Chapter 11
Jenn
I can’t believe we’re still doing this party after what I saw on Will’s work computer, but if he’s going, I’m going—sorry,
you don’t get to just cast me off like that. I’m actually holding back tears as we make the almost three-hour drive. Will
lean my chin on them. I hate crying. There’s a trickle in my nose and I can’t tell if it’s snot or blood, so I stuff a tissue against my face.
“So you’d prefer not to talk about it?” he finally says, in that tense, irked voice that’s a total turnoff.
“Not now,” I correct. Not like this. Not when I don’t have his full attention . . . or a plan. How could I have been so blindsided?
What other nasty surprises does he have up his sleeve?
These are the moments that really just kill me. When I realize that all the work I’ve done to make my place in the world—to
make a beautiful, safe home for my kids, to have the life my mom would have killed to have—is getting siphoned away by these
people that Will carries like baggage. I tried to get Will away from them. I really did. They’re drug users. Cheaters. Liars.
Not a good crowd by anyone’s standards. Not even Bennett and Olivia, which was such a personal blow considering I thought for so long that they were different. But Will just. Can’t. Stay. Away.
I know it’s their influence that’s drawing him away from me. Come on—Psalm 1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. I’ve brought up this very verse before, which I hated having to do, but it’s like he doesn’t take my opinions seriously unless
I throw around the Bible to back me up. He finally seemed to listen last year. Recommitted himself to our family. But here
we are, on the last day of the year, and he’s returning like a dog to his vomit.
It’s depressing. Infuriating. And it makes me wonder how much longer I can allow him to keep doing this before I have to make
some serious decisions.
It’s just so ironic. I’ve poured my life into being a good wife and a good mom. I’ve given Will my best years. My youth. I’ve borne his children,
cooked his meals, cleaned his house. And now he’s painting me as the bad guy? It doesn’t just sting. It’s gutting.
I know how people see me. Little Miss Perfect—I heard Phelps’s ex, Kylie, mutter that once at one of these stupid parties,
and Hellie laughed. Then they noticed me standing there and plastered on the fakest smiles. Which is heartbreaking. Am I supposed
to be mediocre, just so they’ll like me? I didn’t set out to intimidate anyone. I just set out to be the best version of me.
I guess there are worse things to be hated for. But it’s one thing for your husband’s friends to take that view. It’s a whole
other thing when your husband hates you just for trying your best.
Halfway to Michigan City, Will stops for gas, which by the way is exactly the kind of poor planning that drives me nuts.
We should have stopped at our local gas station before leaving, where we get loyalty points.
I watch him standing outside the car, his eyes downcast as the tank fills.
He looks so . . . weak. I thought I was marrying my protector.
My provider. Instead, I’ve been doing all the protecting.
I have the crazy thought of driving off without him—but I sit tight instead.
Crazy isn’t a good look, especially now that I know what he’s been considering.
Will taps on the window, startling me from my death-stare on the dangling keys in the ignition. He jerks his thumb toward
the convenience store. I frown and tap my wrist. He shrugs apologetically, then jogs away. What does he need? A snack? Are
we three years old? Does he have to pee? We’ve only been on the road for an hour! Ugh. I work my fingers at the edge of my
hairline to relieve some tension.
At first it was fun. The parties. I remember that. I liked Will’s friends, especially Olivia. It’s not even hard to remember
the first New Year’s, fourteen years ago. I wasn’t dating Will. We were just friends, in the same Christian group on campus,
Compass. I was dating Oscar, and Will was our faithful third wheel. When Will invited us to New Year’s that very first time,
I was honestly excited for a reason to get out of the house. Dad was spiraling again, and it wasn’t pleasant to be around.
I’ve wondered a hundred times if I’ve wondered once—what if we hadn’t gone? My life could have turned out so differently.
The game Doug designed for that first party was epic: an amped-up game of Clue with the house as our game board. We were divided
into teams of two, and Doug had redone all the actual Clue cards with little pictures of us. The murder weapons were “real”
weapons—an actual wrench, a butter knife, a jump rope. There was a thrill of secrecy and excitement in the air. Olivia and
I were taking a few moments of privacy in one of the bedrooms to talk about the potential murder weapon when Ted waltzed in.
He cackled in that nasty way he has and said, “You’ll never guess what I just walked in on!”
As I remember that moment, in spite of all the years that have gone by, a kernel of rage pops through its skin and expands inside me.
Oscar. It’s been a long time since I’ve allowed his name to cross my mind. I can almost imagine him, instead of Will, in the
driver’s seat, because I really think I would have married him, if he hadn’t decided to run away from his problems. And I
can imagine him in the casket, the last way I saw him. He looked like he was sleeping. Instead of experiencing the tender
feelings I was no doubt supposed to, I was so mad. Oh, I cried at that funeral, but the tears ran hot. He was supposed to
step up, not step out. I realize it’s not “politically correct” to be mad at someone who’s dead, so of course I kept it to
myself, I’m not insensitive, but that kernel of anger has never left me, to this day—it was planted too deep. Oh, and by the way? None of Will’s friends
turned up at the funeral. They’d only met him once, but still—that’s their brand of “friendship.” All take and no give.
They did all turn up when Will and I got married. Doug was Will’s best man, and Bennett and Phelps were his groomsmen. I remember
feeling proud at the altar; proud that we had this loyal group standing up for us. Proud that Will was the kind of person
who could hang on to high school friends—I certainly hadn’t. Of course, I realized they were different from me, from us, but
I thought that their wildness was a function of their youth. That they’d all grow up.
It was maybe two or three years after Will and I got married that I did a mental one-eighty.
