The Year We Turned Forty

by Liz Fenton

  Jessie nodded. The Emily she remembered had been hard on Claire, but never on other kids. “What about her mom and dad?”

  “They were sitting on either side of her and were so close that I thought they were going to squish the poor girl.” Claire thought about how her dad kept his arm firmly around his daughter’s shoulders the entire time and her mom had kissed the top of her head over and over. As angry as she was with Emily, her heart broke as she watched Emily watching them—this girl had a mom and a dad.

  “Claire?” Jessie’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “I felt like such an ass. The single mom with the problem child. So cliché, right?”

  “Any kid can be mean—being a single parent has nothing to do with it,” Jessie assured her.

  “Even so, I could barely make eye contact with her parents. I knew they were silently blaming me. And maybe this is my fault.”

  Jessie shook her head. “Emily might be young, but she’s still responsible for her own actions. You have been a great mom to her.”

  “But I’ve failed her,” Claire said.

  “No, you haven’t. You’re doing your best.”

  “I just keep thinking I could’ve done better.” She’d tried to explain to Emily the other night that she was only trying to protect her from getting hurt, but Emily had scoffed and headed to bed.

  “Maybe we can always be better, but we can’t be perfect. Look what a mess I’ve made of everything—twice!” Jessie said, thinking about Peter’s threat. If someone had told her the day she married Grant that she’d one day cheat on him and get pregnant with another man’s baby, a married man’s baby, she would’ve responded with an emphatic, There is no way that will ever happen!

  “Have you heard from Peter since last night?” Claire asked.

  “No. But I was up all night freaking out about the next time he’s going to pop up.”

  Claire felt goose bumps prick her arms. “Have you considered telling Grant the truth? Wouldn’t it be better if he heard it from you?”

  “No! We already know how that version of the story turns out.”

  Claire thought for a moment. “Not necessarily. This time, you’re telling him much later—Lucas is how old now? Seven months?”

  Jessie nodded.

  “You’ve said this extra time has made your marriage stronger. That you’re stronger. Maybe it’s possible he’d forgive you?” Claire said hopefully.

  “And agree to share custody of Lucas with the man I cheated on him with? I doubt it. And like you said, our problems seem to have mutated this time. Who knows how horrible it could get if Grant finds out. I’m worried he’d fight me for full custody of the girls.”

  “Okay, then what’s the alternative? What are the chances Peter will actually tell him?”

  “I don’t know. He was pretty adamant.” Jessie rolled her shoulders back to release some tension. “It’s so weird to think this is the same man who made me feel so giddy and alive,” Jessie said with a bitter laugh. “How could I have been so wrong about him?”

  “It’s all fun and games till someone gets pregnant.” Claire smiled to let Jessie know she was kidding, but thought of David and how in love they’d been, or so she’d thought, until she announced her own pregnancy. Then he showed his true colors. “But all bad baby jokes aside, I think when it comes to children, parents will do almost anything for them, even things that might surprise you.”

  Jessie nodded. She’d given up her marriage by giving birth to Lucas.

  “So if you do think Peter is unstoppable, wouldn’t it soften the blow if you told Grant before he could?”

  Jessie shook her head, her gaze falling to the floor. “I can’t,” she said softly. Claire wasn’t about to push. She wouldn’t have wanted someone so much as nudging her in any one direction when it came to David and the decisions she’d made. That’s why she hadn’t told Gabriela or Jessie about the letters. Right or wrong, she hadn’t wanted a second opinion.

  “But maybe there’s another way to fix this,” Jessie said suddenly, looking back up.

  “How?”

  “Give Peter what he wants.”

  “But I thought you said telling Grant wasn’t an option?”

  “It’s not. I mean acquiescing, but on my terms. I could tell Peter he can see Lucas once a week, but only if he agrees to keep it a secret. He can be in Lucas’ life and Grant will never have to know.”

  “Do you think he’d agree to that?”

  “I do. At least for a while. He might genuinely be unhappy with his wife, but I’m going to bank on the fact that he doesn’t want to risk losing custody of his other son. I’ll convince him that this way, we can both keep our families together and he can have time with his baby.”

