Chapter 9
Olivia
“We’re making good time,” said Bennett as he took the exit to Michigan City. He was looking handsome in dark jeans, a bow
tie, and Chuck Taylors. And, as usual, he was making a statement that didn’t require an answer. Olivia made a noncommittal
mmm-ing sound in her throat.
Olivia, in the passenger seat of their small VW Tiguan, was in sweats. She was going to change into her new backless yellow
silk dress once they got there, since the hour-and-a-half drive from Chicago would have wrinkled it hopelessly. It was an
expensive dress, but when she’d hit “Buy Now” on the website, she hadn’t given a damn about the price. She was thirty-five,
and her days of being beautiful and desirable were ticking down fast. She was wearing real diamond earrings tonight too. No
engagement ring, because even though Bennett had bought her a new one when the original thin band with its crumb-sized diamond
disappeared a few years ago, she was a little paranoid about Doug stealing it again. It had been Doug, she knew it, but like
Bennett said, they couldn’t prove anything, and anyway, it was only a three-hundred-dollar ring and Doug wasn’t himself at
the time. That was before his second time in rehab. Or third?
Anyway, she knew Doug had changed. That he and Hellie had been trying to have kids and had suffered not one but two miscarriages.
Olivia had sent flowers both times and forgiven Doug a thousand times over for stealing her ring.
If he had. It was just a ring, after all.
He and Hellie had lost actual babies. She couldn’t imagine. Well . . . she could.
It had happened to her and Bennett too. But they’d already had Norah at that point, so it wasn’t the same.
“Excited?” said Bennett.
“Nervous,” she said in a moment of unreflective honesty. “About leaving the kids,” she amended quickly, pulling out her phone
to check. No texts from her mom, of course. She had a full handle on the kids. “All quiet!”
“Great,” said Bennett.
As they made a brief stop at the top of the exit ramp, Olivia opened Facebook. She navigated to Hellie’s page. Wouldn’t it
be incredible if she was pregnant again? That would be something to celebrate. Something to take the focus off Olivia. Well,
there was nothing new on Hellie’s page since her birthday in May. She clicked over to Jenn’s page, the most active of them
all on Facebook.
Jenn had always been really gushy online, but recently it was hitting new levels. The whole family dressed up as characters
from Alice in Wonderland for Halloween. Then, for Thanksgiving, the kids dressed up as little turkeys as she and Will posed on either side of them
with a giant fork and spoon with the caption So grateful for these turkeys!!! . . . which was a bit macabre?
A couple days later, there were pictures of the kids putting ornaments on the tree, and a long post. So grateful for another celebration of the birth of our Savior with these precious kiddos, and of course, Will, who proves
to me every day what it means to be a man after God’s heart!!!
So grateful. How nearly all of Jenn’s posts started. Of course, it wasn’t a personal attack on Olivia—Jenn was just sharing about her
own life, which she absolutely had the right to do—but still. The posts always made Olivia feel like crap. Which was her own
fault, she knew that—her own guilt, which liked to scratch and scratch every time Olivia posted anything on social media.
Liar, liar, liar, it whispered. Trying to manipulate everyone into thinking your life is so perfect. The month she’d gone without sharing pics of the kids though, both her mom and Bennett’s mom had texted. Need pics of the grandkids!!
Fine—so she was jealous of Jenn. Jenn embodied everything Olivia had always wanted to be. A great wife, a great mom. An energetic
force who made granola bars from scratch and ran 5ks and had given birth with no pain medication all three times. She’d even
sent Olivia her hypnobirthing book when Olivia was pregnant with Norah, but to her shame, Olivia caved around six centimeters
and went with the epidural.
There had been times over the years that Olivia had thought she and Jenn could get closer, maybe even become besties—the kind
of girlfriends who sent each other memes and funny Instagram reels, the kind you could text when you were PMS-ing and the
world felt like it was falling apart. In retrospect, Olivia had probably been drawn to Jenn above the other girls among Bennett’s
friend group because in terms of social class, Jenn felt the most similar to Olivia. The others—Phelps’s ex, Kylie, with her
big opinions and two-packs-a-day habit; Hellie with her never-ending cycle of Doug issues; Bunny with her brash, no-filter
way of talking—felt too foreign. Not that Olivia was judging anyone . . . They were just so different from Olivia’s circle
of middle-class, stable friends who weathered the miseries in their marriages and stayed, for better and for worse. Their
dirty laundry, they kept safely in the hamper, where it belonged.
It’s not that Olivia was a snob or thought she was better than Bennett’s high school crowd.
Nothing like that—she knew how bad she was.
It’s just, there was a fundamental part of her that didn’t get Bennett’s friends.
The absurd, almost fantastical nature of their problems .
. . Someone was always lacking a vehicle, or
getting mysteriously fired, or driving on a suspended license, or—
“Almost there,” said Bennett.
Olivia checked her makeup nervously in the little car mirror as they pulled onto Phelps’s street. There was a little mascara
running. She wet a finger on her tongue and wiped it away. Her hand was shaking.
Bennett, seemingly oblivious to Olivia’s shattered nerves, had been talking for the past who-knows-how-long about his dream
of designing a new class at DeLane Prep, where he taught. He kept talking as he pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road,
which would do for a parking spot. Phelps’s house was the last one on the road before it turned to cornfields.
