The Husband Hour by Jamie Brenner (50)

Beth had to hand it to Howard: when he said he was going to do something, he did it.

“Do you want some French toast?” she asked Lauren by way of greeting.

Lauren mumbled something, brushed past Howard, and dragged her bag upstairs.

“Well, at least she’s here,” Howard said.

“What did you say to her?”

“Not a hell of a lot, to be honest. She doesn’t want to talk.”

“But you told her that Stephanie was still here, right? That the answer isn’t to run away? The things we discussed?”

He poured himself the last of the coffee. Beth retrieved the bag of coffee beans from the freezer to make a fresh pot.

“There was a man with her,” Howard said. “Matt somebody. Do you know about this guy? Is she finally dating after all this time?”

The filmmaker. Howard still didn’t know anything about the documentary. “It’s a long story,” Beth said.

“You’ve been holding out on me?”

She turned sharply but then realized he was teasing her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I couldn’t deal with this alone.”

“Of course I’m here.”

“Mom!” Lauren yelled from the second floor. Beth, with a quick, alarmed look at Howard, bolted up the stairs. She found Lauren standing in the doorway of Stephanie’s bedroom. “What is all of her stuff still doing here? When is she moving out?”

Across the hall, Ethan’s door clicked open. When he spotted Lauren, he dashed over, threw his arms around her legs, and gazed up at her with adoration.

Lauren looked down at him and burst into tears.

It’s just a house, Lauren told herself, throwing her clothes into a suitcase and then emptying her drawers; she’d pack the rest in garbage bags or whatever she could find. It’s just a house and it was never truly yours and it’s time to move on. That’s all.

Lauren would have to find her own apartment. Maybe it was something she should have done a long time ago. Every summer, year after year, she’d felt encroached upon, but instead of staking out her own private space and doing the hard work of moving on, she’d just told herself it was temporary. Now the day was here, and she would not cry about it. She was just thankful that she’d been working hard, had saved her money, and was in a position to take care of herself and rent an apartment. As for tonight, for the next few weeks, a hotel would have to do.

But the boxes. She could not lug all the boxes with her, and yet she could not leave the artifacts of her life with Rory behind in enemy territory.

Or were the boxes themselves enemy territory?

She would not, could not, think about Rory. But when she let down her guard, the thoughts slipped through, like water seeping through cracks in plaster walls. All she could do to battle them back was tell herself this: It was not possible that he had known about Ethan. Yes, it was possible that he had betrayed her during that summer apart. But it was unthinkable that he would have fathered a child with her sister, known about it, and still asked her to marry him.

And yet, she was stuck in this hell of wondering and never being able to confront him about it, because she would never hear from Rory again.

It had been one of the hardest things to wrap her mind around in the beginning, the permanence of it. The notion of never hearing his voice, never being able to seek his counsel, never making another plan or sharing another hope with him, was as vast and incomprehensible as thinking about Earth as just one planet orbiting one star out of millions of stars in the galaxy. Once, Rory had played her a video that showed Earth’s size in relation to the other planets’ in the solar system, then the solar system in relation to the Milky Way galaxy, and then the galaxy in relation to all the other known galaxies in the universe. It mapped out the travel distances between the stars in light-years, and the vastness of it all felt like something her mind was not built to contemplate. But this was exactly what Rory loved about astronomy. Maybe, if she had been the one to die first, to die young, he would have known how to reckon with infinity. With permanence. More than four years out, she couldn’t. That was why she had left the letter unopened. It was her safeguard against good-bye forever.

She stared at the boxes taking up most of the space inside her closet.

The boxes were all still open from the night she’d looked through them, poking around for things to share with Matt, hoping to make Rory more balanced, more human in the film. How arrogant, how naive she’d been to think she was the custodian of the truth.

How could you do this?

She couldn’t remember what box she’d stuffed the letter in, and by the time she found it, the floor around her was littered with yearbooks, photos, and clothes. Sitting among the relics of her former life, she pressed her back against the closet door, staring at her name rendered in Rory’s tightly looped handwriting.

If she wanted answers, if there was hope for any kind of response to the question that would haunt her for the rest of her life, she had to open it. It was time to face forever.

She peeled open the envelope carefully, thinking that it had been his hands that had sealed it. He had planned for this moment, just her and his words.

The letter was handwritten on yellow legal paper. He’d taken a page from one of the pads she left on the kitchen counter for her grocery and to-do lists. The routine had not carried over to her life in Longport, and the memory of such a mundane, day-to-day habit took her breath away.

