The Comfort of Lies (37 page)

“What are you drinking?” Tia asked. The Skype screen showed Robin holding a glass, toasting Tia via computer.

“White wine.”

“In a jelly glass?”

“I don’t have a set of wedding china like you’re gonna get. Sorry.”

“What time is it there?” Tia whispered. It was midnight in Jamaica Plain. Bobby had fallen asleep hours ago, after a celebratory bout of lovemaking that had nearly made Tia cry. Bobby had been so tender, treating her like a crystal figurine.

“Nine. Can’t you ever remember the time difference?”

“Not really.” Tia finished off her glass of straight whiskey.

“Is this what you want?” Robin asked.

Tia pressed her lips together and concentrated on the image of crossing Day Boulevard with Savannah to get to see the gentle lapping of Dorchester Bay’s calm water. She felt Savannah’s small hand resting in hers. She imagined Savannah wearing a blue bathing suit dotted with white stars, one that Bobby’s sister, now Savannah’s Auntie Eileen, would buy her new niece.

“Tia, Tia,” Robin called.

Tia closed her eyes.

“Are you crying?”

Tia shook her head.

“Yes you are. I see it.”

Tia shrugged.

“Are you alone?”

“No,” Tia whispered. “Yes.”

CHAPTER 35

Juliette

Juliette clutched the wheel in a death grip as she drove down the snaky Jamaicaway. The four-lane parkway had no business being any wider than one line of traffic in each direction. Even a fractional error seemed likely to result in a headfirst crash into an oncoming car. There were only inches between the traffic lanes, traffic lights came up with brake-screeching frequency, and cyclists veered off their designated path as though the entire concept of bike lanes were only places for the cyclists’ brief respites from their mission of torturing drivers.

The last time she’d driven this road, she’d been on her way to spy on Tia. Not a good memory.

At least today, Nathan knew her destination. The relief of not hiding her meeting with Caroline offered at least some small reprieve for her jangled nerves. Each time she tried to form an adequate apology for having burst into Caroline’s life, it sounded either insane or insipid.

My mind snapped?

My deepest apologies?

I became unhinged?

Anger had turned to sorrow, and now, calmer, if sadder, Juliette could see what she’d done to Caroline, scheming like a character in
a low-rent version of
Fatal Attraction
. Her cheeks became hot at the memory.

Inviting Caroline to a free juliette&gwynne session? Offering treacly sympathy and manipulating her maternal worry? What the hell had Juliette wanted or expected? Jesus. It was a miracle that Caroline had agreed to meet with her today.

“Come on. Give yourself a break,” Nathan had said when they spoke on the phone last night. Lately, they’d talked nightly. It reminded her of when they first dated, with her living in Boston and him in Rhinebeck. “Maybe the miracle isn’t that she’s seeing you but that you’re willing to go and say you’re sorry. You realize that most people would write an email, right?”

Nathan’s genius for reassuring her had become magnified when she no longer had it on tap. She couldn’t access equilibrium without him. People spoke of their husbands and wives as being their best friends, but with Nathan, it felt more essential. Without him, her stability was missing. Friends described feeling that way after their parents died, but Juliette never found comfort or constancy with her mother or father. Only with Nathan had she found an emotional home.

Once again she was reading up on marriage, divorce, adultery, and children—the past five years had borne a new crop of these books. At this point, Juliette hated any sentence containing the word
acknowledge
or
repair
. She wanted to throw the tiresome books out the window. Why didn’t they offer something useful, like instructions for how to permanently wash another woman’s handprints off her husband’s body?

In the end, it came down to two simple declarative sentences:

1. She loved and missed Nathan.

2. She didn’t know if she had the forgiveness in her to make it work.

Father’s Day had come and gone. She’d promised herself she’d make her decision before then, but she broke that pledge. Instead she
made list after list. Gwynne repeated ad nauseam that Juliette should take as long as she needed. Her mother insisted the time was long overdue for her to “stop this nonsense and get your husband home,” while her father urged her to be logical about the decision.

