The Replacement Wife (23 page)

“This isn’t just outside the box. It’s in outer space circling the planet.”

Holly, in her fifth month of pregnancy, was finally showing. Not like Camille when she was at that stage in her pregnancies, when her feet and ankles had been puffy as the rest of her. Holly’s baby bump was of the movie star variety: the only thing protruding on an otherwise sylph-like body. Standing next to her, Camille felt like a dog’s dinner in comparison. She knew she looked awful, thin and drawn, and she felt even worse. She was running a low-grade fever, which she hadn’t mentioned to anyone because she didn’t want to spoil her family’s weekend plans. They hadn’t been out to the beach house since last Thanksgiving, and they were all looking forward to the start of the season.

There was also the matter of their houseguest.

“I don’t have a lot of time to explore other options,” she said simply.

Holly was quiet for a moment, wearing the pained look that had become all too familiar of late: the one that said she knew her big sister wouldn’t always be there. “Still,” she said. “Are you sure you’re going about this the right way? Why not just have her over for dinner instead? That way, if Edward and the kids decide they hate her, the entire weekend won’t be blown.”

“They won’t hate her. She’s a nice person. You’ll see.” Camille spoke with more conviction than she felt. Privately, she shared her sister’s qualms and wondered if perhaps she’d been hasty in inviting Elise for the weekend in lieu of simply having her over for dinner, as Holly had suggested. But she’d been caught off guard when Elise had phoned—it had been over a week and Camille had all but given up on her—and when Elise let it drop, in the course of their conversation, that she’d be visiting a friend in Amagansett on Sunday, Camille seized the opportunity. Why not make a weekend of it? she had said. Elise could stay with them Friday and Saturday nights before joining her friend. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; she’d thought it would give Edward and the children—Holly, too—a chance to really get to know Elise. Only afterward did she regret the impulse. Edward was still upset with her—for some reason he seemed to think the dinner party at Kat’s had been some sort of setup—and she’d been unable to convince him otherwise. She didn’t want to make an already tense situation worse. But it was too late now to back out; the arrangements had already been made and she wasn’t going to risk having Elise change her mind due to a change of plans.

“I don’t doubt she’s a nice person,” Holly said, “But that’s beside the point.”

“She’s just coming to meet you guys and for you to get to know her. That’s all.” Camille attempted to make less of it, but her matter-of-fact tone didn’t match the leaden feeling in her gut.

“Even so, it’s weird.”

Camille couldn’t disagree with that, so she only shrugged and resumed the task of stowing items in the back of the Volvo.

“What have you told the kids?” Holly wanted to know.

“Just that a friend is coming for the weekend.” And maybe a “friend” was all Elise would ever be.

“How does Edward feel about it?”

Camille straightened and sighed. “He’s not too happy about it,” she admitted.

Holly stood with her arms crossed over her chest, wearing a look of disapproval. “Sometimes I wonder if you know how lucky you are to have a husband who loves you as much as he does.”

Camille felt a pang at her sister’s words. She knew Edward loved her, but since the argument they’d had after the night at Kat’s, he’d been strangely withdrawn. His hours at work had grown increasingly irregular and one evening the previous week he hadn’t made it home until after eleven p.m. His excuse was that he’d stopped for a drink with one of his colleagues on the way home from a seminar, and while she had no reason to doubt his story, it had left her feeling unsettled nonetheless. One thing was clear: He’d been in no hurry to get home to his wife.

“I know,” she said in a small voice. “But right now, I don’t feel very lucky.”

Holly’s face creased in sympathy, knowing Camille wasn’t just talking about Edward, and she reached for her, hugging her tightly until Camille pulled back to fish the tissues she kept on hand at all times these days from the pocket of her hoodie. She helped herself to one before offering the pack to Holly. “Well, don’t just stand there, we don’t have all day,” she said after they’d both dried their eyes. Holly gave a snappy salute, saying, “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Camille watched her sister wriggle her way in back among the packed contents of the Volvo and begin rearranging things to make room for more stuff. “Are you sure you want to take all these beach towels?” Holly called over her shoulder. “Don’t you have enough at the house?”

