Chapter 20
AS WE ARE PILING BACK INTO THE CAR, my phone pings with a message from Terrence.
Another executive meeting to discuss the thumb drive just finished.
My fingers hover over my screen. I don’t know where I should be.
I just need someone to tell me what to do.
As a parent, as a portfolio manager, as a wife who’s caught in something ugly .
. . there are too many catastrophes, too many directions to run.
“You should head down there.” Clint keeps his gaze on the rearview as he pulls the car out of our space.
My heart swells. He read my mind. I glance over at him. He nods, but his eyes don’t leave the road. A warmth spreads through my chest. It’s something.
I twist in my seat. “Erika, I can stay?”
“I’m done talking.” She looks out the window.
“We’ll keep you home from school for a few days.”
“I’d already decided that,” Erika snaps from the back seat.
“No. We decide these things as a family.” Clint’s eyes flash at the rearview.
“Family,” she huffs.
I whip around. “What? Tell us what is wrong with you.” The anger in my voice surprises even me, but I dig in. “In fact, give me your phone.”
Erika squints at me like I’m something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
Clint starts to say something, but I speak over him. “I’m not calling it a punishment. I just think you need a break from your phone and posting anything.” I push my hand toward her.
The car slows and pulls over to the side of our road.
“No. You don’t need to stop. Let’s get home,” I say over my shoulder to Clint.
He shakes his head, but I hear the blinker click and we start moving again.
“Now, Erika.” I speak low and slow.
She slaps her peach phone with a flowered PopSocket onto my palm.
I spin around and stare out the windshield.
As the car barely rolls to a stop, Erika is out the door. We both watch as she barrels across the flagstone pavers and into the house.
“Maybe I should stay,” I mumble.
“She’s said all she’s going to say for now. Especially without her phone.” Clint’s cheeks, covered in the faintest gray stubble, puff out as if other words, harder words, are being held at bay.
I probably don’t want to hear them. “I didn’t plan to take her phone. I’d just had enough.”
“We both had.”
I nod. “I’m going to grab a few things inside. Maybe I should come home tonight?”
Clint unfolds himself from the driver’s seat. “I can drive you to the station.”
Twenty minutes later, we are back in the car. I click my seat belt and then shift my shoulders toward the door so I can more fully face my husband. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Clint’s chest rises and falls as he pulls up to the stop sign at the end of our block. “Of course you should plan on being home tonight. This stuff with Erika needs both of us.”
My heart chugs behind my rib cage. I desperately want to ask him if he’s also willing to work on us. Is he in or is he out? Instead, I shift my hip so I sit straight in my seat.
“I don’t know, Meredith,” Clint whispers.
The bridge of my nose burns as tears threaten to flood my eyes.
This is the second time today. He used to be able to read my mind all the time.
Sometime between our move to Scarsdale and the dredging of permanent ridgelines between his eyes, he lost the ability or perhaps the interest to read me.
I stay silent. He’s like those mussels we peeled off the seaweed-strewn rocks off the cost of Blue Hill, Maine, last summer.
One little nudge and they shut up tight.
The bulges in his shoulder and down in his forearms slide and pulse as he maneuvers the car through town. How anyone can think he’s my father or Erika’s grandfather is a mystery to me, no matter our age difference. He’s the sexiest man I know.
I should tell him about Lucas. This thing with Betsey could go sideways fast. If he doesn’t hear it from me, we could be in real trouble, but how can I lay it all on him now?
I smooth the folds in my light wool skirt.
As a tire hits a pothole, my bony knees bump against each other.
I’ve gotten too thin. I used to struggle to keep my weight down.
In high school, I often believed, as Erika does, that my curves were fat.
Have I told her that? I haven’t wanted to give her ridiculous notions any credit, but maybe it would help.
I tug at my hem. Would she believe me? I could show her pictures.
She used to love laughing at all the grunge-inspired fashions and big-wave hairstyles.
I’d hate for her to compare herself to me now. I may be on the runway-fashionable side of my weight, but I’ve lost all muscle tone. I’m nothing to aspire to.
Clint slides the car gear into park. “Don’t miss your train.”
My hand hovers over the door handle. Gutless. I missed my opportunity to say anything of value, or perhaps that was my plan all along.
I’ll be home tonight. We’ll talk then.
I look back at my husband. His usually carefree features droop on his face.
My heart thuds silently. “I love you.” I open the door.
His hand catches my left arm, pressing into my bruised flesh.
I wince and whirl around, too quickly.
He drops my arm as if he’s been burned.
“It’s just that—”
“See you tonight.” The light in his chestnut eyes fades and he turns away.