Did
logical
mean following her heart or her pro-and-con list? Yesterday she’d done what some book suggested, setting a timer for three minutes and then writing out a pro-and-con list without thinking about or judging anything she put on paper.

Juliette parked the car on a side street lined with Victorian homes, happy for a few moments to calm down before meeting Caroline. She passed the old Boston Children’s Museum, now condos, and a former convent, now condos, and then pushed the signal button to cross the busy Jamaicaway.

Jamaica Pond in August looked like a pastoral postcard from 1895—until you noticed white iPod buds in the runners’ ears, dogs straining on leashes, baby carriages specially made to accommodate exercising parents, and T-shirts proclaiming everything from Red Sox Nation to Save Nine Inch Nails.

Juliette shaded her eyes as she searched for Caroline in the glary afternoon sun. Squinting, she saw her waving from a large gazebo perched above the water. A weathered boathouse to the left completed the perfect picture.

After breathing deep for bravery, Juliette climbed up the steps to where Caroline stood.

“Thanks for meeting me.” Juliette held out her hand, grateful when Caroline held it for more than a brief second.

“Do you want to walk or sit?” Caroline asked. “It’s shady here, but I’m happy to get a bit of exercise while we talk.”

“Your choice,” Juliette said.

“I’d liked to stretch my legs.” Caroline gave a small smile. “It’s just one and half miles around. I don’t think we’ll get in much trouble, no matter what you’ve come to talk about.”

Juliette smiled back. “Sounds good. We’ll make the—what?—twenty-minute commitment?”

Caroline placed a baseball cap on her head and slipped on the sunglasses that had been tucked in the breast pocket of her white oxford shirt. “Let’s go.”

Small talk seemed ridiculous at the moment, but Juliette, social discomfort pressing from all angles, made an attempt. “How was the place?”

They’d met here because it was close to a house a Realtor was showing Caroline. Moving from Dover to Jamaica Plain? That was surely a story, but not one Juliette felt any right to delve into except for polite conversation patter.

“Fine.” Caroline’s face became animated,
fine
seeming to hold far more than the word would imply, but then she pressed her lips together as though clamping down on whatever response had been close to coming out. “I don’t want to jinx it.”

“I understand.” Actually, she didn’t, but Juliette didn’t want Caroline to feel compelled to lead the conversation. This was her responsibility to carry. She took in her surroundings, buying a moment by studying the park ranger’s horse encircled by enchanted children. A small boy extended a tentative hand toward the animal’s chestnut brown flank.

“I came to apologize.” Juliette spilled the words in a rush. Might as well dive right in. “My . . . my need for information led me to acting unbelievably inappropriately.”

Caroline stopped walking. She turned toward Juliette and tipped her head. “That’s one way to put it.” The corners of Caroline’s mouth
softened her mocking words. “Inappropriate. That’s what my mother would say to describe serving chocolate in the summer sun.”

“That doesn’t sound so inappropriate,” Juliette said. “I love chocolate. Even soft and melted.”

Caroline shivered. “Ugh. I’m picturing a Hershey bar coating my fingers.”

“And I’m picturing licking it from my fingers. We’re different.”

“We are.” Caroline began walking again. Juliette fell into step, matching Caroline’s clipped cadence.

“Really, though.” Juliette looked ahead as she spoke. “I’m sorry. I was a lunatic. Just thinking about it makes me want to die.”

“I can imagine,” Caroline said.

Juliette appreciated the sardonic response. Polite bullshit was the last thing she wanted. “Not that it’s an excuse,” she said. “But when I learned about Savannah, when I opened the letter from Tia, the world turned upside down, and I felt like my family, my marriage, that everything was about to fall off the face of the earth.”

Caroline nodded without comment.

“Look, I’m not asking for forgiveness. At least I hope not. You owe me nothing. I was awful to you. To Savannah. Your husband. Deceiving you like that . . . ” Juliette let her words drift off.

