The Things We Wish Were True (7 page)

EVERETT

Jencey Cabot was sitting at his kitchen table, looking for all the world like she belonged there. Like she’d just been by last week to drop off some blueberries she’d picked and was back to eat the muffins Bryte made from them, or whatever women did with one another when he was at work. He tried not to stare at her, taking in the changes that had occurred since the last time he’d seen her, which wasn’t nearly as long ago as Bryte thought. He couldn’t let on about that. So far Jencey was doing a good job of pretending it had never happened. Was it possible she’d forgotten?

His gaze flickered back over her. Damn but she was still beautiful. Whether her hair was still the same color blonde as it had been in high school or she’d had some help keeping it that color didn’t matter. Except for the faintest lines around her eyes and a bit more wisdom in them, she looked just like the girl he’d loved first. He forced himself to look away and smile at Bryte, who was all revved up about what had happened at the pool that day. She’d talked of nearly nothing else.

“So then what happened?” he asked, feigning the same level of interest, when all he wanted to do was grill Jencey about what she was doing back in town and ask her if she was mad at him. She had a right to be.

“Well, they took him in the ambulance. But the saddest part”—Bryte and Jencey exchanged mournful glances—“the saddest part was his older sister. They didn’t take her with them, and it just broke her heart. So she’s falling apart and we’re all just standing there wondering what to do.” Bryte looked at Jencey again, and he could see the faintest bit of that old hero worship in her eyes as she did. “Jencey was really great with her.”

Jencey shrugged. “She’s close in age to my daughters. I just talked to her the way I do with them when there’s a crisis.”

Have you had a lot of crises in your life?
He refrained from speaking the words aloud. He liked to think her life in Connecticut had been good, better than the one she’d left behind. The one that had once included him.

“Well, you got her calmed down.” Bryte stood and began clearing the plates from dinner, shooing Jencey back into her place when she attempted to stand as well. “I was useless.”

Everett didn’t like the tone this conversation was taking. His wife was regressing in front of his eyes. Where was the confident, capable woman she’d become in her twenties, sans Jencey? He wasn’t sure that Jencey’s reappearance in their lives right on the heels of the infertility issues was the best thing. He’d been close to talking her into subjecting themselves to all of it again, shoring her up for battle. He couldn’t afford for Jencey to reduce her to that uncertain girl she’d been back when they were in high school. That girl could never have gone through all that his wife—grown-up, confident Bryte—had.

“I’m sure you weren’t useless, honey,” he spoke up.

He saw Jencey’s eyes cut over to him and away in a flash. So she didn’t like him calling Bryte “honey.” Interesting. Or maybe he was just reading too much into the situation. Projecting. Isn’t that what Bryte called it when he said things he wished were true as if they already were? Did he want Jencey to be bothered? To be jealous?

Yes, he did. God help him, he did want Jencey to eat her heart out over how it had all turned out. Never mind the way things had gone down that last time. Never mind that things might’ve been different.

“Everett?” Bryte asked. “Would you mind getting Christopher out of his seat?” Without waiting for his reply, Bryte handed him a wet washcloth. And why not? This is what they did every night. This is who they were. This was the choice they’d all made.

He used the washcloth to attempt to remove the remnants of dinner from his son’s face as Christopher squirmed and whined his disapproval. Jencey watched the domestic scene silently, and Everett wondered what she was thinking. Satisfied with his cleaning job—the rest would come off in the bath—Everett released the booster-seat tray and helped him down. Christopher immediately went to Jencey, sidling up to her with a charming grin as he thrust a toy car in her face to impress her.
Like father, like son,
he thought, and suppressed a grin of his own.

“You’re quite the little charmer,” Jencey said, and pulled Christopher onto her lap.

Bryte turned around and looked at the three of them there at the table—the boy in Jencey’s lap, Everett sitting beside them. He could only wonder what Jencey’s thoughts were, but he could take one look at his wife to know what hers were. He caught her eye and winked.
I love you. You’re my wife. This is our son. I wouldn’t want it any different.
Bryte smiled and turned back to the dishes.

“So where’s the little girl now?” he asked, circling back to the most innocuous topic of conversation he could find. It was awful of him, but he was actually glad for the scene at the pool today. It had given them all something to talk about, allowed them to detour away from the land mines that lay in any other conversational territory.

“Well, she’s with Zell. Remember Mrs. Boyette? JJ’s mom?” Bryte started loading the dishwasher, speaking without turning around.

Everett laughed, thinking of big, lumbering JJ Boyette, the quintessential jock. Everett hadn’t thought about him in years. “Yeah,” he said, thinking of the time JJ had chased him and his friends through the woods by the lake. People said those woods were haunted, and as a child he’d been terrified of going into them. Later, he’d come to love those woods.

