When Evie looked up from the monitor, thirty minutes had passed. Beth and Laney wouldn’t care that the coffee wasn’t made or that the cookies weren’t thawed, but Evie cared. She looked at a folded piece of paper on her desk. The e-mail address Alan had given her for the job at County College. Maybe she’d typed it in wrong. She double-checked. How long did it take someone at a community college to send a form rejection or a simple thanks-but-no-thanks e-mail? It was rude. Yes, that was it. They were rude. She did not want to work for a rude institution, absolutely not, but she wanted to make sure they’d received the application they were going to deny. As she landed on the County College website—just another few seconds—her monitor winked at her; a few more swipes and clicks and under review popped up next to her name. She bookmarked the page and closed the website. Evie opened the freezer as Beth knocked on the door.
“Come on in,” Evie said, waving her arm. She slid a container of unidentifiable cookies across the counter. Laney entered, talking on her phone. She grumbled, “Whatever,” then laid it on the table.
This was all followed by the kerplunk of a stroller and Nicole’s walking into the kitchen with Luca on her hip.
Laney commandeered her spot next to Beth. They stirred half cups of coffee—a new pot was brewing—and rooted through the defrosting Tupperware contents.
“Did you have fun at the beach?” Evie asked, reaching for Luca, who stretched out his arms. She took him from Nicole, then handed him back, realizing that without Luca in her arms, Nicole seemed aimless and empty.
“It’s perfect weather to let Luca sit in the sand for the first time,” Nicole said. “I can tell you about it later.” She pulled out a piece of lined paper from Luca’s diaper bag and handed it to Evie. “She called while you were driving the twins to school. Gerry somebody or other from County College. She said their server has been down since Friday.”
Evie took the paper from Nicole and held it up to Beth and Laney like a six-year-old’s first lost tooth.
“Did she say anything else?”
“She apologized for taking a few weeks to respond.”
“Oh,” Evie said. “I mean, thanks.”
“No problem. That’s the job you want, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
Nicole looked away from Evie, blinking hard. “I know you ladies like your coffee time and I am not going to interrupt. I’m going to take Luca downstairs for a nap. I have some paperwork to do anyway.”
Laney waved and crinkled her nose at Luca.
“You can join us for a cup if you want,” Beth said.
Evie glared at boundary-defying Beth.
“Thank you, that’s sweet, but I’m going to go downstairs. I’m sure I’ll see you both soon.” Nicole disappeared into the basement stairwell.
“You’re going to get that job at County. I just know it!” Beth said. She leaned her chin in her hands.
“We don’t know what this woman wants,” Evie said, flicking the paper, but she had a good feeling. Actually, she didn’t have a bad feeling, which was as close as she’d gotten in a while.
“What are you waiting for? Call that woman back,” Laney said. “We’ll be quiet.” She put one hand over her mouth and crossed her heart.
“In a minute.” Evie looked at Beth. “Do me a favor?”
“Anything!”
“Don’t invite Nicole to have coffee with the three of us.”
“I was just trying to be nice.”
“Don’t.”
Beth shrugged and bit into a chocolate-chip cookie. “I don’t get it. You want us to be nice, but you don’t want us to be nice?”
“Exactly. She is part of my life, but she’s not part of this.” Evie drew an air-triangle connecting herself to Beth and Laney, and Beth and Laney to each other. “Some things are off-limits.”
“Like husbands?” Laney said.
“Oh my God, Lane, knock it off already,” Beth said through a grimace.
“I’m just sayin’…”
“Can you call County or can we change the subject?” Beth said to Evie. “Or I’m going home. I was just trying to be nice to Nicole. I wasn’t trying to add her to our trio. I only asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee.”
“Look,” Evie said. “I feel bad I don’t want her up here with us, but I don’t. I don’t know if that makes me a bad person, but for right now at this moment with this pot of coffee on this day, I just want it to be the three of us.”
“Amen to that,” Laney said a little too emphatically.
“You know,” Evie said, “I’m getting tired of this good-cop/bad-cop routine with Nicole. She’s not perfect. This isn’t perfect. But no matter where I go from here, this is where I am now, okay?”
Beth attempted a smile. Laney fiddled with the wooden buttons on her stubbly cardigan. Even in her one-of-a-kind knit, insolence did not become her.
“What’s up with you?” Evie asked, pointing her chin in Laney’s direction.
“She had a fight with Herb.” Beth bit her lip.
Laney shoved a cookie into her mouth. “We’re falling back into old, crappy patterns.”
“Even though Richard is still dead?” Evie hoped humor would ease Laney’s tension.
“Ha ha, very funny, Ev. Yes. But this time we’re working on it.”
“Good for you guys,” Beth said.
“Yeah, I guess so. It’s just…” Laney said.
“It’s just what?” Beth prompted.
“Oh, say it.” Evie had a low tolerance for woe-is-me marriage stories. When the kvetching revolved around husbands, Evie usually tuned it out—but this was Laney.
“I was just going to say that I knew that good marriages took work—but I didn’t realize how much work. And that it’s not always fun or easy or fast. Those things that got on my nerves about Herb before Richard died? They’re still there. And frankly, that pisses me off.”
