Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The last two weeks of Hannah’s high school career were a whirlwind.
Now that her finals were over, Hannah floated in and out of the house without a care in the world and even started meeting up with a few friends from tennis—friends she’d apparently gotten closer with since having the hot tub pizza party after their last matches.
Ada was overjoyed to find community, even if it was so soon after the end of her time in Nantucket.
Building friendships took skill, Ada knew.
At least, it was something she’d once known.
Sometimes Ada woke up in the middle of the night, heavy with sweat, panicked about Hannah’s upcoming time at Vassar. What if she was lonely? What if she couldn’t admit that to her parents? What if she was frightened every single day of her life?
However, in the lead-up to graduation, Ada was overwhelmed with clients, graduation party preparations, senior dinners, and life's other responsibilities. To make matters worse, Olivia crashed her bicycle and needed to go to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a minor concussion and told to wear a helmet. Ada bit her tongue to keep from yelling at Olivia for not wearing the helmet she had hanging in the garage, because she was so grateful that Olivia was all right. When she called her mother from the hospital, Kathy said, “You never wore a helmet when you were a teenager, Ada. Kids make mistakes.” Hearing this made nothing better, but Ada was still grateful that her mother had come to the phone. Despite everything, her mother’s voice soothed her.
Every time Katrina’s sessions came up in the calendar, Ada found herself finding reasons to cancel: a doctor’s appointment, a bad stomach, stress over Hannah’s graduation party.
Natalie didn’t put up a fuss and rescheduled Katrina to the following week.
And now, each morning when Ada entered her office and prepared for the day ahead, she watched her memories of Katrina and Katrina’s problems, and Katrina’s fears trickle out of her mind.
Maybe Katrina hadn’t done anything wrong.
But the act of asking Katrina about it terrified Ada so completely that she’d decided it wasn’t worth it.
Maybe it was time to recommend Katrina to another therapist.
Ada’s life with Peter and the kids was the only one she had ever known. She refused to let anything taint it.
Sometimes in the back of her mind, she caught herself thinking just because you didn’t look at the wound, it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. But she shook it out of her head.
On the morning of Hannah’s graduation, Ada woke up at the crack of dawn and went to the kitchen to make coffee and check her to-do list. A family party would follow the ceremony, featuring food, pool time, and beach activities.
She needed to pick up hamburger and hot dog buns before the stores were overcrowded with tourists and graduation revelers.
Hilariously, at the grocery store, she ran into several other mothers of graduates, all of whom were picking up their own graduation party items: watermelons, twelve-packs of beer for incoming family members, and cakes with their children’s names written on them in icing.
“I can’t believe it’s happening!” one of the mothers cried when she spotted Ada. “Think of all the errands we’ve run for them over the years. Think of all the silly things we’ve thought of, and worried about, and kept ourselves up over.”
“It’s almost over,” Ada said softly, her stomach lurching.
“You still have two at home. Count your blessings,” the mother reminded her, because she needed to win the “feel sorry for me” game they were playing.
Ada returned to the house to find Kathy already parked in the driveway and drinking a cup of coffee with Peter at the breakfast table. Kade was watching television with a piece of peanut butter toast, and Olivia moseyed down the steps, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Where’s Hannah?” Ada asked, removing hot dog buns from her linen grocery bag.
“I’ll go get her!” Kade cried, leaping up and hustling upstairs to wake his sister.
Ada, Peter, Kathy, and Olivia froze, listening intently as Kade rapped on Hannah’s door. “Get up, graduate!” he called. “It’s time to walk across the stage!”
Next came the sound of Hannah’s door opening and Hannah saying, “Cut it out.” But there was a smile in her voice, proof that their family was going to have a beautiful day together.
A few minutes later, Hannah was at the breakfast table, scraping butter over a waffle.
Her hair was wild and curly and needed to be tamed for the ceremony later.
Lately, she’d been wearing too much makeup, and some of it was smudged around her eyes.
Ada bit her tongue to keep from telling her daughter how important it was to wash your face before you went to bed.
“I can’t believe my baby girl’s all grown up and graduating,” Peter said. “I still remember the first day of school! Mom, don’t you?”
Ada sat down with another cup of coffee and let herself fold back through the years.
Hannah had been five when she’d first gone to kindergarten, with a little pink backpack and a pair of enormous glasses that she’d later replaced with contacts.
Both Ada and Peter had taken Hannah to school that first morning and walked her into her classroom, where they’d shaken hands with the teacher and watched Hannah get settled in.
Both Ada and Peter had cried in the parking lot.
That wasn’t the kind of man who cheated on his wife, Ada told herself now.
“How could I forget it? You were so organized. You had five different folders, each in a different color, one for each subject. Once you got into organizing, you wanted to organize everything in the house. You wanted to put the dishes somewhere else; you wanted to rearrange the towels in the bathroom,” Ada said to Hannah, laughing.
“You used to get things done!” Kade teased Hannah.
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Sounds like I was an obsessive little freak.”
“Hey!” Peter and Ada cried in unison.
“That’s my eldest daughter you’re talking about,” Peter said, shoving Hannah lightly.
Hannah grinned, her eyes bright, as though she were holding tightly onto tears.
The graduation ceremony was set to begin at one thirty that afternoon.
Hannah had to be at the football field at twelve thirty for attendance and rehearsal, which left Ada and the rest of the family a bit of time to set up for the graduation party and get ready themselves.
Ada tried three shades of lipstick before she decided on a light pink one.
When she looked at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t decide if she looked old for her age or young.
Up at the high school football field, Peter took her hand and led her to the stands.
Kade, Kathy, and Olivia walked behind them, Kade fidgety in his collared shirt.
Olivia giggled and waved at someone, and Ada followed her gaze to find a thirteen-year-old boy sitting with his family and smiling at her.
