Half an hour later, Andrew stood on the sidewalk next to an idling yellow cab. As the driver hurled his roller bag into the trunk, Andrew looked up at his apartment window. He could see Beth by the tree, tossing on strands of popcorn. “Look at me,” he whispered.
He was sure she felt his eyes on her, but she wouldn’t turn his way.
“Bud, if you got a six-thirty flight, we’d better hustle,” the driver said. Andrew took one last look at Beth and climbed into the backseat of the cab.
When Andrew arrived at first-class seat 3B on his flight to Chicago, he found a twentysomething beauty occupying 3A. She flashed him a sexy smile as he stashed his carry-on bag in the overhead compartment. It was bad enough leaving his wife on Christmas weekend, but if Beth knew his assistant, Kimberly, was along on this junket, he’d have hell to pay.
When Andrew hired Columbia graduate Kimberly Garner the previous summer, he had no idea it would spell trouble for his marriage. He was impressed with Kimberly from the moment he met her. She was sharp, funny, and ambitious, and he sensed she would soon be moving up the agency ladder. However, when he introduced her to Beth at a company party, he picked up an immediate friction between them. Kimberly poured on the charm in an attempt to win over her boss’s spouse, but Beth was reserved, not her usual friendly self.
“She’s very pretty,” Beth said on the cab ride home that night. “And she has an eye for you.” Andrew laughed, told her she was wrong, that Kimberly looked on him as a mentor. But Beth wasn’t convinced. From then on, if she had to speak to Kimberly on the phone, Beth was short and to the point. When Kimberly’s name came up, she would noticeably tense up.
“Beth, I have lots of assistants. Kimberly’s one of many. And she has a boyfriend.”
In reality, Kimberly had broken off with the guy she’d been dating a few weeks after coming to work for Andrew’s agency. A fact he neglected to mention.
Even though he went out of his way to diminish Kimberly’s role in his work life, she remained a touchy subject. And the truth was, Beth’s suspicions were warranted. It quickly became obvious that Andrew’s beautiful protégé had designs on him. He’d be a fool not to notice the way Kimberly looked at him, how she playfully fine-tuned his hair or adjusted his tie when he was about to head into a meeting. Her flirtations stroked his male ego, but in order to assuage his guilt, Andrew convinced himself it was nothing more than a harmless office crush.
Still, he sensed the day of reckoning was coming, and sooner rather than later. How would he react, he wondered, if Kimberly decided to act on her infatuation?
And that was all the more reason to keep Kimberly’s presence on the Chicago trip on the down low. What your wife doesn’t know can’t get you into trouble.
“Hey, handsome,” Kimberly said. “Thought you were going to miss the flight.” She took a sip of her cocktail and let her glossed lips linger on the rim of the glass.
Andrew closed the overhead compartment and slipped into the seat beside her. “Almost did. Midtown Tunnel’s a parking lot.”
Kimberly had already ordered him a Scotch on the rocks and was reading the galley of the novel belonging to the young Chicago writer they were hoping to sign. She thumbed through the pages of the manuscript.
“A bit derivative,” she said.
“We’re agents,” Andrew said. “Our job isn’t to smell it but sell it.”
“First we have to sign her,” Kimberly said.
“It’s in the bag,” Andrew said. “That’s why I make the big bucks.”
Back at the apartment, Beth kept occupied with cookie baking, gift wrapping, and last-minute Christmas card writing. She promised herself she’d keep her cool. But when she burned a batch of snowman sugar cookies, she angrily dumped the tray in the garbage can and dropped the pan in the sink with a loud clang.
Why would Andrew leave her like this at the start of the holiday weekend? She felt like calling him and telling him off once and for all.
What had happened to him? To them?
Her eyes drifted to an old, familiar snapshot photo stuck by a fruit-shaped magnet to the refrigerator door. Andrew and Beth posing with Andrew’s mother, Emma, at Christmastime, when they were in their early teens. Emma had her arms around them, and though she was smiling, there was sorrow in her eyes.
