“Well, let’s just say I pity the one who goes after them.”
They laughed at the same time.
“I’m shocked by how much I like you,” Caroline said.
Juliette blinked against the stupid tears that rushed up at hearing Caroline’s words. “That’s a nice surprise,” she said after clearing her throat.
“Really, though. You were insane,” Caroline said. “If I hadn’t been able to calm Peter down, I think he might have called the police.”
Juliette shivered, imagining the outcome if that had happened. Detectives questioning her. Nathan bailing her out. Lawyers. Some awful headline in the paper: “Woman Seeks Husband’s Secret Child.”
“Thank you,” Juliette said. “For not calling them. For calming him down. I’m grateful I didn’t do more damage than I probably did. Are you okay? Is Savannah okay? I know Nathan and Tia came to see her. Together.”
“They did. We weathered it. How about you? Are you okay?”
They rounded the halfway mark of circling the pond. From here, the boathouse and gazebo looked distantly romantic.
“This isn’t about me.”
“It can be about anything we want. We’re beyond niceties, aren’t we?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Speaking with Caroline was shockingly soothing. There was little to hide from her. While there was no name for their connection—except perhaps for mishpoche, the Yiddish word Nathan’s parents used to describe anyone even vaguely connected by family ties—Juliette felt as though she were Caroline’s cousin; some sort of relative.
“Nathan and I have separated,” Juliette admitted.
“I’m sorry. Because of . . . all this?”
“Because he lied. When he told me about the affair, right when he stopped seeing her, probably when Tia got pregnant, I thought I knew everything. If he hid Savannah, then who was he?”
“Did you ever think that perhaps he wasn’t hiding it from you, but from himself?” Caroline reached for Juliette’s arm. “Not everything is about us. And thinking or feeling something doesn’t make it true.”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, but I don’t want to deny reality.”
Caroline pulled Juliette to a bench. “Sit down. If we’re going to talk, let’s talk.”
Juliette sat, shocked, and more than a little overwhelmed by this woman. Apparently, quiet didn’t equal shy.
“Look, it wasn’t your goal or even on your mind, but you might have saved our family.” Caroline pulled her feet up on the bench and circled her knees with her long arms. She looked at the geese waddling down the path as she spoke.
“I was very unsure of myself with Savannah,” she continued. “I saw my feelings as everything real in the world. If you hadn’t cut into our lives the way you did, setting the events into motion, I don’t know where I’d be right now. Certainly not happy.”
“Or I could have ruined your lives.”
“Juliette.” Caroline spoke sharply. “Don’t be so melodramatic. You have to see things from other perspectives than your own. The world is three-dimensional. If you want to divorce Nathan, that’s your right. But if you think you should divorce him, because of Savannah, make sure your decision is well considered.”
“Do you think I should take him back?”
“How could I have an opinion on that? I barely know either of you.” Caroline placed her feet firmly on the cement and turned toward Juliette. “But I saw Nathan with Savannah. He isn’t a monster. Certainly, judging by his actions—toward you and Tia—he’s far from perfect. I know he lied, and lied huge, but if you leave, can you base it all on that lie?”
Caroline held up a finger to stop Juliette’s response. “I won’t get this out if I don’t do it right away. I’ve had some horrendous feelings about being a mother. Maybe if Peter knew them, he wouldn’t want to be with me. Don’t we all have moments we’d rather forget, and thoughts we wished never came to us? We say things too awful to remember.” Caroline pushed her hair off her forehead. “When we’re lucky, the people who really matter never know what we’ve said. What we’ve thought or done. Nathan wasn’t that lucky.”
• • •
The doorbell rang.
“Lucas. Max. One of you—open the door!” Juliette shouted from the kitchen.
“I got it!” Max screamed. “I got it!”
“No one cares!” Lucas screamed back.
Juliette dribbled pancake batter on the skillet. She poured a careful letter Y and then watched for the edges to bubble up. The hardest part of making pancakes was having the patience to let the batter set in the pan. Too soon, and you had a mess, with the pancake sticking to the pan until you had to scrape the whole thing out. Too late, and the bottom scorched.
That’s what she’d realized after leaving Caroline on Thursday. She’d been looking for the right spot and the right time when she could unwrap from her pain and disappointment with Nathan. She’d needed to not to see his face for a while and to not be reminded of the Nathan who’d screwed up; the man who’d made such decisions that disappointed her so deeply.
However, if she waited too long, her marriage would be beyond repair. She believed that. They’d lose their rhythm. Everything good about them lived in that beam of belonging to each other. Wonderful things danced inside that connection. The boys. Their merged families. Comfort, support, lust—all of it was wrapped up inside that live wire between her and Nathan.
She didn’t want to kill that light.
She worried they’d already gone too far.
Caroline seemed so perfect that Juliette didn’t believe she could ever compete on the same level of goodness. How was it that she could see life so layered? Was it because Peter hadn’t disappointed his wife or because Caroline had done awful things?
Unimaginable. Juliette simply couldn’t see Caroline being bad.
Or perhaps Juliette had put Caroline up on the same sort of pedestal on which she’d placed Nathan.
