by Vi Keeland
I didn’t understand. It seemed impossible to reconcile my smiling, seemingly happy parents with my dad having an affair with the woman in front of me. I thought for a long time, leaving the silence in the room to grow thick.
When I finally spoke, I looked straight into her eyes. “He loved my mother. They were happy.”
I could see my words caused her pain. As fucked up as it was, that made me feel bad.
She nodded. “Of course he did. There’s no excuse for what I did, what your father and I did, Ford. The only thing I can say is that we’d both been married a long time. I’d married my high school sweetheart, just like your father.” She shook her head and looked out the window. “Curiosity? I don’t know. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, though, both while it was happening and over the last three years. Neither of us had much experience. We didn’t date or really live adult lives outside of our spouses. So I guess maybe we reached a certain point in our lives—midlife—and wondered who we were without our spouses. You’re young, so I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Honestly, I’m not sure I even understand, but I think I needed validation that what I had wasn’t going to be my entire life here on this Earth.”
She returned her gaze to me and shook her head. There were tears pooled in her eyes. “By the time I realized what I had was enough, and I should’ve been thanking my lucky stars instead of thinking I was missing out on something, it was too late.”
I sat in silence, trying to make sense of everything, but I couldn’t seem to grasp anything in my hands. Nothing could sink in. I knew in my heart I’d never be back here, I’d never see this woman again, so I wanted to make sure to ask her what I needed to ask and say what I needed to say. Hoping things would come to me, I looked around the room, lost in thought. My eyes landed on a framed photo of a little girl. She couldn’t be older than five or six.
No.
Just fucking no.
My voice was so monotone. “Is that your daughter?”
Marie smiled. “Yes. Rebecca.” Her smile wilted. “The divorce was hard on her. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through…and now coming here and dealing with this.”
I continued to stare at the photo, looking for signs of my father. I had to swallow a giant lump in my throat to ask what I needed to ask. “Is she…my father’s?”
Marie’s eyes grew wide. “Oh! No. God, no. That’s an old picture. Rebecca is going to be ten next month.” She turned around and looked at the photo. “She was about six there, so I can understand why you’d think that. But I can assure you, she was born years before I even met your father.”
Thank God for one thing, I guess. I sat for another minute or two in silence, thinking about what else I needed to know. But really, I’d already found out too much.
I stood. “Thank you for your honesty.”
She nodded and stood. “I’m sorry, Ford. About everything—the affair, your loss, you finding out. Everything. If I could rewind and do it all over, it would never have happened.”
I walked out of Marie Louise Landsford’s office without looking back.
Unfortunately, I didn’t need to look back, because her honesty had already changed everything I saw looking forward.
Chapter 24
* * *
Valentina
I’d stopped listening to music over the years, and I hadn’t even noticed.
I listened in the car, of course. But I didn’t blast it while I was at home cleaning, showering, or cooking anymore, like I had years ago. Lately, though, that had changed. I found myself doing things I hadn’t in a long time—singing along to music when in the shower, dancing while folding the laundry, planting flowers, baking without a party to bring dessert to. I felt lighter and happier than I had in a long time. And whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not, one of the big reasons for that change was the man next door, who was currently on his way back out to Montauk.
A Billy Joel song came on while I was in the shower, and I sang along, belting out “Only the Good Die Young” at the top of my lungs like I was putting on a show for a sold-out crowd. It felt good…so damn good. As I rinsed the last of the conditioner from my hair, I closed my eyes and joined Taylor Swift for an earsplitting performance of “Shake it Off” that culminated in my singing and shimmying the towel to dry off my back. I wrapped my hair in a towel and threw on yoga pants and a tank top. Grabbing my moisturizer, I wiped the fog from the mirror and found a face smiling at me in the reflection—my own. I felt giddy.
This morning I’d done the sunrise yoga class with Bella and then went for a long walk on the beach. Halfway back home, my cell rang. It was the school I’d had a second interview with yesterday. I got the job!
Since then, I hadn’t stopped smiling. And I couldn’t wait to tell Ford. He’d been in a rush to catch his plane home from Chicago when I’d texted him earlier, so I figured I’d save my surprise until he got back to Montauk. My plans were to go to the supermarket and pick up a few things to make his favorite dinner.
Though those plans abruptly changed the minute I opened the bathroom door.
I startled and jumped to find a man casually leaning against the top stair railing a few feet from the bathroom door. But then my eyes bulged and jaw hung open.
“Surprise.” My son smiled and chuckled. “That’s some show you put on. Didn’t think you were ever going to come out of there. I didn’t know you were such a Swiftie, Mom.”
“Oh my God. Ryan! You’re home!” I swamped him in a giant hug.
He laughed and hugged me back.
“What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t going to be able to come home at all this summer because of the internship?”
“I finished a project I was working on a few days early, so I asked if I could take today to make it a four-day weekend for Labor Day. I need to fly back early Monday morning.”
“Why didn’t you call me? How did you get out here from the airport?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to surprise you. I took the train and then a cab.”
