Lauren emptied every drawer in her bedroom hunting for her computer charger, mentally combing over the past week in her mind. When had Matt interviewed Stephanie a second time? Was there any way he’d just forgotten to mention it to her? Had she seen him the day it happened?
She finally found the charger under her bed. She didn’t even bother moving to a chair. She plugged in her laptop and slipped the HD card into the port.
The clips filled her screen, and before she pressed Play, she could see that Stephanie was in Matt’s room. This bothered her in ways she couldn’t fully deal with in the moment.
Stephanie wore jeans and a T-shirt with a black and pink floral design. Her face was tight with tension.
Lauren watched impatiently, waiting for whatever it was she’d thought she’d find. Five minutes in, she paused, backed up a few seconds, and hit Play again.
“I’m not talking to you today to help you make a movie,” Stephanie said. “I’m talking to you because you shouldn’t make this movie.”
“Why not?” Matt asked off camera.
“Because Rory Kincaid wasn’t a hero.”
“You’re the only person out of the dozens I’ve spoken with who has a negative opinion of Rory Kincaid.”
“Well, maybe that’s because I’m the only one who really knew him.”
“I doubt your sister would agree with that.”
“She would if she’d ever, for one minute, trusted me when I tried to tell her that he wasn’t worth her time. I tried to warn her.”
“She might have thought you were jealous. Maybe you still are,” Matt said.
Stephanie snorted. “So that’s how you want to play this? I’ll be the jealous-sister villain of your movie? Come on. You can do better than that.”
“I can’t—not if you don’t give me something better.”
“Nice try,” she said.
“Where were you in the summer of 2010?”
“I was here. At the shore.”
“Where was Rory in the summer of 2010?”
“He was also here.”
“Where was Lauren that summer?”
“She was taking classes at Georgetown.”
“Is there anything you want to tell me about that summer?” he asked.
“It was uneventful,” Stephanie said. But her face told a different story.
“Was Rory faithful to your sister?”
Stephanie glared at him indignantly. And said nothing.
Lauren, heart pounding, paused the video. What the hell was Matt getting at?
The summer, a low point in her relationship with Rory, was a time she’d avoided going into detail about with Matt. It had been confusing and painful, and in the end she liked to think of it as an insignificant rough patch.
It was the summer after Rory’s rookie season, the summer she should have just graduated from Georgetown. They had planned to spend July at the Green Gable, but she was two credits short of graduating, thanks to all the time she’d missed traveling to LA. She’d asked him to spend the summer in DC with her instead. Obviously, the steaming-hot city wasn’t the ideal place to spend July and August, but she hadn’t expected him to actually refuse. He gave her a litany of reasons he couldn’t change his plans and go to DC instead of the shore.
“So what if we already told our friends?” she’d said. “So what if Emerson is visiting you for the Fourth of July? This is about us.”
Rory was unmoved. Had he just been looking for an excuse to get away from her? Hurt, she’d said, “Fine. I can get more work done without you around.”
They didn’t speak for a few days.
When he finally called, the conversation felt perfunctory. Lauren was afraid to say what she was really thinking, which was Is this over? If it is, let’s just end it. She wasn’t ready for the answer.
Her one consolation was that a professor had helped her get an internship at the Washington Post—the newspaper once run by her idol Katharine Graham. Four days a week after her classes, she went downtown to K Street, where she experienced the energy of the real DC—not the academic bubble of Georgetown, but the bustle of the town. Every day, she would pick up her lunch at one of the cafés filled with people running to and from Capitol Hill, all of them wearing ID tags around their necks, signifying their importance and access.
She realized she had spent too much of her time in DC lamenting her distance from Rory. But that summer, she felt the magic she had experienced that first visit during junior year of high school. And if her love affair with Rory Kincaid was fading, the one she had with Washington, DC, was going strong.
Still, every morning between classes, she called Stephanie at the shore and asked if she’d seen Rory out the night before. The answer was always no, until late July.
“Yeah, I’ve been seeing him and his friends at Robert’s Place.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Not really.”
Completely unsatisfying. But what did she expect? Answers about what was going on in Rory’s mind from a drunken bar conversation he’d had with Stephanie? She stopped asking.
Two more weeks passed without a word from Rory. She weakened enough to ask Stephanie, once again, if she’d seen him. Was he still at the shore?
“Forget about him already, will you?” Stephanie snapped.
“Why should I?” Lauren said. “We’ve been together six years!”
“Well, clearly it’s over.”
Lauren slammed down the phone. All sorts of clichés ran through her mind, like Don’t shoot the messenger and The truth hurts. But none of them made her any less furious at Stephanie. How could she be so callous?
And then, the most surprising phone call of the summer. It came on a Saturday afternoon.
“Where are you?” Rory asked.
“In DC. Obviously,” Lauren said. Where did he think she was?
“No. I mean where in DC?”
“Politics and Prose.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.
What?
For fifteen, twenty minutes, she sat in the bookstore café, fighting the urge to look around the room. Instead, she stared at the same page she had been reading when he called, trying to figure out what was going on.
“Hey.”
He pulled out the seat across from her and sat down. If this were a movie, or if he were a different person, he would have maybe used a cheesy line like “Is this seat taken?” But it was Rory, and Rory just focused his intense eyes on her. He was tan. He looked beautiful.
Before she could say anything, his big hands enveloped her small ones.
“I’ve missed you.”
She started to speak, but nothing came out. What was there to say? He’d come back for her.
A month later, they were looking for houses together in Los Angeles.
Lauren hit the Play arrow on Stephanie’s interview, then skipped back a few minutes.
“Was Rory faithful to your sister?”
Suddenly, Lauren felt sick. The summer came back to her in sharp cuts.
