by Kate Rorick
He didn’t say a word. Not until they’d walked in the front door, and sent Gina home, with instructions to get a good night’s sleep, and that she wouldn’t be needed until Monday.
“Tell me again,” he’d said. Turning to her. The romance hero smile was gone. The kind, understanding bedside manner he used on his patients was gone. What was left was pure anger.
“I told you—” she whispered.
“Tell me AGAIN.”
“Shh!” she replied. “Hamilton is asleep upstairs!”
“He’s three thousand feet away in this monstrosity of a house you wanted. He couldn’t hear us if we used air raid sirens. Now tell me again why I was just fucking humiliated in front of all my colleagues and Boston society tonight!”
That was when she realized Stuart wasn’t angry for her. He was angry at her. That the simmering rage, that festering tension that had been nearly snuffed out, stomped on by all of Quinn’s hard work for the last two months . . . it came flaring right back to life in Stuart’s anger.
“Damn it, Stuart, this isn’t my fault,” she’d said. “Not this time.”
“Oh, so you admit it was your fault last time?” he asked, mockingly.
“Last time I . . . I don’t want to talk about last time.”
“Damnit, I told you to fix it,” Stuart raged.
“I DID,” she said. “I worked so hard. I gave up the Parent Association, because it was taking up too much of my time—”
“You got kicked off,” he interrupted.
“No . . . I told you that it was mutual.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it. I may not have been there, but I know you, and you don’t quit anything.”
“It. Was. Mutual,” she said. “And I threw myself into Hamilton’s potty training—”
“He couldn’t get through the Thanksgiving thing without an accident—”
“And focusing entirely on designing the charity ball. Which I killed. That room was stellar! I got so many compliments, I gave out so many cards—”
“And how many of those cardholders are going to hire you when they figure out you’re the one Jaxxon LaRue was talking about?” Stuart took a step toward her. Then another. “And here’s a little secret—the only reason they kept you on the charity ball was because I stepped in. I told the trust that you needed to be the point designer. They told Jeremy they wanted you.”
Quinn sucked in a breath, tried to absorb that information. It made her wobble, uncertain.
“Well?” Stuart said.
“Well what?”
“How about thank you. ‘Thank you, Stuart, for pulling strings, and putting my career before yours.’”
“Before yours???” she asked, bewildered. “You have never, ever, ever put anything before your career.”
“I’m saving kids’ lives, it’s kind of an important—”
“—not Hamilton, not me, certainly not my job—which I had to fight with you to even keep!”
It was true—when she had decided to go back to work at Crabbe & Co., it was met by passive aggression, a laundry list of things she would have to do and arrange to make that feasible, and every iteration of “you don’t really need to/ we have plenty of money/it’s just vanity/being a surgeon’s wife is work!” Stuart could think of. In the end, he had acquiesced.
“As long as everything else was taken care of,” he said. “That was the deal—you could work as long as everything else was taken care of. And clearly, it hasn’t been, if tonight is any indication.”
“That’s not fair—again, this time it wasn’t my fault. I just got recognized by a pair of entitled assholes, and they—”
“And they decided to get up on the stage and say that your husband is henpecked.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “There are a lot worse things someone could say about you, Stuart—you got off easy.”
“Like what?” he said, suddenly straightening. “What could people say about me?”
“They could say that you’re not a good father.”
He cocked his head to the side so violently she thought he might have pulled a muscle. “You think I’m not a good father? You think I don’t provide? That I don’t fulfill my role for our son?”
Quinn felt something get stuck in her throat. The words, the words that had bubbled up and were fighting their way free: No—you’re not a good father. You’re not here enough to be. She had enough wherewithal to force them back down into the bile of her stomach.
“That’s not what I meant. But that’s what people have been saying about me. Ever since that Halloween video—that I’m not a good mother.” She managed to keep the tears out of her voice. “That Hamilton is going to end up an ax murderer and that video is going to be exhibit A. That someone is going to call Child Protective Services on me. That I’m a terrible, terrible person who is going to ruin my child—so I’m sorry if you got called ‘henpecked,’ but it doesn’t even compare.”
Stuart got very silent. Stewing. And she knew she had scored a point. But it was at her own expense, letting him know how much pain she had been in, how much the video had hurt. Because he could and would use it against her. Make her stop working. Take Ham out of Little Wonders. Tell his mother how she had screwed up. Scale back her world.
But to her surprise, he didn’t use it—at least not now. He seemed instead to be chewing over something, working at the side of his cheek.
“I don’t like having my marriage examined in front of everyone I work with,” he said finally. “And it’s not a problem I would have, if not for your mistakes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said on a sigh, “that they did that.”
“I don’t want it to happen again. I can’t have it happen again.”
“Neither do I,” Quinn said. “But I can’t promise that it won’t.”
“Because . . .”
“Because . . .” Because I’m Halloween Mom, she wanted to say. And Halloween will come next year, and the year after that. And that video will come back. No matter what the lawyers say, or what motions they file. The internet is forever.
“Because you married me,” she said finally.
“I’m starting to think that that’s the problem,” he said finally.
