The Winters(53)

The word left me momentarily stunned. She could have slapped me across the face and I wouldn’t have felt a thing. How is that possible? He adored Rebekah.

“That’s what I think, anyway,” Dani said, and sneaked a sip of my wine. “I mean, he’s never home. You know that now more than anyone.”

“Yes, but I always thought they were happy. I always thought they had a perfect marriage.”

She shrugged. “Mum said people know five percent of what goes on in anyone else’s marriage. I mean, he might have loved her before I came along. He even said to her once, You love Dani more than me, and she goes, Maybe I do? What’s wrong with that?”

Her eyes lingered on me, as if she was testing the effects of her words. Max painted a different picture, of a mother who was hard on Dani, and a father making up for that with leniency and love.

“Married people say things they don’t mean all the time, Dani.”

“Maybe. But when I said Mum took that call in the greenhouse? I was listening. I heard her say, Max, you promised me that this wouldn’t keep happening, that this would stop, so why is this still going on? Something like that. I mean, what was that about except cheating?”

Our meals arrived. Dani dug right into her chicken as though she hadn’t just detonated a bomb on top of my life. I was dizzy with hunger, but when I picked up my utensils they felt heavy, the meat looked too tough, the brussels sprouts too much like fists to cut into. The idea of putting food into my mouth revolted me.

Dani noticed my distress.

“Do you want me to stop talking about it?”

“No. Keep going,” I replied too quickly. “If you want.”

“Okay,” she said, chewing. “So yeah, my dad, he came down to the beach acting all happy. But Mum wasn’t happy to see him. She was super tense and was all, What are you doing home? You were supposed to stay in the city. And he said, I missed my beautiful girls, barely even looking at me. When he went to kiss her she squirmed. He said, It’s getting dark, Dani. Get out of the water. Let’s all go back up to the house. We can order in so we don’t have to cook in this heat. Are you going to eat that?”

It took me a second to realize she was talking to me.

“Oh. No, I’m—”

She stabbed a brussels sprout with her fork and transferred it to her plate. “So. I get out of the water, shower really fast because I knew they were gonna try to squeeze in a fight while I was upstairs. When I came back to the kitchen, they stopped talking. Mum had tears in her eyes. The pizza guy came. We barely touched our food. Between the heat and the tension, you could cut the air with a knife.” She slashed her knife in front of me.

“So dinner was done. I knew Daddy was gonna bark at me to go to bed. I said it was too hot in my room, I want a fan, I won’t be able to sleep. But then I thought, wait a minute, I’d know more about what’s going on if I ‘went to bed.’” She mimed air quotes. “So I go, Okay, fine, Daddy. I thought I was being a genius, but then they went into the greenhouse again. And that’s when the fighting really took off. I couldn’t hear much, just, like, muffled yelling and stuff. But while I was crouched at the top of the stairs to try to hear more, the doorbell rang. I jumped. It was past eleven, late for visitors. I got scared. I heard his steps across the foyer. He answered the door. I couldn’t see who was there, but it was a woman. They spoke all hissy and low, like they were trying to keep it down because I was ‘sleeping.’ I heard him say, Let’s go somewhere else to talk.

“Now they were all in the greenhouse and things got really quiet. The silence was worse than the yelling. It felt like they were in there forever. I leaned over the banister to see if I could hear anything at all. I couldn’t. So I tiptoed down the stairs. I got as far as the door to the greenhouse. The glass was dirty, but I could see him, my dad, and there was my mother . . .”

Dani went quiet for a moment, her forehead wrinkling, as though these events were happening in real time in front of her.

“It was the last time I saw my mother. Before I could get a look at the other woman, she yelled something. My mother’s name, I think. I ran back up the stairs. Behind me I heard my dad yell, Rebekah, Rebekah! Then he said, Wait, you can’t leave. Don’t leave. I kept running, all the way up to their room in the turret, just in time to see my mom’s car take off down the drive. I figured she was mad. That she just wanted to go for a drive. She did that sometimes.”

Her shoulders dropped, and she looked at her hands in her lap. “Daddy was still in the house with that woman, so I raced down to my own room and closed the door because I knew he’d check on me. I slipped under the sheets and lay very still with my eyes shut. Not tight. That would look fake. I read you have to keep your eyebrows relaxed and your mouth slightly open, so that’s what I did. And I waited. And waited. And oh my God, my heart was beating so, so fast and finally I heard him come upstairs. He stopped outside my room. My heart was going boom, boom, boom. He slowly opened my door, crept to the side of my bed, so I fake woke up. I sorta stretched and I go—sounding all groggy—Hey, what’s wrong? He said, Nothing, honey. I brought you a glass of cold water. Here, he said, sit up and drink. It’ll help you cool down. He told me Mum went into town for a sec. I got worried. I said, Why? He said, She remembered we had a fan at campaign headquarters and she went into town to get it for you, sweetheart, because it’s so hot in here. I said, Why didn’t you go? And he said, Mum needed some air. She’ll be back soon. And that’s the last thing I remember.