by Wendy Wax
How could you? I think but do not ask. Because I don’t think I can bear to hear his excuses. And if he admits that he’s having an affair, there’ll be no taking it back.
Do all men cheat? Is it just a matter of time? Something that’s hardwired into their DNA, a time bomb set to go off sometime after the day they say I do but before they keel over?
But I don’t care about other men right now. I only care about my father. I had an affair with a married man even though I knew it wasn’t right. But it would have been even worse if Tonja Kay weren’t the nasty person she is. If she were . . . my mom.
“Right. Well, I should get outside.” I can’t meet his eyes, which is stupid since he’s the one who’s doing something wrong.
When I get outside my mother pats the chair next to her and Nikki hands me a glass of red wine. Temperatures are set to drop and now that the sun’s on its way down it is a bit cold for a frozen drink. Avery’s fingers are orange from Cheez Doodles. Deirdre’s sticking out her chin over something. “You’re just in time,” my mother says. “We’ve been holding off on our ‘one good things’ until you got here.”
I take a sip of wine and study my mother’s face. She looks happy and relaxed despite having cooked and served a major Christmas dinner. But then, she didn’t hear her husband on the phone just now telling some other woman how much he misses her. And she doesn’t know that Daniel Deranian is the new owner of Bella Flora.
Normally I’d be shooting the sunset and our “one good thing” ritual, but I just sit and listen as the toasts begin, wondering what in the hell I’m going to say. I’m glad my mother doesn’t know my father’s cheating on her doesn’t seem quite right. Neither does Maybe Tonja Kay won’t do too much damage to Bella Flora.
I’m still thinking damage control when Deirdre says, “I’m glad Avery didn’t burn the lingerie I gave her. And I believe if she actually wears it good things will happen.”
“Oh God,” Avery groans. “You are not going to turn me sleeping with Chase into your good thing.”
Deirdre’s eyes flash in protest, but she wisely stays silent.
“You’re sleeping with Chase?” Nicole asks in faux shock, which cracks everyone up and lightens the mood. As badly as my gut is churning, I can’t help laughing.
“Ha, look who’s talking,” Avery shoots back. “At least I’m not sleeping with the FBI.” She licks the cheese off her fingers with a Take that kind of look.
“I’m not sleeping with the whole FBI. Just one agent.” Nikki smiles wickedly. “And there’s not a whole lot of sleeping going on anyway.”
When I first met Nicole Grant she looked so sophisticated and la-di-da, even in her designer running clothes, but underneath is an iron will and a ramrod of a backbone. I think Agent Joe Giraldi has his work cut out for him.
“That’s your good thing?” Avery challenges.
Nicole looks like she’s going to argue, but she says, “Yes, I guess it is. My brother may be a greedy convicted felon and Heart, Inc. may be pretty much dead and buried. But good sex is a good thing.”
We all drink to that. I think about picking up my camera and getting a couple of shots, but I don’t. I try to keep my video honest, and honest is the last thing I feel like I can be right now.
“I don’t see Agent Giraldi bringing someone he just has sex with home to meet his family,” my mother observes. Nicole doesn’t respond, but she does pour herself another glass of wine. Normally, I’d be zooming in for a close-up, but I still don’t pick up my camera. All I can think is that my dad seems to be having good sex with someone else.
“Kyra?” Deirdre asks, but I shake my head. I’m definitely not ready yet.
“Okay, then that leaves you, Maddie,” Deirdre says.
My mother smiles and makes eye contact with each of us like she always does. “My good thing, my very best thing, is the same as last night. Having you all here to celebrate the holiday in my favorite place on earth is incredible. Even if it is the last time.” She raises her glass. “Here’s to the new owners of Bella Flora. May they love her and appreciate her every bit as much as we do.”
