Page 27 of This Is How It Started
“What were you doing at Harry Asia’s?”
Adam shakes his head like that’s beside the point. But I have a feeling I know where this conversation is going, and a part of me doesn’t want to hear the rest.
“He wasn’t alone, Rachel.”
“Who was he with?” I ask hesitantly.
“A woman who wasn’t Hannah.”
“What happened when he saw you?” I tell myself we’re jumping to conclusions. Stephen has meetings all the time. If Stephen was having an affair, why would he do it in such a public place?
“That’s the thing, he acted like he’d been caught...came over to where I was sitting and started sputtering bullshit.”
“Like what?”
“Like how the woman was a colleague and they’d decided to grab a drink after work. Except the Google campus is nearly an hour away.”
“Maybe they were in San Francisco that day. Isn’t that where the federal courthouse is?”
Adam looks at me like I’m Pollyanna’s more gullible sister. But I don’t want to believe Stephen’s cheating on my sister. For all his faults, I know Hannah loves him. And I believe he loves her too.
“It’s not as if finding Stephen in a bar is a smoking gun,” I say. “Never mind that conducting an illicit affair at Harry Asia’s is kind of like taking out an ad on the side of a bus.” Especially because the bar is close to our old house on Vallejo. Any one of us could’ve happened by. “I’m sure Stephen was telling the truth. It was a work thing, Adam.”
“All I’m saying is I felt a very weird undercurrent. I’m serious, Rach, it was like déjà vu with Mom and Dad,” he says as if he was the one to have caught our father with Brooke.
Unfortunately, that was my mother. She decided to surprise Dad at an American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery conference at the Westin in San Diego. She hadn’t thought it strange that he took his nurse with him until she found out they were sharing a room. She took a red-eye home and two days later made appointments with every top divorce lawyer in the city. Her best friend, Diane, an expert in divorce, taught my mother all her dirty tricks, including the convenience of conflict. All Shana had to do was pay for a brief confidential consultation with all the best attorneys to make them ineligible to represent my father, leaving him with the equivalent ofMy Cousin Vinny.As it turned out, Dad gave her everything she wanted anyway.
“Did you tell Hannah?”
Adam gets up and sticks the pan back in the fridge, even though there’s nothing left of the kugel but crumbs. I start to yell at him to put it in the sink, but I want an answer to my question. Did he tell Hannah?
“Well?”
Adam blows out a breath. “No. You think I should?”
“No...Yes...God, I don’t know.” On one hand, we Golds stick together. On the other, Adam’s sole evidence is that he spotted Stephen at the world’s douchiest bar with a colleague. Hardly conclusive.
He flops down on the sofa again. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”
Great, now I’m an accessory if it turns out to be true that Stephen is schtupping some floozy he takes to ’80s fern bars. “What did she look like?” Not that it matters, but I’m curious.
Adam hitches his shoulder. “Your run-of-the-mill vapid blonde.” He shakes his head. “That make you feel better about it?”
“So nothing like Hannah?” I say.
“Give me a break, Rach. A guy doesn’t go around comparing women to his sisters. I couldn’t even pick her out of a police lineup. But she was hanging on Stephen’s every word, which tells me she’s pretty hard up.”
“Or they were talking shop because...uh...lawyers. Cases. Work. You ever think that perhaps that crazy little gamer brain of yours is working overtime?”
“Maybe,” Adam says, stuffing two throw pillows under his head and throwing his legs over the back of the couch. “But it wasn’t the first time Stephen was out with a woman not Hannah.”
“Oh?”
Adam comes to a sitting position. “Right before your wedding.”
Memories of a conversation Adam and I had on that day come flitting back. But like everything about my life now, the conversation is hazy. Of course, it was the happiest day of my life, so I wasn’t paying all that much attention to Hannah and Stephen’s marital issues. But I do remember the queasy feeling I got when Adam mentioned that there might be problems. It was as if I’d already sensed that something wasn’t quite right, and the fact that Adam felt the same way confirmed it.
“Where?” I ask, grabbing the throw blanket over the chair and wrapping it around me.
