CHAPTER 17

AFTER SPENDING SOME BONDING TIME with her Keurig, Gigi was considerably more sober. But she wasn’t taking chances with her Fiat—especially since her love life once again put her on the unemployment line. Roman wouldn’t fire her of course, at least she didn’t think so, but she couldn’t imagine sitting at that desk while he touched other people’s skin and not hers.

She mentally shook herself. Didn’t matter. Uber existed for a reason. She could wallow in her pity party and return to the vodka cranberry. Instead she would take a wrecking ball to the things that brought her to this point—the backseat of a man’s car. For once, it had nothing to do with getting off. Sure, the stud driving was eyeballing her like he wouldn’t mind. Up until two weeks ago, the untattooed, Tinder-vixen version of her former self would have been intrigued. Instead, she viewed it as comical the way he divided his attention between checking her out in the rearview mirror, and making sure he didn’t rear-end someone.

The newly tattooed, heartsick version of herself was ready to pass that torch on. She still wasn’t convinced that the old version was wrong for having the no-strings fun while it lasted. Live and let live. It just wasn’t for her any more—not when her heart wanted Roman.

Her mother was the top of her “To Do” list. Her father’s poison had tainted Gigi’s relationship outlook by association and ruined her mother. She needed her mother to see the light yesterday. If Leslie Duval saw it today, that would be a good enough start. The car pulled up in front of the stately white colonial that she’d grown up in. A sigh of relief snuck out when she spotted her mother’s white Mercedes in the driveway and no sign of her father’s Porsche. It was still reasonably early on Monday, but if he’d chosen to work from home, Gigi doubted she could have been brazen enough to carry this out. Her bravery only extended so far.

Gigi thanked the driver, and stepped out of the vehicle. Her first step up the flagstone walkway seemed to echo in her ears as if she were still wearing the kitten heels she’d had on the last time rather than her Toms.

Two weeks ago, she’d walked through this same door and had Chad’s hand up her skirt turning her world sideways. Now she was about to totally upend it. She opened that door and walked through. The smell of her mother’s pot roast wafting down the same hall where she’d stood and listened to her father sweet talk his other woman, right where her mother or anyone else could have heard. It was so blatant, as if he had no regard at all for his wife—which of course he didn’t.

Gigi didn’t even consider ratting him out. Her mother must know and must just be turning the other cheek. It had been easier to believe that. Gigi had never dared to ask; what if she didn’t know? What if she did know and thought she was sparing her children and her reputation if no one else knew? What should have mattered was that a bad man was destroying a good woman—in the same way a bad woman destroyed a good man, to the point that he wouldn’t question what he’d seen.

No more. Enough tears and bottled up pain had passed because of suffering in silence. Because of selfish people and their urges.

“Mom, are you home?” Gigi called as she pushed open the kitchen door.

Her mother stood in front of a steaming bowl with a masher in her hand, pearls around her throat and an almost plastic expression on her face. It was like a twisted Leave It to Beaver scene. “I didn’t expect to see you today, Gigi. What a pleasant surprise.”

She’d lay money down that her mother wasn’t going to feel that way in a moment. “Dad due home soon?”

Leslie nodded in understanding of the usual subtext—will Dad be interrupting us because I don’t want him to hear this. “Oh no, we’ve got time. He said he’d be working late again.”

Pulling up a stool at the edge of the granite counter that divided the kitchen in half, Gigi perched on the edge. “This is a lot of food if he isn’t going to be home for dinner.”

“I’ll heat some up for him when he gets home. Not that he’ll eat it. I’m taking a plate to the neighbor. He’s a widower and he’s not used to cooking for himself. His wife, Rebecca, and I were good friends before she passed.” Leslie pushed the bowl across the counter near Gigi and sat on the stool beside her. “It keeps me busy to feed a friend occasionally, now that I don’t have a house full of kids to chase around town.”

