Thirty-One
Nico sat on a rock near the water and watched the sun burn off the drifting morning fog.
He’d left Valerie curled up in a ball, wrapped in what seemed like all the covers.
He thought she’d be wired when they came home from Helena’s event last night, but she’d been so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open.
When he’d tucked her in, she’d fallen asleep holding his hand.
He hadn’t moved for an hour, although his arm had gone numb in the first five minutes.
Taking care of her, when she did so much for others, soothed him deeply.
A silvery fish broke the mirror surface of the water, and when his phone rang, the sound was jarring over the morning peace. It was the private investigator. “Hey, Nico. Is Valerie there?”
“No.” Had he mentioned Valerie to Andrew before?
“No worries. I wanted to follow up on my call yesterday about Yvette and Rory.”
Rory? “Sorry, who?”
“Didn’t Valerie tell you? I located Roger’s people. They’re in British Columbia.”
Nico stood because news like this was too much to take while seated. “Can you run that by me one more time?”
Andrew recapped the conversation he’d apparently had with Valerie almost a full twelve hours ago about Roger’s daughter, Rory. “You want me to call Roger?” he asked when he finished.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Nico picked his way over the amber layer of pine needles paving the ground to the path.
Valerie knew? She knew and kept it to herself?
During the car ride home? While they were getting ready for bed?
This was baffling. Beyond baffling. A total betrayal.
What was she thinking? He was torn between finding Valerie to have it out with her and finding Roger to tell him immediately.
No, Valerie first. One of the most important steps of determining a workflow was to interview the people involved in the process and to get the facts. He had to know why she kept this to herself, in case there was some reason she didn’t want Roger to know.
He made it to the bunkie in record time and opened the door to find Valerie up and dressed. He barely registered her outfit, something with big purple sunflowers, before he said, “Andrew called.”
She dropped her phone. “I was going to tell you.”
He’d hoped that somehow Andrew had been wrong, and there had been a mistake or a miscommunication.
That Valerie hadn’t known. Her answer meant she knew exactly what she’d done.
He’d thought they were a team but she’d kept this quiet, the same way Stefanie had kept her separation from him, and his sisters had ignored him, and Roger hadn’t included him in his secret.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, keeping his voice as flat as possible despite his heart pounding.
“I wanted to make it special,” she said.
Instantly he understood. “You wanted to make it a big deal. An occasion. Why? To be the center of attention for one last time before Rory took it all away from you?”
The moment he heard the stricken silence, he felt terrible, but it had to be said. What she did was bordering on unforgivable. How long was she planning to keep this to herself?
“How could you say that?” Valerie’s hand crept up to her throat as her voice cracked.
“Why did you need to make it about you?”
“It wasn’t about me!” She sounded upset and he regretted not having this conversation in a place where he could maintain physical distance.
Even in the midst of his anger, a part of him wanted to reach out to give her some comfort.
“It was for the two of you! Roger was so disappointed with what happened in Goderich, and so were you. I wanted to get in touch with them first and then set up something wonderful for Roger. I thought maybe they could fly out and surprise him.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “You wanted to take away Roger’s ability to decide what he wanted to do about his own family, so you could make it into a big song and dance? Because you thought we were sad?”
“Don’t be so condescending,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets, then taking them out to put on her hips before dropping them. “I wanted to confirm it, yes, and it’s an occasion. It needs to be celebrated.”
“Not everything has to be a party!”
“It’s not a party. It’s an acknowledgment of something that is objectively huge.”
“That’s not for you to decide,” he said. This was shocking.
“Nor you. You don’t have a monopoly on Roger,” she said.
“I never said I did.”
“No, but you act like it. You’re so protective of him, it’s like you don’t have a life outside of what he wants. You think I didn’t notice the first thing you do each morning is check in with him?”
“He’s my boss, so stop trying to shift the issue.” Nico’s jaw hurt from clenching it. “This isn’t about him. This is about you keeping this from me because you wanted one last chance to feel part of the family.”
She stepped back. “That’s low. I was helping.”
“You were looking for a way to make yourself feel good,” he said. “It wasn’t for anyone else. You wanted to make this a big deal because that’s what you like. Not Roger. You only thought about yourself.”
“That’s not true.” Valerie was blinking rapidly, and he saw the tears start down her cheeks.
There was no talking to her about this. He stood up and left, wanting nothing more than to avoid Valerie, and everything.
“Nico? Nico!”
Nico shut the door behind him, cutting off whatever Valerie was going to say next.
* * *
Two hours later, Valerie had searched the entire property, texted Nico a dozen times and Roger four, and had slowly transitioned from anger to shame to a nauseating mix of the two.
She had pictured Roger’s reunion so perfectly.
She’d worked out the exact wording to tell him once it was sorted.
She could barely wait. When Nico had come storming in—she was exaggerating; he’d only opened the door—she’d been searching for flights from Vancouver to Toronto to see how soon Rory and Yvette could arrive as she waited for a reasonable time to call the West Coast.
Then it had all gone drastically south and it was her fault. He was right. She didn’t think.
She needed to talk this out with someone. She texted Dalia. Are you busy?
Was about to go for a swim. You want to come?
Valerie hesitated, worried about being a bother, then decided to go for it. I kind of need someone to talk to.
Got it. I’ll be there in ten.
Valerie was pacing outside the house when Dalia pulled up. “Get in the car, loser,” she called. “We’re going ice creaming.”
Valerie got in. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is now, since I spoke it into existence.” She glanced over with concern. “Unless this is a vodka level of talk. We can do that too.”
“It’s barely ten. How about a drive?”
“I know the perfect route. Want to tell me what happened while I get out of this driveway? I’ve seen shorter highways.”
