Ten Months Ago
By the end of July, Tori was spending as much time at the Allards’ house as Van did at hers.
No longer did she dread Wednesdays, when Leo was with her ex.
Now she couldn’t wait for the middle of the week.
When she got a text from her regular Wednesday-afternoon client canceling for the rest of the summer—she chose a lake house in Maine over therapy in Bethesda—Tori didn’t mind at all, despite the lost income. It just meant more time with him.
Van.
His name made her pulse quicken.
He possessed her thoughts every waking moment that she wasn’t actively focused on some specific task.
Undressing in the morning reminded her of being naked with him—the way his eyes darkened when she slipped out of her clothes.
Washing herself in the shower sparked the memory of his hands on her body, leaving trails of heat where his fingers had been.
Even eating breakfast recalled his teasingly feeding her fresh strawberries after they made love on his parents’ bed.
Nothing turned her on more than making love in Jo and Daniel’s bed, on their Egyptian cotton sheets, cool against her feverish skin, the faint scent of Jo’s expensive perfume lingering in the pillows.
It felt like the ultimate revenge against the two people who’d made her feel so unwelcome in this neighborhood. So small.
When Van was on top of her, his lean muscles flexing with each movement, she would imagine Jo and Daniel returning early from France, exhausted and jet-lagged, bickering.
Jo would be wilted from the flight, her designer clothes wrinkled, and all she’d want to do was take a hot shower and sleep in her own bed.
For Tori, picturing the horror on Jo’s face when she opened the door and saw her son framed by Tori’s legs could bring her to climax, her body arching with a pleasure enhanced by vengeance.
“I love these sheets,” Tori said one lazy afternoon, spreading her arms out wide like a child making a snow angel, the silky fabric sliding against her bare skin. “What brand are they?”
“Let’s see.” Van rolled over, exposing his naked back, a constellation of freckles scattered across his shoulders.
He reached around the mattress to yank up a corner of the sheets.
She loved that he was game for anything, his youth making him pliable in her hands.
“Sferra Giza. That mean anything to you?”
It didn’t. But later, at home, when she should have been falling asleep to a meditation app, she pulled her computer onto her lap and looked it up.
A full set of the Italian sateen sheets cost around twenty-five hundred dollars.
Click. Into her cart they went. If Jo can have them, so can I.
She told herself she wasn’t backsliding.
Just buying a few choice things. Didn’t she deserve it?
She vacillated between her hatred of the woman and scorching envy.
Was Jo worth more than she was? Better than she was?
The questions burned her mind like acid.
In the Allards’ master bathroom, after discovering a pink-and-red silk kimono hanging on a hook like a whisper of luxury, she took note of the designer and bought the identical one later at home. The fabric against her skin felt like stolen victory.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said,” Van said one night after they had made love, as his fingers traced lazy patterns on her stomach. “It is my life. I’m nineteen now. Why should I go to college if I don’t want to?”
“You shouldn’t. You should live the life you want.
I mean, you deserve to be happy.” For someone trained as a therapist like herself, it was child’s play to plant these seeds of rebellion in the fertile soil of a young man.
She only wished she could see Jo’s and Daniel’s faces when these seeds sprouted later this fall.
“I don’t want to go to some psycho school and just like compete with a bunch of sweats to be the best so I can get the highest-paying job and work like ninety hours a week.” He rolled over on his back. “What is the point? So I can have kids and put them through the same rat race? No, thanks.”
“Someone has to be brave enough to break the cycle.”
His eyes narrowed, and she could almost visualize the word brave rolling around his brain like a marble.
What young man didn’t want to think of himself as brave?
She knew, from the kids in her practice and their parents, that so many American boys grew up without a sense of purpose.
The mythic quest they sought in movies and video games was simply nonexistent in their upper-middle-class lives.
“It’s not easy to chart your own territory,” she said, stroking his chest. “It’s sort of a rite of passage, from boyhood to manhood. Have you read The Hero with a Thousand Faces?”