“So I don’t know if I’ll get the Teacher of the Year Award again this year, but that would really help my cause, you know,
getting to write the curriculum for my own class—”
She finally allowed herself to take a good look at Phelps’s house. It looked much as it had five years ago. Single-story,
white, with that depressing stoop with the flimsy rails . . . though Phelps certainly was trying this year, with Christmas
lights on the bushes and an inflatable Santa in the yard. She could remember with absolute clarity what it felt like to park
here five years ago. She was fresh out of that miscarriage, and doing all that processing about the stuff from college . . .
And she and Bennett grieved so differently; he was already moving on, while she was stuck in a pit . . .
Shit, shit, shit. The truth was, she hadn’t seen Phelps since the last party.
And she hadn’t really realized that until now.
She’d known it. It’s not like she’d forgotten.
But she hadn’t allowed herself to emotionally confront it.
Now, the factual, three-dimensional, brutal reality of the house was walloping her.
She was about to go inside. About to sit in the same room with Phelps and Bennett.
It would be unbearable. She couldn’t do it. Why had she thought she could?
She braced an arm against the car door, because she was about to plummet.
You could tell Bennett, said a little voice inside her.
The little voice was more than familiar. She heard it every damn time Bennett picked Rosie up. Every time they slept together.
Every time he mentioned Phelps or another of the old crowd. You could tell. You could. Always reminding her, ironically, not as much what she could do, but what she couldn’t: undo her mistake.
But this time, she didn’t dismiss the voice. She held it. She considered it.
What would Bennett say if she just told him? That, in a moment of blackout drunkenness, at the New Year’s Eve party five years ago at
this very house they had just pulled up to, she had been unfaithful. That Rosie was not Bennett’s daughter.
She wasn’t afraid of Bennett’s emotions, whatever they may be. Truly. She’d been angrier at herself than he could ever be.
More disappointed with herself than he could ever be. She’d hit rock bottom alone, with no one to talk to, no friend to unload
on or support her, because it was her own damn fault, and she deserved no better than to live in silent agony with the accusing
voices in her own head. How much worse could her life be if he knew?
It was when Bennett put the car in Park that she realized she couldn’t bear the silence for a second longer. For five years
this secret had eaten at her, tortured her, and this, here, now, was her breaking point.
“Bennett, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Her own absurd problem, she now realized. She was just like them after all, only in more expensive clothes.
Bennett turned to her and grinned as he killed the engine and unbuckled. “Let me guess. Bow tie crooked?” He twisted toward
her and arched his neck, inviting her to adjust it.
She resisted the urge to tug it back and forth, for familiarity’s sake. She loved to fuss with his clothes before they made
an appearance at a party or event. It made her feel cozy inside, like a mother hen, like she was staking her claim. Instead,
she clasped her fingers in a pale tangle in her lap.
Her heart was going furiously. She felt like she was going to pass out. But that wasn’t new. She’d felt like this a hundred
times over the last five years, every time she imagined telling him . . . and then didn’t.
“It’s not that,” she said, tightening her fingers until she felt the urgent pulse of pent-up blood behind her knuckles.
“Uh-oh. You’re not smiling. What did I do?”
She swallowed. Her vision was cloudy and her head swimming, which made it easier to say the words, because they didn’t feel
quite real. “It’s actually something I did. Bennett—”
His look was loving, concerned.
“Bennett, five years ago, I—” She gave a ghost of a laugh. She was absurd. “Well, I don’t know how to say this, but I—” Oh God oh God oh God “—I cheated. With Phelps. It was a horrible mistake. I know this must be a shock—” Words spilled out. She heard herself apologizing,
as if she was listening to a distant radio announcer giving the news. Heard herself telling Bennett that Rosie wasn’t his.
That she was so very sorry. That nothing had happened between her and Phelps since, or ever would again. That she understood
if he could never forgive her.
It was when she stopped talking that the shock caught up with her.
What was she thinking?
She’d hidden it for so long. She could have hidden it one more day!
What was it about going to parties that made her forge into conflict?
Like that time they did Easter with her parents and she felt the need to tell Bennett how much his chewing annoyed her .
. . like the time they were on the way to meet up with Olivia’s college girlfriends downtown and she absolutely couldn’t wait any longer to ask him to please stop starting all his stories with “funny thing” . . .
“Oh, my God,” she breathed, scanning Bennett’s face for any sign of what was about to come.
Slowly, as if his hands were fighting to cross the dense space between them, Bennett took her cold hands in his. He didn’t
seem to be freaking out. Why wasn’t he freaking out?
“It’s okay,” he said. “I . . . I have a secret of my own.”
Olivia’s heart spasmed with something like joy. Had he cheated too? Wouldn’t that be a relief, if they both had something
to forgive! Who would it have been with? A colleague? Someone from Michigan City, during one of his weekends with Phelps?
Maybe it would be worse than her slip-up . . . a full-blown affair . . . a matter of years . . . and she was ready to forgive.
Eager. Hungry for it.
“What?” she said breathlessly.
He looked into her eyes. His voice was steady. Measured.
“I already knew.”