All We Ever Wanted

by Emily Giffin

  I stared at my screen, waiting. Seconds turned to minutes. Just as I was about to give up and take a shower, my phone rang. It was him. My hands shaking, I answered with a snippy hello.

  “Hi,” he said, sounding oblivious.

  “Where are you?” I asked as I sat down on my bedroom floor.

  “In my car,” he said. “On the way home.”

  “On the way home from where?” I said, hugging my knees with my left arm as my hair formed a protective curtain around me.

  “I just dropped Beau off. We ended up going to The Flipside,” he said, lying so easily I got a chill. “Why do you ask?”

  “Why? You tell me why,” I said. “Why are you lying to me?”

  “Why do you think I’m lying?”

  “Because you are,” I said, trying to channel Grace. Any strong girl. Or at least someone who didn’t care enough to get hurt like this. I thought of my mother—how nothing really fazed her, at least not that she’d ever shared with me.

  “What are you even talking about?” Finch said.

  “I know where you were tonight. After you dropped me and Grace off. I’m not stupid.”

  I braced myself for more lying—since that’s what liars do. But instead he folded immediately. “Okay, Lyla. You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t with Beau. And I didn’t go to The Flipside. I was with Polly.”

  “You’re an ass,” I said, welling up. “A total ass.”

  He said nothing, though I could tell he was still on the phone. Seconds passed before he sighed and said, “Okay. Can I please just explain?”

  “No,” I said, telling myself to hang up on him but knowing I wouldn’t. Instead, I just sat there, waiting and listening, a sick part of me hoping, once again.

  “Polly knows about you,” Finch said.

  “What about me?” I said.

  “She knows I went to the concert with you. She knows I like you. And…” Finch said, pausing dramatically as the hope expanded in my chest so quickly that I felt as if my heart would explode. “She knows I’m going to tell the truth about what she did to you.”

  Right after Finch left for the concert, I poured myself a glass of wine. It crossed my mind that I was doing this too often and that drinking alone was a sign of a “problem”—much like the one I sometimes accused Kirk of having. But I rationalized that wine was simply the nighttime version of coffee—more of a ritual than anything else—especially if you had only a glass or two.

  At some point, I called Kirk, partly because I was feeling lonely. But also because I was feeling guilty for keeping secrets from my husband. No matter what mistakes he’d made, I wanted to be honest. He didn’t pick up, though. So I left a message, telling him that I hoped he was feeling better.

  A few minutes later, he called me back. Only he hadn’t—at least not purposefully. He’d simply made an inadvertent pocket dial. I called out his name a few times, but when that didn’t work (it never does), I listened, more out of boredom than any real curiosity or concern. Even after I heard a woman’s voice, I told myself not to jump to paranoid conclusions. Yes, he’d said he had a migraine and was going to bed. But that didn’t necessarily make this nefarious. Hell, she could be a female concierge, helping him get his headache meds from a nearby pharmacy. My service industry explanation calmed me for a few seconds, but then their interaction continued, an easy, back-and-forth rhythm suggesting a certain familiarity. Mostly, it was Kirk talking and the woman laughing. It reminded me that my husband could be really funny and charming, and I felt a pang for a dynamic that had seemed to slip away as gradually as Finch’s open-bedroom-door policy. I couldn’t remember the last time Kirk had had this much to say to me, let alone the last time he’d actually made me laugh. I strained to make out their words, but everything was too muffled. Even the volume was coming in and out, as if they were in motion, in a car or walking somewhere.

  Then, suddenly, their voices got clearer and louder, and I heard the woman say “Honey” followed by my husband’s unmistakable “Oh shit.” Then he hung up on me. I sat there, stunned, yet still struggling to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I’d misheard her honey. Maybe he’d said oh shit about something else. He could have made a wrong turn. Or stepped in a wad of gum. Or realized he’d left his credit card at a store where he’d bought me a sweet token of a gift. It could be anything, really. People said oh shit all the time in the normal course of things. And some people just used terms of affection like honey. It wasn’t as if I’d just heard him having sex with a woman—or professing his love to her. It wasn’t as if I had irrefutable visual evidence. Maybe he hadn’t hung up on me at all. Maybe he’d just lost the connection at that instant.

  This was an exercise I’d engaged in before, especially in recent years, one on which I actually prided myself, believing that it said as much about my self-confidence as about my faith in my husband. But I didn’t feel very proud or confident in that agonizing moment, as I sipped my wine, waiting for my husband to call me back.

  When after several minutes my phone still didn’t ring, I told myself to be proactive and try him again. It went to voicemail. I left a message, then texted another. And another.

  I began to freak out—at least my version of freaking out, which was really just sitting very still, staring into space, and imagining Kirk kissing a younger, more beautiful woman. I told myself that her age or beauty was irrelevant. Unfaithful was unfaithful. Maybe someone my age or older who had real substance and life experience and significant accomplishments might actually hurt worse.