  Claire took a deep breath before responding, choosing her words carefully. “Okay, but what will happen down the road, when Lucas starts talking?”

  “Well, number one, I don’t even know if I’ll be here after Lucas’ first birthday. There’s always the possibility we’ll go back, right?” Jessie looked at Claire, who shrugged. “But I don’t think we’ll get that far anyway. Don’t forget that last time, he wanted nothing to do with Lucas. So I predict he’ll eventually lose interest and move on, back to Cathy and his family.”

  Claire looked into Jessie’s hopeful eyes. Her plan had so many uncertain variables and Claire was beginning to understand that the truth seemed to leak out anyway. But Jessie wasn’t ready to give up on her new life with Grant, and Claire understood why, thinking of Mason. When love finds its way back to you after being lost for so long, you never want to lose your grasp on it again. “Okay,” she said. “I know this is what you want, and I’m not going to stop you. Just please be careful, Jessie.”

  “I know it’s risky, but it’s the only solution. I’ll never forget the look on Grant’s face the first time I told him about Peter. I’d do pretty much anything to never see it again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  “Whee!” Jessie called out as she launched Lucas down the small red slide, where Peter’s outstretched arms awaited him at the bottom. Lucas squealed in delight as Peter caught him and swung him up by his arms, and Jessie felt the conflict arise in her heart, that Lucas’ joy meant that her own might end soon.

  She and Peter had been secretly meeting once a week for two months at a playground about twenty minutes south of Redondo Beach. Two months of playdates filled with building sand castles and driving foam bulldozers together through the sandbox. Two months of taking turns pushing Lucas in the swing, his chubby legs flying through the air carelessly as he laughed in delight. Two months of watching a man bond with his son, of seeing them become more than just two strangers.

  “How’s the teething?” Peter asked as Lucas heaved himself up on the bench. He was so close to walking, attempting it almost every day, eager to keep pace with his older sisters, who’d just started their soccer season, Lucas watching excitedly from the sidelines, trying to crawl onto the field.

  “Not too bad. He’s just very drooly, as you can see.” Jessie smiled wryly and pointed to the never-ending cascade of saliva that propelled from the corners of his mouth.

  • • •

  The first week they’d met at this park, Jessie had sat stiffly at the picnic table as Peter self-consciously bounced Lucas in his lap. Lucas kept reaching his hands to his mother, and Jessie felt satisfied that Lucas was rejecting Peter and was hopeful it would deter him from wanting to see his son again. But the next week, he’d been waiting for them with a basket of sand toys, the price tags still hanging from them. “I thought we’d switch things up a bit,” he said simply, and had sat for thirty minutes in the sandbox with Lucas, who only reached for his mother once. Slowly, with each passing week, Lucas, and eventually Jessie, would warm up to Peter a bit more. One day, Jessie found herself not feeling sick as she pulled into the parking lot, and was even able to meet Peter’s eyes when he said hello and reached for their son. As Lucas began to a
ccept Peter, a small part of Jessie begrudgingly did also, finding it almost impossible to despise someone who put so much effort into knowing Lucas.

  “How are things with Cathy?” Jessie asked. “Any better?” Jessie had drawn the courage a few weeks ago to bring up the state of Peter’s marriage, hoping that if she could help convince him it was worth saving, he’d reconsider what Lucas’ presence might mean for that.

  “She’s pissed at me again. Apparently I’m not attentive enough.”

  “So pay more attention to her,” Jessie said, and rolled her eyes. Since initially asking, Peter had opened up, telling Jessie all the ways he felt Cathy belittled him, making him feel more like her assistant than her partner. Before, when she was traveling, Peter had the freedom to run the house how he saw fit. But now that she was home by dinnertime each night, she’d begun to micromanage each decision he made, causing him to grow increasingly frustrated. Jessie counseled him, which felt weird and inappropriate. But if she was going to save her own marriage, she was going to have to fix Peter’s first.

