Chapter 17 Victoria
Victoria sat at her desk, scrolling through all her unanswered texts to Liz until she reached the response Liz had finally sent, reading the words yet again, as if the hundredth time might lead to a different interpretation of I don’t want to talk to you.
Please stop texting me. Victoria couldn’t comprehend why Liz was villainizing her—Victoria wasn’t the perpetrator; she was another victim, a bystander, a casualty.
When Victoria looked up, she saw Ellen, Deborah, and Annalise walking towards the office kitchen.
Victoria stood and followed them down the hall.
As she did, Harper’s head rose over her cubicle wall, her eyes monitoring Victoria’s path like a gambler at a racetrack. “You okay?” Harper mouthed.
Not even a little. But Victoria nodded. She had exchanged “good mornings” with Mark earlier without spitting in his face, so she was arguably fine, wasn’t she?
Victoria entered the kitchen. Ellen, Deborah, and Annalise turned, their faces bathed in compassion.
“Victoria,” Ellen said gently. “How are you?”
“Embarrassed,” Victoria said. “I owe you all a proper apology. It’s incredibly overdue. I’m sorry the shower you threw for me ended so dramatically. It was perfect until…” Victoria gestured—you know.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed or sorry,” Deborah said.
“These things happen,” Annalise said.
“Do they?” Victoria said.
“Well, things happen,” Ellen said.
“At my shower, my sister threw a fit because there weren’t any vegan options on the menu and she was furious we didn’t take her lifestyle seriously,” Annalise said.
“Two of my friends weren’t speaking to each other when I had a sprinkle for my second,” Ellen said. “But I had baby brain and I accidentally seated them next to each other. Funny enough, though, I didn’t remember that until now. I guess you try to block out the bad stuff and hold on to the good.”
Victoria nodded. Had Ellen just delivered a sound philosophy to apply to life in general?
“How are you doing?” Deborah asked. It was said with such kindness, Victoria made a mental note not to impugn her for her troll collection again; everyone had layers.
“I’ve been better,” Victoria admitted.
“Tea?” Ellen asked, pointing to the selection of sachets on the counter at the same time Annalise asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Victoria considered. Did she? She had been so accustomed to dealing with everything on her own, and then with Ace as her sounding board and confidant, but then she had Liz, and the benefits of a true friendship had opened up to her.
It was like her stamina and ability to function on her own had atrophied with disuse.
“Okay…” Victoria said. “Yes. Thank you.”
Victoria sat down with Ellen, Deborah, and Annalise and they proceeded to lend a thoughtful, compassionate ear as Victoria told them she didn’t know what she was more troubled by: her husband’s unfathomable betrayal or her best friend’s refusal to talk to her.
Ellen tsk-tsked. “This is all so hard, and you’re pregnant, so everything’s heightened. The hormones take everything up at least ten notches.”
Annalise nodded. “When I was pregnant, I used to cry over the littlest things. Puppies, cute memes, reruns of Friends—you name it! And obviously, this is not a little thing.”
“No,” Victoria said. “It’s not.”
“Men are men and we love them, but we’re also not totally surprised when they make the mistakes that men make,” Deborah mused. “When you’re hurt by a woman, it’s a million times worse, because we’re supposed to know better.”
Victoria, Ellen, and Annalise all paused and exchanged looks as they pondered the wisdom Deborah had proffered.
“I was surprised, though,” Victoria said. “I was completely blindsided by what my husband did. And I feel so stupid. I thought I had married this great guy. I thought we had a beautiful life.”
“It doesn’t mean those things aren’t true,” Ellen said.
Victoria shook her head. “I should have known better. How many stories have we heard about men having second families? How many clients have been hiding gambling problems or massive debts from their spouses? How many affairs and love children and secrets do I have to be privy to before realizing I’m a sanctimonious idiot? ”
The women looked at her compassionately, and Victoria realized that maybe if she had possessed a coven like this before, when she had begun dating Ace, she wouldn’t be in her current situation.
If Victoria had had friends who asked, What sixty-year-old man has no baggage?
He really never got married and had kids?
Why? If they had pressed and Victoria had probed.
But she hadn’t. Victoria had taken what Ace presented to her at face value.