  Finally, he called. I took a deep breath and said hello.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he asked, so innocently that it made him sound even more guilty.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked through a yawn that sounded fake, or at least exaggerated.

  “I mean, where are you?”

  “I’m in Dallas.”

  “Where in Dallas?”

  “My room.”

  “Which hotel?”

  “The Mansion on Turtle Creek,” he said. “Where I always stay.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Who were you with an hour ago? When you pocket-dialed me?”

  “I pocket-dialed you?” he said.

  “Yeah, you did, Kirk.”

  “Well…let’s see…an hour ago?…I was with Gerald Lee….”

  “I heard a woman’s voice, Kirk.”

  “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “So, finish.”

  “I was with Gerald—and his fiancée. Did I tell you he got engaged?”

  “No,” I said, thinking that it had been years since I’d even heard him mention Gerald, making his old college friend a very convenient alibi. “You sure didn’t.”

  “Yeah. So anyway, we had a quick bite….”

  “I thought you had a migraine?”

  “I did. Still do. But I had to eat. And now I’m headed to bed.” His voice was suddenly both hushed and hurried.

  “I’m so sorry you’re not feeling well,” I said as insincerely as I could.

  “It’s okay. I’ll be fine,” he said. “Everything okay there?”

  “Sure,” I said, pausing, listening to the conspicuous silence in his background. I pictured him huddled in a marble hotel bathroom, someone waiting for him in the next room. Maybe she was even beside him in bed, craning to hear my every word so they could analyze it together.

  “Okay. Well. I’ll see you tomorrow?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, then made myself say the last three words I wanted to say to him: I love you. It didn’t feel like the truth at that second, more like a test, as I waited to see what he’d say in return.

  “You, too,” he simply said back, failing with flying colors.

 
; * * *

  —

  A FEW SECONDS later, my phone rang again. I expected it to be Kirk, attempting to apologize for his abruptness, fix things, talk to me. But it was Tom. Surprised, I answered hello. He said hello back, sounding tentative as he went on to thank me for coming over this morning. I told him of course, then thanked him for allowing us to come. After an awkward pause, he told me a disturbing story about him overhearing a conversation between two women I apparently knew. Something about Lyla and Finch and the incident. But it was a comfort to hear from him—and a welcome interruption in an intense period of panic and loneliness.

  Bolstered by the brief exchange, I went to Kirk’s office, determination replacing sadness. I sat in his desk chair, swiveling to the left and right, staring at the neat piles of papers, his pewter pencil cup filled with only black Pilot rollerball pens. I opened his drawers, one at a time. Three down the left, three down the right, and one long, skinny one in the middle. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I methodically combed through everything. I found nothing suspicious but ascribed the lack of evidence to his fastidiousness, not his innocence. I turned on his laptop. I didn’t expect to find anything there either, as he knew that I knew his password. But I still scrutinized his email in-box, just in case, scanning rows of names and boring subject lines.

  Just as I was about to give up, I saw an email dated today from Bob Tate, Kirk’s ticket broker. I clicked and read the thread—a complicated back-and-forth among Bob, Kirk, and Finch—and pieced together a very different story than the one Finch had given me earlier. In a nutshell, Finch wanted four tickets to the show (not two), for the express purpose of making amends with Lyla Volpe (he didn’t think she’d go if it were just the two of them). Kirk summarized the request to Bob, who came through in grand style, explaining that the price was steep because they were limited admission and last minute. Kirk said no problem, and he’d settle up in cash when back in town.

  Son of a bitch, I said aloud, the magnitude of their betrayal sinking in. My son and husband had, essentially, conspired against me. It occurred to me that I had done the same thing this morning. I had brought my son to the Volpe home unbeknownst to my husband. I had encouraged Finch to lie to his father, at least by omission. But I believed in my heart that there was a vital difference. I had been trying to do what was right—and show my son how important that was; Kirk was, as always, simply trying to manipulate others in his quest to get his way.

  There was really no way around it. My husband, whom I’d once thought of as charming and take-charge, was simply a user and a liar. And the worst part of it all was that he was teaching our son to be those very things.

  I’d always pictured marriages severing more dramatically, with an explosive fight or irrefutable proof (stronger than a pocket dial) of an affair. But in that quiet moment in Kirk’s office waiting for our son to return from a concert with a girl he had mistreated and maybe even manipulated, I felt in my bones that my marriage was over.

  I wanted a divorce. I was done. So done.

  * * *

  —

  I WOKE UP the next morning to a disjointed dream about Tom and suddenly remembered his call the night before. It almost seemed like a dream, too, coming, as it had, during so much turmoil. I found my phone on my nightstand and started a text to Tom, confessing that I’d had something of a rough night, and apologizing if I’d acted a bit off. I reread my words, then deleted them, the statement sounding a little inappropriate.

  Inappropriate.