  “It’s not that easy. It’s like everything I do is wrong. Last night, she was upset because all the plates in the dishwasher weren’t facing the same way. I had made dinner and cleaned the entire kitchen before she even got home. And instead of a thank-you, all she did was complain.”

  “You sound like a wife,” Jessie teased lightly.

  “Well, that makes sense, because I feel like she’s cut my balls off.” Peter laughed bitterly and Jessie thought about how different he was from Grant. As she let herself get to know Peter, she found him to be confident on the outside, but wildly insecure on the inside. And something about Cathy’s behavior seemed to flip a switch in him, making him angry and insolent. Jessie boldly asked him if he still loved her, and he’d paused for a full minute, Jessie picking at her cuticles as she waited anxiously for his response, praying that he’d say yes. She needed him to love her. Or at least care enough to not want to destroy her.

  “I don’t know anymore,” he whispered finally. “Do you love Grant?”

  “Yes,” Jessie said without hesitation.

  “How do you know? After everything that’s happened?”

  “I just know.” Jessie thought about kissing Grant good-bye that morning. She’d sucked on his lower lip, then let her tongue find his, not allowing herself to be distracted by Lucas’ squeals or the girls calling for her to help them find their field trip forms. “Because I want to be better. For him. For us. Because at the end of the day, the core of my heart belongs to him. That’s why I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Or yourself. You don’t want him to leave you.”

  “Or my kids,” Jessie conceded. “Because it’s not just about me. The truth will hurt them too. You might not care how it affects Cathy, but what about Sean?”

  “Of course I’ve thought about him. But Lucas is his brother. And as an only child, he deserves to know he has a sibling.”

  Jessie felt faint as she’d listened to his argument. She’d been bending over to grab the diaper bag from under the picnic table, and she’d had to squeeze the edge to stop her hand from shaking. In all the times she’d turned the scenarios over in her head, that one hadn’t occurred to her. She looked at Lucas’ onesie with #1 Little Brother printed on the front, remembering how Morgan had dressed him in it, calling out to Jessie that she had finally mastered the snaps at the bottom. She and Madison got to spend time with their brother every day. Sean deserved the same opportunity, but at what cost?

  “You’re right, they are brothers. But would it really be better to tell him he has a sibling if it meant breaking up your marriage to do so? I can tell you that divorce is hard, really hard.”

  “How would you know?”

  Jessie backtracked, realizing her mistake. “I know people who’ve gone through it and it’s terrible,” she said truthfully. Remembering the searing pain inside of her as she’d signed her name on the bottom of the papers, her attorney looking on with feigned empathy.

  “Well, I honestly believe divorce might be better than Sean thinking my marriage to his mom is what marriage really looks like. He hears us fight, Jessie, a lot. I’m not proud of that.”

  “Couples argue,” Jessie said quickly. Last time, before Grant moved out, they had done their best to talk when the girls weren’t home about Jessie’s infidelity, but sometimes they’d end up in their bedroom, voices raised, and she wondered if the girls had overheard.

  Peter made a face. “Someone needs a new diaper.”

  Jessie reached for Lucas, but Peter waved her off, pulling a diaper out of the bag and changing Lucas so quickly she almost thought she’d missed it. It was becoming harder to deny that he was a natural father.

  Jessie thought hard. “You could go to counseling.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll go when you go. You’re talking a good game here, but you weren’t exactly hesitating in that hotel lobby. Obviously you wouldn’t have jumped into bed with me if your marriage was as rock solid as you’re trying to make it sound.”

  “It’s far from rock solid. But it’s also not broken. I made a mistake. I was an idiot to sleep with you,” Jessie said, remembering her boldness as she’d held the pool cue.

  Peter shot her a look as if to say, Gee, thanks, which Jessie ignored.

  “I didn’t leave that bar with you because I didn’t love my husband. It’s just that you made me feel wanted. It had been a long time since I’d felt that way with Grant.” She avoided eye contact as she started shaking the sand out of the buckets and stacking them. “And so I convinced myself that something was wrong with him, and with us. But I was the one who was wrong.”

