After a minute, she opens her eyes and looks at him. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“I need to say three things to you,” he says. “The first is that you need help. Not just you and Ethan, but the whole family system. You need to be seeing a therapist.”
“I know, but Ethan doesn’t want to.”
“If the thought of leaving is even occurring to you, you’re at a crisis point, and he may not have a choice.”
Andi nods.
“The second thing is that we are not talking about a young child here. Emily is almost eighteen. I know she’s taking this gap year to travel, but after that, she’s going to college, right? And then she’s gone. She’s a grown-up. It’s not like you have all these years ahead of you with her being at home. She’s almost gone.” He shakes her hand, smiling. “You still need help, but she’s almost gone.”
“I know. I know.” Andi smiles. “You’re right. I needed to hear that. I need to be reminded of it. When I’m in it, it’s just so all-consuming, I can’t think of anything else, I can’t see a way out.”
“I know, but it always passes, and you can always, always come and talk to me. Or Topher. We love you, and we love your family.”
“So what’s the third thing?”
“I’m having lunch with Pete, my trainer, and he’s totally cute and flirty, and straight. I think you need some fun, so I’m sending you home to get some makeup, then you are putting your game face on and coming with me, and no, I won’t take no for an answer.”
Five
Kids on stunt bikes are gathered around a bench, showing off tricks to one another making their bikes hop and skip as Andi and Drew weave out of the way, crossing over to the Depot Bookstore for lunch.
Andi smiles an okay as the kid shouts an apology over, then she pulls on Drew’s sleeve to bring him to a stop.
“Explain to me again why you’re having lunch with your trainer? And why I’m accompanying you, narrowly avoiding being run over by a BMX bike?”
“Because he’s cute?”
“Yes. Other than that.”
“Because he’s been working me out for a year, and we’ve become friends. I think I may be his gay best friend. He wants to charm me into finding him some new clients, and I thought you might be interested.”
“So that’s your ulterior motive.” Andi grins. “You think I’m getting a flabby ass.”
“No, I think your ass is peachily perfect. But nobody’s ass is staying peachily perfect after forty-two without a bit of help. Anyway, it’s good for you. I know you totally hate exercise, but he’ll work you out on the weights, and he’ll go running with you, and I swear, you’ll love it. He’s fun. There he is!” Drew calls out to a man standing at the end of the counter, examining the homemade delicacies.
He is not very tall, and not what could be described as classically handsome, but there is something immediately compelling about him. When he turns to them and looks at Andi, she finds herself standing stock-still, startled.
He has amused, clear blue eyes, but it isn’t that. Nor is it the strong but broken nose. It isn’t his chin, with a scar running down the left side, or his short, dark hair, with just enough gel to brush it back over his head. It looks spiky but soft. Andi instantly wants to reach out a hand and touch it.
God he’s handsome, she thinks. Then blinks. He isn’t, she realizes, but there is something about him that is mesmerizing. She finds herself suddenly self-conscious, on the verge of blushing, when he reaches out to shake Drew’s hand.
“So this is why you brought me here,” he says, shaking Drew’s hand, then engaging in the claspy man-hug thing that Andi has noticed everyone doing these days. “To torture me with all the refined sugar and white flour.”
“We have organic, vegan, gluten-free cookies,” the girl behind the counter pipes up. “If you’re interested.”
“I think chili’s more my thing,” Pete says. “But thanks. Hey”—he turns, finally, to Andi, who, willing herself to act normal, is stunned at the reaction she appears to be having to this man—“I’m Pete.”
“Andi.” She is shocked at the warmth of his smile, a warmth that travels up her arm, along with a slight warning bell that makes her shake her head ever so slightly, as if to dislodge the nugget of disquiet that has, without invitation, entered her being.
“Nice invite.” Pete gives Drew an approving smile as Andi blushes.
“She’s married.” Drew shoots Pete a withering look. “To the greatest guy ever. And she’s happy. But you’re allowed to flirt because I know you’re completely incorrigible, but don’t get any ideas, okay.”
“Either of you,” he whispers to Andi as they follow Pete to a table on the terrace outside.
