Maine Characters, page 24
She gets up and brushes crumbs from her hands. “Mm. Okay.”
Chapter Twelve
Vivian
At that last Father’s Day brunch, Celeste had to scoot out early for an interview. She left as they were finishing up the meal, leaning into Hank for a peck as she stood. He reached for the check—he always reached for it—but Vivian got there first.
“You can’t pay on Father’s Day, Dad,” she said.
She rooted through her small purse for her wallet, pulling out her phone and keys in the process. She left a 30 percent tip because holiday shifts are their own special kind of hell.
“If you insist, I won’t argue. Thank you.”
On the table, her phone lit up, displaying a text from “” and she quickly pulled it into her lap.
Her dad took a casual sip of espresso. “Who was that from?”
Vivian flipped the bill shut a little harder than necessary. “No one.”
“ ‘No one’ is a heart?” His expression was good-natured, gentle, teasing.
It’s better than a name or even an initial—he should know. She’d been stupid to leave her phone face up; she’d never make that same mistake at Della. But here, seventy blocks uptown, her guard was down.
“Just a friend.”
He nodded, chewing that over. “Dating anyone these days?”
“Work has been so busy lately.”
He held up his hands. “No pressure from me. It’s just been a long time since you’ve told us about anyone special.”
The irony of evading her dad’s questions about an affair is not lost on her. “I know,” she said, intending for that to be the final word.
“You can’t fault me for being curious,” he said lightly.
Vivian felt torn. There was the instinct to quietly preserve her relationship and the dangerous yearning to tell the truth. She loved Oscar, had loved him for so long. Keeping that kind of giddy magic inside for two years took meticulous self-control. Besides, he was mere weeks or months away from leaving Carla. He was practically already separated if you looked at it that way. And if anyone was going to understand an affair, it’d be her dad. Maybe he’d finally feel safe admitting his own truth to her.
“Actually, I am seeing someone.” She rushed to say the rest, afraid she’d chicken out if she didn’t. “Oscar.”
Hank cocked his head. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Isn’t your boss’s name also Oscar?”
Her nerves thumped like a drummer in a rock band. “Yeah.”
“You don’t mean that Oscar,” he clarified.
Shit. “No, I do.”
A deafening lull followed, punctuated only by the low hum of a restaurant’s heartbeat: clattering silverware, overlapping conversations, light jazz, muttered “behind yous” between servers. Comforting sounds, usually. But not then.
Hank’s features contorted in disgust. “Vivian, are you kidding me?”
“I know it’s unconventional, but—”
“Unconventional?” Hank almost never raised his voice, but he did now—loud enough to exude outrage, just low enough to avoid causing a scene. “We’re not talking about piercing your nose or running off with the circus. You could lose your job. Your reputation! What were you thinking?”
She felt like she was being boiled alive in a pot of shame stirred by the ultimate hypocrite. If she’d come this far, she might as well fuck all the way up and be fully transparent.
“I love him.”
It’s the most vulnerable thing she’s ever told either of her parents.
“Is he married?”
Vivian hated answering that. “He’s going to leave his wife.”
“Jesus, Vivian.”
“Oh, you’re one to talk,” she seethed, furious.
He recoiled. Pushed his chair back roughly from the table. Blinked. “What?”
“Dad, come on. Don’t lie to me.”
His jaw hung open as he stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to pretend not to know?”
Bitter silence unspooled between them.
With a groan, she snaps, “Fine. When I was fourteen, I walked in on you talking to someone on the phone. Your daughter. From your other family.”
A vein bulged in his forehead. “That’s absurd.”
“You’re gone all summer! Business trips all the time. And how convenient, you’ve got a second house to stash them away in. I’ve always wondered, where do they go every August?”
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed. He leaned in close and dropped his voice to a guttural scrape. “I’ve been married for thirty-one years, and in all that time, not once have I been unfaithful to your mother. Do you hear that?”
“Then who were you talking to, huh?”
He stared at her for a long time. She waited, elbows on the table, fingers twisted and clenched, watching him conjure up a cover story.
Finally, he managed to say, “It’s not what you think.”
She crossed her arms tightly. “Okay, so what is it?”
Stress crinkled his forehead. “It’s a complicated story.”
She braced herself for a convoluted lie. “I’m listening.”
He thudded his fist into the table. Other diners gawked. “The idea of me carrying on some affair—that’s how little you think of me?”
As soon as the words were in the air between them, his face fell, though. He heard what he’d implied. He must think the absolute worst of her.
“I need a minute,” she said, hurrying to the restroom.
She could almost believe him. That was the worst part—his full-body anguish was too visceral to be an act. She should’ve been relieved to discover her dad was innocent, but instead, she felt nauseated with regret. If her dad never cheated, then she’s been icing him out for half her life for no reason. How do you come back from something like that? You don’t. You can’t. Locking herself into the stall, Vivian ground the heels of her hands into her face. If this really was all one big misunderstanding, it was fatal. It frayed their relationship beyond repair. It cauterized the innocent part of herself she could no longer get back.
