Chapter 2
Chapter Two
P eter begged Gale not to tell the girls what he’d done.
It was a couple of weeks after Gale’s birthday. Gale was in the bedroom where they’d made their girls, wearing a pair of leggings and a tank top, throwing items into three suitcases. It was the end of May, and the divorce lawyers had been contacted, and conversations had been had—painful ones that had genuinely altered Gale’s DNA. Gale had accidentally lost ten pounds far too quickly. To his credit, Peter looked kind of bad. Haggard. Gray-faced. It hadn’t been his plan to lose Gale. He’d just wanted extracurricular activities along the way.
Peter was in the doorway, his arms crossed, his hair greasy. He was watching her pack. “You know you don’t have to go,” Peter said. “Providence is your home. And I’m happy to get an apartment or something.”
Peter had begged her to work it out, but she’d refused. She was beyond this stage of her life. She was forty-six with half of her life left to live. Perhaps that would sound exciting later on. Right now, it was just daunting.
“And you know you can always come home,” Peter added, his voice wavering.
Her biggest fear was failing out there on her own and limping back into Peter’s arms. Pathetic.
Gale raised her shoulders and re-folded a cardigan she’d bought during a trip to Maine with Peter three years ago. At that time, he’d apparently been having an affair with one of their neighbors—something she’d learned during his tell-all a few nights after her birthday. Five affairs over the course of twenty-four years. Gale knew everything now. For better or for worse.
“You really never thought about cheating on me?” Peter had asked that night.
Gale had laughed until she’d cried. No, she hadn’t said. I wanted to love you completely and totally for the rest of my days.
Gale said, “I want to spend the summer in Nantucket with Mom. She’s on her own over there in that big beach house.”
“It probably isn’t even up to code,” Peter said.
“That’s on the docket for my summer plans,” she said. “Hire a repairman. Get that house back in shipshape.”
“You could flip it and sell it,” Peter suggested because he was obsessed with making money.
Gale gave him a dead-eyed look that meant, I would never flip and sell the Nantucket beach house. Are you crazy? His face fell.
“Right. I know. It’s full of memories,” Peter said, extending his hands out in front of him as defense.
It was Gale’s idea to tell Anna and Piper together. She didn’t want it to come out of left field. So they invited the girls for dinner—takeout of their favorite Mexican place. Maybe it was the hundredth time they’d ever eaten there. Perhaps it was the thousandth. Just as ever, Peter went to pick it up while Gale vacuumed the living room for the final time, sat on the edge of the sofa, and wept into her hands. When the girls arrived, she cleaned herself up and let them in. They entered like a light breeze, laughing and finishing one another’s sentences. Peter returned with the Mexican food piled high in plastic bags and hugged the girls. His eyes were rimmed with red. Don’t break down yet, Gale wanted to beg him. Let’s pretend we’re a happy family for a little while longer.
They sat in the same seats they always sat in at the dining room table. Peter was by the window. Gale was across from him. Anna was on her left, and Piper was on her right. In Gale’s memory, they’d even set the high chairs up like that, but it was impossible to know for sure.
“You don’t even know,” Anna said as she dipped her chip in cheese sauce, “how crazy it is at work right now. I’m on the road constantly. I can barely catch a breath.”
Anna worked as a political journalist. Her work had ramped up with a new election in November. It was her first foray into the wild west of election journalism—the girls were just twenty-three years old—and Gale sensed the adrenaline and light in her eyes.
“But like I told you before, I didn’t even think I would get this job,” Anna said. “I mean, I had all those interviews, but I didn’t go to Yale, Harvard, or even Rutgers.”
Anna went to the University of Rhode Island, which was Peter and Gale’s alma mater. He stood for it, saying, “Don’t bash where you came from. A lot of prominent people went there. Me. Your mom. Christiane Amonpour. Pat Abbruzzi. Robert Ballard.” He listed them and waved his fork.
“I know. I know.” Anna blushed.
