Anyone who thought Doug being out ahead shouting into his megaphone meant that he was the one coaxing her along wasn’t paying attention.
Brody came running, arms outstretched, her own sudden fatigue reflected in his eyes. She gathered Oscar’s collapsible water bowl and got to her feet, grateful for the excuse to go before the conversation turned back to Doug. She wanted to think she was over him—how could any self-respecting person not be?—but she’d never get over what had happened between them.
Annie followed Brody’s lead, throwing herself into her mother’s lap. Leigh wiped the smears of tear-streaked mascara from her cheeks and smiled down at her daughter, maternal adoration clouding out the angst of her earlier confession.
“Don’t count that medal out yet,” Sela told her. “In the mom events, you’re going to be a triple threat.”
Leigh looked at her with such compassionate gratitude that Sela had to look away. “You’ll call me, right? As soon as you hear anything back at all?”
Sela rested her hand atop Brody’s fine hair and smiled as bravely as she could.
“Who else would I call?”
5
Caroline
Dad had asked for a day. On the heels of that surreal morning, Caroline had forwarded Sela’s email to both parents—FYI—without further comment. Beyond that due diligence, she wasn’t about to break the silence, make the next move. Not after her inadvertent role in what had happened so far, and the odd note things had ended on.
Thus, she went through the motions as if time itself had slowed as “one day” stretched into two, then three. Caroline didn’t appreciate being avoided. She wasn’t the one who’d done the wrong thing. At least, not the big wrong thing. So when Dad called on Friday, she answered with a gut feeling that fell oddly between relief and dread—that she might finally get some answers but might not like them.
“I’ve been at one of these extended stay places, but they’re sold out Saturday for a wedding, and between Oktoberfest and the Bengals/Steelers game, I can’t find anything that isn’t a small fortune. Any chance I can stay with you?”
They didn’t have a bedroom to spare, but their semi-finished basement housed a pullout couch, every bit as uncomfortable as the rest of its breed, with the added misery of subterranean dankness. Still. She wasn’t sure any accommodations at her address could be shoddy enough to ward off resentment on Mom’s part.
“Just for a night,” he added, reading her thoughts. “She has enough grounds for divorce as it is.” His tone made light, but they both knew he wasn’t exaggerating.
What was the alternative—send him to a friend’s couch, where the circle of Mom’s humiliation would only grow? Besides, Caroline wanted answers. What could she say but yes?
Walt wasted no time in planning his exit. “You two should talk. Alone.” Then, moments later, head up from an events calendar on his phone: “That railroad in Lebanon has a princess-themed ride Saturday afternoon. Think Owen would go along with it since a train is involved?”
Caroline raised her eyebrows. “How much is this talk with Dad going to cost me?” But she couldn’t help returning his sideways grin, even as a current of memories tugged at her heart. Every year for Father’s Day, Dad used to flip the script with a special daughter date, telling everyone who asked that treating her was the best treat for him. Carousel rides at the zoo until she grew dizzy. Reds tickets behind the dugout, with clouds of cotton candy. An overflowing pick-your-own basket at the blueberry festival.
Sela never had any of that.
Would all Caroline’s memories be colored this way—like her ignorance-as-bliss childhood had been at the expense of someone else’s silent sacrifice? She desperately didn’t want that to be true.
She desperately needed to know if it was.
“Let Owen take that foam sword we got at the Renaissance Festival,” she suggested. “He can be a knight, or a prince.”
“Good call. Has anyone told you that you’re pretty good at this mom thing?”
Silly as it might sound, they made a point of trading compliments almost on a schedule. Maureen had noticed once, called her out, and rather than owning up to the weekly reminders set on her calendar, Caroline had shrugged and said, Don’t knock it till you try it. But this was gentler, kinder: Walt sensing without her saying so how anxious it would make her to juggle Dad and the kids at once and how she was not currently feeling pretty good at anything. Maybe it was Walt, then, as much as her memories rendering her in this moment verklempt.
Alone in the quiet house Saturday morning, Caroline found she could do little but wait. She flipped through a magazine but retained nothing. Unable to locate the TV remote, she launched a top-to-bottom search and recovered it in the fridge. That sent her hunting for the coffee creamer, which sat warm and ruined in the living room console.
At last, the doorbell rang—but even the chime was out of place. Usually Dad flung open the door and yodeled, “Yoo-hoo!” The formality had her bracing for how he might look—like he hadn’t slept or kept up with the blood pressure meds Mom usually monitored. But here he was—not tired or pallid.
Only sad.
“I have some ’splaining to do,” he said by way of greeting, holding up a plastic bag of Thai lunch carryout, a peace offering she wasn’t sure she could swallow. She tried to smile, to go along—as if he weren’t someone other than the man she’d seen him as before. If there’d been no end product of his infidelity, the issue would have remained between her parents and them alone. Did it have to involve her now, just because said end product not only existed but found her first?
It was a question only she could answer, which made it all the more miserable. Because the answer she kept coming back to was yes.
The warm aroma of ginger and sweet basil filled the kitchen as he unloaded the noodle bowls onto the table. She grabbed silverware and ice waters and took her seat across from him.
“Have you talked to Mom?” She’d meant to let him speak first but couldn’t stand the quiet.
He leaned back in his chair in a manner that suggested she wouldn’t like what he was about to say. “Your mom has given me an ultimatum: She’ll have me back if I promise not to pursue a relationship with Sela.”
This was not where Caroline had expected to begin. This wasn’t the beginning, thirty-some years back, but the end. Present day. She blinked at him. “She wants to just—pretend this hasn’t happened?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure Hannah is as surprised as she’s let on, to be honest. It might be more accurate to say she wants to keep pretending.”
A puzzle piece clicked into place—the hollow darkness in her mother’s eyes the last time they’d said good-bye. It had the depth of an old, unhealed wound, not the fresh cut of a new one. “Are you saying she knew about Sela’s mother all along?”
He sighed. “Well, she knew Sela’s mother. The message you forwarded confirmed that.”
In the beat of silence that reverberated between them, Caroline tried to picture someone, anyone, she knew sleeping with Walt. How disregarded she would feel, by both of them.