“Well, you succeeded.” God, I needed to squeeze him some more. I snuggled in for another hug. “I missed you.”
“I figured it might be a tough summer being out here for the first time alone.”
Except…uh-oh…I wasn’t alone.
“Umm… I kept myself busy.”
He looked over my face. “You look good, Mom.”
I patted the towel wrapped atop my head. “Must be the turban.”
Ryan smiled. “No…something’s different. You look…I don’t know…less stressed, maybe.”
I squeezed his hand. “I am. I was going to tell you when we spoke this weekend. But I got a job.”
“Wow. Congrats. That’s awesome. And so quick.”
“Yeah. I’m really happy about it.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners, and he smiled warmly. “That’s what it is. You look happy.”
“I am.” Though a large portion of that had nothing to do with getting a job.
“Well, come on. Go dry your hair or do whatever you do when you take it out of the towel, and let’s get something to eat to celebrate. I’m starving.”
“Okay! Give me fifteen minutes.”
After I dried my hair, I shot off a quick text to Ford.
Valentina: My son just surprised me. He’s home for the holiday weekend.
I watched for the text to show as delivered, but it never did. Checking the time on my phone, he should’ve been off the plane and on the train by now. Though perhaps his flight was delayed, and his phone was still off. I hit Call—but it went directly to voicemail. His phone was definitely off. So I shot off another text.
Valentina: I’ll still pick you up from the train. Text me when you know which one you’ll be on.
I tossed my phone into my purse and slipped into a pair of flip-flops. Ryan being home complicated things between Ford and me and the plans I’d had for us to celebrate this weekend, but I couldn’t be upset my son had sur
prised me. I was happy he was home.
On my way down the stairs, I was surprised to hear two voices, but found no one in the house. “Ryan?” I yelled.
“On the back deck!”
I found Ryan leaning over the railing talking to Bella. “I didn’t know Ryan was coming this weekend,” she said.
“I didn’t either. He surprised me.”
“Awww, that’s so sweet. It’s been a while, huh, Rye-Rye?”
I hadn’t heard that nickname in at least ten years. Bella used to call Ryan that when he was little, and he’d hated it.
But when I looked over at my son, he didn’t seem to dislike it anymore. His eyes dipped down to do a quick sweep over Bella. He was checking her out. “You’ve changed.”
She batted her eyelashes. “So did you.”
Oh God. No.
I needed to get Ryan the hell out of here. I tugged at my son’s arm. “We’ve gotta run. See you later, Bella.”
Our lunch lasted two hours. We went to Lobster Roll and sat outside on the benches eating and talking, mostly about his first year of college and his internship.
“All we’ve done is talk about me. Tell me how your summer was. Is it weird being out here without Dad and me?”
I shook my head. “It’s different, but not weird. He actually was out a few weeks ago to get an estimate on some work we need done at the house.”
“How’d that go?”
I smiled. “About as well as the last few years we were together. He said something that pissed me off, and I told him to get out.”
Ryan laughed. “He’s been calling me a lot lately.”
In my head, I thought, Of course he is. His toddler girlfriend moved to India, so he finally has some time to pay attention to his son. Ryan couldn’t possibly have time for two teenagers in his busy life.
But I swallowed my real thoughts and went with something supportive. “That’s good. I’m glad you two are making more of an effort to stay connected.”
He shrugged. “How would you feel toward Tom if he cheated on Eve?”
I knew what he was getting at. “I adore Tom. But I’d always be on Eve’s side, of course. Then again, Tom isn’t my father.”
He wrinkled up his napkin and tossed it on his empty plate. “He’s not seeing her anymore.”
I nodded. “I know. He told me.”
“Is…there any way you’d ever forgive him?”
Oh God. He might look like a grown man, but inside he was still my little boy who hated to see his parents broken up.
“You know what? I sort of have forgiven him. At least I’m moving on from it. I’m not going to lie, your father and I splitting up was hard on me. I think you know that. But now that I’m on the other side of it, I realize we would have wound up here no matter what. We were kids when we got married, and I have no regrets about the decisions I made because I got you out of it, and your father and I…we had some good years. But we grew apart as we grew up, and neither of us was happy for a long time. I blamed it on what he’d done, because it was easier at the time. But our relationship was in trouble long before he did what he did. In fact, the poor state of our marriage is probably one of the main reasons he turned to someone else.”
My son looked down. “I get it. It was stupid for me to even ask.”
I reached out and took his hand. “No, it wasn’t. It’s perfectly normal for a child to want his parents to be happily married.”
Ryan nodded. “That reminds me. What should I have said to Bella about her parents? I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, so I didn’t.”
“I think you can just give your condolences if you see her again. She talks about them a lot, and she’s okay with people mentioning it.”
“Crazy that she lost them both.” He shook his head. “And I’m sitting here selfishly asking if you and Dad might get back together. Puts things into perspective.”
“Yeah. But she seems do be doing well.”
My son smirked. “She looks well.”
I wrinkled my nose. My son assumed it was a general icky feeling a mom might get about her son checking out a girl.