Stephanie had pulled away from her so completely.
And Rory had committed to her so absolutely.
No.
Hands shaking, Lauren removed the disc and inserted the first interview. She didn’t realize what she was looking for, didn’t understand that her subconscious was already piecing together what her conscious mind couldn’t handle.
The thumbnail files lined up, still images of Stephanie but also of Ethan. She clicked on Ethan on the beach, running with a soccer ball. He dropped it to the sand and dribbled it with considerable deftness before kicking it to the edge of the water.
“Score!” he said, raising his arms in victory and then pulling his right elbow sharply in toward his rib cage, a gesture so familiar, so precise, she gasped.
The video kept going, but she was watching a different scene, a scene in her mind’s eye. An argument, long ago, interrupted by a phone call.
It was two months into her life in LA with Rory. The stress of the new season was already bearing down on them, and she’d just found a bottle of Ambien in his nightstand.
“Since when are you taking Ambien?” she asked Rory.
“Since when do you go snooping through my drawers?”
“I wasn’t snooping. I was trying to find a phone charger. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Probably because I knew you’d overreact.”
His phone rang. He checked the incoming number. “It’s your mother. Why is she calling my phone?”
“Probably because mine is dead—because I can’t find my charger!”
He tossed her the phone.
“Mom, this isn’t a good time.”
“You don’t have time for family news?” her mother said. Lauren sighed. Okay, she’d take the bait.
“What’s the news?”
“Your sister is pregnant.”
“Pregnant? Who’s the father?”
“Well, Lauren, that’s not something she’s talking about. I get the feeling it was a one-night stand. But let’s focus on the positive. You’re going to be an aunt!”
Only after Lauren hung up did she think to wonder why Stephanie hadn’t called to tell her herself.
Of course she hadn’t told her.
Because she was carrying Rory’s baby.
Lauren screamed, then pulled off her wedding band and threw it against the wall. She ejected the disc, tossed it onto the floor, and—driven by a rage so pure it showed there was, in fact, an emotion stronger than grief—she grabbed the picture frame holding the image of herself with Stephanie and used it to pound the plastic disc into pieces.
Beth waded into the pool up to her waist, then found a nice sunny spot and leaned against the wall. She adjusted her wide-brimmed hat, knowing it was a losing battle because of the reflection off the water. Don’t worry about your skin, she told herself, enjoy the moment. She exhaled deeply.
Across the deck, Stephanie flipped through magazines on a lounge chair, temporarily relieved of mothering duty. Ethan, worn out from all the eating and swimming, was inside napping.
Beth closed her eyes. She could use a nap herself, but in a good way. She felt relaxed instead of exhausted.
“You’re a monster!” Lauren screamed.
Beth pushed up the brim of her hat and saw Lauren looming over Stephanie’s chair. She stood up straight, shocked by the sudden rancor between the two.
“What did Matt say to you?” Stephanie said.
“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m wrong, Stephanie.”
Stephanie sat up, hugging her knees to her chest.
“It was a huge, huge mistake. But it was that summer the two of you weren’t together—”
“That’s just geography! Of course we were together!”
“That’s not what he told me.”
“Well, that’s convenient. He’s not exactly around to defend himself.”
Stephanie looked stricken. “I don’t mean that as an excuse; I’m just trying to explain my thinking at the time. I was just—I rationalized that you had done the same thing to me.”
“In what universe? Do you even hear yourself?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense now. But back then…I was young. I was drunk. And I was jealous of you. It just…happened. A onetime thing.”
“And Ethan?”
What about Ethan? Beth waited for Stephanie to respond, but she didn’t.
“I hate you,” Lauren said, sobbing.
Stephanie covered her face with her hands, and Beth rushed out of the pool, almost tripping over the flip-flops she’d left at the edge.
“Girls, what is going on?”
Lauren didn’t take her eyes off Stephanie. “Are you going to tell her? Or should I?”
“Lauren, don’t—”
“I want you out of the house by the end of the day,” Lauren said to Stephanie, then turned to Beth. “I need you to get her out of this house. I never want to see her again.”
“Just…everyone calm down. Lauren, whatever the issue is between the two of you, you have to work it out. Stephanie isn’t leaving.”
Lauren walked back into the house. Beth, feeling the crisis temporarily on hold, sat on the edge of Stephanie’s seat.
“Sweetheart, tell me what happened.”
Stephanie cried, and Beth tried not to panic. She hugged her, wishing for magic words that would unlock whatever wasn’t being said.
“Oh my God,” Stephanie said, sobbing.
“Hon, it’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not,” she said in a voice filled with resignation, not her typical drama.
A tornado of clothes flew at them.
Lauren, back on the deck, scattered Stephanie’s belongings all over the ground.
“Lauren, stop that this minute! What’s gotten into you?” Beth said.
“Tell her!” Lauren said to Stephanie. “Tell her, you coward.”
Stephanie picked up a pair of her jeans and a pair of shoes but said nothing. Beth ran over to Lauren and grabbed her by the arms.
“Stop this, right this minute. Ethan is going to come down here and be scared to death!”
“Funny you should mention Ethan,” Lauren said, looking at Stephanie. Beth turned to her older daughter, who looked…well, she looked terrified.
“I don’t want to upset Mom,” Stephanie said.
“Yeah, right. As always, you want to cover your own ass. You don’t want Mom to know what a horrible person you are.”
“Lauren, what is it?” Beth tugged on her arm, forcing her daughter to face her. Lauren gulped.
“I can’t say it,” she whispered.
“Hon, I need you to talk to me.”
“It’s about Ethan.”
Beth glanced at the house, her mind racing. “I want to help.”
“You can’t. No one can. It’s done,” Lauren said, sobbing. “Ethan is Rory’s son.”