The Bad Daughter(17)

Instantly she found herself standing in the middle of its elegant lobby. She and Tara, both sixteen, had ducked into the hotel to use the washroom on their way home from a school dance. They were giggling about Lenny Fisher making out with Marie Reynolds in full view of the school principal, and wondering where Sheila Bernard had bought her dress, since it was obvious it hadn’t come from any of the shops in Red Bluff, when they saw him. The laughter immediately stopped, sticking in their throats like stale popcorn.

What they saw was a tall, handsome man, his arm around a curvaceous brunette roughly half his age, as he strutted across the lobby toward the reception desk.

“Oh, my God,” Tara said, grabbing Robin’s arm and pulling her behind the nearest pillar.

Not that it mattered.

Her father clearly didn’t care who saw him.

“Who’s that with him?” Tara asked.

“Her name’s Kleo. She works in his office,” Robin replied, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

“Maybe it’s not what it looks like,” Tara said. “Maybe they’re here for a meeting or something.”

They watched the man’s hand slide down the woman’s back to cup her right buttock. “He’s supposed to be out of town on business. He told my mother he wouldn’t be back till tomorrow.”

Tara wrapped her arm around Robin’s waist, hugging her tight. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why? It’s not your fault.”

“I’m the one who dragged you in here. I’m the one who couldn’t wait to pee until we got home.”

“I probably would have found out sooner or later,” Robin said. “I mean, look at him. He’s not even trying to be careful.”

They watched her father sign the hotel register and walk toward the elevators at the rear of the lobby, his arm now draped proprietarily across the young woman’s shoulders, his fingers stretching toward the cleavage that was on ample display.

“Duck,” cautioned Tara. “Wait. What are you doing?”

What Robin was doing was standing up, confronting her father, blocking his path.

Had she been trying to shame him into a tearful recognition of what he was about to do, followed by his even more tearful apology? Had she been expecting him to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness? Had she been hoping that, at the very least, he would push the young woman aside and promise never to stray again?

“Don’t tell your mother,” he said instead. “It would break her heart. Now go home. You didn’t see me.”

And so her father’s betrayal became her responsibility.

By not telling her mother, by rationalizing that it would indeed break her heart, Robin had become complicit, a passive participant in the betrayals that inevitably followed. Although she never caught him outright again, she heard the whispers and knew that the rumors always swirling around him, like specks of dust in the sunlight, were true. He continued to “work late” at the office; his business trips became more frequent, lasted longer.

How could her mother not know? How could she not see what was happening right under her nose?

“Go home. You didn’t see me.”

So nobody saw.

And everybody knew.

“My father cheats, too,” Tara had confided some time later.

“How do you know?”

“My mother told me.”

“She told you? What did she say?”

“That they all do it.”

“And she’s okay with it?”

“I guess. She has her Bible.”

“Doesn’t the Bible say you’re supposed to stone adulterers?” Robin asked.

“Don’t think there’d be too many people left if we did that,” Tara said.

And they’d laughed, although the laughter was joyless.

“What would you do if you found out Dylan was cheating on you?” Robin had asked her friend after she’d announced she was getting married.

“Probably cut his balls off.”

“Seriously.”

“I am serious.”

“More seriously.”

“I guess I’d give him a taste of his own medicine. You know the expression—what’s good for the goose…”

“You could do that?”

Tara took a deep drag of the joint they were sharing, then passed it back to Robin. “I can do anything I want.”

And she had, Robin thought.

And now she was dead.

“I would never stay with a man who cheated on me,” Robin remembered telling Tara.

“Then you probably shouldn’t bother getting married,” had been Tara’s instant response.

Was that why she and Blake had never followed through on their plans to wed? Despite all Robin’s efforts to steer clear of men who even remotely resembled her father, did she secretly suspect she’d chosen a man just like him?

Robin stared at the house her father had built next door. His castle, she thought.

His tomb.

“Robin!” her sister called from downstairs. “Landon! Dinner’s ready.”

Robin looked at her watch, stunned to see it was already six o’clock. How long have I been standing here? She turned away from the window. “Be right down.”