Turning Point(51)
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When the flight took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport on Saturday morning, they left with heavy hearts, and looked down at the city they had come to love that had given them so much, and thought of the friends they’d left behind.
And on Sunday, Bill fought back tears when he said goodbye to Pip and Alex. He promised to call them every day, as he always did. They clung to him and when his flight left Heathrow three hours later for San Francisco, he was already counting the days until July.
Chapter Thirteen
As soon as they came through Customs in San Francisco, reality hit Stephanie right between the eyes. Andy was standing there, looking tall and handsome in jeans and a sweatshirt, and as usual, he hadn’t shaved, but somehow it looked right on him. Ryan and Aden were jumping up and down next to him, so excited they could hardly contain themselves, holding signs they had made for her. Aden’s read “Welcome Home, Mom,” and Ryan’s “We love you, Mommy.” Her heart did a flip and she had tears in her eyes as they flew into her arms, and she picked them both up, one by one, careful not to crush their signs. Seeing them brought home to her how long she’d been gone. Everything at home had seemed so unreal to her in Paris. She felt so far away, like a different person there, and she had to be the old person, or pretend to be, now that she was home. She could hardly remember who that person was. She’d been focused on a new life in Paris, and now she had landed squarely in her old life with both feet.
When she set both boys back down on the ground, she looked up at Andy and tried to read what she saw in his eyes. Fear, distrust, resentment, pain, longing. She wasn’t sure what he felt for her anymore, or what she did, as she put her arms around him, and kissed his cheek.
“How was your flight?” he asked her.
“Long” was all she could think of to answer, as they walked along with her bags on a cart. Wendy watched her as she and Tom followed at a distance. She wondered how Stephanie was going to handle the complicated currents that lay ahead. She and Tom were walking to the cab stand together, and Tom whispered to her.
“I’m glad I’m not him. He’s got a nasty surprise ahead.” Stephanie’s affair with Gabriel was no secret to them. Only Andy didn’t know what was in store. It made them both feel awkward when they said goodbye to her. She introduced them to Andy, who nodded and smiled and asked them how they’d enjoyed Paris, and they tried not to sound overly enthusiastic, as a compassionate gesture to him. Stephanie hugged Wendy and promised to call her, and kissed Tom on the cheek and wished him luck with his housekeeping and he laughed.
“You have no idea how much there is to do. I’ll be scrubbing and throwing things in a Dumpster for the next two weeks. I should probably move.”
They walked outside together, as Stephanie and Andy and the boys headed for the garage with her bags. She kept up a constant stream of conversation with Aden and Ryan but she and Andy had hardly spoken to each other since she arrived. She didn’t know what to say and she was afraid he would see something in her eyes. She hated lying to him, but she felt she had no other choice. And worst of all, she felt loyal to Gabriel now, but seeing Andy, she realized that as his wife, she owed him a great deal too. She felt torn in half, and fell silent on the drive home, as the boys screamed and yelled and chortled in their car seats in the back seat, while Andy didn’t say a word. She wondered if he knew.
It took them forty minutes to get to their house, and as Stephanie walked in, she felt a tidal wave sweep over her, as though she’d been lost at sea for a month, and had just been washed back on shore at home. Yet part of her didn’t want to be here, and wanted to be with Gabriel in Paris, not in San Francisco in the house in the Upper Haight.
Everything looked neat and tidy when she walked in, and Stephanie realized Andy had made a superhuman effort to get it all cleaned up for her. She was sure it hadn’t looked that way while she was gone.
“The house looks great,” she said to Andy with a smile.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, and she was suddenly reminded of how cold and angry he had been when she left. Nothing seemed to have improved, and there was suddenly a chasm between them that she had no idea how to bridge, or if she should try. She didn’t want to mislead him, nor tell him the truth in the next six weeks, and it was going to be a juggling act while Gabriel was there, trying to spend time with him. She had a knot in her stomach thinking about it, as she walked into their bedroom, and put down her purse and coat, while Andy carried in her two big bags, one of them mostly filled with toys and clothes for the boys. She had bought a sweater for Andy on sale, but nothing else. She had already divorced him in her mind while she was gone. And now she was back and he was real.
“Do you want something to eat?” Andy asked her, as though he didn’t know what else to say to her. She shook her head.
“No, I’m fine. We ate a lot on the plane.” It had taken eleven and a half hours to get home, and she’d been too nervous to sleep.
She opened one of the bags and took out what she’d bought for the boys and brought it to their room. They loved the toys, and she left the clothes on a chair, to hang them up later, and hugged them both again. They had grown in the past month. And then she went back to her room, took out the sweater for Andy, and laid it on the bed. It seemed a meager offering for his taking care of their two boys for the four weeks that she’d been gone. He walked into the room then, and she looked up at him, trying not to see the question in his eyes. Everything felt off between them, as though they were strangers living at the same address. She couldn’t resurrect her feelings for him.