I raise my glass to my lips, but I don’t drink. There’s no way I can possibly swallow right now. I’m trying my hardest not to even think about Daniel, Tonja Kay, and their entourage tromping around the house that changed all of our lives; I’m definitely not going to drink to it. I also try not to think about my father and how he’s betraying my mother, actually betraying all of us. That’s a lot of things not to think about. I feel warm and overdressed, even though it’s cold out here now that the sun has gone down. I can actually feel my body temperature rising. If I were a teapot, I’d be close to a boil.
“I can hardly wait for the new year and the fresh start that it brings,” my mother continues, eerily echoing what my father said. “We’ll all have a clean slate to write on. There’s so much opportunity to . . .”
“Oh, my God!” I cut her off midsentence. I just can’t take it. “Are you serious?”
My mother looks at me. Her expression is one of concern, not anger, which makes me feel even worse. If, in fact, that’s possible. “Are you completely blind?” I ask. “Or don’t you care that Daddy is . . .”
“No, Kyra,” she interrupts me. “This isn’t a good time to talk about your father.”
There’s a warning note in her voice, but everything’s roiling inside me, looking for a way out. “I heard Dad on the phone,” I say in a rush. “He was talking to another woman!”
No one says anything as I spew out the rest. “He told her that he missed her. That he can’t wait to get back to Atlanta.” I barely stop long enough to breathe. “After everything he’s done, after everything he’s put you through, I can’t believe you’re letting him cheat on you.”
I can’t believe I’m losing it like this, either, but I can’t seem to stop. I know I should have waited until we were alone to bring this up—or not brought it up at all—but I just can’t handle it alone. I look at my mother’s face. She’s upset but not shocked. I look at Deirdre and Avery and Nicole. Their discomfort is obvious, but they’re not shocked either.
Everyone already knows. Everyone but me.
“It’s not what you think,” my mother says while everyone else tries to look as if they’re not there or at least not listening. “It’s . . .”
“It’s what?” My internal censor has checked out, and I’m practically shrieking like a child. Which is what I feel like. Small and irrational and helpless and unable to control what’s happening to my life as I know it. “He has a girlfriend and you don’t care?” I’m mortally offended on my mother’s behalf. She deserves so much more than this. But I’m also mad at her for letting him get away with this. I can’t stand that I’m about to cry.
“Kyra, sweetie. It’s all right. Everything’s okay.”
“How can you say that?” I watched my mother take on the whole load for our family when my father fell apart. I’ve been surprised and inspired by her unexpected strength. I want her to storm inside and threaten to cut off his balls. And at the same time I want her to smooth things over. To fix this like she’s always fixed everything else. “This is definitely not okay!” And never would be again.
“Kyra, honey. Your father is seeing someone. But that’s because we’re already living . . . separately.” She swallows and I think about her insistence that Dustin and I stay in her bedroom. The physical distance they’ve maintained that I’ve been trying not to notice. “Because we’re getting a divorce.”
My hand drops to my video camera and my fingers wrap around the grip. I wish I could pick it up and hide behind it. “But why didn’t you tell me? How could you not tell me?”
“We didn’t want to ruin the holiday, sweetheart. We wanted you and Andrew and Dustin to have this last Christmas with both of us. As a family.”
Tears fill my eyes, turning everyth
ing soft and out of focus. My parents, who’ve been married for twenty-six years, are getting a divorce. “He’s divorcing you? But, why would he want a divorce now? How can he do this to you?”
“He’s not doing this to me, honey. He’s giving me what I want. I asked for the divorce.”
Without speaking, Avery, Nikki, and Deirdre get up and begin to carry things inside. Vaguely I realize the sky is darkening.
“But I don’t understand. You’ve been together for so long. You’ve been through so much. All the hardest stuff is over. Dad’s back on his feet. You’re fifty-one. Why would you want to be alone now? I mean, that’s just . . .”
“Silly?” she asks quietly. “You think I’m too old to bother?”
“No,” I say, but of course that’s exactly what I think. “No, of course not.”