Gigi hadn’t considered her mother’s potential boredom or lack of direction once she’d moved out. For the first time, she wondered if this June Cleaver act was her mother’s own choice. “Why don’t you do some volunteering? Is there something else you’d like to be doing?”

“I always assumed I’d go back to work when you all were grown. But your father said it would make him look bad. I wouldn’t be qualified for much after so many years out of the work force.” Leslie sounded like a wistful girl recounting an unrequited love instead of a lost career. “What good is a Fine Arts degree that hasn’t been used in ages? I find I’m a lady of leisure for better or worse.”

Gigi worried her bottom lip as she stewed on her mother’s admission. Telling her mother what John Duval had been doing could hurt her in more ways than Gigi had considered. Her father neatly trapped her mother and isolated her from any kind of help other than her own children and maybe a neighbor. Perhaps this was why Leslie stayed with him for so long.

More pieces and layers to all the things that people do, the decisions they make. Did Gigi have any right to judge? Maybe not, but she could help her mother. Gigi would not leave her helpless the way John—she no longer wanted to think of him as her father—made Leslie assume she would be.

“There’s something weighing on you, honey.” Leslie’s smile was that open smile, so encouraging and yet layered with sadness that the Botox and a bad marriage just couldn’t hide. “You can tell me. Whatever it is we’ll get through it.”

Gigi took the opening, tentative, as if she was putting one toe in the water—or in this case, a few well-chosen words. “What did you and Dad do on Saturday evening? Anything special?”

Leslie’s expression went slack and her tearless eyes dull with resignation. Her mother could already see the hit coming, but damn it all, she walked through it anyway.

Her answer came out monotone, lacking any emotion. “He was out of town on a business trip.”

“No, Mom. He wasn’t.” There. She’d said it—the easy part at least.

Leslie drew herself up with stately dignity, transforming herself into a visage more akin to Jackie-O than June Cleaver. She exhaled two words. “Tell me.”

“I have a job now at a gallery. We had an event on Saturday night. My boss sold Dad a painting and I saw him there with her. She wasn’t much older than me and the way they hung on each other in front of all those people—it was clear they were together.”

“Did anyone else see?” She stared straight ahead. No tears. Not yet. Her hands twisted the diamond bridal set on her left hand.

Gigi twisted her own ring, the promise ring John had given her mother. It had been on her right hand since her mother passed it down to her on her graduation. She mostly ignored its presence on her hand. “Chad was there from his office. My friend, Ann—you remember her, don’t you? I’m not sure how many other people there he might have known. My advertising did its job and the gallery had a successful event.” She’d leave out the part about getting drunk in the back to avoid an accidental run in.

The room was still, the silence stretching between them. Neither woman rushed to fill it.

Leslie slid the ring she’d been toying with off her finger and laid it on the counter. “I need a locksmith and I need to call your brother before your father gets to him. Your brother will know the best divorce lawyer. Your father hasn’t won a case in years and the dissolution of our marriage won’t be breaking his dry spell.”

Tears threatened the corners of her already red eyes. If her mother wouldn’t cry, Gigi still had enough in the well for both of their broken hearts. Leslie turned and pulled her into a hug. She sank into her mother’s warmth. It had been so long since sincere affection had been in this house, this pristine stage of false morality.

“We’re both going to be alright, Gigi.” Leslie pushed Gigi back, swiping at her tears with the corner of her apron. It was a gesture that reminded Gigi of being young and scraping her knee. Only this time she’d scraped something far more important—her heart. “A man will not bring us down. We’re stronger than that. We are going to be just fine. I promise.”

She gave a halfhearted nod in agreement.

“No,” Leslie commanded, still gripping her shoulders, “Say it. You must say it to make it a reality, otherwise it won’t take hold deep enough. Let me hear you.”

Gigi wet her dry lips and repeated her mother’s affirmation. “We’re both going to be all right. A man will not bring us down.”

“That’s my girl.” Leslie smiled and it was open and real. Not plastic. “Now let’s make those phone calls.”