Everything stopped, midair, midbreath. The snow outside hung suspended in the sky, unable to touch the earth. Because everything else had crashed.
“What?”
“I’m leaving,” he said, quietly, “. . . it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. This . . . this house, this town, Needleton—I never wanted it.”
“I certainly didn’t trick you into it.”
“I thought we’d be able to still be us. Remember us from before? Our place in the city, our lives, going out, enjoying ourselves, and not having it be so much work.”
“It’s not work for you,” she spat out. “I’m the one who does all that, who arranges everything, so we still have as much of a life as possible.”
“Yeah, and it has to be perfect, all the time.”
Because you made me be perfect, she thought harshly. Because you decreed my life was only mine as long as everything else was taken care of. But the words wouldn’t come. They were drowned out by other words, more panicked words.
“No—Stuart . . . We can work this out. I love you. We have a great life together. I’m still the me from before! I’ll Parcel my time better. I can . . . be spontaneous and arrange some more date nights for us!”
“You do realize that spontaneous and arranging date nights are a contradiction in terms?”
“What about Hamilton?” she tried. “He needs his father.”
He didn’t answer, just moved to the door—slow, tired, determined—and put on his coat.
“Where will you go?”
“I have surgery tomorrow morning, so I’ll just crash in the doctors’ quarters tonight. And I’ll find a place from there.”
“The roads are icy—and there’s nothing but drunks out there this time of night. You don�
�t want to drive now,” she tried desperately.
“I’ll be careful,” he said, and opened the door to the frigid night. “I’ll, uh . . . I’ll call you.”
And he was gone.
Quinn had crumpled herself on her couch and cried. Great heaving sobs that would have put any soap opera actress to shame. But when she finished, she felt oddly calm. It was the wee small hours of the morning. She could count on one hand the number of hours she had before Hamilton would wake up.
When she crawled into bed, she was convinced she was just lying down to rest her body, not that her mind would actually turn off. But she was asleep in seconds.
She woke up to a perfectly made Stuart half of the bed, a completely lucid memory of what had happened, and no earthly idea what to do next.
Which was not a common sensation for Quinn.
She just had this deep-seated feeling that absolutely everything in the house was completely wrong.
Hence the massive cleaning.
The cleaning lasted all weekend. Ham helped her as much as a three-year-old could, having fun going through all his toys, stopping to play with toys he’d forgotten he had.
It was a 3,000-square-foot house, there was plenty to be cleaned. A big beautiful new build, filled with all the beautiful things she’d acquired and lusted over as she created other people’s dream spaces. An antique refurbished dresser here, a rare print wallpaper for the downstairs powder room there.
Well, this was her dream house, she thought, once she had run out of closets, basement storage, pantries, drawers, and corners to clean and organize. And what did she have to show for it but an empty half of her bed and a not yet quite potty-trained son who barely noticed his father was gone?
But she didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t think about Stuart right now. She couldn’t think about what he was doing or why he was blowing up their marriage, or how she could convince him to, you know, not. She instead had to focus on what was positive. On what she still had going for her.
Which meant, conversely, she had to actually assess the damage.
Sunday evening, with a pristine house, a toddler sleeping away inside the pop-up castle tent he had forgotten he owned, and a large glass of wine at her elbow, Quinn Barrett fired up the internet.
She typed in “Halloween Mom, new year’s.” She discovered that she had made a couple of year-end “fail” lists—videos of people falling off water skis, and attempting parkour with painful results, and of course, her. She scrolled past.
It didn’t take her long to find the video that Jaxxon LaRue had posted. It was on his channel, fed directly to his millions and millions of subscribers. He posted videos daily, along with supplemental channels for his music videos, diss tracks (whatever those were), and podcasts. He even had a web series he was producing, starring an ex–Disney Channel star. It looked like it had decent production values, she thought randomly.
The most recently posted video was titled PARTY FOR THE DOCS THAT SAVED MY BRO (WITH SPECIAL SURPRISE GUEST!). It was about eight minutes long—medium length for his videos—and it started off mildly enough. Jaxxon LaRue prepping for the charity ball in his hotel room with his brother, doing excited intros into the camera about where they were and why they were attending this party. She saw the Instagram model girl in the background, being used basically as set dressing, and making Quinn feel an uncomfortable pang in her chest when she remembered what the girl had been like when they briefly met—vulnerable, defiant, young, and not entirely aware of what she was doing.
Then the video moved into the party—she recognized all her gorgeous work in dressing the massive room, and mentally preened. At least the décor shone to advantage. He talked to a couple of doctors, the lady from the trust with a clipboard. When he was done talking to them, he mocked them lightly to the camera, making fun of them in all the ways they were not a young twenty-something YouTube billionaire. He then goes on to point out celebs on his phone, the Red Sox players and the Affleck as they danced.
Then, about halfway through the video, he interrupts himself, with a talking head bit done later on that night.
“Okay, of all our celebrity sightings, I have to think that our favorite was this—”
And then—a bootleg of the Halloween video popped up. And Quinn was treated to a video of her stomping as she said “The freaking!”—STOMP—“Food trucks!”
