Chapter 23 Lindy #2
is, I guess. She’s probably somewhere where there’s no cell signal. I wouldn’t worry about that.”
Lindy’s stomach had tied itself in a half hitch. “Have you met this guy? Do you know much about him?”
If Gina thought the question was strange, she gave no indication. She leaned forward onto her desk. “No, and she’s been with
him since just after Christmas! I can’t pry a thing out of her. Except she’s got a glow, you know? I mean, not that she’s
pregnant!” A laugh. “I don’t mean that. Although I suppose she could be!”
Lindy felt like she might throw up. “You don’t know, like, where she met him or anything?”
Again, Gina didn’t seem to find Lindy’s questions odd. Maybe she figured everybody was as interested in gossip as she was.
“No! Weird, right? She said she’s trying to keep her private life private. At least until she knows if things are going to
work out.” Gina shrugged and leaned back. “To each their own, I suppose.”
Again, Lindy swallowed back a sick feeling. There seemed less and less chance that David was anywhere but off with Tiffany. Camping? Evidently so.
She thanked Gina for her time and left, stumbling out into the hallway in a daze. She stopped in the restroom and splashed
water on her face, then looked into her own eyes in the mirror. So this is where we are, she said to herself.
It was a place she had never imagined she’d be.
As she stepped out of the building and back into the heat and sunshine, she pulled out her phone and dialed Eli. “Hey, sweetie.”
It took effort to keep her voice calm. Like a fisherman at sunset, she cast out one last hopeful line: “You guys find anything
else?”
“Um, not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean not really.”
She exhaled. Eli would tell her whatever it was when he was ready to, and not a minute before. Which left her with only her
own theory, after all. “Okay. Listen, would you do me a favor and go look in the garage and see if the camping gear is there?”
A minute later, he was back on the line. “No, the gear’s not here, Mom.”
She closed her eyes, stopped in her tracks for a second. Okay. I understand. She opened her eyes again. The street was very bright and hot in the sunlight. She was only a few steps from where she’d parked
the Volvo. “I’ll be home in about twenty minutes,” she said, “then I want to drive back to Maine tonight. We’ve got an anniversary
party and a wedding to get ready for.”
“What?” Eli’s shock came across the line. She probably seemed to be changing courses. Maybe she was.
“I’ll explain when I get there.” She said goodbye, ended the call, squared her shoulders, and let out her breath, determined
not to cry. Hadn’t she cried enough tears over David in her lifetime?
“There’s no way,” Eli said, when Lindy told the twins the unfortunate truth that their dad had run off with Tiffany to go camping, skipping his own birthday party, abandoning the family at the height of their summer plans.
I have to think he’ll at least show up for Hailey’s wedding, she’d told them, though she was past thinking she could predict what David would do.
The fact that he’d applied for a mortgage
seemed the deciding piece of evidence: He was setting up a new life somewhere else. He just hadn’t informed Lindy yet.
Eli ran a hand through his disheveled curls, for a moment looking so like a young David that it skewered Lindy, made her hands
clammy. “He wouldn’t do that,” Eli insisted. He was still sitting at the computer. Emma was cross-legged on the floor, surrounded
by files she’d been sifting through. She looked up at Lindy, eyes welling with tears. It had been years since Lindy had seen
Emma cry, until these past few days—
Lindy was struck with a fresh bolt of anger. That David would’ve done this to them! Bad enough he was doing it to her, but
this, torturing their kids like this, she could not forgive.
She took another deep breath and managed to keep her voice calm. “I didn’t think so, either, buddy, but that’s where we are.
Sometimes people surprise you.”
Emma shoved the files aside and stood. “We’d better show her, Eli.”
There was something else? Lindy didn’t want to see it!
But she couldn’t seem to make her voice work to say so. She closed her eyes and took another long breath, as Emma and Eli
squabbled briefly in that twin way they’d always had, which involved few words and lots of meaningful looks. Eli finally grumbled
assent, then Lindy heard the clicking of the mouse as he moved through screens on David’s PC.
“Okay, here.”
Lindy opened her eyes and saw on the screen Tiffany Jeffries’ Facebook page.
Despite herself, she peered in to look as Eli scrolled down.
Tiffany didn’t post often—she hadn’t posted in four months, in fact—so there was nothing about a new relationship, a camping
trip, or anything else current.
But, when Eli stopped scrolling, Lindy saw: Back at Christmastime, Tiffany had posted a picture that had obviously been taken at the holiday party at David and Lindy’s home.
It showed Tiffany in that sparkling gold dress, gazing up at David, who had his arm around her and was smiling broadly at the camera.
It was the kind of smile that David rarely smiled.
Tiffany had captioned the post, BEST BOSS EVER! !! And added a heart emoji.
“But I still don’t think . . .” Eli said.
“We are going,” Lindy said firmly, even as she felt her world start to spin, “back to Maine.”