All We Ever Wanted(26)

“Just do me a favor,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows, waiting.

“Don’t do anything….Don’t talk to anyone. Not even Melanie.”

   “Melanie already knows everything going on,” I said, thinking of the half dozen phone conversations we’d had since Saturday night. I think part of her felt culpable and worried that there might be some fallout or punishment for her son. After all, Beau had hosted the party, and she and Todd had, perhaps unwittingly, supplied the booze.

“Yes, but she doesn’t know about this conversation we just had, does she?”

“No,” I said. “But I’m sure she’ll call and ask.”

“Okay. Let her ask. But just keep the details on the down low….Let me handle this for now.”

I almost asked what “handling this” entailed, but I felt pretty sure I already knew. Over the next twenty-four hours, I imagined that Kirk would call his lawyer buddies, lining up a defense should things not go his way sooner. He’d then place a call to Lyla’s father, ask to meet with him “man to man.” He would get the meeting—and then would find a way to convince this man to just “let it all go.” That this result would be in “everyone’s best interest.”



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I RETURNED ABOUT twenty minutes later to an unusually quiet house. On any given day, there were often people milling about our home and property. Landscapers and repairmen; pool boys and Pilates instructors; our occasional chef, Troy; and at the very least, Juana, our full-time housekeeper, who had been with us forever, even when we lived in our old house in Belmont and she only came once a week.

But that afternoon, nobody was there, and I had over an hour to kill before Finch got home from school. The rare solitude filled me with simultaneous relief and panic. I put my bag down in the kitchen and considered making myself lunch, but I had no appetite. So I went to my office, designed as the “servants’ room” back when the house was built in the twenties. It was where I worked on my charities, answered emails, and did my online shopping.

   I sat down at the built-in desk, gazing out the window onto the sun-drenched courtyard lined with boxwoods and blue hydrangeas. The view was beautiful, and it usually put me in a cheerful mood, especially this time of year. But now something about it pained me.

I lowered the roman shades and stared down at my desk, searching for a distraction. Still a paper-calendar girl, I flipped open my planner for at least the third time that day, though I already knew nothing was on my schedule this evening—almost as unusual as our empty house. I closed the leather book, then eyed a box of stationery, contemplating writing an overdue thank-you note and an even longer-overdue note of sympathy. I couldn’t muster the energy for either, so I got up and began to pace aimlessly around the house. Every room was neat, pristine, clutter-free. The hardwood floors shone. Throw pillows were fluffed and perfectly arranged. Orchids were in full bloom on three coffee tables in three different rooms. I made a mental note to thank Juana—something I didn’t do enough—for her work and attention to detail. Our home was nothing short of exquisite.

But as with the view from my office window, the beauty inside our home only unsettled me further. It suddenly felt like a farce, and as I passed through the butler’s pantry, I had the urge to grab a piece of crystal from the lit shelves and smash it against the marble countertop, the way people did in the movies when they were really upset. In real life, though, I knew the satisfaction wouldn’t approach the effort required to clean it up. Not to mention the possible risk of cutting myself. Then again, a trip to the emergency room might be a nice diversion, I thought, reaching up to touch a wine goblet.

   “Don’t be stupid,” I said aloud, dropping my hand to my side. I turned and made my way down the hallway toward the master suite, which had been added to the house sometime in the nineties. I looked around, my eyes settling on a white-velvet chaise longue I’d had shipped from a Deco furniture store in Miami. It had been a splurge—too much to spend on one chair no matter what name it was given—but I’d told myself I would use it often, meditate or read there every morning. Unfortunately, that seldom seemed to happen. I was always too busy. But I walked over and sat on it now, thinking of Kirk, wondering about his character. How could he so easily gloss over what Finch had done to Lyla? Had he always been this way? I really didn’t think so, but if he hadn’t, when did he change? Why hadn’t I noticed? What else was I missing?

I thought about how often my husband traveled and how seldom we were intimate these days. I had no real reason to think that he’d ever been unfaithful, and frankly he seemed to be too into his work to bother with an affair. But I still put the fidelity odds at only about eighty–twenty, then mentally lowered that to seventy–thirty, perhaps a by-product of having a best friend who practiced divorce law.

It had been a few days since Julie and I had communicated even by text, a long stretch for us, and I had to admit that I’d been avoiding her, at least on a subconscious level. I dreaded telling her what Finch had done. It wasn’t that she was holier than thou. In some ways, though she had very high moral standards, she was actually the least judgmental person I knew. But ever since the seventh grade, she’d always given it to me straight. It had caused a few arguments over the years, as sometimes she hurt my feelings with her bluntness. But I cherished our filterless relationship and considered it the truest measure of a best friend, greater than pure affection. Who was the person you trusted enough to be your most transparent self with, in both good times and bad? For me, that person had always been Julie.