What Happened to the Bennetts(105)

“No, it’s a discussion.”

“I love you, I love our family, and I can’t imagine doing that to Ethan, not after . . .” My throat caught, and I couldn’t finish the sentence. We had gone through so much, but we had lost Allison. Our hell wasn’t over, it was just beginning. I felt a wall of pain and hurt and anguish coming, as inevitably as a tide. “I mean, we lost our girl.”

“I know,” Lucinda said quietly, sniffling, and I found myself reaching for her hand. But she didn’t reach for mine.

“What?” I let my hand drop. I could see her lower lip trembling.

“I know I did something terribly wrong. I know I hurt you and I’m very sorry for that, but Ethan isn’t a reason for us to stay together.”

“Why not? I think he is. He needs us now. I mean, we all lost her.” My heart hurt when I said it out loud, anguished. “We lost her together.”

“I know that, too.” Lucinda cleared her throat. “But Allison isn’t a reason, either. Neither of our children is a reason for us to be together.”

“It’s not only the children. We’re a family. We make a family.”

“Not if you and me aren’t a couple, we don’t. I mean a real couple, a loving couple. A couple that should be together.” Lucinda’s hand fluttered to her cheek, wiping a tear away. “At the studio, I see families before I take their portrait, and I see the way they are, how they relate to each other. I see love when it’s there, sure, but I also see resentment, and hurt, and history.” She wiped away another tear. “Sometimes, after I finish the shoot, I have no idea why some couples stay together. I don’t want to be them, ever. I want to know why we’re together.”

“Okay,” I said, listening.

“I know why I had an affair.” Lucinda sniffled. “I think I was taking care of Caitlin for so long, then Mom got sick, and I’m not complaining, but you know, I just thought, life is so short. Anything could happen, I could get sick, I could die. I needed to do something for me, and when I met him, it was all about me, and only me. It’s as pathetic as that. Now that I know it wasn’t real, it’s even more pathetic.”

I understood. She had taken Caitlin to every chemo appointment, gotten her through surgery, then taken care of her mother. And all the time, there were the kids, the games, the homework, the PSATs, the permission slips. I knew it had taken a toll, but maybe I hadn’t appreciated how much. Lucinda was so capable she made it look easy, but it hadn’t been.

“I feel different now, and I have to ask myself if this is the marriage I want—”

“Wait, I didn’t do anything wrong,” I blurted out, but I knew it wasn’t completely true. I thought back to my realization that I had been playing it safe. My dropping out of law school had been me opting for the safer route, just like my father.

I’m a scenic-route kind of guy, I remember saying that awful night.

But I was New Jason, and I could acknowledge I had made a mistake or two. And as soon as I had that thought, my heart softened and I began to forgive her. Not all the way, but I could see a path to follow, like a way home.

Lucinda straightened. “I’m saying if we’re going to stay together, it has to be because we want to for us, and not the us from before, but who we are now.”

“Okay.”

Lucinda fell silent.

I asked, “You mean you want to, kind of, renew our vows?”

“Yes. Only if we both want to.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes, I love you and I want to stay married to you. And I want to rebuild our life and our house, right where it was, and I want us to live there. Is that what you want, too?” Lucinda held out her hand, a pale, open palm in the moonlight, and I reached out my hand and took hers.

“Yes, I love you, and that’s what I want, too. We’ll rebuild everything.” I took her gently into my arms, and I held her against my chest while she began to cry. I rocked her back and forth, feeling the tears in my eyes and the love in my heart and the grief we shared, the two of us standing between the land and the water, clinging to each other under the moon.

Wow, I thought.

She could make me feel that way, even without a kiss.

My wife.

My love.





Chapter Seventy-Five



I sat at the conference table alone, and the packed gallery was restless, waiting for the hearing to begin. The Senate chamber was vast and impressive, its ivory walls adorned with oil portraits in gilded frames and finished with crown molding. Rings of polished walnut desks filled the space, and the blue rug that looked dark on TV was bright. Photographers crouched in front of me, forming a veritable wall of cameras, and I could imagine how I would look in their photos. Grim, grieving, and purposeful.

Today I was going to get a father’s justice.

Six months after Allison’s murder, criminal charges against Senator Ricks had yet to be filed, so I had pushed for a congressional investigation, supported by public outcry, media coverage, and political pressure. The party wanting to tank Ricks’s presidential run backed me, but I didn’t expect purity of motive. They had formed a Select Committee on the Doha Interrogation and decided I would be the first to testify.

They didn’t know I had a litigation strategy of my own.