“You can never have too many beach towels, not with kids,” Camille told her.

She recalled lazy summer afternoons at the beach in Southampton, building sand castles with her kids when they were little and wading with them in the surf. In her mind’s eye, she saw her younger self, a baby on her hip and a toddler in tow, gingerly making her way into the surf, the children squealing in delight as the waves rolled in to splash them. However warm the weather, Kyra and Zach were always shivering by the time they emerged from the water, soaking wet. She’d swaddle them in towels like caterpillars in cocoons, and they’d burrow into her lap to get warm. She ached now knowing those days were behind her. However hard she strove to hold on to each moment, to stay in the present, it was like the sand that slipped from underfoot when she stood at the water’s edge with the tide rushing in.

Her sister emerged from the back of the car, her face flushed and hair in disarray, a piece of lint stuck to one cheek. “I think that’s everything,” she announced. “Should we go round up the kids?”

Camille locked the Volvo, and they headed back inside. She’d been lucky to find a parking space in front of their building. Friday afternoons in the warm-weather months always brought a caravan of cars and SUVs double-parked along this stretch of West End Avenue, the owners of said vehicles shuttling back and forth, loading them with stuff they’d need for the weekend.

Kyra was ready and waiting when they walked in the door of the apartment. “What took you guys so long? It’ll be dark by the time we get there!” she cried. She’d recently acquired her first “grown-up” two-piece, and she was dying to show it off at the beach. Camille hoped the spring weather would cooperate. This time of year, it alternated between stretches of warm, sunny days and weekends when they stayed indoors, a fire lit in the hearth while cold ocean winds gusted outside.

“Is your brother ready?” Camille asked calmly.

“I don’t know, but I’ve been ready for
hours,
” declared her eldest.

“The beach will still be there in the morning,” Holly reminded her niece, adding with a wink, “and so will the boys.” Kyra’s face went pink and she hurried off to fetch her brother.

Camille headed for the kitchen to fetch the snacks she’d packed for the trip. Holly trailed after her, scooting onto one of the stools at the counter. “So,” she said, “I’m seeing Curtis next week.”

Camille grew suddenly alert and she paused, looking up at her sister, as she was putting juice boxes and apples from the fridge into the bag with the soy nuts and SunChips. “He’s in town?”

“Only for a few days.” From the casualness with which she spoke, anyone would’ve thought it wasn’t that big a deal, but Camille knew better. The bigger the event, the more Holly downplayed it—she’d been that way ever since she was a kid. She wondered if Curtis was making a special trip just to see Holly or if she was just a loose end to tie up before he flew back to London.

“Well, I’m sure you two have lots to discuss,” she said pointedly.

“I guess.” Holly shrugged.

Camille frowned. “What do you mean, you ‘guess’? You’re not in this alone, remember.”

Holly helped herself to a banana from the fruit bowl. “He didn’t even know I was preggers until a few weeks ago, and if I hadn’t told him, he’d be none the wiser,” she reminded Camille. “The point is, he’s not a fixture in my life, and no one’s holding a gun to his head. So it’s his choice whether or not he wants to get involved. Either way, Junior and I will be just fine.”

“He should at least pay child support.”

“Why, because it’s the law?”

“It’s the law for a reason, and let’s face it, you could use the money.” Holly’s online business generated a decent enough income, but as often as not it was a case of feast or famine. A major score, like the Springsteen jacket or the guitar played by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, could tide her over during lean times, but with a child to raise, she’d need a steadier source of income.

Holly had other concerns, though. “Those support checks come with a whole lot of strings attached from what I’ve seen. I know women whose exes think it gives them all kinds of rights, even stuff like deciding who they should go out with. I have this one friend whose ex took her to court because it was ‘harmful to their kids’”—she made her air quotes, speaking in a derisive tone that was offset by a mouthful of banana—“that her live-in boyfriend was in a rock band. Imagine!” To Holly, who lived and breathed rock and roll, such a statement was just shy of heresy.

Camille let it go for now. Her sister had never listened to reason. Why should the fact that she had a baby on the way make a difference? She’d continue to go her own way just as she always had.

