The Comfort of Lies (31 page)

That stopped her mother. “The woman has his baby?”

“She gave it up for adoption.”

“My Lord. Well, you certainly are becoming more interesting, Juliette.”

Juliette didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she laughed, and then her mother joined in. They laughed hard enough that their mascara ran, and they had to find the ladies’ room. After they’d dried their hands and reapplied lipstick, her mother offered a summation.

“Have you thought that maybe the answer isn’t ‘Love me or love her’? We live in an imperfect world, Juliette. You may have to decide whether you want a flawed marriage or no marriage at all. Is it too broken to live with?”

Juliette wondered if she could live with Nathan knowing that he still cared for Tia, even if he just cared for her because she was the mother of his child.

He wanted to come home. He told her so each time he visited the boys. Juliette hated the empty space next to her in bed. She despised coming home to a house without Nathan. At dinner, with just the three of them, she felt as though they sat on a wobbly stool. But she didn’t know if she’d feel any better with him lying next to her.

It might be a whole new kind of loneliness.

CHAPTER 29

Nathan

“I’m waiting in front of your house.” Nathan pushed
End
button on his cell phone and disconnected with Tia. He’d spent the morning making sure that his clothes were perfectly pressed, his shave close—dressing to see his daughter as though getting ready for a date.

He still yearned to impress her, he wanted to show Caroline and Peter Fitzgerald that he wasn’t a loser, and he needed to demand courage of himself.

“We have to do it,” Tia had said. “We have the opportunity. Juliette can’t get mad at you anymore, right? She’s the one who threw you out.”

He wouldn’t tell Tia that he’d told Juliette they were going to see Savannah. Tia had already sounded halfway to hysterical when she’d called, saying, “Caroline came to me for a reason, and we need to find out what it is. We need to see if Honor is safe.”

There is no Honor.

She is Savannah.

It’s Lucas and Max that I’m worried about. How can they be safe without me?

“We have to step up to the plate. Please. Come with me,” Tia had
entreated him. “Who knows what’s going on? We need to see where Honor is, and what she’s like, and who she is—”

Last night he and Juliette spoke briefly, their conversation revolving around the kids: soccer practice, summer camp schedules, and which nights he’d take them out to dinner. Then Nathan threw in the question: “Can I come home?” Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought there was a chink in her armor when she hesitated before answering. Then, when after saying “No,” she added, “not yet, we’ll see,” he knew she was wavering.

While half listening about the cost of Max’s soccer camp, he considered telling Juliette about this visit to meet Savannah, and then, just as quickly, he reconsidered it. Then, he flipped again, realizing he had to tell the truth.

When he finished speaking, Juliette had been silent. Then he heard her muffled sobs. Why was she crying? Wasn’t this what she’d wanted? Hadn’t she told him to make it right with Tia? To go see his daughter? To see Tia, and then convince her it was finally over? That’s what he was trying to do, damn it. She’d made him feel as though he were torturing her. It was as though that previous conversation had never happened.

“I just can’t talk to you.” She’d spoken so slowly, it was as though she could barely release those depressing final words.

What had that meant? Can’t talk to you now? Ever? This fucking week?

He missed his wife and sons so badly that he felt like the loss hung from his chest like a lousy badge. Patches of his old nemesis—eczema—broke out behind his knees. His stomach pitched in circles. Sleep seemed an impossible dream, and the circles under his eyes grew darker each day.

Tia slipped into the car, unusually quiet.

“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked.

“I already put the address in the GPS.”

“How do you know where they live?” Tia’s questions jabbed like challenges. She exhausted him, but he owed her, and he knew it.

He wanted to pretend that the other night had never happened.
Bury it under a pile of being good. Coming that close to Tia had been playing with rocket fuel and matches.

“A little thing called the Internet,” Nathan said.

“I forgot how thorough you are.”

He turned a bit and smiled. “Once you liked that.”

“Once you liked me.”

“I never stopped liking you, Tia.”

“But you stopped loving me,” she said. “If you ever started.”

He kept his eyes glued on traffic.

