The Husband Hour(33)
How could a simple note last longer than their marriage? Longer than Rory himself?
In the beginning, after the night on the beach, things had grown slowly between them. She’d never planned for their relationship to be a big secret. But with everyone away for the summer—or, at the very least, not congregating every day at school—it was easy to fly under the radar.
Lauren and Rory had a routine. They went to a movie or ate lunch at Boston Style Pizza. They talked about everything—her family, his family. Rory had been a surprise, born when Kay Kincaid turned forty. His father, a Vietnam veteran and a police officer, died of a heart attack when Rory was four. His older brother, Emerson, fifteen years his senior, was an instructor at West Point. Rory said, more than once, that Emerson was the closest thing to a father that he had, aside from his coaches. It was Emerson who had drilled into his mind the imperative to excel. Rory told her, “I don’t think I’d be happy if I wasn’t good at something. Great at something.”
The week Emerson visited that summer, she didn’t get to see Rory at all. It hurt her feelings that he didn’t want to introduce her, but Rory told her it was for her own good. “He can be tough,” Rory said. “He wouldn’t approve of me being serious about a girl. I should be focusing on school and hockey right now.”
All she’d heard was serious about a girl…
And besides, she wasn’t exactly rushing to make things public in her own household. It shouldn’t matter about Stephanie—it couldn’t. That was so long ago. And it had been nothing, really. Still, she kept quiet. She snuck around. And with her parents working at the store long hours every day and Stephanie at their grandparents’ beach house for the summer, it was easy to be invisible.
But then school started.
The first hockey game of the new school year fell on a Thursday in late October. It was home ice, and Lauren, with her newly earned driver’s license, drove herself and a few friends to the game. Rory’s mother and Emerson in the stands, and being invisible to them felt terrible.
The Skatium was unusually crowded that night. The hockey team had gotten so close to states the previous year that there was a surge in community interest in them. And it didn’t hurt that a month or so ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer had published an article about the best local high-school athletes. They ran a photo of Rory from the final game of last year. He was crouched in position for a face-off, his expression intensely focused. It was a gorgeous picture, even in the grainy black-and-white of newsprint. She bought three copies of the paper and put them on a shelf in the back of her closet.
Lauren had watched him practice a few times over the summer, but this was the first game she’d been to since they’d become a couple. When he skated out onto the ice in the first moments of play, she felt a swell of pride that made her chest almost physically ache. It was strange to be surrounded by all those people watching him, hundreds of eyes on the boy she’d come to know so well.
The crowd jumped to its feet. One minute and fifty seconds of play, and Rory had scored his first goal of the season. He made his signature gesture—lifted both hands into the air, then pulled his left arm in sharply at the elbow, his hand a fist. Score!
She settled back in her seat and someone yanked on her ponytail. Hard.
She whirled around to confront the offender and was surprised to see Stephanie.
“Oh, hey! I didn’t know you were coming,” she said, naively interpreting the hair-tug as a playful greeting. Stephanie was all decked out in Seven jeans and a top that made her look like she’d stepped out of a scene from The OC (her favorite show). Her hair was loose and as golden as the oversize hoops in her ears.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she snapped.
With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Lauren looked around nervously. “About what?” She noticed Mindy Levy standing next to Stephanie, arms crossed.
“Rory Kincaid,” Stephanie said.
She looked electrically beautiful in her rage, and it was hard in that moment for Lauren to believe that anyone would choose her over Stephanie. But it was clear that Stephanie realized that someone had.
“Let’s go outside,” Lauren said.
“Do you want me to come?” Mindy asked Stephanie.
Stephanie ignored her—seemed to be ignoring both of them—and stalked out of the rink. Lauren didn’t know if she was simply leaving or if she was agreeing to continue the conversation outside. Reluctantly, she followed her, just steps behind. Stephanie didn’t turn around, and the heavy doors to the rink almost slammed on Lauren before she caught them. Behind her, she heard the roar of the crowd, and she wondered if she’d missed one of Rory’s plays.
The hallway was ten degrees warmer than inside the rink, and perspiration immediately made her layers of clothes feel suffocating. Stephanie kept walking, still not glancing back, until she was gone from the Skatium. Lauren followed her outside.
“Stephanie, stop!” Lauren yelled. Her sister whirled around, and even in the darkness, Lauren could see the glisten of tears in her eyes.
“I can’t believe you,” Stephanie said. “How could you lie to me like this?”
“I didn’t l-lie to you,” Lauren stammered. “I just didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, now you didn’t want to talk? We talk about everything else. And I felt bad for you. I invited you to everything because I didn’t want you to be a loser, and this is how you pay me back?”