He chuckled. “Yeah. Pretty sure my face would be the same if you were telling me some guy was hot.”
I winced inwardly. Pretty sure your face would be worse if I told you the guy I thought was hot was the brother of the girl you thought was hot.
***
That evening, I still hadn’t heard from Ford, and my text wasn’t showing as delivered yet. I was getting worried and reached out to Bella, albeit under false pretenses.
I knocked next door and she appeared in her uniform. “Hey.”
“Hey, Bella. Have you heard from your brother? Umm…I wanted to ask him to look at my sink again. He fixed it for me at the beginning of the summer.”
“Yeah. He’s in his room. Passed out, I think.”
I failed at hiding my surprise. “He’s home?”
She scooped her car keys off the kitchen counter. “Got home about an hour ago. Bombed off his ass. He was swaying. I’m surprised he made it up the stairs. I have to get to work, but feel free to wake him up. Although, I doubt he’s in a condition to fix anything.”
“Ummm. Okay. Thanks. Maybe I’ll just check on him and make sure he’s okay.”
She smiled. “Such a mom.”
I waited downstairs until she got into her car and pulled out of the driveway, and then I went up to Ford’s bedroom. Sure enough, he was out cold. Face down, his arms and legs splayed wide across the bed, he held his cell phone in one of his hands.
I walked over and whispered, “Ford?”
He didn’t budge so I slipped the cell from his hand and pressed the side button. Dead. Well, at least that made me feel better about why he hadn’t called. I walked over to the end table and plugged it in for him, then sat down on the edge of the bed and watched him sleep.
“Bad day, sweetheart?” I brushed a piece of his hair from his face. “You’ve been quiet since you went to Chicago. Probably hard to visit the building you and your dad worked on together, huh? A lot of memories.”
Of course he didn’t answer. After watching him sleep for a little bit, I took off his shoes, got a bottle of water and a couple of Tylenol from the bathroom, and left his hangover helper at his bedside.
I leaned down and kissed his cheek gently. I felt a tightening in my chest as I realized in a few days I wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. God, I’m not ready for this to be over.
Chapter 25
* * *
Ford
My lungs burned, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
I wasn’t even sure where I was. I’d gotten up at the ass crack of dawn with a belligerent hangover. Tylenol and two bottles of water did nothing to ease the pounding in my head. I couldn’t even remember getting home. I remembered sitting at the airport bar, pounding vodka tonics and ordering more on the plane. After that, it was pretty much a blur. Somehow I’d managed to get on the right train and made it into my bed. On any other day, if I’d woken with this kind of killer headache, I’d have turned over and gone back to sleep.
But this morning, I needed to feel more pain. So I’d gone out for a run. And I’d run. And run. And kept on running. I’d run until I ran out of beach, then kept going—weaving my way through side streets and passing houses and blocks as fast as I could.
Finally, my legs gave out on me, and I fell.
So here I was, sitting in the middle of a park I’d never seen before, on some block I’d never been to, panting and bleeding from a scraped-open knee. My head still fucking hurt, but the burn in my lungs felt even better.
I sat with my elbows on my knees and my head dropped between them.
My fucking father is a cheater.
The man whose chair I sat in at work, whose daughter I’d raised for the last five years, whose relationship I’d thought was everything…the man who I’d looked up to since I could remember.
It fucking hurt. And I just couldn’t make sense of it.
/>
Why?
Why?
My parents had seemed so in love. They didn’t fight. They didn’t have financial problems. They finished each other’s sentences, for Christ’s sake. As I sat there, stills of them played in my head like a slideshow on fast forward.
Them dancing on the deck.
Mom reading to Dad on the beach.
Him grabbing her ass, and her giggling when they thought no one was paying attention.
All the I love yous.
The Mason jars.
The two of them wrote things down they loved about each other and exchanged them as gifts.
Who the fuck does that if you aren’t in love?
And that was the part I couldn’t reconcile.
Even though I’d found out he’d had a long-term relationship with another woman, I still had no doubt he loved my mother. So if he loved my mother, why would he do it?
Why?
Why?
Why?
The only answer that made sense was the one his mistress had given me. They’d gotten married so young, neither of them knew a life without the other, and my father hit a certain age and started to have an identity crisis.
A midlife crisis.
It wasn’t fucking right.
That was for sure.
But it’s also what had happened in Valentina’s marriage.
Fuck.
I was pissed as hell at my father, but that wasn’t what had my chest feeling hollow at the moment.
Valentina had been right all along.
I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to see it.
She’d been with her husband since she was sixteen—the same age my parents got together.
I wanted her to choose to be with me, but how could she decide what she wanted when she didn’t even know what was out there.
***
Shit.
This morning I’d read Val’s texts from yesterday, so I knew her son Ryan was in town. But I had no idea what she’d told him. I assumed nothing. Yet I couldn’t be sure, so I played it close to the vest. The two of them were out on the back deck, leaning over the railing looking at the beach when I walked up on the sand—hours after I’d left for my run.