These people weren’t going to change, and it was time to move on to higher-quality friends—people who had goals that were more in line with Will’s and mine.
Goals like, you know, remaining solvent.
Staying married. Having careers. I forget what provoked my change in perspective .
. . Doug’s second time in rehab? Or was it his stint in jail?
Then there was the drug use at that party, while I was pregnant with Mackenzie .
. . I tried to tell Will that we had outgrown his friends, and when he agreed to leave with me in the night for the sake of our unborn
baby and the danger of marijuana fumes, I thought we’d never come back. He’d finally see how his old associations were harming
me, our children, our future.
How wrong I was. Like the whole restaurant investment scheme—what could Will have been thinking? If it hadn’t been for the
fire, who knows how much money we would have sunk into the failure that is Nathaniel Phelps. Still, of all the needless drama
and destructive behavior, the “friend group” moment that took the cake for me was when Ted Kristos showed up at our front
door, a few months after the last party, because—get this—a bounty hunter was after him. Yes, an actual bounty hunter, which I didn’t even know was a real thing. I said we couldn’t possibly get involved,
but Will insisted we had to step up. So Ted Kristos, the drug dealer, slept on our couch—the couch of a home where two young children lived—for a whole week. Even now, all these years later, it makes me furious enough to scream. I hope he’s still in jail.
Anyway, the year after the whole Ted debacle, the party was canceled last minute, and I thought, thank God. Then there was a heart attack or something, and another party bit the dust, which by the way, I’d been praying for—never
underestimate the power of prayer. By the third miss, I was convinced the party was finally dead, and good riddance.
And now, here it is again, up from the grave.
Will returns from the gas station with a small bag of Doritos. Soon, we’re merging back onto the interstate. He eats the Doritos
chip by chip, and the sound of him chewing is so disgusting I nearly have an aneurysm.
I don’t speak the rest of the way, because it’s either silence or an explosion.
I don’t even speak when we roll onto Phelps’s street and I take in the whole depressing view.
I haven’t been to this particular rental house—or have I?
I can’t keep track of where Phelps lives or who he’s married to; it is honestly beyond me.
In any case, it looks the same as I might have imagined.
In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by corn.
The house itself is a single-story dingy white house with an inflatable Santa out front that takes it to a whole other level.
I don’t mean to sound hoity-toity, but I have noticed that people from Phelps’s social class go for the big tacky flash instead of the basic maintenance that could actually make their places more pleasant to live in.
“Doesn’t it look nice? He put lights up this year!” Will says as he puts the car in Park, and he actually looks delighted
by what he’s seeing.
“We’re thirty-five now, Will, not five,” I say, and I know it’s bitter and unloving, but I never claimed to be perfect. Will’s boyish enthusiasm
is one of the things that drew me to him, back in college. But it hasn’t aged well.
He turns to me with another expression I don’t like. Wariness. I can feel the unspoken question. Are you about to ruin this party for me?
“What?” I shoot out. Stay in control, Jenn, I urge myself as I feel the anger about to press out my actual skin.
“I told you I wanted to do marriage counseling,” he says, tight. I know he’s saying this in response to what I saw on his
computer. “The offer still stands.”
“We don’t need marriage counseling, William!” I’m shouting, the anger exploding out anyway. “You need professional therapy! When are you going to take responsibility for yourself?”
“I am in therapy,” he says.
“He’s not a good therapist,” I snap. News flash, not all therapists are created equal. “You purposefully chose a non-Christian. Which defeats the point.”
“Okay. So we’re going to do this now, after three hours of silent treatment?” His voice is calm, which he knows makes me feel all kinds of rage-y, and if we weren’t parked right across the street from Phelps’s house . . .
We sit there for a minute, looking at each other. If looks could burn, he’d have two holes where his eyes are.
“You know what?” I finally say, using all my self-control. “We’re not.” My voice actually comes out calm, like his, and I’m
proud of myself for taking my foot off the accelerator. “You’re right. This isn’t the time.”
But I hope he knows that if he’s going to bring the big guns, I’ve been building a shield. Not because I wanted to. Because
I had to. It’s not that my social media posts aren’t sincere. I am absolutely, unequivocally grateful for Will and my girls. But
Will has let me down too many times for me to remain the naive girl who walked into this relationship like it was an upgrade
from the previous one, when really it was exactly the same. Once bitten, twice shy. So . . . what about twice bitten? I think
you go beyond shy. I think you start to plan. You start to take out insurance policies against disaster. Like the impregnable
supermom I’ve built on Facebook. You want to hurt me? You’re gonna have to go through her—and her entire adoring army of Facebook followers.
“Well . . .” says Will. “Should we go in?”
Something perverse in me makes me grab for my phone.
“Here, pre-party selfie,” I say. I throw an arm around his shoulder and tug him close, and we’re cheek to cheek. I can feel
the light texture of Will’s stubble. The tension in his cheek muscles as he smiles. I can always make him smile with the camera.
Maybe that’s why I do it. Because he doesn’t smile for me anymore.
And I deserve better.
While I angle the camera for the most flattering shot, my eyes aren’t only seeing our two faces reflected back on the phone screen. They’re also seeing, superimposed over our smashed-together faces, the internet search Will last made on his work computer:
Divorce lawyer paternal rights specialist.
Like he thinks he can stab me in the back like that.
Like he thinks he can take the girls from me.
I may be a nice Christian girl. I truly believe I am, at my core. But I’m also a mama bear. Threaten me, and I will take.
You. Down.
His friends inside that house may blindly support him. Encourage him to act the fool, to make himself happy, to take the easy
path like they all have, straight into divorce and failure and addiction. But I am not like them. I do not let things fall
apart around me.
I take control.
“Say cheese,” I say.