Chapter Twenty-four
The kitchen was in breakfast mode when Phil returned home. Katie was pouring herself a cup of coffee, Lina was at the stove, and Logan was sitting at the kitchen island.
“I brought up the Christmas boxes,” Logan said. “I wasn’t sure which lights were for the outside of the house. Do you want to come look so I can get started?”
Phil didn’t. He wanted to talk to Lina, who was watching him with an equal mixture of annoyance and relief in her eyes. “Let me just grab a slice of bacon first.” He crossed to Lina, cupping the side of her hip with one hand while he reached around her with the other to snatch a piece of bacon from a plate beside the stove. “I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I couldn’t just ignore what she did.”
“You could have long enough to talk to me,” she said, continuing to poke at the bacon in the skillet.
“I was angry.”
“Which is exactly why you should have waited a few minutes. You were in no condition to drive. You could have—”
“Dad?” Logan interrupted. “Are you coming?”
“Yes,” Lina answered for him. “And make sure you go talk to Megan when you’re done,” she whispered for his ears only.
Phil lightly tapped his knuckles against Megan’s door a short time later. “Sweetheart, it’s Dad. May I come in?”
The click of the lock releasing preceded a light “okay.” Phil entered the room to find Megan lying on her bed, still in her yoga attire, curled on her side, facing the wall. “Hey.” He sat down on the edge of her mattress. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m just tired.”
“Megan?” He gently squeezed her shoulder. “Talk to me, sweetheart. Are you upset? Mom told me what happened.”
“I don’t think I really want to talk about it, Dad.”
“I need to know what she said to you.”
“Nothing. It was just a normal conversation. She said she was a lawyer and that she had worked with you and that you were brilliant or mesmerizing or something like that. I don’t remember exactly.”
“What did she say to upset you?”
“Nothing.”
“She must have said something. You’re clearly upset.”
“I just…I…I didn’t expect her to look like that…to be so much younger than Mom.” She turned her face into her pillow.
He hadn’t seen her cry since she was thirteen and her team lost the middle school lacrosse championship. She was never a child that cried easily. “Megan? Look at me. Tell me what’s going on.” He clasped her shoulder and slowly rolled her onto her back. The pain in the tear-filled eyes looking up at him tore at his heart. “Sweetheart?”
“It wasn’t real,” she whispered. “Until I saw her, what you did wasn’t real.” She wiped at her eyes. “How could you do that? How could you be with someone besides Mom?”
He hesitated, trying to think of a sufficient answer, but of course there wasn’t one. “I messed up,” he finally said.
“Like Carrie’s dad,” she whispered, referring to one of her friends whose father left her mother for a younger woman. “I remember thinking you would never do something like that, and now you have.”
“No. I didn’t leave. I would never leave Mom.”
“But you were with that Kim! You got her pregnant and she had your baby.” She slapped her hands over her eyes. “How could you have done that?” she cried. “How?”
Phil squeezed his forehead. “There’s no excuse, no way to justify what I did. And I have to live with that knowledge, that I hurt your mother and you kids. It kills me that I’ve disappointed you. But I will tell you this. For the rest of my life I’m going to try to make it up to your mother. That’s all I can do—atone for my sins.”
***
Lina was in the living room in the front of the house, sorting through the Christmas boxes with Logan, when Phil came down the stairs. As soon as she saw the stern expression on his face, she knew something was wrong.
“What happened?”
“She’s just upset. You should talk to her.”
“Hey, Dad? Look.” Logan held up a five-foot grinch. “It’s to put in the front yard next to one of the trees. Mom bought this last year. We haven’t used it yet.”
“That’s great, buddy,” Phil said, barely glancing at Logan. “I need to exercise. Then I can help you.”
“Phil—wait.” Lina followed him to the door leading down to the basement. “What did she say?”
“Nothing I didn’t deserve. Don’t worry about me. Worry about her.”
“Honey, are you okay?” Lina asked moments later, stepping into Megan’s room.
“No,” Megan whispered before collapsing in Lina’s arms.
“Oh, sweetie.” Lina led her to her bed, her heart aching for Megan, who had always been a daddy’s girl. Almost from the day Lina stopped nursing her, Megan had preferred Phil. If he was home, he was the parent Megan sought out to fix a booboo, read her a bedtime story, or make her feel safe after a bad dream. Lina used to worry she was somehow deficient in the nurturing department until Katie came along. Katie loved Phil, but like most young children, she preferred her mother. Over the years Lina came to accept that Megan just shared a special bond with Phil.
Now with that same daughter crying in her arms, Lina wasn’t sure what to do, so she settled on what felt the most natural, stroking her hand up and down Megan’s back and assuring her that everything was going to be okay.
“I’m sorry,” Megan whispered after several minutes.
“I’m your mother. You don’t have to apologize for being emotional.”
“No. I don’t mean about that. I mean about not being there for you, not understanding what you were feeling.”
She was talking about her reaction to Phil’s affair more than a year ago. “No.” Lina shook her head. “Megan, no. You’re just a girl. It isn’t your job to comfort me. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She pulled her in for a hug, squeezing her tightly. “You’re not supposed to know how to handle a situation like this. I hate that you have to even think about it.”
“I just didn’t understand until I saw her,” Megan whispered. “How could he have done that to you?”
“It was wrong. There’s nothing that can justify it. But I know how sorry he is, how much he loves all of us.”
“I wouldn’t have talked to her if I had known who she was. I hate that I was nice to her.”
Lina framed her face with her hands. “It wasn’t your fault. You had no way of knowing who she was.”
Lina felt like an actress, playing the part of a happy mother as she finished going through the boxes with Logan, unable to shake the sadness that enveloped her after her words with Megan. Megan seemed to have recovered, announcing that she was meeting friends for lunch and even giving her father a hug when he came downstairs after his shower. It was as if Megan’s sadness had been a cloak that she’d passed to Lina.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
Lina spun around, her hand touching her chest. “Logan. I didn’t hear you come in. Are you already done putting up the lights?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I came in to get a heavier coat. Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She forced a smile. “Just a little tired. Someone made me stay up and watch Christmas Vacation last night,” she teased.
“Katie just told me that woman was there—at yoga. Liam’s mom.”
“She was.” She turned back to the bowl of cookie dough she was mixing.
“Do you need a hug?”
The unexpected question brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away, forcing a smile to her face as she turned from her task and let her fifteen-year-old son wrap her in his arms, offering her a dose of much-needed comfort. “I could never turn down a hug from you,” she whispered.
“I lost it when I went over there today. It was in front of Liam. He was pretty shaken up,” Phil told Lina later that evening as they sat alone in the family room discussing what had occurred with Kim.
Lina’s stomach sank, imagining how scary an enraged Phil would be to a baby. She couldn’t remember him ever yelling around their children when they were young. “Was he okay?”
“Eventually. She never went to him. She just left him for her sister to deal with. He was calling out for her. I can’t get that fucking vision of him out of my head, his face distraught and his little hands reaching out to her. And she just left.” He shook his head. “What in the fuck did I do, Lina? That’s his mother. She didn’t even seem to care.”
“She was upset,” she said, more to soothe Phil’s obvious distress than to defend Kim. “It may not have even registered in her mind.”
“It would have registered in your mind. It registered in mine.” He leaned his head back, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I can’t do that to him again. I don’t want to scar him.”
“You won’t.” She rubbed his arm. “One time isn’t going to scar him. He’ll be okay.” Her thoughts turned to Kim, wondering what kind of person wouldn’t immediately comfort their child.