Heart of the Matter

by Emily Giffin

  “You think it’s fake?” Cate asks. “Or is she really that happy?”

  “I don’t know. I think she’s guarded, for sure . . . I think she has a big filter,” I say. “But I also think she and Dex just have one of those lofty marriages. Those perfect relationships.”

  Cate gives me a look that conveys hope. Hope that such a thing is out there for her. It occurs to me that she once felt this way about my marriage.

  “Look. Don’t get me wrong,” I say. “I want my brother to be happy. I want Rachel to be happy . . . But I can’t help being a little sickened by them. I mean, did you see how they were holding hands? On barstools? Who holds hands on barstools? It’s awkward . . .” I imitate her by reaching my hand out and holding air with an adoring expression. Then I say, “I thought she was going to pass out when Dex confessed their affair.”

  “You mean the one we all knew about anyway?” Cate says, laughing. “You think she gave him shit later?”

  “I doubt it. I think they probably went home and made out. Gave each other massages. Whatever. It can be so draining being around couples like that,” I say, realizing that jealousy takes a lot out of you.

  “Look, Tess,” Cate suddenly says, her expression becoming somber. “I know you’re scared. I know that’s why you aren’t calling April back. But Dex is right . . . You really need to confront this head-on. Worrying about it is so much worse than the truth . . . And look, maybe it’s nothing. Maybe Nick is getting a bum rap here.”

  “Maybe,” I say, wondering how I can be so sure of an affair one minute—and just as sure that he would never cheat on me the next. “And if he is innocent, then I am the bad guy. Snooping through his things and smearing him like I did last night.”

  “You didn’t smear him,” Cate says. “But yes . . . this really could be a case of paranoia . . . He’s probably at home, missing you.”

  I glance at my watch, picturing Nick in the throes of breakfast with the kids, crossing my fingers that he is engaged in the moment. That even if he’s unhappy with some of the details of our life, the discontent will pass and things will work out in the long run. This is my desperate, hungover wish.

  “Could you call April now? Please?” Cate says urgently.

  I hold her gaze and nod slowly, thinking of all the times that Cate has encouraged me to do something I’m too scared or weak to do on my own, including that first phone call to Nick so long ago, thinking how different my life would be right now if I hadn’t followed her advice. Then I pull out my phone and dial one of the few numbers I know by heart. April answers on the first ring, saying my name with a telling note of anticipation.

  “Hi, April,” I say, holding my breath, steeling my heart.

  “Are you having a good time?” she asks, either stalling or prioritizing phone etiquette over everything else.

  “Yeah. It’s always good to be back in the city,” I say, my voice becoming fake, wishing it were Cate on the verge of giving me bad news. I look across the table as she rests her fork on her plate, her expression of sick dread and suspense mirroring the way I feel.

  “So,” April says. “You got my text last night?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I did.”

  She begins to stammer, offering a rehearsed preamble about her duty as my friend to tell me what she’s about to tell me.

  “Okay,” I say, my stomach in knots. “Go ahead.”

  April exhales into the phone and then, speaking as quickly as she can, says, “Romy saw Nick over at Longmere School. Yesterday afternoon.”

  I feel the tension drain from my shoulders, feeling profound relief that this could, in fact, be about private school rumors, and nothing else. I have never confirmed our intention to apply to Longmere for Ruby, and I can tell it is a source of intrigue among my so-called friends, perhaps because they want their own choices validated by my eagerness to get Ruby in.

  I clear my throat and say, “Well, I did tell him the ball was in his court on the school front . . .” I nearly consider telling her that I knew he was going over to the school but don’t want to risk being caught in a lie, and fear that Nick might have said something to contradict this story. So instead I say, “Good for him for being proactive. He must have set up a tour. Or a talk with the head of admissions. Or maybe he actually submitted our application. Wishful thinking . . .”

  “Yes—but . . .”

  “But what?” I say, feeling a stab of intense loyalty to Nick, and simultaneous disdain for April.