She sighs. “At my age you start thinking not only about the length of time you have left, but the quality of that life. And despite everything we’ve been through—or maybe because of it—I can’t be myself—the self I am now anyway—with your father.” Her smile is apologetic. It’s me she’s worried about.
I hear the finality in her voice and I can’t hold back the tears anymore. They pour out of my eyes and skid down my cheeks.
My mother wraps her arms around me. “Oh, Kyra. Honey. I’m so sorry.” She wipes a tear off my cheek and I look up at her, but her face is a blur. “I’ll always love your father in certain ways, and I’ll always be grateful to him for giving me you and Andrew.”
I’m crying full-out now.
“He’ll always be your father. And Dustin’s grandfather.” She pauses. “But I think I deserve to make the most of the time I have left, don’t you?”
I nod because I know I’m supposed to, but I feel like someone ripped a hole in my chest the size of the Holland Tunnel. I just can’t process this on top of everything else.
I hate that I’m crying, but it’s a lot harder to stop than it is to start. “I just feel like there isn’t anything I can do about . . . anything.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She brings her forehead to mine. “There’s nothing to be done. Change is the only constant, and there’s no point in wasting time and energy trying to fight it. There’s just acceptance and moving forward.”
I sniff and nod, my forehead pressing into hers. My mother has turned into this font of New Age wisdom when all I really want are the pancakes with the smiley face formed with chocolate bits and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches shaped like stars. Is that too selfish for words?
She unwraps her arms from around me but holds on to my hand. I don’t know if she signals them that it’s okay or they’ve been watching and waiting for the right moment, but Avery, Nikki, and Deirdre come back bearing more wine. I try not to be mad that they knew about my parents before I did. Timing isn’t really the point.
Nicole fills everyone’s glasses and I take a long drink.
“Are you okay?” Avery asks.
I nod even though I’m not. The tears are on intermittent now, but I can’t seem to locate the off switch. It’s small of me. I think I’ve already used the words childish and selfish, but I can’t help it. I’m both of those things. I just can’t bear to be the only one dealing with bad news. So I raise my glass. “I guess this is as good a time as any to share some news.”
I have their attention now and I don’t let myself stop and think about whether this is the best time to share it. “Daniel bought Bella Flora. He’s the mystery buyer. Tonja Kay called today to tell me how pissed off she is about it.”
I see the shock and horror on their faces, but I’m beyond caring. “She can’t wait to get her hands on it. She and her designer.” Deirdre once worked for Tonja Kay, but not anymore. “She’s thinking about gutting the first floor so that they can build an indoor pool.”
No one speaks or moves. No one even lifts a glass to her lips or so much as swallows. I’m not sure anyone is breathing.
“So I guess my one good thing is that we won’t be here when he moves Tonja Kay, their kids, and her interior designer into the place she referred to as Bella fucking Flora.”
Chapter Eight
We’re sitting in a stunned silence when Troy walks up from the beach. Once the sunset is complete, the camera-free zone ceases to exist, so his camera is on his shoulder. The men are right behind him. My father is holding Dustin’s hand. Chase and his father and sons are arranged around him. Andrew brings up the rear. They look like a batch of linemen in a protective formation around a miniature quarterback.
The pack of paparazzi straggle up the path behind them and plant themselves in the no-man’s-land of scrub and sand that lies between Bella Flora and the jetty. Apparently no real celebrities or celebrity look-alikes have popped up in the Tampa Bay area. We will have to do.
I brush my lips across Dustin’s sandy forehead and brush a dark curl back out of his eye, but I don’t meet my father’s eye when he hands Dustin to me, and I don’t speak when Troy begins to herd us inside for the grand announcement of the location of our next Do Over. I’m not sure how it’s possible to seethe and go numb at the same time, but that’s what I’m doing. I am an emotional Oreo cookie—hard and crumbly on the outside, soft and seething in the middle.
Avery goes up on her tiptoes to whisper something in Chase’s ear.
