by Susan Wiggs
She settled on a pink sundress and matching sandals and resisted the urge to pull her hair back into a ponytail, because he seemed to like it hanging loose. She put a six-pack of beer in the fridge. Then she paced and wrung her hands. She was setting herself up for all kinds of hurt, maybe even a rejection. He’d never actually told her he loved her. Maybe their connection was based on their mutual concern for the children. And sex, of course. Like a hormonal teenager, she couldn’t stop thinking about that. True love had to be more than that, she thought. Didn’t it?
This was absurd. She shouldn’t be doing this. A few months ago, her life was going completely according to plan. Since Crystal had died, and Sean and the children had come along, she’d lost control of the reins. And now this? Now she wanted to bare her heart to him? Was she out of her mind?
In the midst of pacing the floor, she came up short in front of the framed photo of herself and Crystal at Haystack Rock. Those shining eyes and laughing faces seemed so terribly young to her, as though they belonged to two strangers. In that moment, the grief struck her like a fist in the dark, as intense as it had been the morning Sean told her about the accident. Lily wrapped her arms across her middle and sat down as the waves swept through her. It happened like this sometimes; just when she began to think she’d adjusted to her loss, the grief came smashing through again like a destructive storm, a natural disaster.
There was a knock at the door and she shot to her feet. As she hurried to answer it, she wiped at her eyes. She was an idiot. She had no business telling this man she loved him. It would only complicate the situation.
He seemed distracted when she greeted him; his kiss was perfunctory and his mind was clearly on something other than her. She studied his face and realized it was more than distraction. “We need to talk,” he said, striding into her living room. He seemed to fill the whole place with his presence.
Well, thought Lily. So much for romantic declarations. “All right,” she said, determined not to let him rattle her. “Sit down and we’ll talk.”
He sat on the sofa but didn’t relax. Instead he leaned forward like a coach in a team dugout, wrists balanced on his knees, fingertips touching, a scowl on his face.
“Is everything all right?” Lily asked. Dumb question. She already knew it wasn’t. He was probably dumping her, that was it. Dumping her for twin tire models or a Hooters waitress. She reeled in the loopy thought and waited.
“Cameron told me something that I think you should hear.”
Lily’s mind ran through the possibilities. There were so many of them. “And?”
“He said…I mean, he’s known for a while now that Derek isn’t—wasn’t—Ashley’s father.”
It was the last thing she’d expected, and the sound that came out of her expressed wordless disbelief. She felt a terrible shift in the world. Here was the man she loved, telling her something that could change everything. No, she thought. No.
“Did you know anything about this?” Sean asked her, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her in a way that was not altogether pleasant. In fact, it was singularly discomfiting to be regarded with suspicion and mistrust.
“Anything besides the fact that it’s patently untrue? No.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around the room, his gaze lighting on the photo of her and Crystal laughing, their arms around each other. “I was surprised, too,” he admitted. “Regardless of my opinion of Crystal, I never dreamed Ashley belonged to anyone but Derek. Neither did he. I know that for a fact.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Lily said. “She is Derek’s child. I have no idea why Cameron would say she’s not. He must be mistaken, must have misunderstood something—”
“Cameron’s not stupid. He didn’t make a mistake and he wouldn’t dream this up out of thin air.”
“It’s simply not true,” she said. “He’s not a liar, but he’s laboring under some misinformation—”
“I didn’t come here to debate this with you, damn it.”
“Then why did you come here?” Her temper rose right along with his. That was the crazy thing about love. It could turn in the space of a heartbeat. She should have respected her instinct not to trust it.
“To tell you something important about a family you supposedly care about,” he said.
“Supposedly? Oh, you mean the family I spent the summer with, in an RV with a dog? Gee, whatever gave you the idea that I care?”
He set his jaw, took a breath. “All right, so there’s no question about your commitment to this family. That’s the reason I’m here. You have a right to know. And I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t have proof.”
Lily sat down. “Proof?”
He stayed standing as he handed her the envelope. “This is a copy of a blood test Crystal had done the Monday before the accident. I picked up a copy from her doctor as soon as Cameron told me. The test removes any doubt. Derek’s blood type is AB, and Crystal’s is B. The baby’s is O, which any high school biology student will tell you means she can’t be Derek’s.”
Lily’s hand shook as she thrust the lab report away. Unfortunately, she remembered high school biology all too well, and she knew these test results were no lie. She nearly gagged on the next question. “Then who…?”
“The father’s Greg Duncan, the golf coach,” Sean concluded, “and he doesn’t know.”
Lily discovered that she’d stopped breathing. She started up again in panicky little gasps. Greg Duncan. She had worked with him, dated him. One time, she’d even kissed him. How could she have missed this? Crystal used to try to warn her away from him. He’s a player, she’d said. A user. You can do better. Lily assumed Crystal wanted her to find someone to get serious with. Now she wondered if Crystal warned her off because she herself had been with Greg.