Laney’s phone buzzed. They all knew it was Herb—and snorted short bursts of laughter.
“Just go,” Evie said. She opened the door against the March wind. Laney backed out the door and saluted her friends before running across the yard. Evie might even have seen her skip.
Beth held out her hands as if to inspect her nails, but her eyes fixed on the eternity band on her left ring finger. Beth’s sense of humor did not extend to marriage. “It’s worth it to make a marriage work.”
“Well, tell me something that I don’t know. Of course marriage is worth the work. And I did the work, you know? It’s just that … God, Beth, sometimes you do everything you can and it still doesn’t work out.”
Beth shrugged. “Guess so.”
Evie shrugged back. What did Beth know of the thousand little compromises that made up Evie’s marriage? What did Beth know of the compromises that made up Evie’s day? Her friend’s life was so regimented, so calm. Beth and Alan ate meat loaf every Tuesday. Bunco was Wednesday. Tennis on Thursday. They went on a date every Friday night. When Cody, their son, was little, they spent Saturdays at all his games. Now they Skyped while he was in Paris for a semester.
Of course Evie knew better than to judge things by appearances. Well, by appearances only. But Beth was rock solid. Beth and Alan were rock solid.
The two women sat in a growing silence. Beth folded her hands and twirled her thumbs.
Evie had never seen Beth fidget. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to be honest with you about something. Something I did.”
“Something you did? You’re like a Jewish Mother Teresa in pearls and pink argyle. What on earth did you do? Put the salad fork next to the soupspoon?”
Beth twirled her thumbs again.
“Oh my God! Stop with the thumb-twirling and tell me what’s wrong.”
“I had an affair.”
“Oh my God!” Evie grabbed Beth’s hands to stop the jumble of movements and words. “You cheated on Alan?”
“No!”
“So it was like a zillion years ago.” Evie let go of
Beth and fanned herself.
“Right. And it doesn’t matter now.”
“It must matter if you want to tell me about it after all this time. So, what’s the story? You cheated on a boyfriend and now he found you online?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I was like Nicole.”
“What do you mean you were like Nicole?”
“I had an affair with a married man.”
Evie’s face contorted and she sat on her hands. “You did not. I know you.”
“You’re right, you do know me. But you’re wrong because I did. That’s the point.”
Evie’s mouth dropped open. Her throat was dry. She walked to the sink in rapid, little steps, turned on the faucet, cupped her hands under the water, and sipped. She stared into the stainless-steel basin and watched her moral certainty wash down the drain.
Beth slept with someone else’s husband? Beth was like Nicole—but Beth was nothing like Nicole. Beth was a community matriarch, a beloved wife and mother, Evie’s confidante. She fussed over seating arrangements for dinner parties, changed her curtains with each season, and was the closest a grown woman could come to being a Boy Scout. Evie’s limbs ran cold. Did this mean Nicole could be like Beth?
Evie wanted to be alone. No, she wanted the kids home. No, she wanted to be back at Laney’s house for dinner so she could drink more wine, come home without Beth and Laney, and fall right to sleep. The insides of Evie’s sleeves itched as if the fabric had turned from cotton to wool. She rubbed her arms, turned back to the sink, her cheeks burning. Evie cupped her hands again and filled them with cold water. This time she splashed it on her face. To hell with mascara and with Beth.
“When exactly was this?”
“I was twenty-six.” Beth stood, walked around the counter, and ended up behind Evie. Evie grabbed the spigot, afraid she was going to lose her balance.
“I’m not who I was twenty-five years ago. You’re not who you were two months ago or four years ago. We all change.”
Evie let the quiet hang between them until she burst. “Does Alan know that you had an affair?”
Beth inhaled deeply. “Alan knows because it was Alan.”
Evie tipped her head to the side, repeating the words to herself. It was Alan. She paused and swallowed each word separately.
It was Alan.
Alan was married before, and Beth was his mistress. How could Evie not have known? She felt middle-of-the-night nauseous and the room seemed to sway. Alan was Richard. Beth was Nicole. Then who the hell was Evie? She looked at the floor to stop the rocking and blocked the echo of Beth’s words by counting indentations in the tiles.
“Look at me,” Beth said.
Evie looked up and past Beth at the wall behind her.
“Can we sit down?”
“I can sit. You can leave.”
“Scream at me or something, please.” Beth’s voice was the same as always, yet completely unfamiliar to Evie.
“I don’t have the energy to scream at you. I’m not your mother. Oh, yes, you must have made your mother so proud!” That was mean. Beth’s mother had died years before.
“Stop it.”
Evie stepped backward away from Beth and ended pinned against her own counter with nowhere to go. Beth walked to the other side. The counter had always served as a gathering place. Now it was a gulf between them.
Beth reached across toward Evie, who laid her hands on her thighs.
“Does Laney know?” Evie sniggered. “There is no way Laney knows.”
“No one knows.” Beth spoke slowly, deliberately.