“Nico’s mad at me,” she said. “I kept a secret. I found out something I should have told him right away, but instead I hoarded it for myself.”
“Doesn’t seem like you,” observed Dalia. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the secretive type.”
If only Dalia knew. “No?”
“Not unless you had a really good reason,” she said.
Valerie hoped this grace would extend if Dalia ever found out about the whole Roger thing. She turned her attention to Dalia’s question.
“I thought I did but Nico disagrees,” she said.
Dalia nodded wisely. “Such is the way of an argument.”
“I was going to tell him,” Valerie said.
“Sure.”
“I only found out yesterday and I was busy with the event.”
“You were.”
“I wanted to find the right time and make sure it was all in order.”
“Makes sense.” Dalia glanced over. “Are you done justifying it to yourself?”
Valerie slumped. “Yes.”
“What’s the real reason, then?” Dalia flipped down the visor as the sun slanted through the window.
“I got carried away in my head,” Valerie said. “I got the idea and thought about how to make it special, and perfect, and all the hugs and accolades and stuff I’d get because I was the one to make it happen.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“Not if you do it to make the other person happy. It is if you do it to make yourself look good and in the process it makes the other person upset.”
Dalia pulled into an unofficial lookout over the lake.
It was astoundingly pretty but Valerie didn’t care, thinking about Nico as they got out and waded through the tall grass and weeds to an abandoned picnic table near a tree and covered with carved graffiti.
Dalia was quiet, giving Valerie the space to think.
She’d been in the wrong for not telling Nico, but he’d hit hard and mean. She hadn’t expected that.
She checked her phone again. Nothing. To distract herself, she went through her group chats.
Blair and the others were talking about going to New York for a girls’ weekend.
Her mother had texted to tell her Erica and her fiancé were getting a kitten, and made no mention of their fight. One of the twins was getting a new car.
Valerie sighed and put the phone down.
“Do you ever feel like everyone is an adult but you?” she asked, wanting to talk about anything to get her mind off Nico. “How can I be thirty and still feel like I don’t have it together?”
“Sometimes,” said Dalia. “I mean, look at me. I work a few shifts at a diner and rent a room. I do admin work for a bunch of strangers. I’ve got twenty bucks in my retirement fund so I’m stuck working until I die.
My sisters both went the husband, kids, good jobs, nice houses route.
It’s hard to not feel like I’m failing somehow, although I don’t want any of that.
I like my jobs, and I don’t feel trapped, but they’re always complaining. ”
“I hate feeling trapped too.” Valerie tossed a rock at the water, and it landed in the grass.
“Then where are you failing on the adult front?”
“I can’t stick to things. I never could, according to my mom,” said Valerie. “Like Ad Astra. The second I had a problem, I quit. Or seriously considered it.”
“According to your mom? Not you?”
Valerie opened her mouth but paused. She’d always believed her mother’s interpretation but was it accurate?
She thought back to the things she’d quit.
Her job with Ruth, but it had been to start her own company.
Jake, but that was to save her own mental well-being.
Pilates. That was because she didn’t know how to refuse when Blair asked her to come, and she stopped when Blair did.
A rum-tasting course she’d had to shelve when work got too busy.
Becoming a certified gemologist… Okay, quitting that was on her.
She’d realized she’d preferred admiring stones in ignorance.
“No,” she said slowly. “I never quit because I was flighty. I had reasons.”
“Even if you didn’t, that’s fine,” said Dalia. “It’s not a moral failing to decide something’s not for you and to stop. Have you always kept with the things you wanted?”
“I have,” said Valerie, in the slow realization of epiphany. “I love crafts and I do those. I love planning events and I stuck with that for a decade.”
“Very few choices are set in stone,” said Dalia. “I mean, some are for sure. But there are lots you can revisit or rethink once you’ve given yourself time.”
Valerie didn’t answer. They stayed for a while, tossing stones down toward the water and picking flowers. The sun was kind on Valerie’s skin, warm rather than baking.
“Overall, people are too hard on themselves,” said Dalia eventually. “Let’s take you. You wanted to do something nice. In your mental imagery, was the focus on the reaction to the nice thing or the reaction to you doing the nice thing?”
Valerie thought about it. “The reaction to the nice thing. Mostly.”
“Then you wanted to do something kind but messed up the execution a bit. It’s not a crime. If you felt good for doing good things, that’s science, my friend.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it activates the reward centers in our brain.” Dalia made a face. “Apparently we had to be incentivized to be kind to people. I’m not sure what that says about humanity.”
“I don’t know if Nico’s going to take neuroscience as an excuse for keeping this from him,” she said.
Dalia tapped her on the knee. “Then maybe start with an apology,” she advised.
They drove back to the Badgertons and Valerie leaned her head back. “I feel like all we’ve done is emotionally rescue me this month,” she said. “It’s been the Valerie show.”
“Don’t sweat it,” said Dalia, turning into the driveway. “You’ll have plenty of future chances to be a stand-up friend. I’m a hot mess in my luteal phase, so next week you’ll be talking me down from shaving my head and moving to Bali because someone cut in front of me at the grocery store.”
“I look forward to it.”
“You’re the only one.”
When Valerie got out of the car, Dalia leaned out the window. “Call if you need me, okay? Or if you want a place to stay. We’ve got an extra room and I can come get you in minutes.”
Valerie felt her insides melt a bit with relief. Someone was in her corner. “Thanks.”
She waved Dalia back down the driveway. Then she stood there, batting away insects and wondering if she should look for Nico or simply pack up and leave.
No, Dalia was right. She had an apology to make.
She wasn’t a quitter and she never had been. She wasn’t going to start now.