Looking at herself in the mirror, Jennifer thought that, if nothing else, she could take comfort in the fact that at least she was dressed the part of the happy wife and expectant guest. Dress for the job you want, her mother had always told her. She was aware of the fact that she was beautiful. She was one of the lucky, vain ones who could truly believe it. The knowledge often gave her strength in difficult or stressful times, probably more often than it should have, but tonight it had no effect on her, and she sat on the edge of the bed in her tastefully expensive dress and an agitated silence punctuated with the occasional questions or declarations of disbelief, because she just could not fathom that this was how her evening had turned out. It was so unlike the way she had foolishly allowed herself to imagine when she’d walked in the door at the end of the day to find Tom and Abby snuggled together in a blanket on the couch, watching one of Ben’s idiotic sports-disaster movies and laughing hysterically.
Then she hadn’t been the slightest bit upset — even as she took in that Tom was wearing sweatpants and surrounded by a sea of dirty dishes with all of her expensive silk throw pillows tossed amid other random junk scattered from the kitchen to the living room. She had even bitten back her comments at evidence that the perfectly assembled tray of appetizers she had so painstakingly created earlier was going to need a major reno. She loved watching the two of them together and was thrilled to think that Tom had managed to extricate himself from his office duties to spend a little time with his daughter before the adults headed out for the evening.
Tom had been working so much lately. To see him there relaxed at home was worth the mess. In fact, at that moment, if Jennifer was the type of woman to allow herself the luxury of self-reflection, she would have considered herself perfectly content. And it was not a state she often found herself in.
It had been very short-lived, lasting only up until she broke the spell by asking what they were up to, to find they’d been in that same position for hours and that Abby hadn’t gone to school that day, or more correctly, that she had decided not to stay there. It was further eroded when she learned of the reason. Her ten-year-old daughter had stolen money from her purse, said goodbye to her mother with a straight face, before walking away from the schoolyard, not telling a soul, and hopping into a car with a strange man to travel to a neighbourhood she knew nothing about — to spend the morning with Cynthia Wilkes, of all people. For someone whose entire life experience up to this point could be the textbook example of the cautionary cliché “expect the worst,” Jennifer was surprised that she could still have those rare moments of naive optimism push their way through the weeds of reality, blooming so briefly, delicate and lovely. She always felt so betrayed when she couldn’t keep herself from thinking that they might survive.
But the final blow was to learn that this bad, so extremely dangerous and unacceptable behaviour, the lying and the risk, had been practically endorsed by her husband — who hadn’t even bothered to call her when he found out about it. Who had since said nothing to their daughter about her actions, except making some vague statement to “follow your heart, but use your head next time” while plying her with attention and crappy food, leaving Jennifer in shock and without any forewarning to play the heavy and send Abby fleeing to her room in tears as she aimed a series of “I hate yous” like tiny daggers straight into Jennifer’s heart.
“So she just went there and spent the morning with your ex-wife. And you just think this is all fine and dandy?”
“No, of course not. But what do you want me to do, crucify her? She’s ten and she’s precocious and she was curious, that’s all. She has been asking questions, you know that, and you know it was hard on her having Matthew go back to school this year. It’s lonely being an only child, especially one who is too smart for her own good. I think she just wanted to see where the other kids spend their time.”
Abby had been asking questions, more and more lately. The other day he had found her rooting through the bottom shelves in his office where he kept some old albums, not hidden exactly, but kept discreetly out of Jennifer’s view. He knew that Abigail had flipped through them before from the times that he had done the same, but he had never offered her the chance to do it with him.
In a way Tom knew this whole escapade was his fault. He had up till now neatly avoided any conversations his daughter attempted to broach on the subject of Cynthia and his previous life. Cynthia had been the central piece of that life, his memories for so long — they’d met as kids — but out of respect for Jennifer, he had made almost his entire childhood an off-limits area for the girl. He did it even though he knew she was burning with questions, and that she probably had a right to be. A father’s history isn’t his alone, no matter how much he’d like to keep it that way, or to try to rewrite or erase it. The truth was, he hadn’t been protecting Jennifer as much as Abby or himself. He wanted desperately to keep her unaware, for a little longer, for as long as he could, about the nature of her birth and the foundations of their current family structure, wanting to hold on to the one member of the family who still might consider him a bit of a hero.
But she was too smart and the questions had been getting too precise and more frequent. He should have dealt with it instead of letting her take matters into her own hands. Instead, he let her make the choices. He knew that she had made dangerous ones, and he was just living with the fallout. It was sort of a pattern with him.
“Now she has seen the place, and met their mom, you know that she listens to Cynthia’s show, even though she thinks its some kind of crime. She probably thinks Cyn’s some kind of celebrity, and kids get a kick out of that. We have never really told her it’s okay for her to talk about it, and let’s face it, we don’t think it is. So now it’s done and she is home and safe and no worse off for it except for a tongue-lashing — well-deserved — and a little too much sugar.” Abby was being raised on the low-sugar, low-fat, low-preservative, low-taste diet Jennifer enforced to keep herself thin, her daughter healthy, and her aging husband alive long enough to see Abby through college. His other kids complained bitterly.
“I cannot believe that woman feeds her kids that trash. Toaster tarts? Why didn’t she just give her arsenic? She probably did.” It was a ridiculous thing to say and Jennifer knew it, but there had to be some way that Cynthia was at fault in some of this. The only innocent bystander as far as Jennifer was concerned was herself.
“Well, it’s not like Cyn was expecting her, you know. We should just be thankful she was even there to take her in.” This he said fully aware of the risk he took in defending the other Wilkes woman.
“Oh, that’s right, Saint Cynthia. Mother to the world’s children,” Jennifer hissed, but the tirade was cut short when another wave of very real panic suddenly swept over her. “She could have been kidnapped or killed or something.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Anything could have happened to her, Tom. Do you not get that? This is not some small town.”
“It didn’t.”
But Tom got it. As calm as he was trying to be for the both of them now, by the time he’d arrived at Cynthia’s place, he had been near panic himself thinking of all of the things that could have gone wrong with this seemingly innocent introduction. He was in such a state of impotent rage and euphoric relief that when he saw Abby sitting safe in Cynthia’s kitchen, he was filled with an almost irresistible urge to slap her. He couldn’t explain it now; he’d only ever experienced it once before years ago, when a five-year-old Matthew, not paying attention to the warnings, had run and slipped off the edge of the dock at the cottage one early spring, scaring them both senseless. The smack had surprised the little boy but hadn’t seemed to have held a lasting effect, though after seeing the look on his face, Tom had not believed he could ever hit one of his kids again and be able look them in the eye.
Seeing the look he was giving Abigail, Cynthia had sprung into action and managed, in that seemingly effortless way she possessed, to defuse the situation, physically standing between father and daughter, soothing