The Good Wife (36 page)

But even Brianna was looking at Kit, waiting to hear the news. Wondering.

At last year’s Brennan Girls’ Getaway their mom had news. It hadn’t been good. It had changed everything.

“Wait,” Brianna said, holding a finger up. She hit Puree on the blender. For a minute the only sound in the kitchen was the whine of the blender grinding ice.

While the blender whirred and chopped the ice, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about last year’s Brennan Girls’ Getaway and how Mom had said there was nothing she could do this time. Nothing she would do. Mom was gone ten months later.

The blender turned off.

“So what is it? Is that why we’re here?” Sarah demanded. “It’s not because Boone thinks I’m having a breakdown?”

“You
are
having a breakdown,” Brianna said tartly, “and that
is
why we’re here. But apparently Kit has news of her own.” She looked at her twin. “You’re pregnant. Right?”

Kit laughed. “Yes. How did you know?”

Brianna rolled her eyes. “Because your boobs are huge, and you’re glowing.”

Kit laughed again and blushed. “I’ve had to buy all new bras.”

Sarah darted a glance in Cass’s direction but Cass looked surprisingly serene.

“Cass knows,” Kit added. “I told her a month ago. She was the first one I told.” Her expression was protective. “I . . . know . . . it can’t be easy for her.”

Cass’s blue eyes shimmered with tears but she smiled. “I’m thrilled for you, Kit. You will be an incredible mother.”

“Thank you.”

“So when is the baby due?” Meg asked, whipping out her iPhone to add the information to her calendar.

“He’s going to be a Christmas baby.” Kit, still blushing, was also beaming, radiating happiness. “December twenty-fifth.”

“He?” Meg repeated.

Kit nodded again. “They saw a little penis on the ultrasound.”

“Hopefully it’ll be a big penis one day,” Brianna deadpanned.

Everyone laughed, including Sarah. But then she thought of their father and how she’d missed his birthday just a few days ago. That was bad. She owed him a makeup dinner. She’d have to make a point of doing something with him soon.

“Have you told Dad yet?” Sarah asked.

“Yes,” Kit answered. “He knows.”

Meg and Sarah exchanged glances.

“And what did he say?” Sarah demanded.

Kit smiled. “He’s thrilled.”

Meg and Sarah exchanged another swift glance. “He didn’t have a problem with you . . . not being married?” Meg asked.

“No.” Kit’s cheeks were dark pink. “Because he was there with us at the courthouse when we got married.”

It was Brianna’s jaw that dropped this time, eyes enormous. “You’re married?”

“At the courthouse?” Cass squeaked, incredulous.

Kit nodded. “We didn’t want a big wedding. In fact, we didn’t want a wedding at all. We just wanted to get married, so we did. And Dad was our best man.”

“Whoa.” Sarah was grateful for her rickety old stool. “And you’re telling me Dad was cool with all of this?”

Kit couldn’t stop smiling. “Yep.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt, pulled out a sparkling diamond engagement ring, and slipped it onto her finger. “And Dad loves Jude.
Loves
him,” she repeated, wiggling her fingers, showing off the ring. “And you will, too, when you know everything.”

Meg frowned. Brianna’s eyebrows arched. Cass still looked stricken. And Sarah didn’t know what to think.

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

“It means that Jude isn’t a mechanic. He’s not a grease monkey. Or a drug dealer.” Kit took a breath, chewed her lip. “Not really supposed to talk about it yet, but since we’re married, you should know. He’s a police officer . . . just an undercover one.”

“A what?” Meg choked.

Brianna grinned. “A narc,” she said, hugely amused. “Our Kit’s married a narc. And they’ve made a little undercover baby. What could be more perfect than that?”

* * *

T
hey all slept in the next morning and then walked to Mr. Toots for coffee, where they sat on the saggy sofas in the window nook talking about their plans for the day.

Cass and Meg were going to take a walk. Brianna wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. Maybe read, maybe see a movie. Kit had grading to do, behind on reading her students’ journals, and Sarah just wanted to go back to bed and sleep.

They all pretty much did what they wanted, with the exception of Brianna, who found herself roped into Cass and Meg’s walk.

Sarah went back to her upper bunk bed and napped the rest of the morning away. It felt good to be lazy. Felt good to not think.