He frowned and for a split second she thought she had laid it on too thick, that she had been too obvious. But then he exhaled loudly and turned to her. “No, but I’ve heard of it. I’ll check it out.”
“Read Marcus Aurelius too,” she said, intoxicated by the power she felt over his young mind. “Meditations. I think you’ll really relate.”
It was only a week later, sitting in the Allards’ immense Jacuzzi tub with Van, that she realized she might have made a terrible miscalculation and gone too far.
Leo was asleep at home, and Autumn was in the basement.
She had told Autumn she was going to the gym.
Visiting Van when she had custody of Leo was riskier than anything she had done before, but she had convinced herself that she deserved an hour or two away.
It’s not like she was neglecting Leo—he was asleep.
“My parents are coming back this weekend,” Van said, lifting a beer bottle to his mouth. “I’m not sure how we should tell them about us.”
Tori laughed, but he didn’t. A chill went through her despite the hot bubbling water. “That was a joke, right?” She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at his creased brow, a flutter of panic in her belly like a trapped bird. “Van?”
“I don’t want to sneak around,” he said. “I thought maybe I could move in with you.”
Tori started coughing in an effort to choke back her surprise. He couldn’t be serious. But one look at his face told her he was. “You can’t tell them.”
“I’m not afraid of them.” His voice had a stubborn edge, the confidence of youth that hadn’t yet learned about consequences.
“You should be.”
“Why?” He sat up, his sudden movement sending a wave of water sloshing over the edge of the tub. “I’ve decided. I’m not going to college. I’m going to move to Long Island and work with my uncle. I’ve already talked to him.”
Tori stared at him. Never once did she think he would follow through on his plans of rebellion.
It was just fun, silly pillow talk. She had misjudged both his dissatisfaction with his parents’ view of success and his own personal resolve.
She took a deep breath and channeled her professional training as a therapist, even as her heart hammered against her ribs.
“These are two different issues. There’s what’s going on with us, and there’s your plans for the future. ”
“It’s all the same issue.” His voice had an edge she hadn’t heard before. “‘Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.’”
“What is that supposed to mean?” She reached for his arm, but he pulled away.
“It’s Marcus Aurelius. I want to live my life with purpose and intention. I thought you wanted that too. I thought you wanted that for us.”
“Van, there is no us. This—” She waved her arm around the tub. “This was so much fun, but it was never going to last. It was a summer fling. I mean, you couldn’t possibly have believed…”
But the look on his face told her that he did believe. And she knew in her heart that she had led him to it. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“Wait, are you breaking up with me?”
“It was always going to end.”
“No. I don’t accept that.” He moved toward her in the tub, water splashing everywhere and over the edge. “I get it. You’re scared. But I know you love me.”
“No, no.” She pulled back. “I never said that.” She stood up suddenly, covering her nakedness with her hands. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t say the words, but…” He looked up at her imploringly.
She felt dizzy as she stepped out of the tub and yanked a towel off the heated rack.
“What are you doing?” he called after her as she rushed into his parents’ bedroom to find her clothes. “You don’t need to be afraid of my parents, Tori.”
Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. Where the hell were her panties? Forget it. She grabbed her sundress and pulled it over her head. As she headed to the door, she felt his grip on her upper arm, stopping her short.
“What the hell? You’re just going to run away?” She turned to look at him. His face glowed red. She’d never seen him like this before.
“I have to go. Let me go.” She pulled her arm free and ran out the door.
Her heart thumped as she ran barefoot out the back door of his house, her shoes in her hand.
She ran through the thick grass to the hole in the hedge, holding a breath that she didn’t exhale until she was through to the other side, her side.
Once her feet hit the concrete of her back patio, she allowed herself to breathe.
She stood there a moment, staring back at the Allards’ house, her hair dripping, the reality of the mess she had created crashing down around her.
Marks were already starting to form on her arm where he had grabbed her.
She had nowhere else to go. This was her home.
She had no choice but to slink back inside.
And pray that Van didn’t do anything stupid.
She couldn’t lie to herself—she had lost control of her little game.