Lauren reread it and reread it. The date told her he’d written it before his first deployment but long after he’d betrayed her with her sister. The sentence that jumped out at her, that defined the entire letter, was the entreaty that she go back to being the girl who loved her big sister. The worst mistakes were mine alone. Well, technically that was not true. And maybe that event wasn’t even what he was referring to. But she felt that it was, that he wanted to take the blame.

The one thing she couldn’t find, even with the most creative interpretation of the letter, was any sense of whether or not he knew about Ethan.

She had to know. Unfortunately, the only living person who might have had the answer was the one person she’d sworn never to speak to again.

The house was quiet and empty. How many times had she wanted solitude but was instead surrounded by her family? And now she needed to talk to Stephanie and everyone was gone. Figured.

Late afternoon, close to four, was optimal beach time. The sun had peaked and ebbed; it was the perfect hour to doze off under an umbrella, read, or just comfortably watch the waves until dinner. She remembered when she was a kid, her grandmother had always been the last one off the beach, reluctantly dragging her chair back to the house only after her husband had showered, dressed for dinner, made a cocktail, and sent Lauren out to fetch her.

Out on the deck, Lauren cupped her hand over her eyes against the sunlight and looked toward the ocean. Sure enough, four beach chairs were lined up at the water’s edge. She didn’t bother walking around to use the gate; she just pulled off her sneakers and climbed over the wall separating her property from the beach.

As she trod through the sand, the idea of turning back crossed her mind half a dozen times. She didn’t.

I have to know.

Ethan’s delighted squeal caught her attention, and when she looked at the ocean, she saw him with her father, bobbing in the rolling waves.

“Be careful!” her mother called out to them, hidden from Lauren’s view by the umbrella.

Lauren stood behind the wall of chairs, unnoticed.

“It’s fine, Mom,” Stephanie said from the chair next to her mother.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Beth put her paperback down on the beach towel, stood up, and marched to the water, calling out, “Not so deep, Howard!”

Lauren slipped into her mother’s chair, and Stephanie nearly jumped out of hers.

“Jesus! You scared me,” Stephanie said.

“Let’s walk. I need to talk to you.”

Stephanie didn’t say a word, but she left her chair with a quick glance at their parents and Ethan before following her.

They walked north along the water, just past the first lifeguard stand. It was so miserably uncomfortable to be near Stephanie, Lauren gave up on finding a quiet spot just so she could get the conversation over with more quickly.

“You have to tell me: Did Rory know about Ethan?” Lauren blurted out.

Stephanie looked at her in surprise. “No! Absolutely not. I thought you understood that.”

“Understood that? Clearly, I didn’t understand anything, thanks to you!”

“I tried to warn you not to marry him.”

Lauren felt stricken. She’d thought about so much in the past twenty-four hours, yet she hadn’t considered their argument in the car that day in the airport. She had been certain Stephanie was just jealous of her engagement. How could she have imagined the truth?

“Why didn’t you tell me what happened?”

“If I told you that I…that we slept together, would that have stopped you from marrying him? Or would you have forgiven him and hated me?”

“If you’d told me about Ethan, I can guarantee I wouldn’t have married him.”

Stephanie shook her head. “You say that now.”

They stood in silence. Stephanie broke it first.

“I never intended for this to come out. And I still hope that Ethan never knows the truth. How could I explain this to him?”

Lauren looked at her, incredulous. “You don’t plan on telling Ethan? Ever?”

“What good would it do? Rory is gone. It’s not like telling him the truth gets him a father. And the poor kid—his very existence isn’t just a mistake; it’s the biggest shame of this family.”

Oh God. What had she done? By accusing Matt of knowing about Ethan and keeping it from her, she’d inadvertently given him the information. And now he had it, and he would use it.

“Stephanie, you’re not going to like this, but…you have to tell Ethan about Rory.”

“Lauren, please spare me a morality lecture here, okay? No matter how much I deserve it.”

Lauren nervously toyed with the end of her ponytail. “It’s not that. I…told Matt Brio. I thought I could convince him not to go ahead with the film. But he didn’t listen to me.”

Stephanie reached for her arm.

“You didn’t.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“He’s going to put this in the film?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about Ethan? He’s innocent in all of this, and he’s going to be the one who suffers!” Stephanie’s eyes filled with tears. Before Lauren could think of a response, Stephanie ran back to the house.