Just then Kyra reappeared, with Zach in tow. Minutes later, they were all buckled into the Volvo, headed for the Throgs Neck Bridge. Edward would join them later; he was taking the jitney. Holly kept the children entertained while Camille drove. Kyra considered herself too mature, at fourteen, for such games as seeing who could spot the most out-of-state license plates and only reluctantly joined in, but she soon got into the spirit of it and was craning her neck, shouting in glee at each new sighting of a vehicle that didn’t bear New York plates. It wasn’t until they were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the LIE that the children grew restless.

“What’s there to eat?” Zach’s voice rose, petulant, from the backseat as he and Kyra rifled through the bag of snacks their mom had packed. “Apples and chips
?
That’s it? Can we stop at McDonald’s?”

“It’s ‘may’ not ‘can.’ And no, we may not,” Camille answered mildly, inching forward another car length as the traffic began to move again. “I don’t want you to spoil your appetite.”

“But I’m hungry
now.
” She could see her son in the rearview mirror working himself into a major pout.

She ignored it. If there was a silver lining to living on borrowed time, it was that she had learned not to let the small stuff get to her. When one of her children whined or mouthed off, she saw it as evidence of normalcy. Better that than have them minding their manners because they were fearful of making their sick mother even sicker. “We’ll eat dinner when we get to the house,” she said in her don’t-try-my-patience voice. “I’m fairly certain you won’t starve before then.”

It was growing dark by the time they pulled into the driveway of the modest 1850s Cape Cod, on a tree-shaded lane in Southampton. Camille and Edward had purchased the house shortly after Zach was born. Juggling their busy careers with the demands of a five-year-old and an infant had made them see the need for a place where they could slow down and enjoy life more. Toward that end, they’d declared the beach house a television-free zone, a rule that applied to computers and video games as well. Anywhere else the kids would have balked at such a rule, but here they accepted it as the natural order of things. She’d noticed they were happier and better behaved as a result. Most evenings after supper, they played card games or Scrabble or worked on a jigsaw puzzle together. When the kids were younger, Camille or Edward would often read aloud to them from books they themselves had loved as children—
The Borrowers
or
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
or
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea—
while a fire crackled in the hearth and Kyra and Zach listened raptly. Here, more than anywhere else, they were a family.

And now, with Elise, she’d possibly be introducing a new member. A fresh ripple of apprehension went through her at the thought. What if her husband refused to give Elise a chance? What if Elise decided against taking on such a huge commitment once she saw what it entailed? Camille would be back at square one, without a plan and her family without a safety net.

You can’t think that way,
she told herself as she flipped open the Volvo’s hatch and began pulling boxes and bags out of the back. She had to stay positive. Even if the desired outcome was one she never could have imagined wishing for back in the days when she’d had a choice.

She’d arranged for Elise and Edward to arrive on the same jitney. When she pulled into the parking lot of the Omni a short while later, she spotted them standing together in front of the station chatting amiably.
So far so good,
she thought. A small seed of jealousy sprouted nonetheless. She’d been so worried they wouldn’t like each other, it hadn’t occurred to her they might like each other a little too much. Watching their animated faces and the way Edward nodded his head as if deeply interested in whatever Elise was saying, she suddenly had trouble getting enough air into her lungs. It felt like the time she’d cracked a rib falling off a ladder, when it had hurt just to breathe. This was the hard part. The part where she had to grit her teeth and smile while her husband bonded with—and possibly grew to love—another woman.

She tooted her horn to get their attention. As they approached, she noted with approval the canvas tote Elise carried in lieu of a suitcase. One of Edward’s pet peeves was women who packed for a weekend in the country as if they were going abroad for an entire summer. Elise’s casual attire, khakis and a cotton-knit sweater with a lightweight quilted jacket thrown over it, also struck the right note. Camille was reminded of when her friend Nicole had come for a visit several summers ago. Nicole had arrived looking as if she’d stepped from a glossy ad in
Town & Country
. All weekend, while the rest of them ran around in shorts and flip-flops, she minced about daintily in pressed slacks and wedge-heeled espadrilles. Even at the beach, she was in full makeup, wearing a matching cover-up over her swimsuit. She hadn’t been invited back since.