He forced himself not to look over at Jencey, not to think of their hideaway. At some point he wanted to talk to her alone, to make sure she wasn’t ever going to mention anything to Bryte, who still had no idea what had happened in New York. He couldn’t afford for anything to knock them off course, not when he’d laid so much groundwork for attempting a second child. Bryte would use any excuse to postpone another round of fertility treatments.

He understood—last time was hell—but he also knew that in the end the treatments had worked. He glanced over at Christopher, whose eyes were growing heavy as he sat on Jencey’s lap. He didn’t want his boy to be an only child. He’d been an only child. His world had been lonely until Jencey and Bryte had come into his life when he moved to Sycamore Glen at ten years old. He’d thought of them like sisters, until he didn’t.

“Have you heard anything?” Jencey piped up. “From Zell?”

Bryte shook her head and shut the dishwasher door with a thud, the glasses inside clinking loudly against one another as she did. “Tell you what, I’ll go call her. I’ve got a neighborhood directory around here somewhere.” She strode out of the room, leaving Jencey and Everett alone.

“I’m sorry.” Jencey waited a moment, then spoke quietly, knowing they had precious few moments alone. “If this is awkward.”

He shrugged as if it were no big deal, not letting on how desperate he’d been to cover his bases, to beg her not to mention anything that could damage his marriage. And yet, with Jencey sitting there, he didn’t want to bring up that awkward and embarrassing night. From the back bedroom they used as an office, he heard Bryte using her telephone voice, slightly louder and more formal than her normal speaking voice.

“It’s just weird,” he brought himself to say. “Seeing you again.” He gestured to Christopher. “Here.”

“I’ll never bring up . . . the past,” she said. She looked over at him and their eyes held. “I wouldn’t do that,” she added.

He looked away, focusing his gaze on Christopher’s face, but he could still feel her eyes on him. “Thanks,” he mumbled as relief flooded his body. Bryte returned to the room, talking a mile a minute.

“So, Cailey is still with Zell, and it looks like she’s going to be there for a while. Terrible situation. Cutter has—hang on, let me make sure I say this right—acute respiratory distress syndrome. He’s in intensive care, and the mom basically can’t miss work because she’s the sole breadwinner for the family. They’re monitoring Cutter for possible brain damage because he was under the water for who knows how long. I’d like to string those lifeguards up for not paying attention!” Bryte said, her voice growing more animated. “I told you, didn’t I, honey?” She didn’t wait for an assent from him before continuing. “I told you how those lifeguards are not doing their jobs. I hope they fire every one of them. I mean, what would’ve happened if Lance didn’t see him and jump in?”

“I shudder to think,” Jencey agreed, nodding vigorously. She took another gulp of wine. Everett noticed she was knocking the wine back. And Bryte, ever the hostess, kept her glass filled. He didn’t exactly blame Jencey. If he didn’t have to get up early for work, he’d definitely get hammered.

Christopher yawned and reached for him. “Come on, buddy,” he said, lifting him into the air as he stood and settled him on his hip. “Let’s get you into the tub.”

“Oh, let me get him some clean pj’s,” Bryte piped up, scuttling back out of the room.

“It looks good on you,” Jencey said to him before he could follow his wife.

He turned back to her. “What does?” he asked.

She held her hands out to indicate the room, the house, the wife, the child. “All of it, Ev.”

He nodded his understanding, then quickly walked away.

BRYTE

She’d had to walk away from the two of them. She’d seen it. Of course she had. The way he couldn’t look at Jencey for very long. The way he snuck glances at her when he thought no one noticed. She’d spent her formative years studying Everett Lewis with the devotion of a scholar. She knew his mannerisms by heart; his face spoke as loudly as his voice. He still thought Jencey was beautiful. Bryte couldn’t blame him. She did, too. And the truth was, she somehow wanted to see them together, wanted to subject herself to the pain of it, as if that would make them even.

But she hadn’t anticipated the intensity of her own pain. The idea of punishing herself had been appealing in concept, but the reality of it was too much to be contained in their small kitchen amid the scraps of the dinner she’d cooked, the scent of barbecue chicken mingling with Dawn dishwashing liquid. She’d run from the room, landing on the first excuse that came to mind. She ran straight to the drawer that, yes, contained the neighborhood directory to look up Zell’s number. But it also contained stray business cards. She’d added that business card to the rest years ago, hidden it in plain sight. As she left Jencey and Everett alone in the kitchen to say whatever it was they needed to say without her around, it was that card—and not the neighborhood directory—she had in mind.

She tugged open the drawer and removed the directory first, just in case Everett followed her back there. But he wouldn’t. He would take the opportunity she’d given him. She rummaged through the haphazard pile, riffling through cards from the electrician and the plumber and the babysitter and, inexplicably, a baby-diaper service when she’d never used anything but disposables. She kept sorting through the cards, hearing the murmur of voices in the next room. She refused to think about what they might be saying. They had their secrets and she had hers.

