2

Tyler

Saturday, September 19

Tyler didn’t know what was wrong with his wife. She’d been sullen and non-communicative since they’d left their friends’ house. Lifting his eyes from the illuminated yellow lines in the road, he stole a glance at her pale profile etched against the dark background outside the passenger window.

The gentle slope of her nose gave way to naturally pouty lips and a proportionally prominent chin—a profile as familiar as his own face after ten years of marriage. The downward turn of her mouth and the creases tugging at the corners had always been an endearing part of her facial features, but over the past few years the lines had deepened with discontentment.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

He sighed. Her response signified this would be one of those conversations where he asked and pleaded for information, and she punished him with silence for some offense he’d committed and knew nothing about.

“I know it’s not nothing, so you might as well tell me what I did. Things were fine back at Hilary and Drew’s house. Now what?”

She shook her head, crossed her arms, and turned her body toward the window where the outside scenery blew by in a mask of neons, car lights, and darkened landscape.

“I did what you wanted, didn’t I? I told them how great everything looked. What else did you want me to do? Did I not act envious enough or something?”

“This has nothing to do with you, Tyler,” Lana said, her voice muffled and trembling, the way it always sounded just before she burst into tears.

“If it’s not me, then what is it?”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you.” She sounded just like her mother.

He ground his teeth. “Man, and don’t I know it.”

These days, Lana never missed an opportunity to remind him that not only did the world not revolve around him, but he was on a priority list in a galaxy somewhere outside of her solar system. He was lucky to get a civil word out of her unless they were going out to eat or doing something extraordinary.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snipped.

Tyler shrugged. “I never know what’s going on with you, Lana. You asked me to come with you to this thing tonight, and I agreed—even though I really don’t care that their house was remodeled by some television network and they’re going to be on that home show. And really, I don’t know why you’re so impressed with that either. We have a nice house, too.”

“Yeah, right. I’d be embarrassed to ask Hilary and Drew over.”

Tyler shook his head. He refused to respond to her goad. Now she was just picking a fight.

Lana sniffed, turning her face toward the window. “Between your mess—the golf clubs, the computer stuff—and the kids’ junk all over the place, some days I feel like checking into a hotel.”

“Fine,” Tyler said. “You need me to do more around the house? Is that what you’re saying? ’Cause I can do that. Just let me know.”

But it was obvious this offer wasn’t enough for her. Oh no. She was looking for a proper battle tonight, and nothing he said would cool Lana’s belligerent state of mind. Her ice-blue eyes—the ones he’d fallen in love with so long ago—bored into the side of his face.

“Did you see the storage units they put in their basement? And the size of their master bath? It would be great to have some updated hardware in our bathrooms, instead of the builder’s special from fifteen years ago.”

“Well, maybe we can look into that,” Tyler said as anger circled his emotional periphery, banging at the outskirts of his brain with all of the clumsiness of an off-kilter washing machine. “We’ll see what we can do, Lana. We don’t have the budget a TV network has, though.”

“Or the Newell’s budget,” Lana reminded him.

They’d had this conversation more than a few times recently—ever since Hilary and Drew Newell, friends from church, had been contacted by Remodel, Inc., Television and were told they’d been chosen from thousands of applicants to appear on one of the reality shows.

“After the new year, we’ll contact The DIY Outlet, OK? I’ll see if I can have someone come in and give us a quote on our master bathroom, but we can’t go crazy and do an entire remodel like they did. We don’t have that kind of cash.”

Lana turned on him. “I know that. Why do you keep saying that? What do you want me to do? Go back to work? Put the kids in daycare?”

“No, Lana, I’d just like you to be satisfied for once in your life. It doesn’t matter how much we have, you always want more. We could live in a mansion in Great Falls and you’d want us to live in Newport, Rhode Island, instead. You are never, never happy!” The rage came on suddenly, leaving him no space to talk himself down from it. He’d been reading a book on controlling his anger, and he was working on redirecting it, channeling it into his workouts at the gym, or finding ways to deflect or control it before it flared. But tonight, the techniques weren’t working.

Lana went silent.

He sighed heavily as the adrenaline subsided, and he propped his elbow against the window, leaning his head upon his hand as he drove. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, as much to himself as to his wife.

At least he had dinner with the Wolfs to look forward to. He and Lana had gone early to the Newells’ open house so they could still meet Josh and Molly for drinks and dinner. Plus, tonight they were trying out the new restaurant on the corner of Elden Street and Herndon Parkway. That was secretly the only reason he’d gone to this thing anyway. That and the chance for a night away from the kids. “You might text Molly and Josh and let them know we’ll be a few minutes late,” Tyler suggested.

“Oh, I’m not going. Text and tell them to forget it.”

A tight knot developed in the pit of Tyler’s stomach. He knew that tone all too well, and it usually meant she would dig in her heels. Some of their worst fights had ended that way, and in the last few years, the fights were more frequent. Embarrassing premature exits from church events and Bible studies, feeble excuses as to why they couldn’t attend birthday parties, sheepish phone calls to his parents asking if the kids could stay the night with them because of some emergency or other…Tyler knew they never really fooled anyone. “Come on, Lana. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

“Why? So you can stare across the table at Molly all night?”

“What?” Tyler shot her a glare. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

“No. That’s ridiculous. And you know it.”

“Is it?” she sneered.

“Yes, it is. Now you’re acting like some crazy person. Let’s just go and have a nice meal and forget about this.”

“No.” She crossed her arms. “I’m not going. I’ll jump out of this car right now.”

“Molly and Josh are our friends, Lana. It’s not like you don’t know them. Anyway, they’re probably already there.”

“You want to call them or you want me to do it?”

“Come on, Lana.” He really did want to go. He wanted to sit down with friends and talk and laugh. He wanted to pretend like they were in love—as they used to be.

“Nope. I’m not going.”

“What do you want to tell them?”

“I don’t care. Tell them there’s an emergency with the kids or the babysitter.”

“You mean lie.”

“I don’t care what you tell them. Tell them the truth, for all I care.”

Tyler’s shoulders slumped with defeat. The clicking of the car’s signal light reminded him of the tsking noise his father sometimes made—the one he’d made ten years ago when Tyler had told him he was going to marry Lana. His father hadn’t liked Lana from the start. And Tyler’s father had never been wrong about anything.

Tyler shook his head as he jerked the steering wheel to the right and onto the street that would take them home rather than to dinner. “Fine. Go ahead and call them. Tell them whatever you want.”