Far better to not think. Or feel. Or look ahead.

But after a couple of hours of dozing, she headed downstairs, poured a glass of iced tea from the pitcher in the fridge, and stepped outside onto the front porch, where Kit sat in an old wicker armchair with a pile of notebooks on her lap. “Still grading journals?” Sarah said, appalled. “You’ve been at it for hours.”

“I have one hundred and eighty-two students, which means I have one hundred and eighty-two journals to read,” Kit answered, glancing up with a smile. But she placed the stack of notebooks on the wicker coffee table, freeing up her lap, and then patted the chair next to her. “Sit. Let’s talk. We need to talk.”

“Why?”

“Because something’s obviously wrong. You’ve apparently come unglued.”

Sarah didn’t sit, just leaned against one of the columns and chewed her thumbnail. “I have,” she agreed. “Completely unglued. I kept warning Boone, but he didn’t listen.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I wasn’t happy. That I wasn’t doing well.”

“And what did he say?”

Sarah shrugged. “That I was tough and strong and would soon get my mojo back.”

“He was giving you pep talks.”

“Yeah. But I’m not on his team. So it didn’t help.”

“You’re not on his team?”

“Not anymore. It used to be Team Walker, but it’s changed. I’ve changed.” She opened her mouth, gulped in air, filling her lungs. “Boone and I are divorcing.”

Boom
. She’d said it.

Sarah held her breath, waiting for her Kit to jump on her. Waiting for Kit to protest and defend Boone, because of course, Kit loved Boone. All her sisters loved Boone. But loving Boone wasn’t the problem.

She loved Boone.

But she didn’t respect him. And a woman had to respect her man. She had to have confidence in him. And faith, too.

Sarah had tried to have faith, but it wasn’t there, the trust wasn’t there, and without it, it was like the biblical story of building your house on sand instead of rock. The sand washed away, fell away, destroying the house. Her house was the same.

“You haven’t been happy for a long time,” Kit said, her cautious expression matching her tone.

“But I want to be happy,” Sarah said.

“You deserve to be happy,” Kit agreed carefully, because as their parents had frequently lectured to them over the years, divorce didn’t solve everything. In their eyes, it was just the start of a whole new set of problems. Maybe even bigger problems.

“It’s not that I don’t love him,” Sarah added.

Kit nodded. “I know.”

Suddenly Meg and Cass and Brianna were there as well, walking up the front steps, having returned from the beach.

“Are we interrupting something?” Meg asked, glancing from Sarah to Kit, seeing somber faces.

“Boone and I have separated,” Sarah said wearily. She was worn out from months of worrying and resenting, never mind all that bottled-up self-loathing. “It’s not working anymore, and I don’t know that it’s his fault. It may be mine. But regardless, I need to learn to love myself again. Because I don’t. I don’t even like myself. I don’t even know who I am. Or what I am. Besides a failure.”

“A failure?” Meg dropped into a faded wicker chair. “How are you a failure? I don’t understand.”

Sarah’s shoulders twisted. “I spend my days obsessed with Boone and whether he is or isn’t faithful. I think of him out on the road, playing ball, living the good life while I’m at home, holding down the fort, and I hate it. I hate him. I hate me. Mostly I hate me.”

“But why would you hate yourself?” Bree asked, burying her hands deep in her swirling-cotton-skirt pockets.

“Because I’m a snoop. A sneak. A spy.” Sarah smiled hard even as she ground her back teeth together. “You should see me, going through his wallet and pockets. His travel bag and desk drawers. I examine everything, even his damn restaurant receipts.”

“You think he’s cheating,” Meg said.

Sarah nodded.

“And what have you found?” Cass asked softly.

“Nothing.” Sarah laughed, slightly hysterical. “And that’s just it. I can’t find proof of anything . . . or he can explain everything . . . and then I just look stupid. I feel stupid. And the self-loathing kicks in.”

“But if Boone was the one who cheated, why would you hate yourself?” Cass persisted.

Sarah fought for her composure. “Because I stayed with him. And I didn’t stay because I was strong. I stayed because I didn’t think I’d survive without him.” Her lips curved, as she tried to hide the tears in her eyes. “Pathetic, huh?”

“That’s so harsh,” Cass protested.

