After he hung up, he sat there staring at his phone. His father with another woman astounded him. They’d never been close or understood each other well, but Trey had always thought of him as a loyal husband. Work had been his mistress. A young woman? An employee? The ambitious Bradley Wattson risking it all for a girl didn’t seem plausible.
He picked up the phone and called Autumn. She answered almost at once, sounding sleepy. He’d woken her. “Hey, what’s up?”
“My dad had a heart attack. He’s in the hospital.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”
“I have to fly down there.” He paused, fighting tears. “Could you take a few days off? Go with me?”
“Of course I will. Martin’s always looking for extra hours and I have sick days I need to burn before I lose them.”
“Thanks.” He paused, gathering himself. “I’m feeling totally lost.”
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. My mom says he’s having an angioplasty surgery to reroute the blockage or whatever. I guess that means it’s bad, right?”
“I’d think so, yes. But surgeons do these all the time. They’ll fix him.”
He tried to speak, but the lump in his throat made it impossible.
“Trey, are you there?”
“Yeah. There’s more. When he had the heart attack, he was in bed with a woman who is not my mother. A woman half his age. She works for his company, no less.”
She surprised him by cursing loudly. “What a total prick.”
“Mom said it’s gone on for at least a year. He’s planning on leaving her. He pays for this girl’s apartment.”
“Your poor mom.”
“She hired an investigator,” he said. His stomach turned again. “I can’t believe this.”
“I’m sorry, Trey. What can I do?”
“Just come with me. Can you be ready in an hour?”
“I’ll hustle.”
After he hung up, he found two seats on a midmorning flight to San Diego from San Francisco, which would give them plenty of time to make the hour-and-a-half drive into the city. When he checked his email for the confirmation, there was a message from Autumn.
* * *
Dear Art,
I’m just dashing this off quickly before I leave for a trip to San Diego. Trey’s father had a heart attack. In addition, the jerk’s been having an affair with some girl who works for him. Men can be such total pigs. I’ve never heard Trey’s voice sound like that. He asked me to go with him down to San Diego. I said yes, of course. I can’t let him go face all this alone. I may not be able to write for a while, depending on what Trey needs.
Love,
007
* * *
Instead of writing back, he closed the laptop. As soon as he was through with this crisis, he would put an end to Art. From then on, he would be Trey. Which meant that he had to tell Autumn the truth about everything. However, it would have to wait until after his trip home. He knew the next few days would take all the energy he had.
Trey and Autumn took a taxi straight to the hospital from the airport. His mother had texted while they were in flight that they’d taken Dad back for surgery and anticipated they would be done by that afternoon.
After they were dropped off in front of the entrance to a large new hospital, they asked the receptionist in the lobby for directions to the heart wing and were told to go up to the fifth floor. As they waited for the elevator, Autumn gave his shoulder a squeeze. “It’s going to be all right,” she said.
He didn’t answer, comforted by her touch.
They found his mother and sister in the waiting area of the surgery wing. Jamie spotted them first and ran toward them. She threw her arms around Trey’s neck and hugged him. “I’m glad you’re here,” Jamie said before stepping from his embrace to look at Autumn.
“This is my friend Autumn Hickman,” he said. By then, his mother had joined them, and they both shook hands with Autumn.
“Hi, Autumn. It’s nice to meet you.” From behind Autumn, his sister raised her eyebrows at him. He could almost hear her thoughts. Have you been holding out on me? He pretended not to get the cue.
Jamie was dressed in her typical shorts and a tank top. Her long hair, the color of a ginger ale, was currently pulled back in a ponytail. She wore no makeup and looked the same as she had since she was sixteen, other than her skin was now clear of teenage acne. They shared the same deep blue eyes, which they’d gotten from their mother.
He hugged his mother next. Slightly over sixty, her daily walks and yoga practice gave her the physical strength of a much younger woman. She wore her blond hair in a neatly snipped shoulder-length bob that matched her impeccable attire. Even today, when she must be going through about a thousand confusing emotions, she wore a designer ensemble of white pants paired with a pink cotton sweater and kitten heels.
“Any news?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Jamie said.
“We should know something in the next hour.” Mom played nervously with the tennis bracelet around her wrist.
“Did you have a chance to talk to him before the surgery?” Trey asked.
“Yes, we spoke.” Tears welled in Mom’s eyes. “He finally told me the truth.”
Jamie wrapped her arm around Mom’s shoulders. “He told her he wants to marry the girl. Can you believe that?”
“He said nearly dying made it clearer than ever,” Mom said. “How did he put it? ‘Life is too short to pass up joy.’”
“Is that her name?” Autumn asked. When they all looked at her, she flushed bright red. “Oh, right. Joy, the concept, not the name.”
For a moment, no one said anything, then Jamie, Mom, and Trey all burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry,” Autumn said. “Obviously, you meant the concept.” She was not laughing with them. Instead, she looked genuinely horrified. “Hospitals make me nervous. It’s like my brain is all jumbled in here.”
