Do I Know You?(76)

Helen nods. “I understand.”

I look up, blinking waterlogged lashes. “You do?” I ask. I don’t hide my doubt, even if it’s impetuous. Here Helen is comforting me for the first time ever, and I’m questioning her. “But you and Conrad have the perfect marriage,” I explain.

Her lips twitch, her eyes drifting to where her husband just exited the restaurant. “I’m going to let you in on a secret,” she tells me. I feel myself lean in. “Our marriage is perfect,” Helen continues. “It really is. But we pretend, too.”

I meet her eyes. She only caught Graham’s dismissive parting remark. She doesn’t know what we’ve been pretending this week, the extent of our elaborate game, with its joys and its unexpected heartbreaks. She doesn’t know how much her words resonate with me—how much they’re exactly what I needed to hear.

“Everyone pretends,” Helen goes on gently. “They pretend they’re brave. They pretend they can predict the future. They pretend they can carry fears or difficulties, but they don’t know if they can. They pretend they have hope they don’t know if they’ve mustered quite yet. When we need to, it’s what we do for each other.” She reaches for my hand with hers, which I grasp. “Perfect sometimes . . . requires a little pretend.”

I stay silent, clinging to what she’s saying.

“Perfection is only something you can see from the outside,” she continues. “I know you and Graham are working something out right now, but that doesn’t mean your marriage is any less perfect than mine. I just hope you won’t give up on it.”

“I won’t,” I whisper unhesitatingly. “I don’t want to. Ever.” In fact, it’s this truth I’ve protected even in my lowest, saddest moments with Graham. On the nights I felt like I really didn’t know him, or the mornings when I was guiltily relieved we wouldn’t have to make small talk over breakfast. That truth was there.

Helen smiles fully. “Then Conrad and I need to get out of your hair. Go find your husband.”

She stands suddenly. Her decisiveness in ending the conversation gives me the momentum I need to do the same. I’m grateful for it. I get up, feeling better, and walk with my mother-in-law out of the restaurant.

The Cutlers’ BMW is waiting when we reach the valet. Surprising myself for the second time today, I hug Helen. She doesn’t stiffen or seem thrown in the slightest. Her arms come around me, and I’m inexpressibly thankful to have this entire other family through my bond with Graham.

It makes me miss my own parents. I feel this sliver of sadness keenly inside my gratitude. While they’re not perfect, they’re my parents. Avoiding them over the problems I’m having with Michelle is starting to get exhausting.

I release Helen, renewed. I have so much I can’t avoid anymore.

Starting now.





46


    Graham


I COME TO a hard halt, sucking in air with my hands on my knees.

I hear David stop gracefully next to me. He doesn’t even sound winded, somehow. We’re farther from the hotel than I’ve been all week, having taken the long, looping trail for our makeup run. The dirt path is uneven, my legs searing with every incline. The sun filters through the trees surrounding the trail in ever-changing patterns of glittering light. It’s quiet—I seem to have scared off the birds with my wheezing.

I give up and drop down onto the grass, head between my knees. What if I just lay down right here instead of returning to the hotel? I start to like the sound of the idea.

“Do you want to talk about it yet?” David asks from overhead.

Squinting up, I find him ringed in sunlight. My temples pound with the blood fighting to reach the rest of my body. When my thoughts shift to Eliza—to my parents, to all the doubts and questions I have—I feel dizzy. I’d hoped running would distance me from the emotions I couldn’t fend off in the restaurant, feelings of not being enough. It didn’t. They were waiting for me, like they have been every day, no matter how difficult my work or how delightful my distractions.

“Tell me about your plans with Lindsey instead,” I deflect.

David sits down across from me in “crisscross applesauce” like I’m sure he demonstrates for his students. He eyes me but allows me to redirect the conversation. “We’re getting dinner tonight somewhere off hotel grounds,” he says. “She picked the place, and she’s going to drive us over there. I’ve been thinking about what you said, though.”

I wipe my forehead with my shirt, waiting.

Something sad has entered David’s expression. “I know I need to be honest with her before we really start something.”

“Honest about how you’re not actually an expert on marine-life conservation?”

He idly rips a blade of dead grass into smaller and smaller pieces. “Well, honest that I only started reading up on those subjects after meeting her.” His gaze rests on the papier-m?ché grass pulp he’s creating. “I can’t pretend with her, not if I want something real,” he goes on. “Which I do.”

When he looks up, I find I can’t quite meet his eyes. His words touch too sore a place in me. I want to flinch away. To put off these questions just a little longer. But I can’t. While I know this week’s pretending with Eliza has held us together and even brought us closer, I can’t help wondering, closer to what, exactly? To a promise I can’t keep? Not while I’m still not enough for her.