Chapter 29

Justine

The night we got home from the beach I made dinner—hoagies with all the fixings and a side order of guilt for my plate. After dinner, Mark watched TV, and the girls slept peacefully in their beds, content that I was home and all was well. I slipped out to the deck to look at the stars and wonder what I’d just done, wondering why my family couldn’t see traces of him on me. Mark didn’t look up from ESPN as I closed the door behind me.

The night was not quiet. Crickets, frogs, and cicadas blended together to perform their summer symphony. From across the yard I could hear Ariel’s neighbor, a recluse I’d waved at but never met, playing music as he often did. Tonight was ’80s music. Toto sang, “All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes.” Even after dark the air was still hot, though not as humid. I wore a tank top and fantasized that I’d stayed long enough to wake up with Tom this morning, that the slight breeze I felt on my arm was his touch as we woke up tangled together in his hotel room. It was hard to imagine that just the night before we’d been on the beach together. I tilted my head back, breathed deeply, closed my eyes, and heard a noise—a movement in the yard.

I yanked my head back down, scanning the yard for the source of the noise. There was movement in the playset tower. I saw the faint outline of a profile, a white shirt. “Who’s there?” I asked, foolishly heading toward the culprit instead of going inside like a smart woman would.

A girl stuck her head out from the cover of the tower. “Miss Justine, it’s me, Heather.”

I stopped in the yard and watched as she climbed down. “Heather?” I asked. “What in the world are you doing out here?”

She stopped at the bottom of the tower and leaned back against it. “I come here sometimes,” she said. “To think. I’m sorry. I’ll go.” She started to walk away. I could see her clearly in the light coming from our house windows.

“No, Heather, you don’t need to feel like you have to leave. I was just going inside,” I lied.

She reached up and pulled on her ponytail, shifting her weight and looking around like she was trying to find the fastest escape route. I hadn’t really looked at her in a long time, I realized. She’d grown up while I looked the other way.

“You’ve gotten so pretty,” I blurted out.

She blanched and looked away. “Umm, thanks,” she said. She wrapped the end of her ponytail around and around her index finger, then let it go.

“I mean, you’re not a little girl anymore.” I smiled. “I still think of you as a little girl.”

“You and my dad,” she said.

“How is your dad?” I asked. I could feel the blades of grass against my bare feet, sharp on my skin. I shouldn’t have asked about him.

“He’s good. Working a lot. He lives not far from here. I see him some.” She looked at me with eyes that told me she knew more than she was supposed to. “I remember he built this playset with Mr. Mark.”

“Yes, he did.” I thought back to that day years ago. Caroline had been so little I was afraid for her to climb the stairs of the tower. The men had looked so handsome, so capable, climbing around hoisting lumber. Erica had come over, and we’d cooked dinner, laughing as we worked. Heather had helped watch out for the girls. “That was a good day,” I added.

She smiled with one side of her mouth. “Sometimes I like to come here and remember when things were better with my parents. When we were all happier.”

I wondered what to say in response to that. “That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “It’s good to remember the good times.”

She paused and looked at the house. “I know,” she said. “About what’s going on with you and Mr. Dean.”

My heart started pounding. “What?” I asked, laughing. “Nothing’s going on with me and Mr. Dean.”

“I saw the two of you together. You were in his car on that dead-end street where they stopped building houses. I saw your car and I saw his, so I went over to see what was going on. And I … saw you. Together.”

If she only knew that I was trying to figure out which time she saw us. We’d gotten pretty crafty at inventing excuses to meet there. It was “our place.” “Listen, Heather, I don’t know what you think you saw, but … there’s nothing going on with me and Mr. Dean.”

She looked me in the eyes for the first time that night. “My dad denied it too, when my mom caught him.”

I didn’t try to argue further. We stood for a moment and looked at each other, neither of us saying a word. “I might be a kid,” she continued, “but I’m not stupid. And the truth is, I came over here tonight to try to figure out what to do about it. The Deans live across the street from us. They’re nice people. They love their kids. You and Mr. Mark are nice people. You love your kids.” She sighed. “So I came here just to watch your house and try to remember what that felt like—to be like Cameron and Caroline. To still have a mom and a dad who loved each other.” Her eyes flashed in the darkness. “Do you really want to take that away from them?”

I looked away, ashamed. “No,” I said quietly, thinking of the guilt I’d been carrying since I slipped away in the first light of dawn. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” I couldn’t explain to Heather that Cameron and Caroline didn’t have a mom and dad who still loved each other. That argument was pointless, and she was, after all, just a child. A wise child, but a child nonetheless.

“Then stop, Miss Justine. Just stop. It’s not too late.” She kicked at the grass with her flip-flop. “I won’t tell anyone. It’ll be just between us.” I saw desperation in her eyes. The poor kid needed to believe that I could do what her parents could not. In that moment, I wanted to be the person she believed me to be.

“Okay,” I said, because it was all I could think of to say, and because I just wanted this confrontation to be over. I raised my eyes to look into hers. “Thank you.”

She left without another word, and I wondered if she thought I was thanking her for not telling or thanking her for helping me see that I had to do the right thing. She was right, and I knew it. I was a grown-up. I had to stop, for my girls if nothing else. I stood in the yard for a long time after she left, figuring out how to do just that, watching as the lights in the houses around me went out, one by one.

The next morning after Mark had gone to a coffee shop to hide behind his laptop screen and the girls were busy playing upstairs, I called Tom and was relieved when his voice mail picked up. Between Heather’s visit and the overwhelming guilt I felt, I knew what I had to do even if my heart wasn’t in it. I was worried that if I actually spoke to him, I wouldn’t say what I had to say. His voice made me weak, drove me to promise things I had no business promising. This promise wasn’t for me or for him. This promise was for my family.

“I think that we both know the other night was a mistake,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. “I’m sorry, but this just isn’t me. I’m not this person. And I know once there was something between us, but now … there just can’t be now.” I glanced around the kitchen and thought of him trying to pull me to him the night we had him and Betsy over, how happy I was just from his nearness. “I’m sorry,” I said into the phone and ended the call.

Later I would tell Mark we needed to sell the house. He would agree because of our finances and his job loss. He would never suspect the real reason I wanted to get away. He might even congratulate me for being willing to sacrifice my house to save my family. He would never know what I was sacrificing. I wiped away tears and turned to face the rest of my life without Tom.