“But true.” Sarah’s voice hardened “I used to be somebody. I used to have confidence, a sense of self-worth. But I don’t anymore. I want it back. I need it back. Bad.”

* * *

S
arah didn’t drink that night. Not by choice. There was no wine, and the tequila was gone. She could have walked to the store on the corner and bought a bottle, but she didn’t.

Instead she sat up, late into the night, on the front porch, wrapped in a blanket.

Sitting on the steps, she listened to the sounds of the night. The waves pounding the beach across the street. The voices of young kids racing down the back alley. The laughter of girls leaving a bar. A young couple murmuring, talking. Another couple arguing.

You said,
she said.

You said,
he said.

Sarah watched them walk past her, on their way to their car. They walked with space between them, their anger like a third person tagging along.

Boone and me,
Sarah thought, ducking her head, closing her eyes, hating to be like the couple fighting.

She and Boone had always been more than that. Better.

Eyes closed, she could see him the day they first met. It’d been here in Capitola and he and two friends were in line at Pizza My Heart. She’d just come off the beach in nothing but a bikini and cropped T-shirt, having killed it in an aggressive beach volleyball game.

She was still sweating, and hot, her long hair in a messy ponytail high on her head, and she’d walked right past Boone, not seeing him at first, but then something—some energy—caught her attention and she stopped, looked behind her.

There were three men, but she saw only one.

Tall, lots of muscles, a gorgeous face, a golden tan.

She looked then at his friends. They both had muscles, too, that lean fit look that identified them as athletes.

She knew. She’d been an athlete.

She’d looked away, and then looked back, and Boone was staring at her, his gaze warm, intense.

He likes me,
she thought.
He likes what he sees.

She liked that, and she smiled, just a little, the corner of her lips lifting.

He’d liked that, too.

She’d lifted a brow, slightly mocking, and gave him a smile that was more challenge than anything else, and then turned around, giving him a view of her ass in its little red bikini bottom, and headed on home to the family beach house.

He caught up with her before she made it to the cottage’s front door.

He had to leave soon, he said. He had a game that night at Candlestick Park. Could she come? He’d put her on the pass list . . .

Sarah had laughed and tugged the rubber band from her hair, freeing it. Her hair tumbled down over her shoulders to the middle of her back. She pushed her hand through it, lifting it. “I don’t even know you,” she’d said.

“I’m Boone Walker. I play baseball for the Braves.”

“What position?”

“First base.”

Impressive. She liked first base. “Where are you from?”

“New Orleans.”

She liked his accent. Sounded hot, sexy. But then, he was pretty damn hot and sexy. “Do you put a different girl on the pass list every night?”

“Only ones who wear red bikini bottoms.”

She tugged her T-shirt lower, but it did nothing to conceal her bare, flat stomach. “You’re a flirt.”

“You’re beautiful.”

She’d held his gaze, wanting to see what was in his eyes, appreciating his intensity. He was smart. Successful. He’d also be impossible to keep. She’d gone to school with guys like this. Had dated guys like this.

“Come tonight,” he said.

She lifted a shoulder. “Can’t.”

“Why?”

“I have to work. I bartend across the street at Margaritaville.”

“You bartend?” he repeated.

“I do. It’s my job until school starts.”

“You’re still in school?”

“I start law school in September.”

He was impressed. But she wasn’t finished. “I also act as a bouncer when required,” she added, leaning toward him, looking into his eyes. He took her breath away. It made her furious. “And I could kick your ass.” She smiled. Sweetly.

Boone laughed. “Do you always play hard to get?”

“I
am
hard to get.”

He laughed, again, and yet something had changed, something between them. She found herself staring at his mouth. She could barely breathe.
Kiss me,
she thought.

And he did.

He pulled her into his world, his hands sinking into her hair, his mouth covering hers. It wasn’t a long kiss. Wasn’t a hard kiss. But it still blew her mind.

“I’m in town for two more days,” he said quietly, his mouth hovering just above hers. “Come see me tomorrow. Our team’s staying in Burlingame.”

And then he’d expect her to sleep with him.

And it’d be good. Maybe great. But then he’d be gone.

“Nope,” she said, even as part of her was jumping up and down saying
yes yes yes.
But she knew. She couldn’t just give herself to him. He’d never respect her if she did.