Chapter 67 Penny
Chapter 67
Penny
“‘What’s your best excuse when you’re pulled over for speeding?’”
They all shout, “Diarrhea!”
Leo says, “My wife’s having a baby.”
She remembers the day Leo got a police escort to the hospital for the birth of their third child.
“‘What don’t women want?’” Sienna reads aloud. “Where do we start, ladies?”
They’re elbow to elbow, picking cards and laughing at the answers. They’re spilling stories about life and relationships and kids.
“Our oldest tried to make waffles for his brother by pouring the dry mix directly onto the griddle,” Lucy says.
“I was at a friend’s house and helped myself to a bowl of grapes on the table. They were plastic!” Penny says.
They’re laughing so hard, she’s sure wine shoots from their noses. Her belly hurts from the memory. It feels good, but then her and Leo’s phones ping simultaneously. They pick them up at the same time. A text from his publicist with a link.
Have you lost your mind? it reads.
She’s surprised it took this long. She had just begun to wriggle away from the awful memory, praying those girls wouldn’t be so foolish as to post photos from the Profile hike. She was wrong. This is TMZ gold.
She slams her phone down on the table, but she can hear the girls’ voices from the video streaming from Leo’s phone. Henry passes Leo on the way to his seat beside Lucy, and the room quiets as Tracey’s voice booms through the speaker: “You are everything that’s wrong with men today.”
“Is that you, Leo?” Henry asks, leaning in for a better look.
Curiosity is piqued. The others get up from their chairs and stand over Leo.
Penny’s trying to avoid Leo’s eyes. Leo’s not watching the film. He’s watching her.
“You and Penny ... you were everything we wanted. Everything we dreamed about as little girls. And not just because you’re Leo Fucking Shay. We idolized you two. We watched you hold doors for Penny. Piggyback your daughter through the Oscars. You were macho, but you were sensitive and sexy and unflinchingly loyal. You made us believe that happily ever after just might exist.”
The first time Tracey said it, she looked tearful. Now, with Tracey’s careful editing, Penny is the one who feels like crying.
Tracey added music to the scene—Morgan Fucking Wallen—and the camera shines on Leo’s handsome face. “I love Penny. I still love Penny.”
Penny feels the table eyeballing her, studying her for a reaction.
“If you love her, Leo, you need to prove it.”
“Please shut it off,” Penny says.
But he won’t. The video has the appeal of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” except she knows this won’t end all that well.
And the video rolls on. Leo losing his temper. Leo divulging to these strangers, and now the world, what happened that day in August. How much they lost and how they couldn’t come back from it. She feels their eyes on her, on him. What will this do to Alara and Buckley?
“Please, Leo.”
They’re at the part when Penny broke free and headed down the mountain. She should get up from the table and go, but where? A part of her wants to know the end, a different end from the one they have. And that’s when Leo finally presses pause.
Lucy is the first to say something. “I am so terribly sorry.”
Sienna wipes her eyes. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. I am so sorry you had to go through that.”
Henry takes a swig of wine.
“I told you this would happen,” Penny says. “You gave those vultures everything they wanted.”
Then he stands up.
“Penny.”
“Leo, don’t.”
“Penny,” he says, talking over her. “I did it for us. I did it for you.”
“You think this is going to help us? Spilling our private life in the news for anyone to dissect and distort? How is this going to help Alara and Buckley? Or the kids?”
“They asked me to prove myself. They attacked you. I won’t let them do that anymore. We’ve spent so much time protecting our privacy and keeping things secret that we succeeded in burying our very real feelings. We cut ourselves off from each other.”
“Not now, Leo.” Her heart beats wildly.
“Now, Penny.”
He looks around the table. “We rented a house in Palm Springs with our best friends from high school. Normal people not in the business. Buckley was out golfing. Alara was with us at the pool, watching the kids.” He pauses; it’s not an easy story to share. “The kids were all good swimmers ...”
“You don’t have to do this,” Penny says.
“I do.”
“You don’t have to share every detail. Some things can be ours.”
“You’re right, but I think we need to talk about it. Me and you. Because if we don’t, we’ll never find a way back to each other. I think you want that, and I do too.” He keeps going. “The kids had been in the pool the whole day. Penny said she’d go inside for more drinks and snacks. I told her I’d help. I followed her inside. She looked so beautiful, my wife.” He stops. Unable to say more.
Penny’s back in the moment, back in the torment of that day. They didn’t have sex, but they’d wanted to. He came up to her and pressed her against the wall. His thumb traced her lip, and they molded into one, he shirtless, she in a bikini. And he kissed her as though it had been months, and it almost had been. He’d been on a shoot, and she’d lost track. She felt his entire body against hers, and they got carried away. But she also told him to stop. She told him six kids were too many for Alara to watch. She told him they had a job to do, but he kissed her harder and reached for her nipple under the thin fabric. She let out a soft moan, but she managed to wriggle away.
“I kissed my wife.” His voice breaks up the memory. “I wanted her. I loved her. And I kissed her longer than I should have. By the time we got the drinks and snacks and made our way outside ...”
Nobody speaks.
“If we’d been there . . . if there had been more eyes . . . maybe . . .”