Juliette slid the pancake letter onto the plate next to the stove. She took the pan from the oven warmer and began spelling Happy in pancake letters.
Lucas came in as she placed P on the platter.
“Dad’s here.”
“I figured,” Juliette said. She leaned over to kiss Lucas, rising on her toes to press her lips to his forehead.
He gestured at the platter with his chin. “Does this mean he’s coming home?”
Juliette placed the spatula on the spoon rest. “We haven’t spoken about it, really. Not totally. But, yes, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. That’s what you want, right?”
“I guess. If you do.” Lucas reached out for a burnt edge she’d cut away. “Shouldn’t it be about you? And about Dad?”
Juliette slipped the spatula under A and lifted.
“We’re bound together whether we live together or not. Once you have children, wherever you are, you’re part of the same family.” She stopped for a moment to swallow. “I’d like us to be in that same family here. Together.”
Juliette was saying more than Lucas imagined. He and Max, they had to know about Savannah. Which meant knowing about Tia. It would be an awful lot to throw on the kids, but ripping apart their family was an awful lot to throw on them in a far worse way. As for lying, well, she’d learned how well that worked.
Today she and Nathan would begin living in truth.
“There,” she said. “Bring me the powdered sugar.”
“Mom, it looks fine the way it is. You don’t have to make a big fuss all the time.”
She put down the spatula and turned to her son. “Lucas, this is who I am. Sometimes I’ll make a big fuss because of something bad, and you’ll hear me crying my eyes out in the bathroom. And other times, just because I’m happy, I’ll make an embarrassing fuss. I make commotions. But I’m your mother, I love you, and I’ll always take care of you. Now go get the sugar.”
He rolled his eyes, which at that particular moment felt nice and normal and not annoying a
t all.
“Here,” he said, handing her the shaker of sugar.
“Thank you. Bring your father and brother in for breakfast.”
She straightened the letters until Happy Family Day looked perfect, at least for this one moment.
Yes, she was being kind of goony and making a fuss. But what the hell. At least they’d have pancakes to eat that weren’t scorched and weren’t lying in a gloppy mess. At the worst, she’d covered them in a little too much sugar.
For God’s sake, that should be the worst thing that happened to them.
CHAPTER 36
Caroline
Caroline felt uneasy. Going back to the office hadn’t made sense after Caroline left the pond, but being alone in her house on a weekday was just plain odd. Nanny Rose had taken Savannah to the park and probably wouldn’t be home for an hour. Peter was at work. Silence and stiff perfection surrounded her.
She placed her briefcase on the side table and tried to imagine what it might be like to walk into the Jamaica Plain house. After kicking off her shoes, she unzipped her case and lifted out the folder of information from the real estate agent. When she slid it onto the kitchen table, the bright colors popped against the stark white room. Once she’d spread the pages in a rectangle, she poured a glass of sparkling water and sat to study the brochures before her.
The red house looked bigger in the photos—of course, real estate pictures were always taken to have everything appear ten times larger—but it had more than enough room for the three of them. Downstairs were four rooms and a tiny bathroom. She traveled the rooms with her finger, following with her eyes as she moved from the living room, stopping at the graceful fireplace mantel, and then passing through the tiny dining room—where windows opened to an enormous side yard, highlighted by lilac trees—and then stopped at the cobalt, white, and wood kitchen. Here she could imagine cooking something. Nothing incredible, but something. The outsized and airy family room opened on all sides to light from the yard. Neighbors’ houses, far and close, dotted the view.
Caroline glanced out her kitchen window at the copse of blue spruce. Along with flower beds thick with roses, never tended by her or Peter, they provided a backdrop for Savannah’s spacious swing set. Even standing on a tall ladder, they’d be hard pressed to see another house. At the Jamaica Plain house, they could practically spit on their next-door neighbor’s driveway. And while the tucked-away street meandered in a pretty circle of mostly single-family homes, one block away was one of the largest train stops in the city, located on a street where run-down bars and a twenty-four-hour grated liquor store mixed in with the newly gentrified restaurants and coffee shops.
Her mother-in-law would have a coronary. As for Caroline’s own parents, well, it would probably be best to blindfold her mother and father before driving them to the house.
The Jamaica Plain yard cried to be fixed, but unlike here, Caroline itched to get her hands in the earth. She could see herself and Savannah turning over the soil. Getting dirty. Upstairs, none of the four bedrooms, ranging from small to medium, compared with the ones they slept in now—although the largest would make a more than decent home office for Peter. Golden oak floors reflected the light that flooded in from the two walls of windows.
She looked around. Here everything was plumb, perfect, and gleaming with money and taste. Caroline just didn’t know whose taste it reflected.
She looked at the brochures on the table and saw a warm, inviting house. A home for deep-cushioned sofas and bookcases.
Their house. Not a spread from Architectural Digest.
She’d take Peter to see it on Saturday, but she bet that he’d love it. A real estate guy once told her that you could see it in people’s eyes when they’d found their home, and right now she saw the Jamaica Plain house with eyes of love. Perhaps Peter’s mother would think they were downsizing, but Caroline preferred to think of it as finally finding the just-right size. If their apartment in Cambridge had been too small, then this McMansion in Dover had always been too big. They were dwarfed by the size and bombarded by the precision. How could a kid bounce around in a place so flawless?