She faded right in front of Evie’s eyes. “You’re full of it, Beth. How can no one know? Alan was married and had an affair. With you. His wife knew, and how about his family and his friends? Oh my God, does he have other kids? Is Cody yours or did you steal someone’s husband and child?”
“Cody is nineteen, and Alan and I have been married over twenty years. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’re a slut and I’m ridiculous. We’re quite a pair.”
Beth’s face drained from springtime peach to pale ash, but Evie didn’t care. She’d been duped by someone she loved and trusted. Again. There were secrets. Big secrets. Again.
“I know it sounds cliché, but they weren’t happy. He asked for the divorce because of me, but the marriage wasn’t bad because of me. They got married after college, and this happened within a few years.”
“You didn’t care that he was married, did you?” Evie whispered.
Beth gulped and looked down. “It just happened.”
Evie guffawed.
“I know its cliché, but it’s true. We were friends and then…”
“And then you were naked. That’s a logical progression for this cliché of yours.”
“It was so long ago, it was a different lifetime. It doesn’t matter how it happened. Alan was married for four years, and a year later he was married to me. In a synagogue, by a rabbi. You’ve seen the photos a million times.”
“I don’t get it. How could you not have cared that he was married?” Evie said, her throat stretching, almost cramping. “How could you not have ever told me with everything you knew? We were best friends. I told you everything.”
“I did care, Ev. But I loved him. And I didn’t tell you because I love you too. And I was scared you would hate me.”
“God, no wonder you were always so understanding of Richard. And now Nicole. It all makes sense. It’s like a little club. Do you have a secret handshake? A password?” Evie handed Beth her coat. “You see yourself in Nicole, don’t you? It’s why you make excuses for her, why you whisper to her, why you want her to have coffee with us.”
“I feel bad for her. I know that just because she did something hurtful doesn’t mean she’s a bad person.”
“In case you missed it, I didn’t say she was a bad person. I asked her to move in here. I’m the one eating dinner with her every night. I’m the one who acknowledged her as part of this convoluted family. Frankly, at this point, I’m fine with Nicole. You seem to be the problem. At least with her I know what I’m getting.”
“I just thought if I told you…”
“What?”
“I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted you to know.”
“It was eating away at you, and now that you got it off your chest, your betrayal can eat away at me. Great, thanks, because I don’t have enough to worry about.”
“I didn’t betray you by having an affair with Alan.”
“No, you betrayed me by lying. By breaking a promise to be straight with me, and to having insight that might help me when I was going through everything.”
Evie slumped in a chair and glowered at the stranger-friend standing in her kitchen. Beth’s aura was tarnished, which made Evie sad when she wasn’t seething. It was never fun to watch someone change before your eyes when you needed her to stay who she was. Who Evie thought she was.
“I can’t defend what we did, but I’m not going to apologize for having a solid twenty-four-year marriage with Alan.”
Evie leaned back. “So, are you going to tell him you told me?”
“Of course.”
“How do you know he hasn’t cheated on you? He did it once … he could do it again.”
“I trust him.”
Evie sneered. “How does he know you haven’t cheated?”
“You know me better than that.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do. Circumstances do come into play in life. And people can learn and make choices that point them in different directions than in the past. If Alan and I ever had problems, we wouldn’t look to someone else, we’d look to each other.”
Evie looked at the clock on the microwave. “You need to go. Unless you just want to go downstairs and hang out with your protégé.” The words shot out of Evie’s mouth. She was glad to see them go. Better out than in.
“I’m not leaving until you tell me you
don’t hate me.”
“I can’t do this.”
“You can’t do what?”
“I can’t have you in my house.”
“I’m so sorry, Evie.” Beth reached for her and Evie recoiled.
“Just go.”
Evie pointed toward the door and Beth winced. She left in silence without putting on her coat, pushing in her chair, or closing the door.
Chapter 15
EVIE JIGGLED THE STATIC OUT of her pant leg and surveyed Lakewood County Community College. It was late March. The trees were still bare, but large planters overflowed with pansies and daffodils. Men and women of all ages, sizes, and colors sauntered past, some with backpacks slung over a shoulder and others with briefcases swinging from one hand. There weren’t a lot of low-riding sweats with phrases across the tush, and there weren’t many logo hoodies. Evie sensed no preppy vibe at all, quite the switch from her memories of Northwestern, which consisted of late-eighties big hair, stand-up collars, and shoulder pads.
County geared its courses to adult students, most of whom worked full-time. These students would be mature and motivated, and thankfully, they were not slaves to college fashion trends, no matter the decade. They’d enroll to start a degree or learn something new or finish what they’d started when life got in the way, and not because their starched and pressed parents packed the car, set them up with a laundry service, and dropped them off with a credit card. Not that any of those things had happened to Evie. The students at County were here to change direction or find one. Evie could relate. Maybe she’d suggest that Nicole go back to school. Or maybe Beth had already suggested that during one of their secret meetings. Evie pushed Beth out of her head the way she’d pushed the flowers Beth had left on the doorstep to the bottom of the kitchen trash can, the same way she’d banished her from the kitchen four days ago—with force, and a modicum of regret.
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