  “I don’t think it’s asking too much to want to feel wanted by your spouse after the honeymoon period is over,” Peter said as he handed her a yellow shovel that was hanging over the edge of the sandbox. “Even after having kids,” Peter added, and Jessie wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself.

  “You’re right, but the reality is that couples get lazy, putting all their energy into children and careers and then blaming the disconnect on each other when, in reality, they’re choosing—you and I were choosing—the easy way out. We turned to each other when we should’ve turned to our spouses. I wasn’t choosing Grant. You weren’t choosing Cathy. And we have to take ownership of that.” Jessie stretched out a mesh bag and placed the buckets inside. “I’m choosing to fight for my marriage. And I think you should too.”

  “Maybe.” Peter reached for Lucas’ hands as he pulled himself up, letting go as soon as he balanced himself. Lucas flashed a grin and tentatively took three steps before toppling over.

  “Oh my God.” Jessie’s hand flew over her mouth. “He just walked. Those were his first steps!” Jessie ran over and picked him up. “Good job, buddy! Walking at nine months, that’s a new record!”

  “I’d like to think that dexterity comes from my side of the family. I walked very early too.” Peter came over and rubbed Lucas’ back. “Great work, son!”

  Jessie half smiled, not sure how she felt that Peter was the father who got to witness Lucas’ milestone. But there was one thing she now knew for certain as she beamed at Lucas. Peter wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

  • • •

  “What’s that?” Colin asked as Gabriela heaved a box into the house, pushing it through the doorway with her foot when she couldn’t carry it any longer. “My anniversary gift?” he joked tersely. It was March 12 and neither of them had mentioned the upcoming date.

  “No.” Gabriela offered him a partial smile. “The drugs for the next cycle.”

  Colin frowned as he grabbed the box off the floor. “Last time I checked, you needed my sperm and my approval for another round.” Colin’s voice bristled with anger. The morning after she’d returned from New York two months ago, she’d gone to see Dr. Larson without Colin, working out the details of the third cycle, nodding mildly when the doctor inquired if Colin was still on board, then coming home and anno
uncing matter-of-factly that she was starting again. Colin had flashed her a look of pity and muttered, What happened to we? before heading out for a run.

  “What are you saying?” Gabriela’s voice shook and she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms.

  “This will be round four in less than a year. Shouldn’t we take a break?”

  Gabriela clenched her jaw, ignoring his dig. When she’d found out she wasn’t pregnant again, for the third time, she hadn’t gotten out of bed for five days, sobbing into her pillow so much that she’d given herself a rash on the side of her face.

  “Taking some time off from this will help you—us—relax a bit and give your body a chance to rest.”

  “You’re acting like I should take a vacation. Maybe go somewhere warm and tropical and frolic on the beach. How about Bora Bora or Turks and Caicos? Like that would make everything okay, Colin. I could never do that right now. That would stress me out. Not being here. Not trying to make this happen. Don’t you get that?”

  “Not a vacation. I was thinking maybe more like focusing your energy on something else, like your writing.”

  The truth was, she had only turned on her computer once in the last two months. And when she had, she’d written just three terrible sentences. As her fingers rested on the keyboard, she’d felt as if someone were sitting on her chest, and she’d gasped for breath, her heart racing, her fingers tingling. Jessie had suspected it was a panic attack when Gabriela confided in her, but she refused to go to the doctor to find out, afraid they would prescribe her a medication that would interfere with her ability to get pregnant. Or worse, they’d suggest she take some time off from IVF. And that, she was not willing to do.

  “I’ve been writing here and there,” Gabriela lied. She had found it easier to tell everyone she was writing, to avoid the concerned looks they were sure to dispense. Two thousand words just today! she’d written in an email to her editor, her stomach clenching as she’d pushed send. She hated to mislead her, but she kept thinking about Sheila’s plea that Gabriela not let her down. She prayed the words would come, that she’d wake up one morning and the book would rush out of her. The last time she’d penned the novel, she’d done so in less than ninety days so she knew she was capable of making the deadline if she could just get the words to form in her head soon. Because it wouldn’t be long before she and Jessie and Claire would have to decide if they were going back or staying here.