She held up the shiny sheet showing the family room in Jamaica Plain, filled with windows and punctuated by French doors. In her mind, she populated it with a red oriental rug, lamps pooling warm light, and sofas with curled arms that would cradle your head while you read the Sunday papers.
Not too small. Not too big. Just right.
• • •
“Peter, you’ll love this place,” Caroline insisted later that night. “Trust me.”
She slid closer to him, feeling the leather couch grab at her jeans as she moved.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Do we want to live that close to Forest Hills Station? Do you know what it’s like there? I’m not sure that’s where we want Savannah to grow up.”
Calm down. Let him find his own way there.
“Just come look at it. That’s all I ask.”
Peter put his reading glasses back on and reached for the sheets of paper he’d thrown on the sleek coffee table. “When I spoke about saving money, this wasn’t what I pictured.”
“What did you picture?”
“I suppose something a little more . . . upscale?” He read the specs again. “We could fit this house into our place twice. Do you really want something so small?”
“I’d like to be able to find each other. I don’t want to work for a mortgage payment. And I like the idea of neighbors; of Savannah being able to play with other kids. I saw bikes on lawns.”
“You’d let her ride her bike there?”
“For goodness’ sake, plenty of kids grow up in the city.” Caroline took his hand and squeezed. “This doesn’t have to be the place. But I want you to come and see it. Walk around the street. See how nice everyone is. The couple next door are both doctors, and across the street is a school principal. It’s not like we’d be moving into a war zone. It just isn’t a lily-white suburb like here.”
“Don’t make me sound like a snob.” Peter leaned forward. “I’d like her to have friends down the street, but I also want a good life for all of us. I want to give Savannah more than I had.”
“Is more measured in dollars?” Caroline reached for her wineglass. “Love? Fun? You and I had great childhoods, by any standards. I had plenty of money. You never wanted for anything. You had the wild, big family thing. I had my sisters. Our mothers were always there. And we both knew from where we came.”
Caroline’s eyes welled up. “We can’t give Savannah what we had. It isn’t possible. We don’t have a house full of kids or sisters for her. She never had a mom at home. Whether we like it or not, we’re an unconventional family.”
“This isn’t about the house, is it?” Peter put a hand on her knee.
She wiped her eyes with the bottom of her T-shirt and shivered. Despite the muggy temperature, it was cold and dry in the living room. “No. I like the house, but that’s not why I’m upset. We need to figure out what the true right thing to do for our daughter is, and we can’t explore it from across a divide. I don’t want to be convincing you, or vice versa.”
“You think we’re on different sides?”
Caroline looked away from him. He couldn’t accept that they’d escaped family dissolution by only a thread.
“Do you ever think what it’s like for Savannah?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s adopted, and whether we like it or not, she’s always going to have questions. Maybe we’re being selfish. We’re trying so hard to make everything just right for her, just right like we had, but maybe we’re ignoring what she really needs.”
“Which is what?” he asked.
Peter looked uneasy, but she pressed on. Fear of truth had already lead Caroline to an imagined burial of her husband and child.
“Savannah knows about Tia and Nathan now, and that she has brothers. We can’t pretend they don’t exist.”
“
What does that mean to you, Caro?”
She laced her fingers. “It means putting our dread away. We can’t keep them out of her mind or our lives. That’s a fantasy for our own psychic safety. Living as though they never met—it’s not only impossible, it’s wrong.”
“I never suggested we should lie. Or paper over the truth.” Peter began pacing. “But are we supposed to share her with them? What do you propose? We have them over for a Labor Day barbeque? Maybe they can come to my mother’s for Thanksgiving.”
“You’re her father. I’m her mother. No one’s arguing that. Look, I don’t have the answers; I only know that we can’t be good parents without asking the questions. Our girl shouldn’t have to hide herself from us. I don’t want her to feel guilty if she wants to meet her brothers someday. And we have to think about what ‘someday’ means before she comes to us.”
Caroline left the couch and went to her husband. She put her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Doesn’t it frighten you?” Peter asked. “Don’t you ever worry about losing her?”
“I don’t think you lose someone from loving them the right way.” She pressed her hands into his back. “We’re a family. We became one the day we took Savannah in our arms. That miracle will never stop. Maybe now we have another bit of magic to be grateful for. Finally, it’s all out in the open, and we can be a family without the holding on to the comfort of lies.”
Peter touched the brochure. He traced the outline of the red house in Jamaica Plain and then picked it up.
“What the heck,” he said. “It can’t hurt to look.”
CHAPTER 37
Tia
Tia woke up hung over again. Not a deadly bout. No wretched nausea, so, thank God, she hadn’t thrown up. Only a throbbing headache reminded her of the previous night. She reached for the coffee that Bobby had left for her. Since their engagement last month, they’d been spending more time at his place. He already had her picking out furniture and carpeting for the condo where they’d move when construction was finished.
The Comfort of Lies: A Novel Page 30