The Jaxxon talking head came back. “Remember Halloween Mom? Well, guess who’s going into the New Year the right way!”
And there was the whole interaction she had with Jaxxon and his brother, from the moment Jaxxon approached them at the bar. She got to see herself steel faced, taking the younger LaRue to task for the joint he had just lit.
She watched as Jaxxon joined the fight, and as he told her to back off his brother. As the joint flew through the air, and landed near the curtain. And of course, the stomping.
The video cut there, to Jaxxon and his brother snickering into the camera phone as they walked toward the stage.
The rest was their bit onstage, mocking her. She cringed when she heard the line about orgasms, knowing that Stuart would be apoplectic.
Then he closed it out, saying it was great and to check out his other channels, and the web series with the ex–Disney kid, and some Zen bullshit about having a blessed New Year.
And that was it.
It was less of a jolt to her system than the first video. As if she was almost resigned to the notoriety. Except for the fact that Jaxxon LaRue had such a massive following, such a media machine.
No doubt she could sue him. She could set her lawyers to the task, they would relish billing her the hours, and maybe even getting a decent settlement out of him. But she just didn’t have the energy at the moment.
She took the Jaxxon LaRue video and downloaded it to her desktop. She’d learned how to do that on the advice of her lawyers—so she had a copy of the actual video, if the poster decided to alter it in some way, she could point to the original. She then went around to all of her social media sites and froze them again.
That’s when she saw the one ray of light in a fairly shitty (so far) year.
A post from Sutton on her Instagram. In between all the pics from a sweaty spinning class, cute interior DIY looks she’d done to her apartment, or #bestlife photos from a beach or a theater or a restaurant, was a picture of a magazine cover.
The Martha Stewart magazine.
And there, on the cover, was the Beacon Hill house.
Specifically, a shot from its entry hall. Quinn had killed herself on that entry hall. Talking Mrs. Chafee out of the classic yet woefully outdated black-and-white-tiled entryway and into a beautiful salvaged marble floor threaded with green veining had been the work of her life, but it had been the basis for everything that came after, from the graceful sage on the walls to the antique oak-frame mirror with taper holders next to the Shaker chair. It was a master class in blending the old with the new, with setting the tone of the home via the entryway, and It. Had. Made. The. Cover.
A rush of pride filled her as she quickly went to her tablet. The hard copy of Martha Stewart would be arriving this week sometime, but she had the digital subscription too and she would sip the rest of the wine and revel in the triumph of a year’s worth of work.
But as she pulled up the magazine and found the article, all of that happiness dropped off her, like a banana peel, revealing the bruises beneath.
Her name was nowhere to be found.
The house was a Crabbe and Co. renovation, according to Jeremy. And it had been a team effort—led by himself. He’d taken special care of the house, learning its history, working closely with the architect to preserve and highlight its heritage.
Quinn would bet money that Jeremy didn’t even know the architect’s name. And that in between his trips to Morocco and Spain he had stepped into the Beacon Hill house maybe twice. While she had spent nearly every day there from the moment she met with Mrs. Chafee to the second she was shoved into
the background.
She didn’t understand—she’d been interviewed by the reporter. She even recognized some of her phrases and quotes, but they were attributed to “a Crabbe and Co. designer.”
It would be one thing if Jeremy took all the credit for the company. Attributing it all to Crabbe and Co. was gauche, but at least she would be underneath that banner. But he hadn’t confined it to that.
No—he had given a special shout-out to someone.
“Crabbe and Co. actively fosters talent, and so when young assistant Sutton Van Ness had a proposal for a child-friendly bathroom, she was given leave to run with it—turning the bland, beige Jack and Jill into a pop of bright joy in the stately house, perfect for the family’s young ones.”
The bathroom was pictured, along with some adorable moppets (no doubt on loan, because if Mrs. Chafee had kids she had never mentioned it) diligently washing their hands.
Sutton. Sutton, who admittedly had designed a very nice, if a bit generic bathroom, was the designer called out in the pages of Martha Stewart. In Quinn Barrett’s bible. The indignity didn’t end there.
No, the cherry on top was on the last page of the spread. In the very far corner was a photo, of Jeremy, his hand on Sutton’s shoulder. The mentor and his new protégé.
It was as if Quinn Barrett the designer—along with Quinn Barrett the wife—no longer existed.
She had done everything for the Beacon Hill house. She had done everything to prove herself to Jeremy, to Crabbe and Co. Just like she had done everything to show Stuart she was the best and most perfect partner for life.
She had doubled down on perfection, and it had—totally and completely—blown up in her face.
And try as she might, there was just no way to design her way out of that.
Chapter Twelve
Oh my god, I can’t. I just can’t.”
Daisy whipped her head around as she heard Shanna’s words. But Daisy couldn’t stop, as she was being pulled down the hall by Carrie at full speed, her little body tilted forward trying to drag her mother to her classroom.
Shanna was stage-whispering with Suzy Breakman-Kang and one of Charlie and Calvin’s moms. The twins’ mom was holding back a little bit while Shanna and Suzy broke down into giggles. Shanna caught sight of Daisy as she passed.