“Did you ever love me?” she asked.

“Of course I did. I’ll always love you.”

“How will you love me? As though you’re my distant uncle? A brother? A kissing cousin?”

He took her hand and squeezed. “Don’t you think we’ll always care about each other in some way, for what we share?”

She pulled away from him. “I’ve spent the past six years trying to stop loving you.”

He didn’t know what to say. That she’d spent years in love with him while he barely thought of her was so damned sad.

“You broke my heart, Nathan,” Tia said simply, quietly. “Everything I did, it was about you.”

“I don’t think I knew that,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry.”

“I was stupid.” Tia shook her head. “Robin says I was never real to you.”

The truth stung.

Occasionally Nathan admired women’s willingness to examine one another’s relationships, but most of the time it drove him crazy. Like Juliette and Gwynne: Nathan was positive that Gwynne knew everything he did, especially the bad things. At times it made him uncomfortable to be with Gwynne, knowing she’d heard about everything, from his affair, to how he compulsively checked his hairline every morning.

He glanced in the rearview mirror, saw a truck barreling down, and switched to the right lane.

“Robin says I was the whore to your wife’s virgin.” She tapped
him on the leg in the familiar manner of old lovers. “You know, the virgin-whore complex.”

“I know what a virgin-whore complex is.”

“Sorry, I forgot for a moment what a genius you are.”

Had she been this sharp tongued when they were together? God knows he could have ignored anything, he’d been in such a sexual headlock with her.

Keeping his marriage vows had come easy after getting over Tia, like a pacifist who’d adopted nonviolence after dodging combat bullets.

Nathan had fooled himself: he’d worked overtime at the task. Except for moments when a stab of sexual memory excited him, he’d just about put Tia out of his mind. Yes, there had been a discomforting curiosity about the baby, but then when he never heard from her, he convinced himself that she’d had an abortion. He’d managed to believe that Tia was out of his life forever, and he and Juliette would live happily ever after. He’d been so grateful for her forgiveness that he forgave himself and then absolved himself of the memory of Tia.

Nathan never tried to find out what happened with the pregnancy. Battling for a pardon from Juliette overtook everything in his life. He walled off thoughts of Tia. He’d convinced himself that his renewed devotion to Juliette and the boys made him a good and faithful husband, and a father above reproach. The past disappeared. Abracadabra: his affair was expunged via good deeds.

Denial, sure, but that’s how he moved ahead. His ability to rationalize, figure out things—assure himself that he was a good man—now seemed like the actions of a delusional man.

Juliette never let go of the
why
, which seemed to bother her more than the actuality. She searched for a reason that would put his infidelity into a paradigm she could understand and thus prevent from happening ever again. As though if he revealed the truth, she’d then understand how to prevent him from straying.

Why the hell had he been unfaithful? The real answer made him seem like garbage. Sharing the truth of his hunger, his want to see
himself through the eyes of a besotted woman, would make him seem like . . . like exactly the man he’d been.

Juliette had never been less than a satisfying lover. No woman ever felt closer or more right, though, truth be told, some had been more exciting, but only in the way that one occasionally wanted wasabi to electrify the tongue.

Now Tia provided agitation, not electricity. Sleeping with her had been stupid. Had he really believed he could get away unscathed?

He’d learned to live without lightning, but it had come back to knock him on his ass.

 • • • 

Caroline and Peter Fitzgerald stood in the doorway, the child between them, each with a hand on her shoulder. He studied the couple before staring at the girl, afraid of seeing her.

Tia moved closer to him, and he inched away.

The neutral set of Caroline Fitzgerald’s mouth, neither smile nor frown, gave away little. She had an unthreatening appeal, willowy and wholesome.

Nothing about Peter Fitzgerald’s expression was neutral. His tight lips were locked, maybe against words that might escape. Judging from the man’s expression, his first words could be a demand that they leave. He thought Peter unlikely to win if they fought, Nathan being rougher and wider, but Nathan could be very wrong. Despite Peter’s average build, he had the air of a street kid who’d know how to fight dirty. Nathan wouldn’t bet on himself if they were tangling over the child’s safety, not after seeing how the man clasped the child and glared at Nathan.