When she returned to the table, the waiter had dropped off her card—they could leave, thank God. Swaying in the crushing tension, Vivian made her way out onto a sidewalk full of father-daughter pairs. One teen girl swapped paper cups of bright gelato with her dad.
Hank caught up to her. “Can we talk?” he asked in a pained voice.
There was a frantic flicker behind his eyes, like he wouldn’t be able to breathe until this mess had been sorted out. It hurt Vivian to see him like that, but she was afraid to find out how badly she’d messed up.
She backed away. “I’m going to be late for work.”
He opened his mouth as if to protest but didn’t stop her. She left him behind on the sidewalk without a final glance. Less than an hour later, he was dead.
Lucy
So much for enjoying her remaining nights on Fox Hill Lake. Once Vivian was out of sight, Lucy scarfed down two slices of pizza and sat by the fire Caleb had made. Leaning against the stone ledge, her back had gone from warm to uncomfortably hot, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. She quietly filled him in on what Vivian had said about her breakup with Oscar, and everything she was able to glean about him online—which was quite a bit. Heaps of professional accolades, a session with a photographer to announce his wife’s pregnancy, and zero sign of a divorce.
“I just couldn’t do it. Cheat,” Lucy says, stabbing a finger toward an image of Oscar with one hand around a woman’s waist, a sonogram in the other, and an easy, confident smile.
“You’ve kissed one guy in your entire life,” Caleb says.
“Two now.” And after being burned twice, she isn’t eager to go for a third.
“Excuse me, two. You’d skydive into a cage of sharks before doing something like that.”
“At least I’d only be hurting myself. That poor woman.”
“Maybe Vivian’s doing her a favor, then, by taking him off her hands.”
“You think they’re back together?”
His nostrils flare. “Seems like it.”
“You like her,” Lucy says, more accusatory than observational.
He makes a sour face. “As a friend.”
“Sure. Still, though?”
Caleb hesitates. “We don’t know the whole story. People are complicated.”
“This isn’t. They’re running around behind a pregnant woman’s back. Do you think he pays her more than everyone else?”
The front door slides open with a bang. “I’m not a nepo mistress,” Vivian calls out, annoyed.
Shoot. If it were anyone else on any other day, Lucy would be stumbling over herself to apologize right now.
In a huff, Vivian sinks onto the couch. Oscar trails her, slinging his arm around her shoulders. She doesn’t snuggle into him in the way Lucy would expect; instead, she crosses her arms and legs.
“I think it’s past time we open a bottle. Who wants Champagne?” Oscar asks.
Caleb nods seriously. “That’s my go-to.”
Oscar studies him for a second, then smirks. “Funny.” With a hand on Vivian’s knee, he says, “You’re off duty tonight, let me grab it. Lucy, for you?”
She doesn’t want anything from this polished slimeball. “No, thank you.”
While he’s up, the house is so silent, they can hear every glug from the bottle and every crackling flame. Vivian stares distantly across the room.
“Thanks, man,” Caleb says, lifting the glass to Oscar.
“My pleasure.”
“I hear you’ve got quite a place in New York.”
Leave it to Caleb to be pleasant.
“We’ve been doing all right,” Oscar says in a tone he probably thinks comes across as modest. “What do you do?”
Caleb winks at Vivian. “Every New Yorker’s favorite question, right?”
“Mm. Yeah.”
Oscar watches them with disdain.
He doesn’t waver. “I bartend and work at an adventure park.”
“Ah, so you’re in the industry, too.”
“At the best bar in town.”
“Yeah?”
Caleb rolls out the punch line. “It’s also the only one.”
“Of course it is,” Oscar says tightly. “If you’re ever in New York, you’ll have to stop by Della sometime. Both of you.”
“Next time, definitely.”
Lucy isn’t sure Oscar recognizes the sarcasm. Caleb hates New York.
“Though I don’t know how you get a moment of peace down there,” he says. “Must be pretty hectic, no?”
“Well, at least there’s more than one place to get a drink.” Oscar squeezes Vivian’s shoulder. “And soon there’ll be one more.”
“There’s more to do up here than you might think,” Vivian says. “Boating, hiking, fishing…Town is only twenty minutes away.”
“You fish now?”
“I drive a pickup truck, too.”
“What have you done to her?” Oscar says to Lucy, joking.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s like she’s Laura Ingalls Wilder.”
Lucy cannot believe this man. “So, what, unless you live ten blocks from the Met, you’re a hick?”
He holds up his hands. “I was just kidding.”
“Sure,” she says sarcastically. “You’re staying overnight?”
“Yeah.”
Vivian intently examines her cuticles.
Lucy rises. “Well, I’m going, then.”
Her childhood bedroom, unfortunately, awaits.
