the vet before I left work. Apparently Ginger is sedated at home. “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t find my phone this morning. It’s somewhere in the apartment.”
“Let me get that for you, aunt Sadie,” Bell says, grabbing my bag by its strap. It’s half her size, so she drags it over the doorway.
“Did your daddy teach you such good manners?” I ask, suppressing a smile.
“No. He says you aren’t a guest—you’re just family. I disagree, though.”
“I see.” I purse my lips at Andrew. “Just family?”
“Sellout,” he mutters.
I saw Andrew over Halloween when I took Bell trick-or-treating. So much has happened since then, though. We’re not a hugging family, but I go right to him.
He opens his arms automatically. “What’s wrong, Satan?”
I laugh into his chest. Andrew has always had my back, even as kids, but sometimes, he just didn’t like me. Like when I spied on him and his friends. Or when I warned his high school girlfriend he was going to dump her. Instead of Sadie, those times I became Satan, his evil sister.
I pull back and look up at him. With his high cheekbones, and slicked black hair, he’s a spitting image of our grandfather. He died when I was young, but since our dad wasn’t much of a role model, Andrew idolized Grandpa Beckwith.
Bell sings a string of la-las as she drags my duffel into the guest room. “We’ll talk later,” I say, nodding in her direction.
He shuts the door behind me. “You hungry? I just finished dinner. Spicy kale omelets.”
I unbutton my coat and follow him through the house. Against the odds, my brother has done well for himself. He skipped college to work for minimum wage at White Castle and was soon managing multiple locations in the northeast. He spent his nights learning to fix cars and restore classics from our grandfather’s friend, who then retired and sold Andrew his garage.
Bell skids in behind us, scrambling onto a barstool that looks too high for her. According to Andrew, she’s number one in her gymnastics class—even though I’m pretty sure the children aren’t ranked. “On Thursdays, we have breakfast for dinner,” she explains. “Because there are no rules.”
“There are some rules,” I say, shooting a warning glance at Andrew, “aren’t there?”
Andrew shrugs. He isn’t a typical father by any means, but he’s the best one I know. When Bell’s mom up and left them a few years ago, Nathan and I came for a weekend. Nathan took Bell everywhere he could think of to distract a three-year-old. Andrew and I stayed at the house, where I locked him inside and taught him how to cook, launder, make a bed, and clean. He was a fast learner, but he didn’t have much of a choice.
I eat the eggs and groan. “You’ve come a long way, grasshopper. What’s in this?”
He grins his signature, lady-killer smile. “And the teacher becomes the student.”
I toss a crispy breakfast potato at him. He pops it in his mouth. “I’m still light years ahead of you,” I say defensively. I take another bite. “I think.”
“Aunt Sadie,” Bell says. “I know all the words to the Rolling Stones.”
I raise my eyebrows at Andrew. “Seriously? That’s what you make her listen to?”
“She loves it. Don’t you, Bluebell?”
She looks stressed. “I try to listen to what my friends like,” she says seriously, “but when I do, I can’t get no satisfaction.”
Andrew and I laugh. She fights a giggle, but one corner of her mouth tugs. Andrew probably told her it wasn’t cool to laugh at her own jokes. Sounds like something he’d say.
After dinner, I help Bell with her homework while Andrew washes dishes. “I’m going to call Nathan,” he says, drying his hands. “I know he’s worried. You want to talk to him?”
I scratch my temple. I’m not sure what there is to say over the phone. Nathan must be even more tired than I am considering he didn’t sleep last night. And there’ll be plenty of time to fight when I get back. “No. Just ask him how Ginger’s doing.”
Bell’s head shoots up, but before she can ask, Andrew does. “What happened to Ginge?”
I pet Bell’s silky hair and look at Andrew over her head. “Nothing. She’s fine.”
He raises his eyebrows as if to ask what the hell’s going on, but there’s no way I’m getting into it with my baby Bell in the room. She’s made of innocence, and as far as Andrew and I are concerned, she’ll stay that way forever.
He disappears from the kitchen but after a minute, he’s back. “Sadie.” I look up. He’s holding out his cell. “For you.”
I kiss Bell on the top of the head, get up, and take the call on the back patio. I wander into the yard, where the dead grass sticks to my socks. I barely notice. �
��Hi,” I say into the phone.
“He can’t have you.”
My heart stops, and I stare out into the dark as Nathan’s words sink in. “What?”
“I said,” he pauses, “he . . . can’t . . . have you.”
“Nathan, this isn’t a contest. It’s complicated.”
“It’s simple, actually.” Though there’s determination in his voice, there isn’t an ounce of the anger I expected to hear. “I will climb the highest mountain. I will run the fastest mile. I will carry the world on my shoulders.” He takes a breath. “You think I’d sit back and let someone take you from me? I’ve made mistakes, but I will not let you out of this marriage for anything. I’ll fight for us, and you will too, even if I have to make you.”
I close my eyes and swallow down the lump in my throat. For so long, I wished for him to come back to me. I wandered the desert, searching for water—first on my feet, then, when I got weak, on my hands and knees. But it was someone else who gave me a drink. I got what I needed from Finn. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “If you knew what it was like—”
“I do know. I’ve been sick with worry,” he says. “I’d come get you, but Ginger needs me here.”
“How is she?”
“Fine. Apparently dogs’ paws have capillaries close to the surface. They bleed a lot. But the cuts aren’t as bad as they looked.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“She’s sedated.” He clears his throat. “I was trying to reach you.”
“I left my phone there.”
“I thought you were with him. I was over there for half an hour banging on his door, but the coward wouldn’t open it.”
I look at my socks, black shadows in the grass. It hadn’t occurred to me Nathan might go looking for me. I don’t even want to wonder what would’ve happened if he and Finn had come face to face.
“I’m not with him,” I say. “But so what if I was? I’m leaving, Nate. I’m giving you what you wanted.”
“You think this is what I want, Sadie? You couldn’t be more wrong.” He speaks frankly, as if there’s no arguing with the facts. “I’ve had a lot of time alone today to think, and I’m sorry things got this far. I didn’t do a good job explaining myself. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to let you go. I fucked up, but I have a long time to make it up to you, and I will.”
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