Growing up together in tiny River Falls, Pennsylvania, Andy Farmer and Beth McCarthy were practically inseparable. They met on a sweltering summer day in a lukewarm kiddie pool in Beth’s backyard. Andy was four, Beth three. He was a sweet, sensitive little boy who seemed grown up beyond his years. He wore little sweater vests and bow ties and looked like a miniature Alex P. Keaton. Andy was polite to a fault. It was always “yes, sir” or “yes, ma’am.” Adults adored him.
When she reflected back on those early days, Beth could see that young Andrew was forced to be the man around the house long before he was ready. His salesman father, Henry, was on the road most of the time, and the rare times he was home, he preferred to lounge in his easy chair and “catch up on his TV.”
Beth could almost hear the ominous words: “Son, I need to speak with you about something.”
Andrew had told her every detail about that moment, details that were burned into his memory. Twelve-year-old Andy was sitting at the little oak desk in his room finishing up his math homework when his mother came in to break the news. It was the third of October, and a cool autumn breeze blew through his open window. As the years went by, Andrew would think back to that moment and marvel at how many minute details he could remember. He could even remember how many times his neighbor’s dog barked: six.
“It’s about your father,” Emma Farmer said.
“What about Dad?” His heart was beating fast. He knew this wasn’t going to be good. “Is he okay?”
“He’s left us,” Emma said. “He’s found someone else. Another woman.”
That someone else turned out to be a young waitress he’d met on one of his sales trips. Not long after the conversation in Andrew’s room, Emma slipped into a deep depression. And try as young Andy might to cheer her up, she never came out of it.
Two years after her husband left her for good, Emma Farmer fell ill one afternoon and died three days later. Andrew was holding one of his mom’s hands when she passed; Beth was holding the other.
Andrew didn’t even bother to try to contact his dad to give him the news of his wife’s passing. He waited until after his mother’s funeral and then sent Henry a terse note: Mom’s dead. Just thought you should know. From that day forward, Andrew wanted nothing more to do with his father.
In the weeks following his mother’s death, Andrew tried his best to push Beth away, but she refused to let him. Late one night, in a fit of rage, he called and told her he wanted to meet her by the bandstand in Town Square. Even though it was well past her curfew, Beth could tell her friend was deeply troubled, so she slipped past her sleeping parents and headed for the rendezvous.
When Beth approached the bandstand, she saw Andrew pacing like a caged cat. “Andy, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Andrew wheeled on her, and she could see the pain and rage in his eyes.
“I hate him, Beth. You hear me? I HATE him!” he said. “And I need you to hate him too.”
“Andrew . . . ?”
“Say it! Say that you hate him as much as I do. If you’re really my friend, say it.” Beth watched as hot tears rolled down Andrew’s face. His voice lowered and he struggled to choke back his sobs. “I need to know. Say you hate him, or we’re done.”
Beth slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry, Andy. I don’t. I can’t. And if having to hate your dad is a condition of our friendship, then I’m sorry. I guess we can’t be friends anymore.”
Andrew stared at her as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“I wish you the best, Andy,” Beth said. “I really do. And I’ll miss you.”
Beth walked away quickly to hide her tears. She wanted to look back at him, to tell him that she loved him, but she knew that would be the wrong thing to do. She knew how much he was hurting, and she knew that she couldn’t help him until he was ready to help himself.
They didn’t speak for two months. Then one rainy school morning Andrew was waiting for Beth when she came out of her house. He held an umbrella for her on the five-block walk to River Falls High while he let himself get soaked to the bone. That was Andrew’s way of saying he was sorry. He never mentioned their quarrel.
Beth was happy to have her friend back, but she worried about her Andy, about the rage and grief he kept bottled up inside. He hated Henry Farmer for his betrayal, for not being there, and there was no talking him out of it.
And she knew that someday the emotional bill would come due.