The Husband Hour(82)

Could he do this film right without hurting Lauren?



There was no dignified way to walk on hot sand. Beth sprinted from the house to the ocean, scanning the beach for her daughter and husband. She turned left at the water’s edge, stepping around shell fragments and small marooned jellyfish the size of mini-pancakes.

A few yards away, near the lifeguard stand, she spotted Stephanie’s long blond hair. Howard was dressed in shorts, a polo shirt, and a baseball hat.

Seeing him from a distance was like looking back through time; he was twenty-five again. Maybe Howard actually looked younger after some freedom from the daily grind at the store. And maybe her weeks at the beach were having an effect on her too.

Howard noticed her and waved. Okay, that was a good sign. A friendly start.

“Mom!” Stephanie said, following her father’s gaze. “Look who showed up!”

“So I see. This is a surprise,” she said, accepting Howard’s kiss on the cheek. She realized that she’d missed him the past few weeks, and not just in sentimental moments like the Fourth of July fireworks. As challenging as it was to be together, it felt wrong to be apart.

“Welcome home,” she said, pointed in her use of the word home. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

They walked a few feet away, out of Stephanie’s earshot.

“I’ve left you messages,” she said, trying not to sound too accusatory.

He turned toward the ocean. “I’m sorry. I wanted to use the time apart to think.”

Swallowing her hurt, Beth said, “I used the time apart to think too. And I might have found a solution to our problem.”

He looked at her, crossing his arms. She explained her idea for subleasing the store. He seemed incredulous at first, but as she spoke, he began nodding.

“I can’t believe I didn’t consider that,” he said.

“You’ve just been too close to the whole thing. Come on,” she said. “I have paperwork back at the house to show you. And some good leads on tenants. But we have to follow up.”

They walked back to the house and Howard called out to Stephanie, “I’ll see you and your sister at dinner.”

“Dinner?” Beth said.

“I thought we’d go out to eat. I made a reservation at Tomatoes.”

She smiled.

Howard adjusted his hat, and she wished she had one of her own. She tried to make it a habit to use sunblock every day but still forgot sometimes. She shielded her face with her hands cupped over her eyes until they reached the house.

“This sublease strategy…you did a good job, Beth. Thank you.”

She beamed, thinking maybe the time apart had been a real blessing in disguise. He opened the sliding-glass door to the kitchen, and a rush of cool air greeted them. Beth walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a lemon and a pitcher of iced tea she’d brewed earlier that day. She was bending down to the lower cabinet for the cutting board when Howard said, “But we do need to come to an agreement about this house.”

She stood up and turned to him. “If this sublease works out, we won’t be on the hook for the monthly rent. And we can live here. There’s no reason to sell this place.”

“I’m not living here year-round. It’s freezing and isolated in the winter.”

She stared at him, incredulous.

“You’ve always loved this house.”

“As a summer getaway! Not as our home.”

“Why not?”

His face turned red. “Because it feels like failure, that’s why not. I didn’t want to lose the store, but I did. I didn’t want to lose our house—I can barely live with the fact that I did. But I’ll be damned if I’ll spend our retirement in your parents’ old place, freezing our asses off ten months out of the year in a desolate town because it’s our only option.”

“What about what I want?”

Howard sighed. “I just can’t do it, Beth. And if that’s really what you want, I have to admit, I don’t see the compromise option here.”

“Neither do I,” Beth said, the words catching in her throat. He left the room.





Chapter Forty-Three



Howard had picked a restaurant that Lauren typically never set foot in during the summer. Tomatoes was one of the trendier establishments in town; it had brightly painted rooms and pop-art lithographs lining the walls.

The hostess led them to the back dining room, and Lauren spotted a lot of regulars from Nora’s sitting at the octagonal bar. It was strange for her to wait on people by day and then be a customer alongside them at night.

The three of them sat at a table under prints of Marilyn Monroe and Superman. The empty fourth seat was glaring.

“Isn’t this nice? A night out with my girls,” Howard said as the hostess handed around menus.

“I still don’t get why Mom didn’t come tonight. If you two would just start acting normally, things would go back to the way they were,” Stephanie said. It took all of Lauren’s strength not to roll her eyes at this typically simplistic and self-serving comment.

“If it’s that easy, why didn’t you just ‘act normal’ with Brett?” Lauren said.

Stephanie snorted. “You’re comparing Mom and Dad to me and Brett? They’ve been together, what, thirty-five years?”