“Do you have a background in the CIA or something?” Caroline asked. “You did quite a job on short notice.”

“I don’t know where it came from.”

“Remind me to never cross you,” Caroline said. “It was bad enough just being in the cross fire. Your children are pretty lucky, though.”

“Why?”

“Well, let’s just say I pity the one who goes after them.”

They laughed at the same time.

“I’m shocked by how much I like you,” Caroline said.

Juliette blinked against the stupid tears that rushed up at hearing Caroline’s words. “That’s a nice surprise,” she said after clearing her throat.

“Really, though. You
were
insane,” Caroline said. “If I hadn’t been
able to calm Peter down, I think he might have called the police.”

Juliette shivered, imagining the outcome if that had happened. Detectives questioning her. Nathan bailing her out. Lawyers. Some awful headline in the paper: “Woman Seeks Husband’s Secret Child.”

“Thank you,” Juliette said. “For not calling them. For calming him down. I’m grateful I didn’t do more damage than I probably did. Are you okay? Is Savannah okay? I know Nathan and Tia came to see her. Together.”

“They did. We weathered it. How about you? Are you okay?”

They rounded the halfway mark of circling the pond. From here, the boathouse and gazebo looked distantly romantic.

“This isn’t about me.”

“It can be about anything we want. We’re beyond niceties, aren’t we?”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Speaking with Caroline was shockingly soothing. There was little to hide from her. While there was no name for their connection—except perhaps for
mishpoche,
the Yiddish word Nathan’s parents used to describe anyone even vaguely connected by family ties—Juliette felt as though she were Caroline’s cousin; some sort of relative.

“Nathan and I have separated,” Juliette admitted.

“I’m sorry. Because of . . . all this?”

“Because he lied. When he told me about the affair, right when he stopped seeing her, probably when Tia got pregnant, I thought I knew everything. If he hid Savannah, then who was he?”

“Did you ever think that perhaps he wasn’t hiding it from you, but from himself?” Caroline reached for Juliette’s arm. “Not everything is about us. And thinking or feeling something doesn’t make it true.”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, but I don’t want to deny reality.”

Caroline pulled Juliette to a bench. “Sit down. If we’re going to talk, let’s talk.”

Juliette sat, shocked, and more than a little overwhelmed by this woman. Apparently, quiet didn’t equal shy.

“Look, it wasn’t your goal or even on your mind, but you might have saved our family.” Caroline pulled her feet up on the bench and circled her knees with her long arms. She looked at the geese waddling down the path as she spoke.

“I was very unsure of myself with Savannah,” she continued. “I saw my feelings as everything real in the world. If you hadn’t cut into our lives the way you did, setting the events into motion, I don’t know where I’d be right now. Certainly not happy.”

“Or I could have ruined your lives.”

“
Juliette.
” Caroline spoke sharply. “Don’t be so melodramatic. You have to see things from other perspectives than your own. The world is three-dimensional. If you want to divorce Nathan, that’s your right. But if you think you
should
divorce him, because of Savannah, make sure your decision is well considered.”

“Do you think I should take him back?”

“How could I have an opinion on that? I barely know either of you.” Caroline placed her feet firmly on the cement and turned toward Juliette. “But I saw Nathan with Savannah. He isn’t a monster. Certainly, judging by his actions—toward you and Tia—he’s far from perfect. I know he lied, and lied huge, but if you leave, can you base it all on that lie?”

Caroline held up a finger to stop Juliette’s response. “I won’t get this out if I don’t do it right away. I’ve had some horrendous feelings about being a mother. Maybe if Peter knew them, he wouldn’t want to be with me. Don’t we all have moments we’d rather forget, and thoughts we wished never came to us? We say things too awful to remember.” Caroline pushed her hair off her forehead. “When we’re lucky, the people who really matter never know what we’ve said. What we’ve thought or done. Nathan wasn’t that lucky.”