“And the fact that you got the gig in the face of all those Harvard and Yale grads means something,” Gale interjected.
Peter snapped his fingers. “You’ve got it , kid.”
Peter and Gale locked eyes across the table. Gale’s heart jumped into her throat, and she bit her tongue to keep from sobbing.
They talked about Anna’s career for a while, plus her dreams and goals for the upcoming year. Perhaps she’d have to write about another brand-new president. Maybe she’d find new ways to discuss the ongoing wars across the world. Anna was whip-smart and slightly impatient. This made her a wonderful journalist. She always went out and sought the story.
Piper, on the other hand, was quieter and demure. She adored her sister and fought to avoid following her as a teenager. She’d had to forge her own path. She’d gone into pastry-making and worked at a little shop in downtown Providence. Tonight for dessert, she’d brought little éclairs so tiny and beautiful that Gale had to fight tears all over again. Everything made her cry these days.
Piper told a story in her little soft-spoken voice about a pastry incident at the shop earlier that week. “There was frosting all over me,” she said, laughing delicately.
Peter shot Gale a look halfway through dinner that meant, please don’t tell them. Please, let’s just keep our lives like this. Don’t break their hearts.
Peter loved the twins. Gale loved the twins. But she had to love herself, too. And that meant getting out.
Gale folded her hands under her chin and interrupted a comfortable silence. “I have some news.”
Anna’s eyes brightened. Piper tilted her head. They were precisely the same: soft red hair that curled to their shoulders, green eyes like Gale’s. They were five feet five with round cheeks and very small feet. But Gale, being their mother, always knew how to tell them apart. It had to do with their mannerisms. It had to do with the different twinkles in their eyes and Piper’s quieter voice and Anna’s garrulousness.
“I’m going to spend the summer on Nantucket,” Gale began.
Peter made a horrible noise in his throat. He sounded like a wounded animal.
“With Grandma?” Piper asked.
“Yes. With your grandmother,” Gale said.
“I have too much work,” Peter interjected, as though that were the reason he couldn’t make it.
Anna nodded knowingly. She had work, too. She knew all about that.
But Gale hurried to fix the implication. “Actually, that’s not it. Your father and I are going to take some time apart.”
Piper and Anna’s faces were immediately drained of color. Anna tugged her hair, just as she had as a little girl.
“I’m sorry?” Anna blurted.
Piper’s lower lip quivered.
This would all be solved if I could just tell them about their father’s multiple affairs.
But Gale was an adult. And being an adult meant not needing to “win” all the time.
“We’re going to take some time apart,” Gale repeated because she’d decided it was the best way to put it. “We’ve been married a long time. You’ve had boyfriends. You know that not everyone sees eye-to-eye after a while.”
Piper dropped her face into her hands, and her shoulders quivered. Anna looked stricken. She reached across the table and took Gale’s, then Peter’s hands. She looked like she was going to ask how she could fix it. How could she use her journalistic intellect to bring Mom and Dad together again? As if it were really that simple.
“We’re going to talk after summer’s over,” Peter said. “We’re going to reassess.”
They hadn’t agreed to that, but Gale had to let it go. She set her jaw. Sure. Whatever. We can “reassess.”
The girls were quick to get out of there that night. They left the dessert behind and boarded Piper’s Chevy, driving slowly into the mist that billowed through Providence. It was like a kind of omen. Peter remained at the dining room table with his shoulders hunched. The phone started to ring in the kitchen, a brrrring that cut through the silence and made Gale’s ears ring. Gale hadn’t had the energy to answer it since the night what’s-her-name called. Margaret. Her name is Margaret. When Gale had asked Peter if he was still going to see her, he’d said, I don’t care about her. I care about you. But that wasn’t a real answer to her question, was it?
If Gale were a betting woman—which she generally wasn’t—she’d have bet that Peter and Margaret would be married within the year.
But she never could have imagined what happened next instead.