Letter Twenty-Two #3
“What else has she done?”
Bree hesitated again. “If I tell you this, you can’t say anything, okay? Especially to your dad.”
“To my dad? Why?”
“Because it involves him.”
“I won’t say anything,” I said, but it already felt like a lie.
Bree turned her body to face mine. “Okay, so you know how my dad made me sleep in the parents’ wing over the summer?”
I nodded.
“Well, early one morning, I started to leave the guest bedroom and…” Bree trailed off, chewing hard on her bottom lip.
“And what, Bree?”
“I saw my mom leaving Nic’s bedroom.”
“Okay…”
“I tried telling myself they were probably just talking. But she looked half-asleep, like she does when she first wakes up, and what she wore made it even more difficult for me to believe that.”
“What did she wear?”
“This short, silky chemise thing. The top part was made entirely of lace, and even from down the hall, I could see her nipples. She was wearing lingerie—in your dad’s room. No robe to cover herself or anything.”
I stared at Bree, wide-eyed and speechless. Eventually, I managed to whisper, “What the fuck.”
“Yeah,” Bree said. “So later that morning, I talked to my dad, because I couldn’t let my mom cheat on him and get away with it.
I told him what I saw, and this is the really messed-up part.
It didn’t faze my dad. He didn’t look shocked or upset at all.
He just…brushed it off. Told me not to worry about it.
He said they’d known each other a long time, that they were much closer than most friends.
Then he went back to his book, totally not caring that his wife had just spent the night with his best friend. ”
Again, I gaped at Bree. And, again, I whispered, “What the fuck.”
“I know,” Bree said. “Since then, I’ve been watching them closely, and I’m starting to notice all this stuff that never seemed weird before, but seems totally obvious now. Stuff that should’ve been obvious the whole time.”
“Like what?”
“Like how your dad’s the only one who calls my mom Lib, and how I can never tell which one of our dads my mom’s talking to on the phone, because she talks to them both exactly the same way. And then there’s how she touches Nic when he’s over at my house after school.”
“After school?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“When I get home from school, he’s usually there—hanging out with my parents.”
“My dad?” This didn’t compute. Since when did my dad hang out at the Harrises’ during the middle of his workday?
Even more bewildering to me? That I had just now learned about it.
“Just for a little while,” Bree said. “When I walk in, he’s getting ready to leave and head back to work. My mom smooths his jacket and tie, and he kisses her goodbye on the cheek, and I mean, they’ve always done that stuff, haven’t they? Only I never read into it before—but I definitely am now.”
Bree was right. Nic and Libby had always been super affectionate with each other—kisses on the cheek, hand squeezes, long hugs—but I figured they did that stuff because they were best friends. The same way Michael and I were.
Before we started hooking up, that is.
Bree added, “And my dad—he also touches your dad a lot. Have you ever noticed that?”
I stopped to think. “Your dad touches everyone. He’s a touchy-feely guy. My dad is, too, actually.”
Bree winced. “Are they, though? Or just with each other?”
I gave a nervous little laugh. “They’re best friends.”
“I don’t know,” Bree said. “I think there’s more to them than that.”
“Why?” I asked, drawing the word out.
“Because I’ve”—Bree shifted uncomfortably beside me—“seen some stuff recently. Now that I’ve been paying attention.”
“What stuff?”
“Well, like, one day after school? When Nic was over at the house? He seemed pretty upset about something. My dad and Nic were sitting close on the couch in his study, facing each other, talking quietly. Then Nic looked away at one point, and my dad, like, touched Nic’s face and pulled it back to his.
Your dad put his hand over my dad’s hand, and they leaned in really close until their foreheads were almost touching.
Nic grabbed the back of my dad’s neck and—”
“Oh, God,” I cried, springing up from the bed. “I can’t listen anymore. This is so messed up. Oh my God.” I sounded hysterical. “Have you told Michael all this?”
Bree nodded. “He’s disturbed by it, too. He’s been worried about telling you—worried you might overreact—but I felt you should know.”
“Do you think this is why my dad doesn’t date? Hasn’t dated my whole life? Because he’s in some secret relationship with your parents?”
The huge grimace on Bree’s face probably matched the one on mine. “Maybe.”
My skin crawled. I shivered, thoroughly disgusted and repulsed. My dad, part of a threesome. Or throuple. Or triad. Or whatever the hell you called a married couple with a boyfriend.
