Page 26 of The New Year's Party
“You know what?” I finally say, using all my self-control. “We’re not.” My voice actually comes out calm, like his, and I’m proud of myself for taking my foot off the accelerator. “You’re right. This isn’t the time.”
But I hope he knows that if he’s going to bring the big guns, I’ve been building a shield. Not because I wanted to. Because Ihadto. It’s not that my social media posts aren’t sincere. I am absolutely, unequivocally grateful for Will and my girls. But Will has let me down too many times for me to remain the naive girl who walked into this relationship like it was an upgrade from the previous one, when really it was exactly the same. Once bitten, twice shy. So... what about twice bitten? I think you go beyond shy. I think you start to plan. You start to take out insurance policies against disaster. Like the impregnable supermom I’ve built on Facebook. You want to hurt me? You’re gonna have to go throughher—and her entire adoring army of Facebook followers.
“Well...” says Will. “Should we go in?”
Something perverse in me makes me grab for my phone.
“Here, pre-party selfie,” I say. I throw an arm around his shoulder and tug him close, and we’re cheek to cheek. I can feel the light texture of Will’s stubble. The tension in his cheek muscles as he smiles. I can always make him smile with the camera.
Maybe that’s why I do it. Because he doesn’t smile formeanymore.
And I deserve better.
While I angle the camera for the most flattering shot, my eyes aren’t only seeing our two faces reflected back on thephone screen. They’re also seeing, superimposed over our smashed-together faces, the internet search Will last made on his work computer:
Divorce lawyer paternal rights specialist.
Like he thinks he can stab me in the back like that.
Like he thinks he can take the girls from me.
I may be a nice Christian girl. I truly believe I am, at my core. But I’m also a mama bear. Threaten me, and I will take. You. Down.
His friends inside that house may blindly support him. Encourage him to act the fool, to make himself happy, to take the easy path like they all have, straight into divorce and failure and addiction. But I am not like them. I do not let things fall apart around me.
I take control.
“Say cheese,” I say.
Chapter 12
Bennett
Going out to the car for their bags, Bennett pulled his jacket tighter around his torso. It wascold. That wet kind of cold that penetrated everything. He opened the trunk, noticing that another car had parked on the other side of the street, a little ways down. Was that... Will and Jenn? He was about to jog over when he saw Will’s hands gesticulating. He squinted, trying to make out what he was seeing. Ah. A fight.
Returning his attention to his own business, he yanked out the overnight bag he and Olivia were sharing. He’d give Will and Jenn their privacy. Let them work it out. That was marriage. He could relate. His stuff with Olivia always came up right before some big event, like Easter dinner with her parents, for example, which had been incredibly awkward, because then you had to pretend everything was fine, and Olivia was very good at doing that, which always cast an uncomfortable seed of doubt for Bennett. If she could pull off the gracious act so easily, how could Bennett really know when she was truly okay or just pretending?
Speaking of which, why had she chosen this moment, of all moments, tostoppretending and finally talk about five years ago?
He wasn’t angry. He’d had a long time to work through his anger. Just... on edge. The truth was, hehadn’tknown for sure. He’d had good reason tothinkOlivia and Phelps had slept together. He’d processed it as if it was fact. But in the absence of a full confession from his wife or friend, there was always the possibility that it wasn’t true. The death of that possibility did hurt, but it was cool—he’d built an entire fortress around this problem. It was an arrow nicking the solid wood of the gate, that’s all.
He got it, why Olivia had sat on her secret. That’s how she was. Not a verbal processor. She was deep. Mysterious. It’s part of what had drawn him to her, after all.
His friends? They were different. Balls to the walls. They wore their problems on their sleeves. Like when Phelps’s restaurant deal went up in literal flames. Phelps had gone on a bender, and no one knew where he was for two days. Kylie, who he was married to at the time, though not for much longer, called Bennett. Even though it was just two weeks before New Year’s and they were going to see each other anyway, Bennett ended up driving to Michigan City. Will drove in too. They split a hotel room at the Red Roof Inn that smelled like old cigarette smoke. When Phelps showed up the next day, nursing a hangover the size of Indiana, he made no pretense about anything being fine.
Yes, the very thing that had drawn Bennett to Olivia in college during that art history course was her poise. Sure, there was her timeless, Old Hollywood beauty—you couldn’t exactly miss that—but it was her composure, not her looks, that set her a head and shoulders above all the other women Bennett had known. When she agreed to that first date, Bennett’s self-esteem had soared. If he was capable of attracting a woman like that...
Now he wondered. Would it be better to trade poise for honesty? Even if it was uglier up front, even if they had tofigure out how to fight productively and there were some hurts along the way, surely they’d be closer in the long run...
No.He couldn’t start thinking like that. He had made his choice five years ago to deal with Olivia’s cheating privately, honorably, to not export all his shit onto anyone else. To stay in his marriage. And not just in body, but in spirit. His dad, according to all appearances, had stayed with Bennett and his mom. But Jim Rhodes wasn’t really there. Wasn’t engaged, unless he was dumping on them. Didn’t ever ask Bennett questions, just unloaded his political opinions and his anger and his bitterness. Bennett had vowed he would never be like his dad. If Bennett was staying with Olivia, not only was he all in, but he was not going to make her the dumping ground for his negative emotions. So during the Year from Hell, he’d worked through all of it on his own.
The hardest thing was the possibility that Rosie wasn’t his. Based on the math, she could be Phelps’s or Bennett’s. During the pregnancy, he thought he’d made his peace with never knowing, but then she was born and looked nothing like her sister, Norah, and Bennett temporarily lost his mind and did a deep dive into his uncle’s carefully assembled ancestry records. If he could just confirm she looked likesomeonefrom his side... Finding John Rutherford Rhodes, scowling out of that sepia-toned picture from the 1800s with his rifle and his beard, looking like the original gangster, had felt like a tiny miracle. Not an assurance by any means—but a possibility. A hope. Something to hang on to in the tempest of newborn life that followed.
The choice to keep everything to himself had been clear, in a way. Blow up his life and lose the two people he loved most, Olivia and Phelps, and possibly also Norah and definitely Rosie. Or, take it like the man his father never was and forgive, even if they never asked forgiveness. Be the family man he’d always wanted to be.
He’d gotten to the point where he could even look kindly on the betrayal. Phelps’s restaurant had burned down two weeks before the party, Kylie had served him divorce papers, and even though Phelps still pulled himself together enough to host the party, he wasn’t his normal, cynically cheerful self. He was in a bad place. Much like Olivia, who had gone through the miscarriage that year, and some kind of depressive episode, which Bennett connected not just to the pregnancy loss but to her loss of independence, since Norah was such a needy toddler. Both Olivia and Phelps were weak going into that party. Vulnerable. Could Bennett really destroy all their lives for a single mistake they’d made from a place of duress?
Bennett leaned against the open trunk and exhaled, nice and long.
