The Husband Hour(90)

“Over? How is it over with Ethan in my life?”

“I don’t follow.”

“For God’s sake, Matt. Stop playing games with me!”

“Lauren, I truly don’t know what you’re talking about. I am not playing games with you.”

“What would you call it? Pretending to be my friend, sleeping with me, all the while knowing that Rory had a son with my sister?”



“What took you so long?” Beth said, ushering Howard into their bedroom and closing the door.

“Beth, it’s the middle of the summer. The turnpike was a parking lot. Why were you so vague on the phone?”

“I wasn’t vague. The word crisis isn’t vague. We have a crisis,” she said, deliberate in her use of the we. If there was ever a time they needed to be a unit, it was now.

“What’s the problem?” he asked impatiently, his hands on his hips.

She sat on the bed and picked up a framed photo from her nightstand: her mother with Stephanie and Lauren when they were little girls. She started to cry.

“Beth, for God’s sake, what is it? You said the girls are okay?” Alarmed now, he moved closer to her.

“Yes, yes.” She sniffed. “Physically, I mean. But the rest…I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Just out with it,” he said.

“They had a terrible argument earlier, and I tried to intervene and then Lauren said…she said…”

Howard sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Beth, you can’t force those two to be best friends. Maybe not even friends. Haven’t I been trying to tell you this?”

She shook her head, pressing her fingers to her temple. “Lauren said that Rory is Ethan’s father.”

Howard shrank away from her.

Beth hated to tell him, hated for him to know what a terrible, unforgivable sin Stephanie had committed. She wished that she didn’t know. But when she looked at his face, she didn’t see shock or dismay…not even a little surprise.

“Did you…know about this?” she said.

Howard walked to the patio doors and looked out at the ocean. “Why do you think I was so against your plan to force the two of them—and Ethan—here under the same roof all summer?”

Beth jumped up. “You knew about this and you kept it from me? How? How did you know?”

He turned around. “Stephanie confessed to me after Lauren and Rory got engaged. She panicked.”

“Why didn’t she talk to me? Why didn’t you talk to me?”

“She thought you would side with Lauren and that you would hate her. And she was terrified of Lauren finding out the truth. I gave her my word that I wouldn’t tell a soul, including you.”

Beth covered her mouth with her hands and began to pace. So many things that hadn’t made sense over the years started to come together. Stephanie’s refusal to talk about Ethan’s biological father. Her boycott of Lauren’s wedding.

“You should have told me.” Beth marched over to him, forcing him to look at her. “You didn’t tell me about the second mortgage on the house. You didn’t tell me about this. We clearly haven’t been partners in a very long time.”

He shook his head sadly. “Let’s not make this about us.”

Beth fought back tears. “Isn’t it, though?”

“No,” he said. “I think our problems are our problems and this is something else entirely.”

“Fine. So what do we do now?”

“The only thing we can do,” he said. “We have to put our issues aside and be parents.”





Chapter Forty-Eight



Lauren huddled on Nora’s couch, surrounded by cats. She’d already texted Nora half a dozen times during the day, first saying she’d be late for work, then that she wasn’t coming to work, and finally that she needed to stay at her house.

A few hours into her self-imposed exile, Lauren was cried out and couldn’t stand to be alone. If she didn’t find some way to distract herself, she was going to lose her mind. She laced up her sneakers and ran over to the café.

Long past the three o’clock closing time, the front door was locked. Through the window, she saw Nora standing on a short ladder hanging something on the wall.

Henny opened the door for her. Lauren, surprised to see her, wondered if their feud had blown over. Maybe the laws of the universe healed one wound while another split wide open.

“Hey there, Lauren. I thought I saw you leaving my house earlier today. Oh—is that indiscreet of me? I’m probably breaking some sort of landlady rule.”

“Yeah, it’s not what you think,” Lauren said miserably.

Henny hoisted a box onto the counter. It was filled with signs painted pastel colors, each one separated by bubble wrap.

“What a blessing this summer, having Matt as a tenant. This online-sales thing has just changed my whole approach. You know I’m selling by category now? I’m doing beach signs, family signs…love signs.”

“I’m happy for you, Hen. But I really don’t want to talk about Matt,” Lauren said, thinking, One woman’s blessing is another woman’s curse. “And they’re going back on the walls here?”