  “But . . . he didn’t seem to be on a tour.”

  My silence is loud as she waits, then continues. “He was with Valerie Anderson.”

  Despite being clear on her implication, my head is still foggy. “What do you mean, with her?”

  “They were in the parking lot,” she says. “Together. With her son, Charlie. He was putting Charlie in the backseat of her car.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to get my head around the image, trying to find a logical explanation for it.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “What do you mean, you’re sorry? What are you trying to say?” I ask, feeling my annoyance escalate.

  “I’m not trying to say anything,” April says. “I just thought you should know . . . I thought you should know that Romy said it looked . . . well . . . odd . . . the way they were standing together.”

  “And how was that?” I snap. “How were they standing?”

  “Well . . . like a couple,” she says reluctantly.

  Doing my best to control my voice, keep it from shaking, I say, “I think you both are jumping to a pretty dire conclusion.”

  “I’m not jumping to any conclusions,” she says. “I realize it could be perfectly innocent. He could have gone to see the school to, like you said, investigate it for Ruby, and while there, he could have just run into Valerie . . . in the parking lot.”

  “What other scenario could there be?” I ask, indignation washing over me.

  When she doesn’t answer, I continue, becoming strident. “That my husband had an inappropriate rendezvous in the Longmere parking lot? I mean, April, I’m no expert on affairs, but I can think of a lot of better places . . . Like a motel. Or a bar . . .”

  “I’m not saying he’s having an affair,” April says with a note of panic, clearly aware that I am royally pissed. She clears her throat and furiously backtracks. “I’m sure Nick would never develop an inappropriate relationship with a patient’s mother.”

  “No. He would not,” I say boldly. “He would not do that with anyone.”

  Cate perks up in her seat, giving me a “you go, girl” smile, pumping one fist in the air.

  More awkward silence passes as April says, “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “No. Not at all,” I say curtly, stiffly, wanting her to know just how mad I am. Wanting her to know that I think it is vastly uncool that she would perpetuate a rumor about my husband. That she would ruin my weekend with her fear-mongering, rumor-spreading, meddlesome ways. I almost tell her that maybe she is the one who should take a hard look at her life, consider what might be missing, what void she is trying to fill.

  “Okay. Well. Good,” April says, continuing to babble. “Because I would never want to start trouble . . . I just . . . I just would want you to tell me if you saw Rob with anyone . . . Even if it was perfectly innocent . . . I just think that’s what friends are for. We girls need to stick together . . . look out for one another.”

  “I appreciate it. And you can tell Romy I said thanks, too. But there really is no need for concern.” Then I say a terse good-bye and hang up, looking across the table at Cate.

  “What happened?” she asks, her eyes wide, her long lashes still layered with black mascara from last night.

  I give her the scoop, waiting for her reaction.

  “I think there is a good explanation here. I think that’s a lot of circumstantial bullshit. And I think your friend April sounds like an ass.”

  I nod, pushing my plate away.

>   “What do you think?” she asks carefully.

  “I think . . . I think I need to go home,” I say, my head swimming.

  “Today?” she says, looking disappointed, but supportive.

  “Yes,” I say. “I don’t think this can wait . . . I need to talk to my husband.”

  32

  Valerie

  She awakens the next morning in something of a blissful stupor, unable to make herself move from the spot on her bed where Nick left her several hours before, kissing her one final time, promising to lock the door on the way out and call her in the morning, even though it was already morning.

  Her eyes still closed, she rewinds the reel to the beginning of the evening, replaying every exquisite detail, all of her senses buzzing, in overdrive. She can still smell his musky scent on her sheets. She can still hear him breathing her name. She can still see the strong lines of his body, moving in the shadows. And she can still feel him everywhere.

  She rolls over to glance at her clock, just in time to see Charlie tiptoeing past her room, clearly trying to be stealthy.

  “Where are you going?” she says, pulling the covers up over her shoulders. Her voice is hoarse, the way that it is after a concert or an evening spent in a loud bar, which is puzzling, because she is quite sure she made no noise last night.

