Chapter 24 Lindy
Lindy
of the darkening Maine sky. They were northbound, approaching the Kennebunkport service plaza, and Eli wanted to stop and
ask to see the security footage from Saturday midday, to see if they could spot David. “It would take us hours to find anything,
if they even agreed to let us have access. And we already know he stopped there. It won’t tell us where he went after that.”
Truth was, Lindy did not want to see images of him. Especially, she did not want to see images of him with Tiffany. She also
did not want to expose her embarrassing circumstances to even one more person, not even a security guard at the Kennebunkport
service plaza.
“It’s killing me that we were there looking for him on Sunday,” Eli said. “Hailey and Cody and me. We asked at the Starbucks,
but nobody remembered him.”
Lindy swallowed at the pain in her son’s voice. “I’m sorry, honey, but we know he just got gas for the car. It isn’t going
to tell us anything to find him on the security footage.”
“We could see, like, what he was wearing,” Eli said. “That might tell us something.”
A sudden image popped into Lindy’s mind of David in a Hawaiian shirt and lei—he’d never worn either in his life—on his way
with Tiffany to the Portland airport to catch a flight to somewhere tropical. The girl could’ve charged airline tickets to
her credit card, and he could’ve paid her back in cash. With some of our hundred and nine thousand dollars.
“I really don’t want to see what he was wearing,” she said.
“But, Mom, we need to be doing everything we can—”
Emma spoke up darkly from the back. “Give her a break, Eli. She’s coming to terms with the fact that her husband’s a fucking
cheater.”
Lindy clenched the wheel tighter. It was a shock to hear the sentence out loud, to know it applied to her. “Emma, that’s enough.”
She let out a quick breath, trying to get her bearings. “Look, you guys, let’s not say anything to the others, okay? The last
thing Hailey needs is to go into her own wedding thinking . . . well, that every relationship is doomed.” Lindy also didn’t
want Kate or Josh to know what David was really up to. She had the feeling he was going to need his siblings when this mistake
of his blew up his life. Though why she was still trying to protect him, she had no idea. A lifetime of habit, maybe.
Lindy wished she hadn’t given his picture to those TV stations. She wished she had never called the police. Kate was right:
This was just what fifty-year-old men did! Even the police obviously knew it, though they’d been too polite to say so: Your husband is likely having an affair, ma’am.
God, if David was going to leave her for a younger woman, why did he have to do it in this entirely humiliating, devastating,
public way? Couldn’t he have gotten through two more weeks, put on a good face for the parties and the wedding, then told
her privately that it had been his last hurrah? That would’ve been the humane thing to do. Didn’t she deserve humane, no matter
what mistakes she might’ve made over the years?
“It kinda seems like that’s true, Mom,” Emma said. “If this is what’s happening with you and Dad, everyone else is basically
screwed.”
“We still don’t know anything for sure,” Eli argued. “A lot of other things could still be possible.”
“Like what? Falling in the woods?” Lindy snapped. She didn’t even want to think about the possible heart condition, and she
was not going to tell the kids, but it was certainly another factor that had pushed David into full-on midlife-crisis mode. (God,
and he was going to be exerting himself with Tiffany! Lindy quickly cut off that thought, blocked the image from her mind.) The timing of turning fifty must
have just sent him over the edge.
“I have to think,” she continued, “we’ve searched every trailhead between the state line and Portland. I have to think we’ve
proven that theory is not true. In fact, you know what? Let’s search the parking area at the train station in Portland. You’re
right, Emma. He could’ve parked there and taken off somewhere. We should search the airport, too.” The idea of him with Tiffany
on some tropical beach wouldn’t leave her. They had all that money; they were making a real getaway of it!
The twins didn’t answer. Eli simply sighed. It was true it would make little sense for David and Tiffany to drive to Portland
if they were going to catch a flight, or even a bus or a train. They would’ve booked any trip out of Providence or Boston.
And David wouldn’t have taken the camping gear if they were headed to a tropical beach . . .
But wait. Gina had said Tiffany had a “glow.”
What if David had taken the money not for some luxurious getaway, but because he was starting a new family with Tiffany? Of
course! The mortgage application. He was buying her a house, a crib, a stroller. Maybe they were having a little camping-trip
pseudo-honeymoon, before he told Lindy and took his permanent leave—
Lindy swallowed back bile. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw Emma bent over her phone, thumbing out a text. Was she
writing to Hailey or Cody, telling them about the money, about Tiffany?
Lindy hoped not. She still had to believe that David was going to at least show up for Hailey’s wedding. Even if he was setting
Lindy aside in the cruelest way imaginable, there was no way he would miss the chance to walk their daughter down the aisle.
Besides, Tiffany had taken vacation for only a week, so she was clearly heading back to Cranston in time for David to attend Hailey’s wedding—
But it didn’t make sense that David and Tiffany would run off for a week together and then expect to go back to business as
usual at work. Were they throwing it all away? Giving up their jobs and starting a new life with that hundred and nine thousand
dollars?
Lindy didn’t know. But she did know that she needed Hailey’s wedding not to be ruined by everybody knowing about David’s affair. (How would Hailey even
go through with the wedding, if she knew?)