Ada thought, Uh-oh, and considered the next five years of Olivia’s life: boyfriends, heartaches, and plenty of calculus.
It would be a different story, similar to the Hannah High School experience, but entirely distinct as well.
Midway up the bleachers, Ada found a familiar face: Nick Willis.
He sat by himself, dressed in a pair of Dockers and a button-down shirt.
Their eyes met, and Ada offered him a soft smile before continuing up the steps after Peter.
Peter grabbed a seat toward the top, insisting it provided the best angles for photographs.
“There she is,” Peter said, pointing toward a sea of high schoolers in glossy uniforms. “She’ll be up soon. The Bushners always are. Guess that was different for you, huh? Wagner must have always gone last in the alphabet?”
Ada smiled, her mind still on Nick and the conversation they’d had at their Friday afternoon session.
He’d been talking about his wife and how painful it had been to watch his daughter say goodbye to her, how Carleigh had had to grow up in a short span of time.
Nick had teared up during the session, his cheeks blotchy with embarrassment.
But Ada hadn’t been able to stop herself from wondering, Does Peter ever wish I’d die so that he can carry out his affair to its natural conclusion? Does he ever wish I’d get a serious disease, or have an accident, or drown? Does he ever fantasize about me never coming home?
Now, Peter touched Ada’s shoulder and said, “I’m proud of you, Ada.”
Ada flinched and looked into his eyes. “I’m proud of you, too. We have a high school graduate. We did it!” She made her voice bright and joyful.
Not long after, Peter’s mother and father, Greg and Laurie Bushner, grabbed bleacher seats in front of them and began to gab excitedly with Kathy about their role as grandparents in Hannah’s life.
“Always such a bright girl!” Laurie cried. “She’s going to go on to do amazing things.”
“She sure is,” Kathy said, puffing her chest, as though she wanted to prove herself the better of the two grandmothers. “Vassar, here she comes.”
“I still think she should have applied to Stanford,” Greg said, because he’d gone there a million years ago and had sway.
Ada grimaced into a smile. Although she hadn’t said anything during the process, she hadn’t wanted Hannah to apply to somewhere so far away.
“Vassar will be just fine,” Peter said. “It will be better than fine. Our Hannah picked it.”
Hannah was the second to cross the stage.
“Hannah Marie Bushner.” Hannah walked proudly, with her shoulders back and her chin held high.
She accepted the diploma and made eye contact with first Ada, then Peter, before gliding back down to her seat.
Ada and Peter were on their feet, applauding like crazy. Tears fell down Ada’s cheeks.
“That’s my girl!” Kathy cried.
Like Ada Wagner in her old life, Carleigh Willis had to wait until the very end of the ceremony to get her diploma.
By the time she strode across the stage, most everyone was packing up their things and preparing to head to their private family parties.
Nick was on his feet, clapping like crazy and finger-whistling.
Carleigh’s cheeks were bright red. Ada joined the applause, and Peter gave her a sideways look.
“She was on Hannah’s tennis team,” Ada explained.
“Ah. Go, Catie!” Peter said.
“It’s Carleigh.”
But Peter wasn’t listening to her. Already, he joined the stream of audience members, stomping down the bleachers and heading for Hannah.
Ada, Kade, Olivia, Kathy, Greg, and Laurie followed him and threw their arms around Hannah, congratulating her.
The sun was a pounding red ball in the sky.
Already, it was eighty-three degrees, and they were saying it might reach eighty-six before the afternoon was through.
Back at the house, Ada insisted on taking a series of photographs of Hannah with all of her grandparents and siblings.
Eventually, Peter asked Ada to stand with Hannah for a photograph, for which Ada was grateful.
So often, husbands don’t remember to take pictures.
Peter wasn’t like that. He was a good husband.
A good father. Her starry-eyed man. Ugh!
The house was open for the party, with Peter and Ada’s colleagues and friends of the family swinging by for hors d’oeuvres, grilled fish, and buttery biscuits.
Peter was at the grill for most of the afternoon, sipping a light beer and chatting with whoever swung by to say hello and ask him about the world of teeth.
Ada was just as busy, but always with her eye on him.
Was he flirting with their neighbor a little too long?
Was he laughing at Natalie’s joke in a way that suggested he was into her?
Ada had never been a jealous wife before. It was an awful cycle. She wished she could crack it.
At around six thirty, when everyone was bursting with food and scattered around with soft drinks or glasses of wine, Ada took a breath and approached her husband. He was cleaning the grill diligently, never one to let tasks like that go for long.
“You know, you can get out of here if you want to,” Ada said, surprising herself with how open she sounded.
Peter frowned as the dirty rag was raised over the bars of the grill. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you have plans tonight,” Ada said, keeping her voice light.
“You can head out whenever you want. I can take care of everything else. Gosh, there isn’t that much more to do, is there?
” She looked around the backyard, the veranda, and the pool, where one of Greg’s friends from work floated on a noodle with his nose toward the sky.
“You think I want to leave my daughter’s graduation party?” Peter asked.
Ada took a breath and let herself dive into Peter’s intense and beautiful eyes. “I just wanted to give you that option, if you wanted it,” she said.
Peter sputtered. Under his breath, not loud enough for anyone to hear, he asked, “Have I ever given you any indication that I don’t want to be your husband and Hannah’s father?”
Ada thought back to everything he’d ever said, everything he’d ever let her see, and she knew he was right. She was acting paranoid.
Hurt marred Peter’s face. “I want to celebrate here. With my family.” He let his massive shoulders drop. “We did something incredible together, Ada. It means the world to me.”
Ada switched her weight onto her tiptoes and pressed a kiss onto Peter’s lips. “We really did,” she whispered, before ducking back into the kitchen to cry.