Nathan looked at the girl.

His daughter.

The words barely computed, but seeing her struck him in the gut.

She was lovely. Rosy cheeks. Hair so dark he’d call her Snow White if she were his daughter. His princess. He smiled. She looked back with mistrustful eyes. She grasped her father’s hand. Peter leaned down to her. “It’s okay, pumpkin,” he said.

“Why don’t we go inside,” Caroline said.

Tia and Nathan followed the family, Savannah clutching Caroline’s and Peter’s hands as they walked through the large white-tiled hall to the living room. Unlike Nathan’s home, all warm wood, cushions, and jewel tones, this house shone with aluminium and gloss. Sun bounced off the burnished surfaces, showing everyone in an uncomfortable clarity. Tia looked tired, Peter irate, Caroline anxious, and Savannah—the poor child seemed confused and terrified.

“Want to get the cookies we baked?” Peter asked Savannah.

The girl moved her head in an infinitesimal nod. “Okay.”

Hearing her voice for the first time knocked Nathan out. She sounded so little—a little, little girl. He’d somehow built her into a large and unwelcome presence; now the sound of her tiny voice washed away his resentment.

Savannah peeked back as she walked away, staring at Tia but also catching Nathan’s eyes. He worked to hold her glance without appearing stern. Seeing her in three dimensions confused him, and he whipped between curiosity, fear, and some atavistic pull. He wanted to take out his phone and capture her face in a picture. Show his mother. Look at it later.

“What have you told her?” Tia asked the moment Savannah was out of sight.

“The truth.” Caroline didn’t embellish. “Why did you want to come?”

“Because she’s my daughter,” Tia said.

“She’s been your biological daughter since she was born.”

“But you never came to see me before,” Tia said. “I needed to know what changed and what was going on. See if everything was okay for my daughter.”

Tension showed in Caroline’s shoulders as she rearranged magazines on the coffee table, first straightening them and then fanning them out into a decorator design. Caroline reminded him more of Juliette than she did Tia. Sympathy for Caroline’s rigid stance stabbed at Nathan. Caroline and Peter certainly hadn’t bargained for a visit like this when they adopted Savannah.

“We haven’t been formally introduced,” he said. “I’m Nathan Soros.”

Caroline scrutinized him. “Yes, I know. Does your wife know that you’re here?”

“Fair question. She does.” Nathan heard Tia take a sharp breath.

“So what exactly is your intent in seeing Savannah?” Caroline asked. “Do either of you realize the possible ramifications of this? This could work out very well, or very badly. Have you—all of you, including your wife, Nathan—have you even thought about her?”

“Why did you say yes to our visit?” Nathan asked. He really wanted to know—this wasn’t a truculent question, and he prayed Caroline would understand that from his tone.

CHAPTER 30

Caroline

Caroline realized she should get off her very high horse. Riding so far above the ground helped no one, least of all Savannah. If Tia’s face got any tighter, it might shatter. The poor woman’s hands shook even as she folded her arms around herself. Savannah must be terrified by that fear. What did she make of it?

Having Tia and Nathan come here might be the very worst parenting decision they’d ever made.

Dear Lord, she hoped this wasn’t going to damage her girl. How had she been so righteous and convincing when urging Peter to allow it: “Better to face the truth,” she’d said. “These are her biological parents. She’ll try to find out more about them sooner or later. This may be the right time.”

Then she’d read to him straight from her research sites: “The philosophy of comfort does not take into consideration several very important factors, one being that open adoption should not be based on making the adults involved comfortable; rather it should be about providing for the needs of the child.”

But maybe she’d been wrong. Or they’d been wrong.

Caroline took a calming breath and ordered her face to relax. “We let you come because we thought it might be healthy for Savannah
to have a more open adoption. Even in the best of homes, adopted children fantasize about their birth parents. No matter what, she will always wonder about you—she already does. Peter and I agree, better to put that overwhelming curiosity to rest.”