The Husband Hour(25)

This made Lauren’s assignment to profile the LM hockey team, currently first in the division and headed to the state finals, a challenge. The dreaded sports assignment had little chance of being published. Still, Lauren was determined.

She strategized the piece; hopefully, there would be a game that week that she could go to. And she would schedule interviews with the coach and a few key players. She started with the facts: The Lower Merion Aces were in the western division of the Inter County Scholastic Hockey League, the ICSHL. That year, the highest scorer in the entire ICSHL was Lower Merion’s team captain, Rory Kincaid.

The first challenge of her journalism education would be getting up the nerve to talk to him. And then she remembered the Katharine Graham memoir and some advice Graham’s mother had given her: “Be a newspaperwoman, Kay, if only for the excuse it gives you to seek out at once the object of any sudden passion.”

In Matt’s room, Lauren refocused on the computer screen. His interview with Stephanie concluded with a few innocuous questions.

“What do you think?” he said to Lauren.

“I think that you’re wasting your time here. I mean, aside from Stephanie’s stunning revelations about the social strata of Lower Merion High School.”

He smiled. “Maybe you’d have something to say about other interviews. You could look at them and correct any misinformation. I’m interested in your perspective on what other people have said. Despite your cynicism, I do want to get this right.”

“You think this is about me being cynical? This was my life, Matt! I’ve worked really hard to find some sort of peace.”

“I get that. And if it’s any consolation, I’m hearing only good things about Rory. It’s all positive. Even the stuff about him hiding his concussions is totally understandable—”

Lauren froze. “He never had concussions. Okay, he had one and he sat out a month. Everyone knows about that.”

“That’s not how his former teammate Dean Wade remembers it.”

Lauren’s hands clenched, her fingernails digging into her palm. “Well, it seems you’ve got some unreliable sources.” How could Dean Wade have talked to him? And how could Dean’s wife, Ashley, not have told her about it? Ashley was her friend; she was on the board of directors for the Polaris Foundation!

“So help me get it right,” Matt said.

“Why should I do that?”

“You were a journalist. You must believe in the truth. At least, you must have at one time in your life.”

Lauren couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to that. All she could do was leave.



Beth lifted a box and felt a twinge in her lower back. She dropped the box and heard glass break.

“Darn it!” She stretched for a few seconds, making sure she hadn’t done any real damage, then cut through the tape. Inside, she found shattered dishes. At least it wasn’t good china.

“You okay up there?” Howard called from the bottom of the stairs.

“Fine,” she said.

She heard the clop of his footsteps climbing up. The last thing she needed was him bothering her.

“Did you break something?” he asked from the top of the stairs.

“No,” she said.

“Beth, don’t make yourself crazy going through all of this junk. Just hire someone to take it to Goodwill. If no one’s missed it in all these years, no one’s ever going to miss it.”

She looked at him incredulously. “I can’t just toss this stuff away sight unseen. What if there’s something important in here?”

He threw up his hands in irritation, and she realized the conversation over the boxes was similar to the one they were having about the girls. Whatever was inside the boxes hadn’t been worth her attention in years and therefore never would be. Likewise, whatever was broken between the girls—between all of them as a family—had been broken for years and would stay broken. But Beth didn’t agree on either count.

“Howard, it’s fine. It gives me something constructive to do.”

The argument between the girls at dinner was terribly upsetting. And where had Lauren run off to?

Howard sighed with disapproval and trekked back down the stairs.

She was so relieved to see him go, felt such a remarkable lifting of stress in his absence, that she realized it was a good thing he was taking a trip to Florida. He would go, and she would stay, and the time apart would do them both good. She could deal with the girls without his judgment, and he could figure out their next move without the weight of her resentment about losing the house. Both houses.

Reenergized, she turned back to the rows of bags and boxes, the front half of them loosely organized into three sections: boxes that were clearly hers, boxes and knickknacks that had belonged to her parents, and unmarked boxes or random things she couldn’t place. She stepped over a stack of full garment bags and made her way deeper into the room. In the space between boxes, she noticed a trail of tiny pellets. She groaned. Mice.

She moved on to another section, packing boxes labeled in Lauren’s handwriting. Oh, good Lord. She kept things from her LA house up there? When Beth told her to put them in storage, this wasn’t what she’d meant. She bent down, reading the Sharpie scrawl: Rory/LM and Rory/LA/Press Clips.

Beth would have to take care of these boxes. She didn’t even want to remind Lauren they were there. No need to reopen the wounds, although they already had been by that filmmaker hounding her. How dare he? What were people thinking? And Stephanie, going behind Lauren’s back to talk to him. Nothing Stephanie did should have surprised Beth at that point, but she still had hope that Stephanie would turn things around—for herself, and for the rest of the family.