  I repeated the word in my head, realizing how much I despised it. It was a favorite of Kathie and all her Bible buddies, the catchall for any behavior they wished to judge. Her dress was inappropriate for a wedding….That book selection was inappropriate for teenagers….The conversation they were having in front of children was inappropriate….Her political post was inappropriate….A text to a single, attractive father asking about a drunken conversation? So. Very. Inappropriate.

  Screw being appropriate, I thought, as I dialed Tom’s number, hoping he would answer. He did, almost immediately.

  “Hi. It’s Nina,” I said, my palms turning clammy.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Did I wake you?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve been up for a while.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I was just thinking about our call last night…and your Uber ride.”

  “I should have kept my mouth shut with those women, but…”

  “But you didn’t,” I said, feeling a surge of respect for him.

  “Correct,” he said with a hint of a laugh.

  “What did you say to them, exactly?”

  “Just the facts. That I was her father. And that she wasn’t Mexican.” He started to say something else, but then stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You were going to say something.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was.”

  “What was it? Please tell me.”

  “It was about your husband.”

  “What about him?” I asked, both dreading his response and praying that he’d give me more evidence. Say something bad about the man I wanted to leave.

  “I probably shouldn’t get into that. It’s really none of my business,” Tom said. “And it could complicate our…situation.”

  “Our situation?” I repeated, wondering if he meant our two kids and the hearing on Tuesday—or the unlikely connection we seemed to be forging.

  “You know…everything else that’s going on,” he replied vaguely.

  “Yeah,” I said, my head pounding from the swirling subtext.

  We sat in silence for another few seconds before he cleared his throat and said, “Look. Those women were drunk. Really drunk. Who knows if anything they said was true….And I could have heard them wrong….I was driving.”

  I closed my eyes. “Lemme guess. They were talking about Kirk cheating on me?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said softly but swiftly. “They were. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” I said. It was an overstatement—I didn’t know anything for sure—but I didn’t want Tom to feel guilty.

  I could hear him draw a deep breath, then say my name on a weary exhale. It sounded like a plea.

  “Yes?” I said in response.

  “I don’t know you very well,” he said slowly, as if very carefully choosing his words. “But you deserve better than this.”

  “I know,” I managed to reply. “Thank you, Tom.”

  Right after we said goodbye and hung up, I realized that I’d forgotten to mention Lyla and Finch and my strong suspicion that they had gone out the night before. I told myself I needed to call him back. But I couldn’t make myself do it. I was just too disappointed in Finch. In my life.

  Instead I called my best friend and told her I needed to see her. That I was having a crisis. She asked no questions, simply saying she’d be home all day, waiting for me.

  I then went to check on Finch. I’d heard him come in the night before, around midnight. I went upstairs now, lightly knocking on his door. When he didn’t answer, I opened it. He was sound asleep and lightly snoring, the covers tucked up under his chin. I walked over to his bedside and put my hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently, then harder, until his eyes opened and his mouth closed.

  “Yeah, Mom?” he said, squinting groggily up at me.

  “Hi. I just wanted to let you know I’m headed home. To Bristol. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow. But Dad will be here in a few hours.”

  “Is everything okay? With Nana and Gramps?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, comforted that he’d shown himself capable of concern. “I just feel like I need to go home.”
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br />   “Okay,” he said, blinking.

  “Do you want to come with me?” I asked, knowing he would not. His lack of interest in his grandparents these days made me sad, but right now it was obviously low on the list of things to be sad about.

  “I have a lot of homework….” he replied, his eyelids fluttering and closing again.

  I stared at his face for a few seconds before reaching out to lightly shake his arm.

  “Yeah, Mom?” he said, his eyes still closed.

  “How was the concert?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said. “Fun.”

  “Good…I’m glad….It was so nice that Beau could get those tickets,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And it was just the two of you? Or did you go with other people?”

  “Just the two of us.”

  “Okay…well. Remember your father’s coming home today,” I said, feeling sick on so many levels. It was the way divorced people talked. Your father rather than Dad.

  “Yeah. You already said that, Mom.”

  “Does he know you went to the concert?” I asked, giving him one final chance.

  “Nope,” he said, finally opening his eyes so he could lie right to my face. “I haven’t talked to him.”

  Strike three, I thought, walking out of his room.

  * * *

  —

  I ARRIVED IN downtown Bristol shortly after two o’clock, going first to Julie’s house, a small cottage that she and Adam had lived in forever. As I got out of my car, I spotted her on one of two rocking chairs on the wraparound front porch they’d recently painted. I’d selected the color for her—Benjamin Moore Tranquil Blue.

  “Hey there,” I called out with a little wave. “I love your porch. It looks so pretty!”

  She waved back at me, still rocking in her chair. “Thanks to you!”

  I climbed the porch stairs as she stood and held out her arms, then pulled me into a long, tight hug. It was comforting, as was the familiar scent she’d been wearing since high school—Chanel No. 5, which she’d once joked was the only Chanel she’d ever own.