Somehow, Lily found her voice. “That’s completely absurd.” Even as she spoke, she was comparing Ashley to Greg in her mind. Brown hair, brown eyes, big deal. Ashley looked like she could have been fathered by Keanu Reeves, too, but that didn’t mean he was her father. Yet Sean had cracked open a door and she couldn’t resist peeking in. In her mind’s eye, she caught a glimpse of Crystal, who had been team mother three years in a row. Lily remembered this because she’d urged Crystal to give it up when her marriage fell apart, since she had enough to deal with, but Crystal had refused. Maybe, just maybe…She kept picturing Crystal’s shell-shocked expression when she had come over to Lily’s house one night and said, “Derek has someone else. And I’m pregnant.”
“She would have told me,” Lily said. “She told me everything.”
“Apparently not.”
“Even if it did happen like that, she would have told Greg.”
“Not Crystal. She needed to be the injured party in the divorce. Winning child support for three kids meant more money for her, and she knew she’d get more from a golf pro than a high school coach.”
“That’s a horrible, bitter thing to say.”
“Not nearly as bad as having one man’s child and attributing it to another.”
Lily felt queasy. “Crystal wouldn’t do that. She simply wouldn’t.” Lily stared at the dated test results and remembered that day with brittle clarity. It was a Monday, the same day Charlie had started stealing. Good God, she thought. Could Charlie have known? It was bad enough that Cameron was in on this. His mother and his coach. No wonder he vandalized the golf course.
“What’s your point, Lily?” Sean asked.
“Obviously, from the timing of the test, she wasn’t sure herself until just before she died. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Up until the blood test, she probably thought Ashley was Derek’s.”
“She might not have known whose DNA the baby has, but she sure as hell knew who she was sleeping with.”
“My God, you really did hate her, didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “This conversation is going nowhere,” he said. “Maybe we shouldn’t have had it in the first place.” He headed for th
e door.
“Wait,” Lily said, her voice very low. Too low, perhaps, for him to hear. If he didn’t hear and kept going, she wouldn’t call him back.
He did hear. He stopped and turned around.
She squeezed her hands together until they hurt. “We have to tell him.” She startled herself with her own words, because by saying them, she acknowledged the truth. Queasiness swelled inside her, tangling with questions that would never be answered. The trouble with being angry with a dead person, she reflected, was that you could never sit down with her, talk things out, get an explanation, make amends.
“That’s not what I want to hear from you,” he said.
“It’s not my job to tell you what you want to hear. That will never be my job, do you understand?” Her eyes burned with tears of fury. What did he expect, coming here and telling her this about her best friend, a woman she had loved and trusted and respected all her life?
“Cameron and I have already discussed this. We’re not telling him.”
She winced at the thought of Cameron discussing his mother’s infidelity. How could you, Crystal? Lily wanted to scream. How could you, with your son’s coach? “Sean, you can’t fix this with a lie or another deception. Greg deserves to know, and so will Ashley when she’s old enough to understand.”
“You’re not thinking this through, Lily,” Sean said. “The baby is with me because I’m the kids’ blood relative. If Duncan’s the father and not my brother, then I’m not related at all to Ashley. He is. So don’t you tell him.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat. You have no right. You were Crystal’s friend. Big deal. I’m the guardian of this family and the decision’s mine to make.”
She wondered what it was she saw in his eyes besides anger. Fear, perhaps? Then she told herself she didn’t have to worry about what he was thinking or feeling. It was a far different conversation from the one she thought they’d have this evening. And this angry, autocratic man was a far different person than the one she thought she knew. Clearly, she was only a part of this family so long as she agreed with Sean. She got to her feet, crossed the room and held the door open. “I think you should go.”
“Fine.” He strode out the door, then hesitated and turned back. “Was there something you wanted to tell me?”
Only a few minutes ago, she’d wanted to tell him she was in love with him. They should be having dinner together, sharing a glass of wine, making love deep into the night. She swallowed a knot of bitterness that had lodged in her throat.
Thank goodness she hadn’t told him yet. At least she hadn’t given him the hammer to crush her with. Then she realized she felt crushed all the same. “Not really. Nothing important, anyway.”
After he was gone, Lily sat very still. Darkness crept in, but she didn’t bother getting up to turn on a light. She wondered how long she would sit here, just like this, before someone noticed her absence. Would she be like one of those forgotten, friendless people you sometimes read about in the paper? She used to savor her independence and solitude. Now that she’d had a taste of family life, she wanted something else. And it had been so close, within her grasp. Sean had wanted just one thing from her, just her cooperation in dealing with Greg Duncan. Why hadn’t she given him that? Love was supposed to be about compromise. Surely they could have found a solution that worked for everyone.
A dozen times she reached for the phone, then changed her mind. She was terrible at this. She didn’t know how to be a woman in love, and she certainly didn’t know how to deal with the aftermath of a quarrel.
The thirteenth time she picked up the phone, the doorbell rang. Lily nearly jumped out of her skin. Then she laughed aloud. He’d come back.
With a broad smile on her face, she flipped on the porch light and opened the door. “Oh,” she said, her heart plummeting. “Hi, Mom and Dad.” She offered them dutiful hugs and invited them in.
“We decided to drive down for the tournament,” her father said. “Violet told us it was a big deal.”
“Vi told you to come?”