His mother stopped laughing and took Autumn’s hand. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Joy happens to be a common name.” She gestured toward a clump of chairs. “Let’s sit. You can distract us by telling us a little about yourself.”
They all took seats next to a fake fig tree with a fine layer of dust covering its plastic leaves. The walls were painted a glossy wheat-hued yellow and paired with army-green chairs and a mustard carpet. He’d like to meet the designer who thought this decor would comfort those waiting and worried for their loved ones and gently suggest that next time he go with shades of blue.
He took the seat next to his mother. Across from them, Autumn and Jamie sat next to each other.
“It was so kind of you to come with Trey,” Mom said to Autumn. Her hands shook as she folded them together in her lap.
“I’m glad to be here. I took a sick day from work,” Autumn said. “I have a ton of them left.”
Jamie turned to Autumn. “What do you do for work?”
“I’m a pharmacist,” Autumn said, raising an eyebrow and lifting one side of her mouth in a crooked smile.
“No way,” Jamie said, obviously seeing the irony. Their father’s company made some of the most powerful and commonly prescribed drugs in the world.
“True story,” Trey said. “She dispenses Dad’s drugs on a daily basis.”
“I’m quite familiar with the medicines your father’s company makes,” Autumn said. “The cholesterol one in particular. Many of our older customers are on it.”
“They help people, right?” Mom asked.
“They do,” Autumn said.
“I have friends who think the pharmaceutical industry is evil,” Mom said as she curled and uncurled her hands. “I’ve defended my husband’s work at more teas and book club events than I can count.”
“Me too,” Jamie said. “It’s gotten to the point I don’t even mention what my father does.”
“Much of the public feels distrustful,” Autumn said. “Mostly because of the prices. A lot of our elde
rly folks on fixed incomes have to walk away without their prescription because it costs too much, especially if the pharmaceutical company has managed to keep the drug from being made in a generic form. I hate to see that, especially if I know the drug will help them.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment. The Wattson family was used to this kind of criticism. Trey had had no interest in continuing his father’s legacy, believing himself that drugs were overpriced. He knew, too, that bribery and manipulation of the medical community were frequent practices. His father had bragged about it, proud of his treachery while hiding behind a public persona of the benevolent curer of illnesses. “My drugs save lives,” he’d often said to his attackers, both defensively and proudly.
Would the medical community he’d manipulated be able to save him this morning? Probably. There was no such thing as justice. Good people had bad things happen. Bad people had good things happen.
Then again, his father wasn’t totally bad. No one was purely one or the other. He’d always reconciled his father’s work with his devotion to his wife. Now what did he have left in his arsenal of defense? His father was a cheater, sneaking around with a woman half his age. He’d told his wife that he wanted out after forty years of marriage. What kind of bastard did that?
Too many. It was a trite story, because it happened all the time. Men of a certain age, facing their own mortality, clung to youth in all its forms, including trading in their loyal wife for a sparkly trinket of a girl.
For the next half hour, his mother and Jamie lobbed questions at Autumn. He worried they were too intrusive, but the questions about where she went to school and how she’d met Trey and how long had she been in Cliffside Bay didn’t appear to bother her.
He did cringe, however, when Jamie asked her about why she hated hospitals. “Did someone you love spend a lot of time in the hospital? Were you sick as a kid?”
They obviously hadn’t noticed her slight limp. If they had, even Jamie knew not to ask about it outright. His sister was infamous in their family for blurting out inappropriate questions.
“I was in a car accident when I was fourteen. My legs were mangled.” Autumn tapped her hands on both knees. “I had a million operations over the years to repair them.”
“No wonder hospitals make you nervous,” Mom said.
“Totally,” Jamie said, nodding.
“I spent way too much time in ones just like this,” Autumn said. “It’s impossible not to associate them with pain. I’m sure my brother Stone doesn’t think of them too fondly, either. I can’t tell you how many of my operations he sat through just like this, waiting for the doctors to come out and tell him how I did.”
“Where was your mother in all this?” Mom asked. “Or your father?”
Autumn’s expression clouded, but only for a second. “My mother left when I was four. Dad was around but mostly drunk.”
“That’s awful,” Jamie said in her usual unfiltered manner. “How could she leave you guys like that?”
Autumn glanced at Trey, and they exchanged a knowing look between two people who knew each other’s stories well. “She suffered from depression and thought we were better off without her. My older brother, Kyle, basically became a parent at eight years old.”
“You poor kids,” Mom said. She looked over at Trey fondly. “I can’t imagine this one here taking care of anyone when he was eight years old.”
“That’s the truth,” Trey said. “I’m grateful I didn’t have to.”
“You never saw your mother again?” Jamie asked. “After she left?”
“Strangely enough, she’s back in our lives,” Autumn said.
“After missing everything?” Jamie asked, before a pointed look from their mother made her flush from embarrassment. His sister had a tongue that moved faster than her brain.