This was a lot to process on a Sunday afternoon.
Later, long after Bree and the Harrises had left, I was still sitting in my room, reeling from shock. I sifted through memories of my childhood, trying to disprove the whole thing, but the more I remembered, the more it all made sense.
Take the summer I’d turned ten, for example, when I’d woken in the middle of the night with a high fever and stumbled over to the parents’ wing, needing my dad—only to find his bedroom empty, the bed fully made, not a wrinkle in sight.
The fever had undoubtedly muddled my reasoning skills, because I assumed he’d been called away in the night and would be back the next day.
So I’d knocked on the Harrises’ bedroom door—needing someone to help me feel better, too sick to care who it was at that point—and John had answered.
He’d led me back to my dad’s room, located a thermometer in the en-suite bathroom, and checked my fever.
Then my dad had appeared, strolling into the room and taking over… in his pajamas.
There were all the weekend trips my dad had taken with the Harrises—from the Berkshires to Portland to Newport to Vermont. Trips I’d always lamented because, for me, it meant a weekend stuck with Eleanor and Gabe. The only plus side to these trips was how much happier Nic would be when he returned.
There were all the times—since you’d moved in, actually—where Nic had disappeared to the Harrises’ for an hour or two, at different times of the day or night, and I know for a fact Bree hadn’t been home on many of those occasions.
There was the time I’d dragged you over to the Harrises’ to snoop in John’s study, and they’d appeared. John—and my dad. There at the house together. In the middle of the day. Had they been…hanging out upstairs before we’d arrived?
There were the nightcaps following all the wine consumed at dinner, where the three of them melted into the sofa, bodies wedged tight, hands roaming freely—which more than one outsider had flagged as suspicious over the years, including that girlfriend of Bree’s, Amber.
“They’re drunk,” I’d told her.
It wasn’t weird for my dad to put his arm around Libby, or for her to laugh into his chest, or for Nic to place his hand in her hair.
It wasn’t odd for John to rest his hand on my dad’s thigh, or for my dad to mumble things close to John’s ear, or for the two men to often fix each others’ ties or pat the other on the cheek or sit super close on the sofa when there was plenty of room to sit farther apart.
They did that stuff all the time. They’d done it my whole life. They were best friends.
And, okay, so maybe they were never quite that affectionate in public, but that’s only because it would surely raise eyebrows if they were, and the Harrises had a certain kind of image to uphold.
At dinner that night, I studied my dad. This man, who looked so familiar to me—but aside from being my dad, who else was he?
A person who hid secret sons and lied to the police.
Who stalked someone’s birth mother and threatened strange women on the sidewalk.
Who not only withheld key details about my mother—like that we looked almost exactly the same—but had lied to my face about the last time he’d spoken to her.
A person who’d once told me, “I don’t date because your needs are my main concern right now, and I don’t want anyone else getting in the way of that.
” But if he’d been dating the Harrises this whole time, then that was a lie, too.
Another lie of omission.
Like the lie he’d fed the Harrises about you.
While you and Nic laughed over some anecdote your professor had shared in class the Friday before, I kept picturing the intimate moment between my dad and John in his study, along with the one of Libby coming out of my dad’s room.
Nic’s gaze slid over to me, and he reared back, disturbed by whatever he saw on my face, the smile melting off his. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I dropped my gaze to the table and mumbled, “Like what?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t like it. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Elliot, look at me.”
I refused to look at him. “Can I be excused?”
“No,” he said. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I want to be excused,” I said, clutching my dinner napkin.
“And I want to know what the hell’s going on,” Nic said.
I shoved my chair back. “Me, too, Dad. Me, too!”
You both stared back at me, confused.
“What?” Nic asked.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it, Nic.”
He drew back, startled a second time. “What did you just call me?”
Apparently, Nic considered this—me calling him Nic—a huge sign of disrespect. Good, I thought. Nice to know.
“I’m going upstairs.”
“I haven’t excused you yet.”
“Don’t care. I’m going, anyway. Try and fucking stop me.”
Nic turned to you. “What the hell is going on?”
You shrugged, a bewildered look on your face. “I’ve no idea.”
Nic ordered me to come back as I walked away. But I ignored him.
Surely you remember that whole next week, Casey. It was great fun. Not for Nic, of course, but great fun for me.
Monday morning, when I came downstairs wearing my newly cropped Harvard sweatshirt with a pair of black leggings, you and Nic gawked at me.