Chapter 23
Jon
Saturday
Jon is surprised to hear the TV on when he arrives downstairs on Saturday morning.
Susan’s still asleep upstairs, Bella beside her, after a wakeful night.
Did they leave the TV on when they went to bed?
It was late when Greta and Leesa and the girls left, and he’d had a fair bit of wine, but he’s pretty certain he switched it off…
He slows as he moves toward the living room, suddenly nervous.
He stops, swallowing, listening. It’s definitely the TV.
It takes him another moment before he reaches out a hand and, carefully, pushes the door.
Onscreen, he recognizes an old episode of Stranger Things.
And in front of the screen, cross-legged on the rug, sits Aoife.
She turns now to look at him.
“Hi, Jon.”
“Aoife! How are you? I mean…”
“My mum let me in with your spare key.” She pushes her glasses up her nose. “She said not to wake you or Susan, that you need your sleep.”
He remains, however, baffled. They’re a close family, Susan and her sisters, cloyingly close at times, and they all keep spare keys in case someone gets locked out, but they’re not in the habit of letting themselves into each other’s houses uninvited.
Aoife must read his mind. “My mum and Susan agreed it. Mum and Maeve are gone down to Kildare Village, shopping. I didn’t want to go, so Susan said I could stay here till my friend’s mum picks me up in the afternoon.”
“Ah, OK.” Susan should have told him. He scratches his head. Then again, maybe she did and he forgot.
“Uh, coffee?” he asks.
“Yes, please!”
He wonders if thirteen-year-olds drink coffee. He’s pretty sure he did at that age, and Aoife’s old enough to say if she’s not allowed. He raises a hand and heads for the kitchen to put on the coffee machine, rubbing his eyes.
Jon doesn’t really like Aoife. Susan admires her confidence, but to him, it’s just precociousness.
He’d never tell Susan. She’d be horrified.
And hurt. Family is everything to her. Jon has no siblings and admits—though only to himself—that he doesn’t always get it.
This closeness. This living in each other’s pockets.
Susan claims it’s because their dad left when she was a baby and then their mum died when she was in college, and he understands that, he absolutely does.
But maybe it shouldn’t mean there’s a slightly annoying thirteen-year-old invading his Saturday-morning space?
Especially with the week they’ve just had.
He brings a coffee to Aoife, who is now on the couch, looking at her phone.
“I’ll head back upstairs,” he says, not sure of the etiquette here but fairly certain he doesn’t have to stay and chat.
Aoife nods knowingly. “You must be tired,” she says, sounding like someone twice her age. “The message situation,” she adds.
“Um, yeah.”
“The Gearys are still pretty mad.”
“I…I’d imagine so.”
“And now Cody’s lost some work experience program he was supposed to be on. Celeste and Warren are fuming.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. My friend’s brother is friends with Cody. I hear everything. He put it on his Stories just now.”
Jon isn’t sure what that means but thinks it might be Snapchat related.
“I guess these things happen,” he says lamely.
Aoife stares at him in that unsettling way she sometimes does.
Like she’s burrowing right into his brain.
“He lost his place on the program because of Susan’s message.
People found out what he did and the company wanted nothing to do with him.
That’s a direct quote from my friend’s brother. ” Her eyebrows arch above her glasses.
“OK. That’s…well, I’d better get Susan’s coffee up to her.” He closes the door.
· · ·
Upstairs, Susan is still asleep. He sets her coffee carefully on her night-stand, without disturbing her or the baby.
The coaster that usually sits on the top of the night-stand is missing and he glances around, looking for it.
Susan’s family can be pretty free and easy about coasters, but he was brought up to take no chances.
Her night-stand drawer is ajar, and he slides it open, looking for something to put beneath the hot cup.
The drawer is messy. Hair-claws, notebooks, pens, a tube of cream and a paperback copy of Daisy Jones & the Six.
He pulls out the paperback. That will do as a pseudo-coaster.
Something catches his eye beneath the book.
Something solid and shiny and sickeningly familiar.
His scalp prickles. He stares, dizzy and hot and cold all at once.
The bracelet. Oh god. Meaning…meaning—he turns it over in his mind, grasping for an alternative conclusion, but there is none, not with that inscription…
This means only one thing: Susan knows about the affair.