  “Downstairs,” he says.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not yet,” he says, his left hand gripping the wide mahogany banister, one of the features she loves most about this house, especially at Christmas when she decorates it with swaths of garland. “I just wanted to watch some TV?”

  She nods, giving him carte blanche permission. He smiles, then disappears from her view, down the stairs. Only then, as she is left staring at her ceiling, does the weight of her actions sink in. She slept with a married man—a father of two young children. And further, she did so with her own child under the same roof, breaking a cardinal rule of single parenthood, one of her own rules that she has vigilantly followed for six years. She reassures herself that Charlie is a sound sleeper, even after days filled with much less duress than yesterday. Yet that is beside the point, really, because she knows that he could have awakened. He could have come to her bedroom, pushed open the door held shut only by a small leather ottoman and a heap of their commingled clothing. He could have seen them together, moving under the covers, over the covers, all over the room.

  She must be crazy, she decides, to do such a thing. Initiate it, in fact, both the walk upstairs to her bedroom and the actual moment when it happened, the moment she looked into his eyes and whispered, Yes, tonight, please, now.

  There is only one other possibility, apart from lunacy—and that is that she, too, is falling in love, although it occurs to her, with equal parts cynicism and hope, that there might not be much of a gulf between the two. She thinks of Lion, the last time she felt anything remotely like this, remembering the temporary insanity of that relationship, how she believed it was real with her whole heart and mind. She wonders if she could be wrong again. Deluded by an intense attraction, a need to fill a void in her life, a search for a father for Charlie.

  But she cannot make herself believe that any of these explanations are true, just as she cannot fathom Nick making love to her for the wrong reasons—for lust or conquest or fun. This does not mean that she is oblivious to the immorality of their actions. Or to the risks—the clear and present danger of emotional ruin. She realizes, fully, that this might end badly for her, for Charlie. For Nick and his family. For everyone.

  Yet she also believes to her core, that there is a chance, albeit slim, for a happy ending. That maybe Nick and his wife have a loveless marriage, and that if it ends, everyone will wind up in a better place. She tells herself that she doesn’t believe in much, but that she does believe in the essentialness of love, the thing that has been missing from her life. She tells herself that Tessa might be just as miserable married to Nick, that she might be having an affair of her own. She tells herself that their children might be better off with their parents happy and apart, than together and lonely. Above all, she tells herself to trust fate in a way she has never trusted before.

  Her cell phone rings from her nightstand. She knows, feels, that it is Nick, even before she sees his name light up her screen.

  “Good morning,” he murmurs into her ear.

  “Good morning,” she says, smiling.

  “How are you?” he asks, sounding self-conscious in that universal, morning-after-first-time way.

  She isn’t sure how to answer the question, how to convey the complexity of what she is feeling, so she simply says, “I’m tired.”

  He lets out an uneasy laugh and says, “Well, other than being tired, how are you? Are you . . . okay?”

  “Yes,” she says, offering no further explanation, wondering when she will let her guard down completely, finally spill her heart. Wondering if such a thing is even possible for her. She has the feeling that it just might be, with him.

  “Are you okay?” she asks him, thinking that he has more on the line, much more to lose, and frankly, much more reason to feel guilty.

  “Yeah. I’m okay,” he says softly.

  She smiles in response, but feels it fade quickly, her buzz displaced by a dose of heavy remorse as she hears the sound of piping voices in the background. His children. A far different matter from his wife. After all, she—Tessa, Tess—could be to blame in all of this, or at least a joint culprit in her own collapsing marriage. But there is no way she can reconcile what she is doing to his two innocent children, and certainly not with the convoluted rationalization that creating a family cancels out the breaking up of another—or that it exculpates her from the unabashed violation of the Golden Rule, in her mind, the only rule that really matters.

  “Daddy. More butter, please!” she hears his daughter say, trying to picture her, grateful that she can’t. She thinks of the framed black-and-white photos in Nick’s office, the ones she has thus far managed to avoid.