The memory of that day and all it signified broke them. Their marriage. Their kids. Their lifelong friendship with Buckley and Alara.
“We gave Ellie CPR, but it was too late. She got stuck under the float. No one saw. When we got to her, there was nothing more we could do.” Leo is full-on crying, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Do you know how many times I’ve gone over it in my head? Do you know how many times I wondered what would have happened if Penny had gone in there alone? If I hadn’t followed her? If I hadn’t touched her?”
The anguish in his face is tough to watch. It’s no wonder they tried to banish the memory.
“We lost more than Ellie that day. We lost our best friends too. They didn’t say it, but they wanted to know why it had to happen to their kid and not ours. Alara had to be hospitalized for months from the grief. We only heard from them once. In the days that followed, they begged us to keep it private, begged us to protect their children. And we did.” His bloodshot eyes look up. “But we took it too far. We shut each other out.
“Penny eventually moved back to Miami. We were hardly talking. Our desire ... our passion ... everything was tied to grief and mourning. And mistakes. I couldn’t touch my wife. I couldn’t hold her. That day at the café with Claire, I was having problems connecting on-screen, and somehow the incident got brought up. She took my hand under the table to console me. I was falling apart. The pain and guilt and grief were eating me alive. And she kissed me. It was unexpected, and it took me a second to process what she was doing, but I turned my head. It just wasn’t fast enough. The pictures spoke a thousand words. And sometimes they get it right, but in this case, they got it wrong.”
Seeing Leo with Claire confirmed what Penny already knew. They’d made a mistake, and the hatred she felt for herself turned on him. By then they were too far apart to find their way back.
“Leo. Penny.” It’s Lucy. “What you’ve been through, and what your friends have been through, is every parent’s nightmare.” She waits to see if they’re okay with her continuing, and when neither of them protests, she says, “I know this is going to be hard to hear: you’ve spent a lot of time blaming yourselves, but this wasn’t your fault.”
His eyes narrow in on Lucy.
“What if we hadn’t—”
“What-if thinking is a useless spiral. Your love didn’t cause this. That kiss didn’t cause this. Imagine how Alara must feel. The grief she carries. I bet the raft was big. Her daughter was a good swimmer. There were others in the pool at the time—”
“They weren’t responsible for Ellie,” Penny interrupts.
“Sometimes in life, things happen that we will never, ever understand. Losing a child is one of those things. It’s incomprehensible. And blame and regret won’t help you heal. It will tear you apart and keep you from ever finding peace again. You two probably single-handedly saved Cassidy.”
Penny sighs. “It’s brought it all back.”
They’ve returned to their seats, and the mood becomes somber.
“I’m sorry. We wish you didn’t have to go through this. We’re sorry for your friends. You never get over that kind of loss,” Lucy says.
Jean-Paul and Renée plate the crème br?lée, but no one seems to have an appetite. Penny’s phone pings; so does Leo’s. Everyone wants to know what happened. Everyone wants a peek behind the curtain. TMZ picked it up. E! News. The New York Post . Notifications pile up on their phones, and even though they’re not mentioned by name, she waits for the video to reach Alara and Buckley.
“Penny,” Rosalie says, “I’m not sure this is going to help, but when I needed you, you were there. You saved me the other night. I felt like somebody cared. You did that for me. Maybe you don’t remember, but I do.”
“Give some of that love to Leo,” Renée says, joining in. “We’ve all seen how he looks at you. How he loves you.” She stops and motions to Henry. “I know you call Sienna ‘Sirius,’ but Penny is the sun.” She finds Penny’s eyes again. “You have every right to shine.”
Now Penny’s sobbing, and Rosalie comes over and offers a hug. Penny takes her in, lets her in close.
“I didn’t mean to ruin the night by bringing this up,” Leo says. “I just needed to share this part of us.” He looks at Penny when he finishes. “Because it’s true. None of us at this table is exactly who we seem or expect—”
“Except Adam,” Sienna jokes.
“There’s more to the video,” Leo adds.
“It doesn’t matter,” Henry says. “You got what you needed from it.”
But Leo is Leo, and he presses play, and Tracey comes back on the screen.
“If there was something you could say to bring Penny back, would you say it?”
Penny’s confused. This she hadn’t heard.
He turns the screen toward her. “I love you, Penny Silverman Shay. I never stopped. And I’m sorry we let grief and guilt pull us apart, because I hate living life without you.”
He turns to her and shuts off his phone. “Pen, if we can just get this piece right, I think we can fix this.”
This isn’t a line from a movie. This is Leo. Her Leo.
They watch her, waiting for her response.
She closes her eyes, and this time she doesn’t see little Ellie’s face or her tiny lifeless body; she sees Leo. Leo and her picking blueberries in Malibu. Leo walking the girls to school with three pink backpacks slung on his shoulder. Leo and her rehearsing lines together, laughing until their bellies ache.
She doesn’t know how they’ll do it, but she knows she wants to try. And she doesn’t make her way over to him, but she nods. At first it’s tentative, but then it’s absolute. A singular gesture that means she’s in. And she catches his two-tone eyes and gives him a thumbs-up. She doesn’t imagine it. There’s a collective sigh. “Okay, I need more wine,” she says.
“Drinks are on me tonight,” he says with a smile.