* * *
Later, when they’ve finished lunch, and are basking in the warmth, lingering over herbal teas, Pete says to Andi, “You look like you’re in great shape,” clearly lying.
“Great way to get new clients,” Andi teases. “Tell them they’re in great shape and don’t need your services. For the record? I’m in terrible shape.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t need my services.” Pete reaches over and takes hold of her arm. “You’re what, a size six?”
Andi, who ranges anywhere from a ten, to a more usual eight, to a very, very occasional six, and only ever for brief periods in her life, nods.
“You look awesome. You don’t need to lose weight, but you could tone. See here?” he gently holds out the pudgy skin on Andi’s arms as she cringes. “That would be gone in just a few sessions.”
“Any other flaws?” Andi tries to hide her embarrassment. “Can you get rid of cellulite?”
“You don’t have cellulite.” Pete shoots a look down to her crossed legs, her shorts having ridden up when she sat down, then grins. “Trust me. I already looked. And no. This isn’t about pointing out your flaws. It’s just about toning up. You’ll feel so much better.”
“Well, thanks. I can see why you’re good, but I don’t have the time.”
Drew frowns at her.
“What?” she looks at him. “Drew! I have a business to run, I’m a wife, a mother, I can’t fit the gym in on top of the other stuff I already do.”
“I don’t know you,” Pete interjects kindly, “but I know you have time. We all have time to do the things we want to do, and if we don’t, we make it. You only run out of time for the things you don’t want to do.”
“He’s right,” Drew says. “Look at you! You’ve wasted a whole morning and now a lunchtime with me, when you could have spent an hour of that in the gym.”
“Okay, okay,” she grumbles. “But now I’m feeling guilty at not doing any work today. I have to go.” She stands up and gives Drew a hug, extending a hand to Pete.
“I’ll take the hug, thanks,” he says, and she awkwardly steps in, patting him on the back and wanting to leave as quickly as possible.
* * *
I’m married, not dead,
she says to herself later, all the way home.
I’m married, not dead.
“It’s fine to be attracted to other people,” she has heard herself saying to friends who have confessed to feelings they shouldn’t be feeling for men who are not their husbands. “It’s just not okay to do anything about it.”
She hasn’t found anyone even remotely attractive since meeting Ethan. She hasn’t felt the thrill of attraction for anyone other than her husband for five years. She doesn’t want to feel anything for anyone other than her husband, isn’t looking to feel anything, isn’t the slightest bit interested in other men.
I am being stupid,
she tells herself;
I am reacting to the fact that a man, single, straight, and cute, paid attention to me, flirted with me ever so slightly.
I am married,
she repeats, over and over.
I am married to a wonderful man and, who knows, maybe one day soon I will find myself pregnant. And think what a beautiful child we would have together, a celebration of our love.
Please, God,
she silently prays,
please let me be pregnant, please let me fall in love with my husband again, please, please, let life be good.
It is good,
she tells herself, forcing herself to focus on Ethan.
Soon,
soon,
Emily will be out of the house, and we will have the relationship I know we can have. He is a good man, I will not find better. He and I are meant to be.
With great and grave effort, she manages to push Pete out of her head, but it is only when she gets home and finds Ethan clearing out the garage that Pete leaves her head completely.
* * *
“What are you doing?” Fear courses through Andi’s body as she approaches the driveway. It looks as if he is packing. It looks as if he is leaving.
She
might have thought about leaving, might have thought that she hadn’t signed up for this, but she didn’t expect, never expected, Ethan to pack up and leave.
“Organizing the garage.” Ethan looks up. “Why? Did you think I was leaving?”
Andi feels a wave of shame and stupidity. “No.”
“You did?” Ethan stands then, closing the box. “You really did? Because of last night?”
“I just got scared,” Andi admits.
“Oh, love.” Ethan walks over to her, extending his arms, and Andi gratefully sinks in.
“I love you. I hate these fights, these moments that happen when we disconnect from each other so completely, but that isn’t what defines our relationship.” He steps back to take her shoulders and look her in the eye.
“What defines our relationship is trust. And love. And communication. I hated this morning. I hated that we didn’t resolve it. I know we need to talk it through, which is why I came home early, but I would never leave you, Andi. I love you.”
