Vladimir(46)

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I prayed they would say a few words and she would continue out to her car, the whole run-in a coincidence. But then I saw John touch her face, and she pulled him in by the hip, the door closing behind him so that they seemed to be swallowed by the night.

We watched in silence as the light in John’s office turned on, and then I started the engine and backed up without looking, nearly hitting a Subaru behind me, and drove out of the parking lot at an irresponsible speed.

“Where are we going?” Sid asked.

“Home,” I said. The image of John and Cynthia was thudding in my brain as if lit by a pulsing strobe, and I fixed my eyes on the white line of the road, like one is supposed to do in dense fog, to stabilize my thoughts.

“Don’t you think we should go in?” Sid shifted her body so she could look over her shoulder out the rear window, trying to keep her eyes on the building as I drove away.

“For what?”

“To see what they’re doing.”

“We know what they’re doing, honey.”

“I didn’t think it was so clear.”

“Sid, it’s nine o’clock.”

“So?”

“So it’s clear.”

Sid turned back to face me, chewing the inside of her lip, an old habit. “That was the woman I met the other night, right?”

“Right.” Had Cynthia been on her way to meet John when she came by the house that night? Or worse, had she come looking for him? Had he given her our address, or had they met there before, an afternoon tussle in our marital bed, arranged for a time when his family was sure to be away?

“Why would she do anything with Dad?”

“She’s a complicated person.” Sid waited for another answer, so I offered, lamely, “Women like your father.”

“Yuck,” she said, but there was a heaviness to her voice, a drip of sadness clogging up her sinuses.

Then her phone buzzed, and she gasped. Alexis was arriving at the train station in fifteen minutes, hoping to be picked up. She had said she was coming, but she hadn’t said when. I was relieved—I didn’t normally enjoy spontaneous guests but I didn’t want to spend time processing what I had seen with Sidney. I felt remiss that I hadn’t parented her out of this shakedown, that I hadn’t told her it was inappropriate for us to go tracking Dad together. Warmed by her attention, by the idea of us as partners, I’d broken a long-held pact I had made with myself to never go chasing after John. And what was I doing inserting Sid into all this? She may be a grown woman, but that didn’t mean the actions of her parents had no effect on her psyche and well-being. Wasn’t it finding out about John and the allegations that had spurred her into the affair with her colleague in the first place, upending her life, forcing her to leave her job, stranding her in her old bedroom turned guest room in her childhood house and town? Without work she was completely adrift, all the running in the world couldn’t counteract the amount she was drinking and eating—she looked perpetually puffy, distended, and ill.

Sid spent most of the ten-minute ride hunched over her phone, texting furiously with Alexis. The pace their thumbs could move. I forced myself to note the scenery around us as I drove. The elementary school, the old post office, the sandwich shop. It wasn’t until we were parked in the pickup area, watching the train pull into the station, that Sid turned to me and said, out of obligation, “How are you feeling about all this?”

I told her I had feelings about it, but I didn’t want her to worry. She was to worry about repairing her own relationship, if that was what she wanted. She took this as offensive.

“What do you mean, if that’s what I want?”

I said I thought that was what she was communicating to me, that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to commit in the way that Alexis was asking. “Not wanting to have a child is not the same thing as not committing,” she snapped.

I nodded. The bond that we had cultivated over the past few weeks was already being severed by the intrusion of her “real” life, which came toward us now in the figure of Alexis, toting a hard-shell rolling suitcase and wearing a very well-tailored power dress with soft leather flats, her braids loosely pulled back in an elaborate gold hair clip that looked like the branches of a tree, adorned with jeweled leaves.

She came around to my window first, greeted me, and told me that she had thought Sid would be the one to pick her up. She was mortified; she hadn’t realized I would have to come out at this time of night.

I told her not to worry, that it was just a coincidence and no trouble. Sid jumped out of the car to help her put her case in the trunk and I listened to their conversation as she rearranged the grocery bags and snow-clearing equipment to make room.

“You look beautiful, Lexi.” I saw Sid perform a half bow of appreciation.

“I was in court today. We got the verdict.” She waited a beat. “Now you’re supposed to say, how’d it go?”

“Sorry, babe. How’d it go?”

“I won.”

“You’re incredible.”

“Tim told me to take the week off.”

“I’m really happy you’re here.”

“Maybe you are, maybe you’re not.”

There was a moment of silence, a touch or a kiss.