Victoria knew she couldn’t live in the past, dwelling on the could-haves and should-haves, but the here and now was unthinkable and the future was entirely undefined.
She manufactured a work meeting, telling Deborah, Ellen, and Annalise that she had to go, and they said to ping them anytime she was in the mood for another kitchen meetup.
Victoria thanked them profusely, then collected her purse from her office and told Harper she was running out for a coffee—never mind the fact that she had emerged from the kitchen, which housed no fewer than three varieties of coffee.
“I can go get one for you!” Harper said.
“I want to stretch my legs,” Victoria said. “Text me if you’d like something.” Victoria saw Harper blush with pleasure.
“Okay, I’ll text ya!” Harper said.
Victoria drove to the coffee shop on a mission, aware that she was blatantly ignoring Liz’s demand, but also figuring that if Liz really didn’t want to see her, she would have changed her routine and picked another coffee shop.
If Liz was there, a tacit invitation of sorts could almost be construed.
Victoria strode into the coffee shop and saw her immediately, like Liz was a beacon. She was huddled over her computer with a drawn, maudlin expression, the carcass of what was once a blueberry-oat muffin sitting on a slightly chipped puce ceramic plate in front of her.
“Hi,” Victoria said. A Miley Cyrus song was playing in the background and Victoria remembered how they had raised the volume and Liz had belted it out when they drove to Fresno together.
Now, Liz looked up at Victoria with dread, her face darkening like a sky in the Carolinas with a tropical storm approaching, and the smoky pop song provided the wrong soundtrack for this moment.
“Ambushing me in public? That’s like a guy breaking up with you at a fancy restaurant so it can’t get too ugly.”
“We can go wherever you want,” Victoria said. “You have to talk to me at some point.” She slid the chair away from the table and sat down in it so she and Liz were at the same eyeline. “We’re going to see each other again at Dawn’s class anyway,” Victoria reminded her.
“Maybe,” Liz said, with a disinterested shrug. She fingered the discarded wrapper of the muffin and refused to meet Victoria’s gaze. Victoria noticed the sallow circles under Liz’s puffy eyes that spoke to sleepless nights. She could relate.
“I’m hurting too,” Victoria said. “I lost my husband and my best friend, all in one moment. My entire world was shattered too.”
Liz finally looked up at Victoria. “What do you mean you lost him?”
“You don’t think I had any idea, do you?”
Liz hesitated but then shook her head.
“I’m staying at a hotel. I’m pregnant and heartbroken and alone and I understand that you’re reeling, Liz, but I am too, and I don’t understand why we can’t be suffering together. Why are you putting me in the same camp as Ace when my only crime was ignorance?”
“You’re my stepmom,” she said. “You’re married to the man who abandoned me. When I told you about Googling my dad, I didn’t think you were married to him! It’s all too weird and I don’t know how to deal with any of this. I just—can’t. I can’t do this.”
“There isn’t a playbook and I don’t have the answers either. But don’t you think we’d navigate it better together?”
“You’re married to him,” Liz said. “That’s always going to come first. That’s how it works.”
“I’m not even speaking to him right now.”
“You gave him my address!”
Victoria let out a small, rueful laugh. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, he showed up at my house.”
Victoria took this in, stunned for a moment.
“I had no part in that.” Now that she knew, Victoria wasn’t surprised.
Ace was the kind of guy who would anonymously and generously donate to a tragedy-stricken stranger’s GoFundMe, who would leave a steaming vat of chicken noodle soup on a sick friend’s doorstep, who would lend an ear, or a dollar, or a word of advice to anyone who needed it.
He was the kind of guy intent upon doing the right thing.
Which made it hard for Victoria to reconcile that person with the same man who had concealed his participation in creating a living, breathing human who was an infant, and then a toddler, and then a child, and now an adult, sitting before her.
“I miss you,” Victoria said. “I want to know how you’re feeling—with the baby—and how it went with Preston’s family…all of it. It’s so hard to go from having you be such an important part of my life to not having you in it.”
Liz looked at Victoria sadly. The hubbub of the coffee shop faded into the background, and Victoria didn’t notice the other customers or what music was playing or the locomotive-style steam releases of the espresso machines behind the counter.
“I miss you too,” Liz said, and for a moment, Victoria was hopeful. “But everything is different now. It’s too weird.”