Autumn smiled thinly and clutched her arms around her middle, as if she were clinging to an old-fashioned handbag on her lap. “She had a hard time of it. Depression and a sense that we were better off without her plagued her for a lot of years. We’re in the rebuilding phase. It’s been hard, but also good to connect. Our family’s complicated.”
“Aren’t they all?” Mom asked. He’d never heard the bitter edge in her voice before. She’d always seemed oblivious to his father’s controlling and critical personality. When Dad had raged at Trey for choosing design and then Jamie for her lack of interest in anything other than having fun at the beach with her friends, cooking or curling up in her room reading books, their mother had gone mute. If she’d fought on his behalf, which he doubted, the outcome might have been different. His student loans had taken ten years to pay off. When Jamie had chosen an English literature degree over business, he’d cut her off in a similar manner.
The doctor came out then and told them that his father had come through the operation just fine. He would recover and return to everyday life soon.
If only it were that easy.
The doctor continued, oblivious to the trauma of their family. How could he know? He operated on the physical heart, not the figurative one.
They’d successfully performed the angioplasty and with a strict diet and exercise program, he would be able to resume a normal life before they knew it.
“A normal life? Does that include sex?” Mom asked.
“Most certainly.” The doctor’s hazel eyes looked amused for a split second before he returned to a stoic professionalism.
“Good. His girlfriend will be happy to hear that,” Mom said.
The doctor’s Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “Um. Sure.”
His mother slumped against Trey, as if her muscles suddenly weakened. His own mind tumbled and darted around in the dark, trying to cling to something that made sense. He knew only one thing for certain. His mother was in agony.
“When can my children see him?” Mom asked.
Children, not her.
“He’s coming out of the sedative—give it an hour or so,” the doctor said. “He’ll be anxious to see his family, and your support will be of great assistance to his recovery.”
“It won’t be,” Mom said. “That’s the sad part.”
The doctor had lost all composure at this point, his face and neck splotched with red. “I should be going. Best of luck.”
After the doctor left, the three of them stood together in a clump. Autumn hovered a few feet away, a pained expression on her pretty face.
“What do you want to do, Mom?” Jamie asked.
Before she could answer, the closed doors of the waiting area opened and a young woman walked in, wearing a tight-fitting slim dress over a curvaceous figure. She hesitated for a split second in the entryway, tossing straight and shiny black hair behind her shoulders. Other than her lips, which appeared chapped and abused, as if she’d eaten off layer after layer of lipstick, her makeup was as thick and expertly applied as a reality television star.
She strode toward the reception area. Black pumps clicked on the tiled floor. She was a fast, hard walker. Halfway to the desk, she halted. Her gaze flickered to them and then fluttered away. In that swift moment, he saw recognition. She knew them. He imagined from the photo on his father’s desk at work. His family. And here was the mistress in all her large-chested glory. Could you be more of a cliché, Dad?
Her mouth formed a circle. One foot stepped backward, making an uneven stance, as if she were about to perform a lunge. Then she lifted her chin slightly before striding over to the receptionist.
“That’s her,” Mom whispered. As if they didn’t know. “Trinity Brown.”
“How dare she come here.” Jamie’s eyes flamed with hatred.
Mom trembled under his arm. “We should go.”
“She should go.” Jamie spoke loudly this time. Several of the other people in the waiting area turned to stare at them. Still at the reception counter, Trinity’s shoulders flinched. She didn’t turn around.
“She’s a child,” Mom said, still in the same hushed tone. “The
same age as Jamie.”
“Mom, let’s get out of here,” Trey said. “We’ll go home. Make a plan.”
His mother turned her glazed eyes toward him. “A plan? I already had one.”
“She should have the decency to look us in the eye,” Jamie said as loudly as the first time.
The entire lobby was now watching their domestic drama unfold. It was better than television. A great distraction from their own worries.
“Do you see us here?” Jamie’s voice reverberated in the now-deadly still and quiet room. “You should acknowledge the family you’ve ruined.”
Trinity turned like a dancer in a slow-motion pirouette. She walked toward them, eyes blazing. Only the young could be so sure of their right to happiness, to taking what they wanted without regard for anything but their own needs. Trinity stopped when she was a few feet from their huddled wreck of a family. “I don’t owe you anything,” she said.
He was surprised by the singsong timbre of her voice. She had a fake voice practiced over the years to convey innocence and compassion. He knew the type. His ex-wife had the same kind of voice. In the beginning, he’d loved to hear her talk. About anything and everything, just to relax into the music of her. How stupid he’d been. How had he not seen that her exterior role of nice, churchgoing girl hid a darkness, a catlike arrogance and deviousness? I will take what I want because I can. When he’d confronted her about the affair, she’d turned it on him. He was inadequate. Too reserved, too uncommunicative, too sterile in his approach to life. As the cruel words slipped off her tongue, she spoke in that sick, sweet pitch of a voice. Those words had been worse than knowing about the affair. Her accusations had simmered inside him and risen from his body in the sickly shape of shame. They became truth to him. He’d caused her betrayal because he was not good enough.
Just as he’d caused his father’s disdain. Trey was not enough.
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