  “Sure, honey,” Nick replies to the little girl.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” she chirps, her voice becoming singsongy. “Very! Very much!”

  Her sweet voice and good manners stab at Valerie’s heart, adding to her burden of guilt.

  “What are you all having for breakfast?” Valerie asks. It is a nervous question, one designed to acknowledge his children without directly asking about them.

  “Waffles. I’m the waffle king. Right, Rubes?”

  She hears the little girl giggle and say, “Yes, Daddy. And I’m the waffle princess.”

  “Yes, you are,” he says. “You’re the waffle princess, for sure.”

  She then hears the little boy, talking exactly as Nick joked—like a cross between the Terminator and a European gay man, a staccato trill. “Da-ddeeeee. I. Want. More. But-tah. Tooo.”

  “No! That one’s mine!” she hears the little girl say, remembering Nick’s joke that Ruby is so overbearing that his son’s first words were help me.

  Valerie closes her eyes again, as if to shut out the sounds of his children, and all that she knows about them. Yet she still can’t help herself from whispering, “Do you feel . . . guilty?”

  He hesitates—an answer in itself—then says, “Yeah. Of course I do . . . But I wouldn’t take it back.”

  “You wouldn’t?” she asks, wanting to be certain.

  “Hell, no . . . I want to do it again,” he says, more quietly.

  A chill runs down Valerie’s spine, just as she hears Ruby ask, “Do what again? Who are you talking to, Daddy?”

  “A friend,” he tells her.

  “What friend?” the little girl presses, as Valerie wonders if it is mere curiosity—or some sort of freakish intuition.

  “Uhh . . . you don’t know this friend, honey,” he tells his daughter, carefully keeping the gender neutral. And then, to Valerie, in a hushed voice, “I better go. But can I see you later?”

  “Yes,” she says as quickly as she
can. Before she can change her mind—or her heart.

  33

  Tessa

  A short time later, after I’ve avoided two follow-up calls from April and exchanged somewhat tearful good-byes with Cate, I am on my flight back to Boston, eating a standard-issue bag of miniature pretzels and unwittingly eavesdropping on two loud-talking men in the row behind me. From a quick glimpse over my seat, I glean that they fall into the beefy, guy-walks-into-a-bar category, both sporting goatees, gold chains, and baseball caps. As I stare at the map in the back of my in-flight magazine, examining the myriad of domestic flight possibilities, I do my best to tune out the discussion of the “sweet Porsche” one wants to buy, and the other’s “douche of a boss,” before the conversation really revs up with the question: “So you gonna call that chick from the club or what?”

  “Which club? Which chick?”

  (Hearty laughter accompanied by either a knee slap or high five.)

  “The double-jointed chick. What’s her name? Lindsay? Lori?”

  “Oh yeah, Lind-say. Hell, yeah, I’m gonna call her. She was sexy. Sexy as shit.”

  I cringe, comparing them to my intelligent, respectful husband who would never, under any circumstances, think of putting sexy and shit in the same sentence. Then I close my eyes, preparing for our descent, imagining the likely scene upon my return: my family breaking all the usual rules, perhaps still in their pajamas, eating junk food, the house an utter wreck around them. I take strange solace in the thought of such chaos, the idea of Nick’s domestic incompetence, the belief that he would be lost without me—in more ways than one.

  Yet when I burst through my front door less than an hour later, I am dismayed to find my family gone, the house clean and orderly. The kitchen is sparkling; the beds are made; there is even a load of laundry, freshly washed and folded, in a wicker basket on the stairs. I wander aimlessly around the house, finding myself in the living room, the most formal and least used space in the house, eyeing the high-backed, rolled-arm couch that I don’t think I’ve sampled since the day my mother and I chose it from a decorator’s showroom. I remember the afternoon well, the hours we spent considering various styles, discussing fabrics and wood finishes for its graceful feet, debating whether to pay extra for stain guard. A project that now seems trivial.