Daddy's Girls (40)

“Where’s Dad?” were his first words to his mother. He was anxious to see him, after being away.

“He had to work late,” she said vaguely.

“He said he’d be home when I got in.” Billy looked disappointed and she wanted to say “He lied,” but she didn’t. She was going to have to tell them something if she didn’t let him stay there, but not tonight. She couldn’t deal with more than she already had. Billy went to his room to play videogames, and Morgan came home an hour later. She’d been happy to see her friends.

“Is Dad home?” She looked hopeful, but tired.

“No,” Caroline said, and Morgan didn’t press the point. She went to her room to call a friend, and that was the end of it. Caroline turned off the living room lights, closed the door to her bedroom, and turned off the lights in her room, wondering how many nights Veronica had stayed there. Just thinking about her and what they’d done made her feel sick. She lay there for hours, with the room spinning, as her world fell apart and lay in splinters at her feet.

Caroline heard from Peter by email the next morning. All he said was “Were you serious about Aspen? You’re not going?”

    “Totally serious. No, I’m not, and neither are the kids,” she responded. She was not going to live her life as a fraud for the summer, pretending nothing was wrong. She was not going.

“Fine,” he responded. “They won’t return our deposit.” She didn’t bother to answer, and three minutes later, he sent another email. “Caro, I told you, I’m so sorry. I was drunk out of my mind. She means nothing to me. She’s a total stranger. It was a moment of insanity. I love you.” Caroline didn’t respond to that email either. Instead, she called a friend’s husband, who was a lawyer. She trusted him, and she said she was calling as a client and it was confidential.

“Sounds serious,” he said, trying to keep things light. “Client-attorney privilege. You’re covered. What’s up?” They had sons the same age in the same class at school, which was how she knew most people now, through her kids. She told him the whole sordid story and what she’d found.

“I’m sorry, Caroline. That’s nasty, and it feels like shit when it happens.” He had a gentle style, and a sympathetic voice, which made her want to cry again.

“Yes, it does,” she agreed.

“What do you want to do?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. I threw him out last night and told him he couldn’t stay here.”

“That’s reasonable, in the circumstances. Now what? How can I help you?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Do I divorce him? Make him move out? What do people do?”

“There’s a whole range of possibilities here. It’s entirely personal, depending on how you feel about him, and your marriage, until now, and going forward. Can you forgive him? Could you get past it? Could you trust him again? Do you want to? Has he cheated on you before, that you know of?”

    “I don’t know if he has. Maybe. Probably. I think he’s having an affair with her. Not just a fling. She’s twenty-three, and a trainee in his office. She must have been staying at our house, if she had her datebook in the drawer of my night table.”

“Sounds like a fair assumption. Do you want to suggest to Peter that you take a break until you decide? That’s reasonable too. He can’t expect you to just gloss over it and forget it.”

“I think he did. He tried telling me he got her from an escort service and it was a one-off.”

“Not with her things in your drawer.”

“Exactly. What do I tell the kids?”

“That’s up to you too. You hold the cards here. You need to decide if you want out of the marriage. What about telling the kids the same thing, that you’re taking a break?”

“It’ll be shocking for them. I don’t think I should tell them why. Maybe that we need to figure some things out. I don’t think he’ll dare contradict me. He’s going to be scared I’ll tell them the truth. I can’t do that to them.”

“Some women would.”

“They don’t need to know that.”

“Why don’t you try what we said? Maybe give it a time limit. Till the end of summer, when school starts. That gives you two months to figure out what you want to do. And he can make other living arrangements for eight weeks.”

“He’ll probably move in with her,” Caroline said, sounding depressed.

    “Caroline, if that’s what he wants, you can’t stop him, and it’s best to know. If he’s in love or obsessed with this girl, you can’t win. So he either fights like a dog to get you back, or he’s made his bed with her, and that’s it. You don’t want to be looking for her underwear under the bed every time you leave the house to drive the kids to school. That’s no way to live.”

“You’re right. I’ll tell him we’ll decide at the end of August. Can I take the kids away?”

“You can do whatever you want. You don’t have a formal agreement. If he complains, or they do, you can negotiate it on a time-by-time basis. Where were you thinking of going?”

“My family ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley.”