Her hand fell on the card she was there to find, and the pace of her heart picked up as she eyed the familiar lettering, the swirl and curve of the name printed on it: Trent Miller. She could picture his face as he handed it to her. “Promise me you’ll call if you’re ever in the market for a different position,” he’d said. “Someone like you I could place a thousand times over, for about a thousand times more money than you’re making now.” He’d given her that cocky, confident look. She’d gone to take the card from his hand, and he’d pulled it away, teasing her. “Promise me,” he’d intoned, holding the card out of reach.

She’d promised, never thinking that would be the case. She was happy in the job she had at the time and wasn’t in the market to be recruited elsewhere. She cared about her clients, and they cared about her. She could solve the technical issues while relating to the human ones, making her invaluable in a field where people usually had one skill or the other but not both. In fact, it was at the specific request of a former client that her name had come back up again, causing her employer to come knocking. She thought of the e-mails waiting in her in-box from her old boss and coworker. And yet, maybe Trent knew of other, better opportunities. Could he offer options she hadn’t thought of that would give her more leverage now? Would it be the worst thing for her to call him?

She ran her fingers across the card and waited for her heart to slow. Then she pocketed it and picked up the neighborhood directory, flipping expertly to the listing for Boyette, John and Zell. Their children were still listed under their names though none of them lived with them anymore. Bryte found that a little sad. She dialed the number, thinking as she did of Zell’s second son, Ty. She’d kissed him once, in the woods behind the lake, near the little circle of trees that Jencey and Everett used to disappear into. She’d kissed Ty because she was bored, because he was there, and because she was determined to get over Everett.

She listened to the sound of Zell’s phone ringing in the house two streets over from hers, thinking that no kiss had ever been powerful enough to break the spell Everett had over her, no desire had ever been as strong as the one she had to make him hers. She traced the outline of the card in her pocket. She’d made him hers; now she just had to keep him. But Jencey wasn’t the threat anymore. She’d become that all by herself.

CAILEY

Three days went by. I told my mom I would just stay with Zell since she offered, and it was better than being at home alone all the time since Mom was always working or going to the hospital to be with Cutter. It wasn’t so bad being with Zell, except for how she kept talking to people on the phone about Cutter. She went into another room and lowered her voice, but I could make out enough to know that 1) this was just about the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a long time, and 2) Cutter was not doing so well. But you know what she would say to me? She would say he’s doing just fine and that I should be able to see him soon. I hate when adults lie to kids.

I wanted to see Cutter, even if he was out cold and hooked up to a lot of tubes and machines. I wanted to see my mom. I wanted to get it over with, the look she was going to give me, that one of utter disappointment that made me wish she’d just yell at me already. I wanted her to say out loud that I’d ruined everything and that I might’ve cost her her job and the house we rented and who knew what else. I’d talked to her on the phone twice, but both times it was really fast, and she wasn’t going to get into it with Zell hovering nearby anyway. My day of reckoning would come later, and the thought of it made my stomach hurt.

Zell tried to occupy my time so I wouldn’t think about Cutter and how awful everything was. She had me help her in the kitchen and tried to teach me how to play cards and took me to the library to check out books on her library card. I told her I might lose the books, and she said well, then, she’d just pay for them if that happened, but she didn’t think it would. I was glad she got me the books. It gave me a reason to go to my room (which was really her son’s room) and be by myself. But if I stayed in there too long, she knocked on the door and asked me if I was OK and wouldn’t I like something to drink or eat. She was always trying to feed me.

I guess if I had to stay somewhere, it wasn’t the worst place I could’ve ended up even if she did put me in a room that smelled like a boy. Zell was nice, if a bit peculiar (I like that word), and her husband, John, was funny. We ate dinner together, the three of us at the table talking about the news and the weather and the things I always imagined families talked about around the table. And for just a moment, I would imagine that it would stay that way forever, that I could change into someone else completely—someone who grew up in a house like that one and not the eyesore of the neighborhood. But then I would feel terrible for thinking about myself, especially considering the fact that Cutter got hurt because I was only thinking about myself. In those moments I would whisper, “I’m sorry” and imagine that wherever Cutter was, he could hear me.

Late at night when Zell and John thought I’d gone to sleep, I would tiptoe to the window in their son’s room and stare up at the stars in the sky, wishing on every one of them just for good measure. And every wish I had was for Cutter to be OK. I thought only of him and not me, forcing my brain not to think about the coming school year or the friends I didn’t have or whether I’d ever fit anywhere. I promised whoever made those stars that if Cutter got better, I’d never care about anyone but him for the rest of my life. And, mostly, I believed it was possible.