It was almost ten o’clock when we finally got home from our heart-to-heart. John and Landon were playing the Wii, which allowed Keisha to slip into her room and repair her makeup before either of them saw her. She got ready for work and then came out, her puffy eyes mostly disguised by freshly applied foundation. We shared a look as I handed her the keys to my car so she wouldn’t have to walk in the dark—she’d walked to and from work many times without complaint. I knew trusting her with my car meant a great deal to her, and she hugged me before calling out a good-bye to John and Landon.
Not long after Keisha left, I headed to bed, thinking John and Landon would stay up longer; however, they ended the game immediately and John came into our room only a few minutes behind me.
“How was book group?” he asked as we went through our nightly routine.
“Good,” I said, glad to be able to mean it and relieved to think about something other than his daughter. “It was really fun. We had a great discussion about the book.”
“And how’s Ruby doing?”
“Great,” I said, sounding a little wistful. I was so jealous of her going on that cruise. The last few years had been all about working as hard as we could. John and I hadn’t included vacations or indulgences. Right now I wanted nothing more than to step out of life for a couple of weeks and get lost in an adventure. “She’s going to Greece.” I explained what I knew about her trip while changing into my pajamas and washing my face.
“I’m so jealous,” John said.
“Me too,” I said, laughing at how similar our thoughts were. Laughter was good medicine for my troubled soul right now.
“We need to plan a trip,” John said. “Maybe just a Baja cruise or something cheap like that. Landon would love it.”
“He would.” I sat on the edge of the bed and put lotion on my hands and feet. When John and I had taken a Caribbean cruise for our eight-year anniversary, Landon had stayed with my parents; they had still lived here at the time. We’d had such a great time and used to talk all the time about taking the kids with us on another one. But then the bottom fell out of the economy, and Keisha started having a tough time and, well, the cruise hadn’t happened. But we were in better financial shape now than we had been the last time we talked about it. “Maybe we could do something after school gets out.”
“I’ll talk to Stan about it,” John said, referring to a friend of his whose wife was a travel agent. “I’ll see what he recommends.”
“That would be awesome.”
He disappeared into the bathroom, and I heard the buzz of his mechanical toothbrush. I pulled my hair up into a high bun and put my clothes and his socks in the hamper. John was so good about taking care of his own clothes, but for whatever reason his socks were always all over the place.
“Oh, hey,” he said when he came out of the bathroom a minute later. “You didn’t tell me Landon found that gift card.”
I froze for half a second, then tried to look natural as I passed him on my way to the bathroom. “Yeah,” I said simply, knowing I should say more but unable to as the guilt descended like a thunderstorm. I tried to summon the confidence I’d felt when Keisha had confided in me. I was the reason she was staying sober. Me. That was a big responsibility, and it was the only thing that made sense in regard to justifying why I was keeping things from my husband.
“I guess it must have fallen out of his pocket or something,” John said. I could hear him turning down the covers while I stared at the reflection in the mirror. John’s wife stared back at me—a woman he trusted, a woman he thought trusted him enough to be honest.
“I guess so,” I said simply, breaking eye contact with the other woman in the mirror. Justifications aside, I felt horrible. I’d never kept anything from John before.
Suddenly he was right there, behind me. His arms reached around my stomach, and I closed my eyes when his lips kissed the back of my neck. “I’m really sorry for jumping to conclusions about Keish with all that,” he said, horribly humble. My heart ached. “It was totally unfair of me.”
If there were a script for this, I would say something like “It’s okay” or “I understand.” I could even say, “I need to tell you something.” But I couldn’t say any of it. It wasn’t okay, and I did understand why he’d jumped to that conclusion—the right conclusion, it turned out. I couldn’t tell him the truth because I’d done what I’d done so that he’d trust his daughter and stop thinking the worst of her. What irony.
I opened my eyes to see him staring at me in the mirror. I forced myself to smile.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking confused.
“I’m good,” I said, though I wasn’t good at all.
“Are you sure? You seem a little, I don’t know, tight.”
I tried to smile wider, but I felt worse than ever. “I’m fine. It’s just been a long week, ya know?” I turned in his arms so that I could look up into his eyes. “I love you, John, so much.”
“Whew,” he said with a teasing grin. “That helps this whole marriage and family thing make a lot more sense.” He reached over and flipped off the bathroom light, plunging us into darkness and giving me the relief of keeping any thoughts he might read in my eyes to myself.