Yet, the more Lindy insisted on discretion, the more likely the twins would be to spill the beans. Emma especially, for whom
being contrary was almost reflex.
Lindy decided, then: She would have to lie.
She would tell everybody that she’d heard from David, he was fine, he was camping, he was sorry he’d worried them. They would
believe that. Especially Kate and Josh would. It would keep them from worrying, keep Kate from drinking. And it would keep
David’s affair, Lindy and David’s marriage, as it belonged: private. For her to work out with him when he showed up again.
Although, after all this, the only thing that would be left to work out was a divorce settlement.
She flicked on her turn signal to exit at the Kennebunkport service plaza, and Eli perked up. “I’m not changing my mind about
the security footage,” she told him. “I just want a coffee.”
Inside the large building, franchises of Burger King, Popeyes, Sbarro, C-store, and Starbucks encircled an atrium filled with
tables and chairs where people were sitting and eating. The whole place was crowded, even at this hour, but that was late
July in Maine for you—the busiest time of the year. Lindy told the kids to go ahead to the restrooms while she stood in the
long line at Starbucks. Her hands felt clammy. She knew she had a good plan, but it still felt wrong.
When the kids came out and joined her, she gave Eli her credit card to place the order and made her way across the atrium and into the women’s room, walking past a dozen stalls to one in the back corner.
She stayed locked inside a couple minutes too long, listening to heels clicking in, faucets and hand dryers turning on, and heels clicking out again, as she tried not to breathe in the unpleasant smells of the cavernous room that had been used by probably thousands of people that day.
She hoped she was doing the right thing, though she had always taught her children there were no circumstances under which
telling a lie was the right course of action.
But she had been wrong about a lot of things, it seemed.
When she went back out to the atrium, the kids were just gathering up the coffees. Lindy took her mocha latte from Emma and
said, “You guys aren’t going to believe this.”
“What, Mom?” Emma said.
Lindy tried to form the words. They were in her head: Your dad just called me.
She couldn’t say it.
She shook her head and started toward the exit, and the twins followed. “You guys,” she said over her shoulder, even as she
blinked back tears. So, she couldn’t lie. She was going to have to stick with telling them the truth and appeal to them as
adults, not assume they’d act like rebellious children. It helped to not be looking at them as she spoke; she was so humiliated,
suddenly. “I—you know, guys. I need your help,” she said. “Seriously. As I told you, all the evidence points to your dad being
off with Tiffany for the week.” She wouldn’t mention her theory about Tiffany being pregnant, about how David was using their
life savings to buy her a house, a stroller, a crib. “It’s fucking unbelievable. But it’s true. And it is going to utterly
ruin your sister’s wedding. And we really cannot have that. So much is ruined already.”
“What are you saying, Mom?” Emma said from behind Lindy.
Lindy pushed open the glass door to go outside.
The fresh air—a perfect seventy degrees now—was a relief.
Beneath the smells of cooling concrete and traffic whooshing past on I-95 was the scent of distant pine trees, of Maine.
Nearby stood the ten-foot-tall statue of a moose.
Lindy and David and the kids had taken at least a dozen family photos with that statue over the years, part of their tradition each summer when they were heading up to Innisfree, and Lindy swallowed back a swell that came in her throat at the thought of happier times.
“I think your dad’s fine, Em, and he’ll be back before the wedding.
I just want—I don’t want everybody to know what he’s up to.
Especially not Hailey. And I don’t want her to know about the money, either.
She’ll think it’s her fault—the fault of the wedding, I mean. And I don’t think it is.”
“But you can’t know for sure that he’s with Tiffany,” Eli said.
Tears sprang to Lindy’s eyes. “A wife knows.” Besides, the evidence was so clear. “There have been some things going on that
I haven’t wanted to tell you kids about, and Gina told me some things at the office.”
They had reached the Volvo, and she turned to face the twins. Emma had tears rolling down her face again. It was clear she,
too, believed that David had run off with Tiffany, based on what Reese had written in that note, based on that photo on Tiffany’s
Facebook profile. Now Lindy just had to hope that Emma would take an adult view of things and understand why it was important
not to let Hailey, especially, know the truth.
“So, what?” Emma said. “You want us to just, like, keep this information to ourselves?”
Just what Lindy had been hoping for, but, at the devastation in her daughter’s voice, she had to swallow back more tears.
She set her latte on the hood and pulled Emma into a hug. The girl was hot with anxiety and fear, and Lindy was struck with
a fresh wave of fury at David, plus renewed conviction that it was definitely the truth: David was fine, he was just off having
his midlife crisis with his little tramp. It was the only possible explanation. It was what fifty-year-old men did.
“That’s right, honey.” Lindy squeezed Emma tighter, stroking her spiky curls. “If you would. For your sister. And for Aunt
Kate? She’s been having such a hard time. Okay?”
Eli broke in. “We’re not going to stop looking for him, are we?”
Lindy let Emma go and looked at her son.
She didn’t know what she was going to say until she said it.
“I think he’ll be back in a few days. Tiffany only took vacation through this week.
Thanks to that credit card charge and the gear being gone, we know they’re camping in Maine, and I know he won’t miss your sister’s wedding.
I think it would be best just to let it be. ”
Eli frowned.
“So what are we supposed to tell everybody?” Emma said, wiping her tears away.