He Booked the Hotel Before He Asked Me Chapter 09

He Booked the Hotel Before He Asked Me Chapter 09

My daughter came in with her hood up and her mascara gone and sat on

the arm of the sofa like she used to when she was fifteen and in trouble.

“Last July,” she said. “The Fourth. Remember the lake house?”

“Marcus and Jenna’s. Yes.”

“I went back inside to get the citronella and Dad and Aunt Jenna were in

the kitchen.” She wrapped her sleeve around her thumb. “They weren’t doing

anything. They weren’t even touching. He was leaning against the counter

and she was drying a glass and they were just-talking. And it was the way

they were talking, Mom. Quiet. Like people who talk a lot.”

“What did you do?”

“I said ‘hey’ and they both jumped about a foot. And Aunt Jenna laughed

and said they’d been arguing about your birthday present.” She looked up.

“And then like an hour later she found me by the dock and she said, ‘You

know your dad and 1 bicker like siblings, right? Don’t tell your mom about the 02:57 +3 >

present, she’ll ruin the surprise.”

Sixteen months old, that memory. A woman looking a twenty-one-year-old

in the eye by a dock and handing her a lie small enough to swallow.

“I asked Dad about it in the car,” Ivy said. “In August. Just casually. And he got- he got weird, Mom, he got so weird about it, and then he said something like, ‘Your mother has a lot on her plate right now, don’t add to it.” She started to cry. “And I didn’t. I didn’t add to it. I decided I was being dramatic and I let it go, and then in Januáry he almost died and I felt so guilty for ever thinking it that I never-”

“Stop.” I got down in front of her. “Ivy. Look at me. You were twenty-one and two adults you’d trusted your entire life told you that your eyes were wrong. That’s not you failing. That’s them working.”

“I could have told you.”

“And I would have believed them.” I said it as gently as I could, because it

was the truest thing I knew. “That’s what makes it work, baby. It only works on

people who love them.”

She cried into my shoulder for a while, twenty-two years old and eleven

years old at the same time.

Then she sat back, wiped her face with the heel of her hand, and said,

“Mom. Give him another chance.”

I went very still.

“Not for him,” she said quickly. “For you. Everyone says people go crazy

after a heart attack, there’s like a thing, cardiac depression or whatever, and

you’ve been married since before I existed and I don’t know how to have two

houses-”

“Ivy.”

“-and Grandma Marion’s going to say it’s your fault and I don’t want you to

be alone at Christmas-”

“Ivy. Stop.” I took her hands. “I want to ask you something and I want you to actually answer it. If Jack did this to you if Jack slept with Sophie for nineteen months, lied about where he had a medical emergency, and then

asked you for permission to do it one more time what would you want me

to tell you?”

–

She didn’t answer for a long time.

“To leave,” she whispered.

“So why is it different for me?”

“Because you’re my mom,” she said, and her voice broke. “And moms are

supposed to be able to fix things.”

“I am fixing it,” I said. “This is what fixing it looks like. It just doesn’t look like

putting it back,”

She stayed the night. We ate cereal for dinner and watched a baking show

and didn’t talk about it.

At 11 p.m. she said, from the other end of the couch, “He called me on

Monday. He wanted me to talk to you.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Did you steal from Mom’s company?” She scraped the bottom of

her bowl. “He said, ‘It’s more complicated than that.”

“And?”

“I hung up,” Ivy said. “And then I threw up. And then I felt fine.”

I loved her so much in that moment I couldn’t speak.

Three days later, Priya called me at the office.

“Nathan’s retained counsel,” she said. “And Claire – he’s coming in hot. He’s

claiming a marital interest in the firm based on six years of employment. He’s

claiming the house was ‘de facto marital’ because of improvements. And he’s

asking for indefinite spousal support on the grounds of a permanent cardiac

disability.”

I stood up. “He’s asking me to support him?”

“Eight thousand a month,” Priya said. “And Claire – there’s one more thing

in the filing, and I want you sitting down when I read it to you.”