He swears, and I know she’s told him about Daniel buying Bella Flora. Chase poured his heart, his skills, and his money into both of her renovations. I hope Avery’s spared him the part about the indoor pool. And that I’m not around when he tells his dad.
“All right, everybody.” Troy continues to herd us toward the house, filming as we go. “We’re going to shoot the reveal in the salon.”
Just before the doors close behind us, I hear Nigel and Bill and the paparazzi at their backs begging for one more shot. A smile. Anything. Even a mooning from my brother or one of the Hardin boys would probably make their day. But I don’t turn around. They’ve had every bit of the golden hour when the light is best to get shots of Dustin on the beach. That’s as close to a Christmas present as they’re going to get from me.
Inside the lights are still twinkling on the tree. Opened presents lie all over the floor around it. Troy motions Mom, Avery, Chase, Deirdre, Nicole, and me to the sectional near the fireplace, then sets his camera on a tripod across from us, which will allow him to include the tree, the presents, and the rest of the group in the background. It’s exactly where I would have set up if I’d been shooting this, but I will never tell him that.
I breathe deeply and settle Dustin on my lap, trying to focus on what’s happening, but my mind is filled with images of Tonja Kay wreaking foul-mouthed revenge on our poor defenseless Bella Flora and of my family, which will only have one of my parents in it at a time. My reality has altered so much in the last twenty-four hours that I hardly recognize it. I’m afraid if someone looks at me the wrong way I’m going to start crying again.
I want to be anywhere but here. I’d be heading there right now, except that “anywhere but here” is not an option.
Troy locks down the camera, makes a small adjustment, and hands Avery the sealed envelope.
“Are you guys ready?” Avery asks. Her smile is uneven. Her hands tremble so badly that the envelope wobbles. My hands are clasped around Dustin’s stomach, which has the dual purpose of keeping him semistill and disguising my own trembling. He’s busy twirling the propeller of a wooden toy helicopter and kicking one of his legs against mine. He couldn’t care less about the camera, but then people have been aiming them at him since he was born.
Avery licks her lips as she tears open the flap and I realize how dry mine are. My mother reaches a hand over and rests it on mine, but I don’t meet her eyes. We’re about to find out where we’re going next—the network could theoretically send us anywhere in the world—but I still feel oddly half-numb. My emotional Novocain is starting to wear
off.
Troy waves one hand above the lens until I look up. His lips stretch into a smile. He points at them and then at me. I smile and try to look eager and engaged. This is business. I have to be professional. No matter how much I resent Troy being first camera and the unpleasant reality TV turn Do Over has taken, none of us can afford to walk away from a network television series. I wear what I hope is an expectant look on my face as Avery’s eyes skim over the card. All of us zone back in from wherever we’ve escaped to as she begins to speak.
“Your next Do Over will start in May,” she intones. “When you turn the home of an extremely high-profile individual into a bed-and-breakfast.” Avery looks up and I can tell that like the rest of us she’s trying to figure out just how high a profile we’re talking. Is it a politician? A movie star? A relative of Mother Teresa?
“That home . . .” She flips the card over then hesitates as if waiting for a drum roll. “. . . is located somewhere in the Florida Keys.”
There’s a beat of silence and then the guys hoot their approval. Without urging from Troy, they come toward us, talking fast.
“I’ve been down there by boat and car,” Chase says. “The fishing and diving are great. But May’s the beginning of the rainy season. It’s hot and humid as hell there in the summer, and the mosquitoes are as big as helicopters.”
“Hurrykopter!” Dustin says, spinning the wooden propeller.
“One of my roommates went to Key West last year for spring break,” Andrew says. “The pictures were awesome. Lots of body paint and big boobs.”
“Boobs!” Dustin says. I glare at my brother. I can tell by how well the word is formed that this is not the first time Dustin’s heard it. The village that’s raising my child is not always as mature as it might be.
Everybody’s talking over each other. Chase’s sons are on their phones, Googling everyone and everything they can think of to try to figure out who the house might belong to and which of the Keys it might be located in.