“Oh, stay,” Oscar says, as if he can order her around. “I was looking forward to getting to know you.”
Lucy actually laughs. Dawn raised her to have better manners than this, but she also passed down a healthy disdain for entitlement.
“I doubt that.”
He looks surprised. “We’ll practically be family.”
“When? When you’re done with your first family? Or are you just going to hop back and forth between the two?”
“Lucy,” Vivian breathes.
She’s nearly lightheaded with shock at her own gall. She’d said that? Out loud?
A grim shadow passes over Oscar, but then he collects himself. “That’s a fair question.” With the same cautious, agreeable tone used by hostage negotiators, he says, “I’m not your dad. I promise.”
“You act enough like him,” Lucy says.
“That’s a little Freudian,” Oscar says, triggering a disgusted eye roll from Vivian.
“What do—” Lucy begins.
“As in Freud’s psychological theory that people tend to be attracted to—”
“You really think I don’t know what that means?”
Oscar frowns. “I’m sorry.”
“I was going to say, what do you actually know about my dad? Did you ever even meet him?”
He chooses his words carefully. “I wish I could’ve. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You don’t have to be nice to me. You’re not going to win me over.”
In a huff, Oscar says, “I don’t even know why Vivian is wasting her time up here with you.”
Vivian interrupts and tugs him away. “Oscar, stop it. Come.”
Vivian
“You didn’t have to be such a dick in there,” Vivian says, exasperated.
She and Oscar retreated to the porch again. The air is dotted with mosquitoes.
“I got pissed, okay? She has no right to judge me like that.”
She crosses her arms. “You said I was wasting my time by hanging out with her. And mansplained Freud. And acted like a condescending asshole.”
He blinks in surprise. They don’t talk to each other like that.
“Fine. I’m sorry. There’s just a lot going on.”
“Hanging out with my half-sister and her friend shouldn’t count as ‘a lot.’ ”
“I’ll be better. I promise.” He slaps a bug on his arm and grimaces. “Can we go inside?”
She’s not done with him. “Here,” she says, entering the garage and flicking on the harsh fluorescent lights.
The damp concrete is cold under her bare feet. Wrinkling his nose, Oscar takes in the scent of rain mingling with gasoline and garbage bins, a half-rotted Adirondack chair, and the fine coat of dust over it all. With his Patek Philippe and hair tousled just so, he couldn’t be more out of place.
She needs to ask a dangerous question. “How do you see this all working out?”
“Me and Lucy?”
“No. All of it. Me and you. Carla. The twins. The bar.”
Now that Lucy’s said it out loud, it’s impossible to ignore how the prospect of Oscar leaving pregnant Carla for Vivian echoes the very real history of Hank leaving pregnant Dawn for Celeste. The circumstances aren’t identical, but they’re close enough to make her gut roil.
“Plenty of kids grow up with divorced parents and turn out fine. I was one of them. And honestly, I was happier once my parents split up and stopped fighting all the time. They did me a favor.”
This seems like a generous version of the truth. Oscar has told Vivian stories about resenting his dad’s string of girlfriends and watching his mom, previously a housewife, struggle to find work again. He fell into the restaurant world at sixteen by waiting tables to help his mom make ends meet. He hasn’t spoken to his dad since.
Oscar is banking on his kids growing up to understand and respect the choices he’s making, but it doesn’t always work that way. Vivian and Lucy are living testaments to that.
“You know this isn’t as simple as you’re making it out to be, right?” she asks.
“It’s not ideal, I get that. What are you worried about, her bankrupting me with alimony and child support?” He rakes a hand through his hair with a weak smile, like the idea of Vivian only wanting him for his money is a cute joke. Then desperation softens him. “Being a stepmom? Us not having enough time together with kids in the mix?” His tone is gentle but too light, like none of these silly little fears are actually worth anything. “I know twins sound like a lot. It took me time to digest it, too.”
He can’t be this shortsighted and selfish. Can he?
“It’s not right, doing this to a kid—making a mess of their family before they’re even born. If you don’t want to be with Carla, fine, but leaving her for me now? Why not two years ago?”
His eyes glow with hurt. “Viv, listen, you’ll get over this. We can get over this—together.”
She has longed for him to choose her for months, for years even, pleaded for it, planned for it. She knows he loves her. But she can’t trust him anymore. He loved Carla once, too. After weeks of handling the consequences of another man’s careless decisions about women’s hearts made under this very same roof, she refuses to saddle the next generation with more cheating and lies.
She couldn’t see this before, but Oscar brings out a nasty side of her, one that ignores how her actions can hurt other people. She easily justified an affair that could devastate Carla because Oscar wanted Vivian and she was morally flexible enough to want him back. She won’t do it anymore.
“No,” she says.
His mouth hangs open. “No? You want this. I know you do.”
“I don’t anymore.” Her hands shake, but her voice is clear. She knows what she has to do. “You need to leave.”
