Chapter 28 Lindy
Lindy
“Hailey?” Lindy tapped lightly on the girls’ bedroom door. “Are you still sleeping, sweetie? We need to leave for your dress
fitting in an hour.”
Lindy hadn’t slept much more after waking in the middle of the night. This morning, when she was sure her parents were out
of earshot and the kids were all still sleeping, she’d called the hospital in Blue Hill.
David wasn’t there.
And she’d decided again: She needed to stick to the story that she and Emma and Eli had agreed upon; carry on with the anniversary
party and the preparations for Hailey’s wedding; make sure that David’s betrayal didn’t completely ruin all their lives.
By sheer force of will, she needed to keep everything—including herself—from falling apart.
After Lindy steered the Volvo to town and onto the crowded Route 1 southbound, Hailey checked her voicemail.
“Oh my god, I’m going to kill him,” Hailey grumbled, then, without a word to Lindy, made two phone calls, giving her credit card number to the bakery for the final payment on the cake, telling the caterer the salmon crostini would be fine, telling both she was so sorry, there’d been a family emergency.
When Hailey ended her second call, Lindy said, “You should’ve used my credit card for the cake,” though, as soon as the words
were out, her stomach started to hum at the thought of the missing hundred and nine thousand dollars.
“That’s okay, Mom,” Hailey said. Lindy couldn’t tell what Hailey was thinking, and the fact that she was wearing sunglasses
didn’t help. She’d seemed distant, quiet, all morning. Was she just sleepy?
Or was there some chance she was onto Lindy’s lie?
Lindy, slowing for the traffic lining up to cross the narrow Wiscasset bridge over the sprawling Sheepscot River, didn’t want
to think so. Besides, everybody was exhausted after the long days of searching. Emma, Eli, and Cody had all just been waking
up as Lindy and Hailey left.
Lindy felt fresh fury boiling at the thought of the damage David had done—
Enough. She needed to focus on Hailey.
“I’m really sorry about all this, sweetie,” Lindy said. The traffic was barely crawling now. From experience, Lindy knew they
could be here for a good twenty minutes, staring at the HELL NO GMO bumper sticker on the rusty Subaru in front of them. She thought she’d left enough time, but at this rate, they’d be late
for the fitting. It was Red’s Eats at the foot of the bridge in the pretty village of Wiscasset that was the problem. Tourists
queued up at Red’s for the lobster rolls by the hundreds all day long, crossing the highway willy-nilly in their haste to
get in line. “This should be the happiest time of your life. Or one of them, anyway!”
Hailey gave a slow nod, drumming her fingers against her skirt. She looked at Lindy sideways from behind her sunglasses. “Were
you happy when you were getting ready for your wedding? Did you really want to marry Dad?”
Lindy inhaled. The question seemed to come out of nowhere; she didn’t know why it made her uneasy.
“Of course I was! Of course I did. But, well, you know, it was different, too, because we didn’t have a long engagement, and our wedding was so small.
Out on the deck at Innisfree.” Lindy knew Hailey knew this, but, feeling oddly nervous, she just kept talking, telling the story the same way she had always told it to the kids.
She let up off the brake to let the Volvo inch forward another car length.
Sunlight glinted on the broad river. “My mother and your dad’s mother did all the food, and we had only about fifteen guests.
My mother played the music, and I wore a crown of flowers, which I loved, and that prairie-style tea-length dress.
Your father had just passed the bar, and we came up just for the weekend.
It was a beautiful sunny September Saturday. ”
Another slow nod from Hailey, more drumming. “Were you sorry that you couldn’t go to law school?”
“Oh, God, no! I’ve told you. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. To us. When I found out I was pregnant with
you, we just couldn’t wait to be a family.”
“I always thought you had to be at least a little sorry not to go to law school. I guess I always felt a little bad about
that. That you had to give up law school on account of me.”
“Oh, no, honey! You shouldn’t.” Lindy remembered vividly how she’d felt then. How frightened David had been, at first. How
angry Lindy’s mother was. And how Lindy herself had simply felt certain. While she might not have previously been aware that she wanted a baby, now she wanted this baby more than she’d wanted anything in her life. She sent a letter to NYU immediately. She went to Providence to look for
an apartment, while David went to Boston to study for the bar. In only about three weeks, he came around to saying he was
happy about the baby, happy about getting married. He seemed lighter around the eyes. His knee was getting better, too. They
were all going to be happy, he said. He was turning over a new, prosaic leaf, and he wasn’t going to question things any longer.
“Honey,” Lindy told Hailey now, crawling forward and braking again, “sometimes you can truly think you want something in life,
and then when a new path presents itself to you, you realize that the new path is actually the right path, that it’s what
you really wanted after all.”
“Hmm,” Hailey said, twisting her ring around her finger.
Lindy thought she detected an odd tone in Hailey’s voice, but she didn’t have it in her right now to ask, and she found herself
worrying, in a way she never had, what Hailey would think if she knew the truth about how and why Lindy and David’s wedding—how
Hailey herself—had come about. David’s crises, Lindy’s subterfuges and stubborn refusal to think anything other than that
she could out-and-out fix him, simply by loving him, by giving him a home and family.
But of course, it hadn’t been that simple, come to find out after all this time.