Her mother made a sound of impatience. “No, your father said she told us it was a big deal—for you. So we decided to come.”
“We have a room at the Hampton,” her father added. “Have you had dinner yet?”
Dinner. She had fixed dinner for Sean but they hadn’t gotten that far tonight. “Tell you what,” she said with false brightness. “Let’s see what we can scrounge up here.”
The three of them went to the kitchen. When Lily put out the dinner she’d prepared—caprese salad, pasta with a lobster and cream sauce—Sharon raised her eyebrows. “This doesn’t look like scrounging to me.”
Lily’s father nodded. “You’re overdressed for scrounging, too.”
She gave a short laugh. “I can’t believe you’re criticizing me for that.” Two years ago, when she’d declared to the world that she would never marry, Lily had started a collection of colorful Italian dishes from Scala. She served her parents in the dining room, treating them like honored guests. She herself had no appetite whatsoever, and it didn’t take her mother long to notice.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Lily struggled to put up the old wall, the one that used to protect her, but she’d lost the knack.
“You’ve always said that, all your life,” her father pointed out.
“Because you’ve never wanted to know the truth,” Lily blurted out, surprising all three of them with her candor.
“Why on earth would you think that?” her mother asked.
“You want to think I’m fine, and Violet’s fine, that everything is peachy and always has been in this family.”
Her parents exchanged a mystified look. “That’s not so,” her father said, and her mother added, “We’ve always dealt realistically with whatever problems come our way.”
“Then why did we never deal with Evan?” Lily asked. There. She’d said it. She’d dared to mention the elephant in the corner of the room, the one they all knew was there but no one talked about. This time, she wasn’t going to let them change the subject.
“There’s no ‘dealing’ to be done,” her mother said. “You never get over a loss like that.”
“And you let it ruin your marriage and make a mess of your kids,” Lily pointed out.
“I can’t imagine why you’d think that,” her father said.
“We’ve been married thirty-five years, and you and your sister are doing fine.”
Lily pressed her sweaty palms on the table, as though to brace herself. “I can’t speak for you and Mom and I can’t speak for Vi. But I’m not fine. I’m not. I can’t even tell the man I love that I love him.”
“How is this our fault?” Her father took a handkerchief from his pocket and polished his glasses.
“It’s not, but I’ve always felt responsible for Evan’s death.” Lily heard herself whisper the words, yet she couldn’t believe her own ears. “Why do you suppose that is?”
The room became a vacuum of shocked silence. Her father started to speak, but her mother reached across the table and touched his hand to stop him. “Terence, let me tell her. She’s right, you know. We were never happy after Evan died. We just…were. But Lily, I never blamed you. How can you think that? I blamed myself. You, I could forgive. Myself, never. And there’s no one meaner than a mother who can’t forgive herself.” As she spoke, she kept hold of her husband’s hand. Then Lily, with tears in her eyes, put her own over both of theirs.
chapter 50
“Lily? I’m afraid I’m going to forget my mom.” Charlie stood in her underwear, holding the peignoir she had slept in every night since the accident. With a tragic expression on her face, she lifted the garment, and Lily could see that it was unraveling at the seams, the lace insets full of gaping holes.
Lily took it from her and set it aside, then sat down on the bed and gathered Charlie into her lap.
“Me, too,” said Ashley, c
lambering aboard.
Lily breathed in their scent and felt their warm bodies relax against hers. How did I live so long without this? she wondered. How will I go on without it? She took a deep breath and pushed aside the thought. Whatever her differences with Sean, they would not change her devotion to Crystal’s children. She had arrived this morning to find that he and Cameron had already left for the tournament. Mrs. Foster was watching the girls.
Charlie rubbed the worn, satiny fabric between her thumb and first finger. “It’s all coming apart, and when it falls apart, I’ll forget her.”
Lily took a Barbie hand mirror from the nightstand. “Sweetie, that’s impossible. Look here. What do you see?”
“My face.”
“And whose face does it remind you of?”
“It’s just my face.”
“And your mother’s face.” Lily was startled that she saw it, too, an echo of her best friend in Charlie. “You have her eyes and her smile, and every day you’ll grow more like her. Most of all, you have her in your heart. All the love she and your dad gave you is there, and it’s only going to grow. It’s yours to keep forever and ever.”
Ashley babbled something and grasped the mirror with both hands.
Charlie slumped against Lily. “I’d rather have my mom. And my dad.”
“I know, honey. We all would.” Lily rested her chin on her head.
Charlie stood up and, with a curiously adult solemnity, folded the nightgown carefully and put it in a bottom drawer. Her movements had the gravity of ritual, and she shut the drawer with a decisive push. “Maybe I’ll sleep in something else,” she said. “Uncle Sean gave me an American Chopper T-shirt.”
“I have a great idea,” Lily said. “How about I take you to the golf tournament.”
“Uncle Sean said we have to stay with Mrs. Foster.”
After last night, he’d assumed Lily wouldn’t show up to watch him play. Which only meant he still didn’t know her. Sure, she’d sent him packing and he’d willingly walked away, but the visit from her parents had convinced her that love was worth any fight.