“I’m sorry,” Andi says. “I’m sorry I thought that, and I’m sorry for what happened. I just felt so resentful. It seemed like such a manipulation.”
Ethan hangs his head. “I’m not saying Emily can’t be manipulative. And she was wrong. And she said terrible things to you. I’ve spoken to her mother, and she’s taking the girls this weekend.”
“Really?” Andi feels a weight lift. “But it’s our weekend to have them, and we have Isabel’s wedding.”
“I know. I already texted Isabel to say the kids wouldn’t be coming. I told Emily I didn’t want her around until she can conduct herself better. I told her it’s fine to feel the way she feels, but it isn’t fine to express it in the way she does. Not to mention the consequence of her breaking curfew. That’s why she’s going, very much against her will, to be at her mother’s this weekend.”
“How did she take it?”
His eyes flicker away. “You don’t want to know.”
“But you didn’t cave?”
“I’m not as weak as you think I am.”
“Thank you,” Andi says, reaching up on tiptoes as she snakes her arms around his neck. “I love you so much.”
Ethan gives her a half smile. “Does that mean I can tempt you upstairs for a spot of afternoon delight?”
Andi checks her watch. “We’ve got twenty-five minutes until Sophia gets back from camp. Think you can delight me enough in twenty-five minutes?”
A throaty laugh emerges as Ethan hauls her over his shoulder and runs upstairs, throwing her on the bed as her laughs turn quickly to slow, satisfied sighs.
Six
When Sophia comes home from tennis camp, Andi avoids Emily by putting Sophia in the car and taking her to the showroom. Sophia has a natural eye for design and loves nothing more than putting together sample boards in Andi’s office.
Technically, Andi still calls herself a home-stager although most of the clients who go on to sell their homes thanks to Andi’s staging then ask her to help them decorate their new houses.
The business has grown to the point where she now has a large warehouse—four times the size of the one she had when she ran her business on the East Coast—filled with furniture and accessories and furnishings that are rented out to turn houses into homes, with one corner devoted to bolts of fabrics and books of wallpaper for the interior decorating clients.
Andi answers e-mails, returns calls, and rings her suppliers while Sophia curls up on the sofa and leafs through old interior design magazines, tearing out pictures of rooms she loves, gravitating, naturally, toward children’s bedrooms.
“I love this!” Sophia will gasp, holding something out for Andi to look at. When Andi goes over to the marble counter on which stands a kettle and a glass apothecary jar filled with tea bags, to make some tea, Sophia comes to stand next to her, wrapping an arm around Andi’s waist.
“Promise me you’ll let me work with you when I’m old enough,” she says, leaning her head on Andi’s arm.
“I promise. I already told you next summer, when you’re fourteen you can work as my assistant.” Andi smiles down at her and kisses the top of her head.
“I just love it here.” Sophia sighs happily. “I’m so lucky I know what I want to do when I’m older.”
“Interior decorator?”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“How about Emily?” Andi ventures, for the only way they know anything about Emily these days is by subtly asking Sophia. “What do you think she wants to do?”
Sophia shrugs. “All she’s interested in these days is her boyfriend.”
Andi is surprised. “She has a boyfriend?”
“Mmm-hmmm. Although I don’t, like, know who it is today.”
“There’s no ‘like’ in that sentence. Who was it yesterday?”
“No! It’s like, last…”
“No ‘like’ in that sentence.”
“Sorry. Last week it was G-man, but this week it’s li … sorry, it’s someone else. She changes all the time.”
“She does? She really has a lot of boyfriends?”
“Yeah.” And Sophia turns away. Bored now.
* * *
We are so unaware,
Andi thinks.
We think of them as children, long after they are children.
On some level, of course, they know that Emily must be sexually active, but is she really? Who with? Where?
It’s not as if Emily makes any effort to be attractive to boys. Her raven black hair is stringy and greasy, her nail polish chipped, her clothes loose and voluminous to hide her ever-growing figure.
“Puppy fat,” Ethan once said.
“At seventeen?” Andi countered.
“It’ll go,” he said, unconcerned.
* * *
Emily has a lot of boyfriends, Sophia said.