A Summer Love Affair, page 10
“Nothing’s wrong,” Elizabeth said, though that was debatable. “But I have something to tell you. I can’t stay silent any longer. I wish that I could, truly.”
Cam leaned forward, her hands clasped. “Mom, it’s okay. Just tell us. It’s got to be important for you to ask me to come north again so we could all be here together.”
“It is important, even though what I have to tell you concerns Petra, mostly,” Elizabeth began.
“Petra is in trouble?” Jess laughed. “What did she do? Forget to unplug the iron? Wait, she doesn’t use an iron, does she? She prefers her clothes to be wrinkled and hanging off her like empty sacks.”
“No one is in trouble,” Elizabeth said quickly, hiding her annoyance at Jess’s unpleasant attitude toward her younger sister. “I probably should have told you this years ago. I’m not entirely sure why I’m telling you now, at this particular moment, but there were signs. . . .” Elizabeth sighed. “When Petra found an old diary of mine—”
“I didn’t know about that,” Jess interrupted. “Cam?”
“Me, neither. But let Mom talk.”
“The diary,” Elizabeth went on, looking quickly from one daughter to the next, “was one I kept in 1991. It was a strange time in my life, strange and . . .”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Cam said. “Take your time.”
After a moment, Elizabeth went on. “Well, the diary coming to light when it did—and honestly, I’d forgotten all about it—combining with a few other factors, things I’d begun to think seriously again about . . . You see, the diary contains the only written evidence, if it can be called that, of . . .”
Jess sighed. “Mom, you’re killing me. Pretend like you’ve got a Band-Aid that needs to come off. Just yank it.”
“Petra,” Elizabeth blurted, “Hugh Quirk is not your father.”
Petra laughed. “Sorry, Mom, but I think I misheard you. I thought you said that Dad isn’t my father.”
Elizabeth’s hands were shaking. If only she hadn’t opened her mouth! But it was too late now. The words couldn’t be unspoken.
Jess frowned. “I heard it, too. What’s going on, Mom?”
“Hugh, Dad, is not Petra’s biological father,” Elizabeth said, amazed at the steadiness of her voice. “In every other way, he was and still is the father of all you girls, equally. Nothing has changed.”
“Nothing has changed?” Jess cried. “Are you insane?”
“Jess! Did Dad know?” Cam asked her mother softly.
“No one knew but me. Not even Petra’s biological father.”
Petra laughed again; this time it sounded ever so slightly hysterical. “Um, I feel like I’m being seriously dumb, but I don’t get it. Mom, what exactly are you trying to say?”
Elizabeth felt her heart begin to pound in her chest. “I had an affair with Christopher Ryan, our family friend. Hugh’s friend from childhood. Christopher is Petra’s father.”
Immediately, Cam scooted over to sit close to Petra and put her arm around her sister’s shoulder. I should have gone to her, Elizabeth thought. I should have spoken to Petra alone, before telling the others. Oh, what have I done?
“Well, at least you know who the guy is! Not just some pickup.”
Elizabeth flinched. She probably deserved this attitude from Jess, as nasty as it was.
“How long did this—this relationship—go on?” Cam asked.
“All told, about two months. It was the summer of 1991. Chris and I attended a ballet together because your father didn’t want to go. We had had tickets for some time but there was a retirement party for a colleague, and Hugh decided he wanted to go to the party instead, so he suggested that I ask Chris to accompany me to the ballet. I should probably have gone on my own, or asked a friend from town, even canceled my plans, given the tickets away. But I didn’t. I was angry with Hugh for canceling on me. I called Chris, he said yes, and we went.”
“You must have had feelings for a long time before that,” Cam said quietly. “Affairs don’t just happen.”
“Yes, I’d had feelings for Chris for years,” Elizabeth admitted. “And he’d felt the same about me. But neither of us had spoken a word or given the other a reason to hope in any way. Absolutely nothing improper had happened. Not until that night at the ballet. It was nothing either of us had planned, believe me.”
“So, basically you had a summer fling?” Jess laughed harshly.
Elizabeth winced. “It wasn’t a fling,” she said evenly. She had expected Jess to take the news badly. Jess had worshipped her father. Still, her hostility was wounding.
“Oh, pardon me, it was a relationship. Well, that makes all the difference! Wait, a minute. Are you sure Dad is my father? What about Cam’s? Did you have other flings? Oh, excuse me, relationships?”
Elizabeth willed herself not to burst into tears or to run from the room. It was difficult.
Cam cleared her throat. “So, what happened to end it?” she asked, again, quietly.
“The terrible guilt I felt. I broke things off with Chris, and he accepted my decision. He was as miserable as I was. And because I wouldn’t leave Hugh, there was no choice but for us to part.”
“Why wouldn’t you leave Dad?” Cam asked.
Jess was clearly fuming, though silently now. Petra sat as if frozen.
Elizabeth knew she had to choose her words carefully. The last thing she wanted was to give the impression that she was blaming Hugh for her decisions. “I was afraid to leave Hugh,” she said, “afraid of what might happen to us all, afraid of the damage a divorce might cause. And Chris and I were both so unhappy at that point that we knew we could have no future together. It would have been badly tainted by what we had done to Hugh. Parting ways seemed like the only solution.”
“That was a brave decision,” Cam said quietly.
Elizabeth gulped in an effort to hold back her tears. “Thank you. Anyway, a few weeks after I had ended our relationship, I learned that I was pregnant. It wasn’t difficult to determine that Chris was the father. Hugh and I hadn’t been intimate in a long time.”
Jess snorted. “Nice. So, let me guess. To hide the fact that the baby wasn’t Dad’s, you had to have sex with him again. You had to add insult to injury, pretend you were interested in your husband. God, I can’t believe this!”
“You must have been frightened,” Cam said, ignoring her sister’s outburst.
Elizabeth looked at her youngest child. Petra sat with folded hands, her eyes closed, silent.
“I panicked,” she admitted. “The last thing I wanted was for your father to learn the truth about the affair. Sadly, Jess is right. I resumed intimacy with Hugh. Still, I was worried that the truth might come out at some point during the pregnancy, if something went wrong. But the pregnancy was remarkably smooth. A part of me had thought that a child conceived in a—in a dishonest way might . . . Well, I was in a strange, fearful state of mind, even superstitious. But I needn’t have worried. Petra was born in perfect health and . . . and nobody was any the wiser.”
Finally, Petra opened her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell him, Mr. Ryan,” she said, “that he was . . . He might have . . .”
Elizabeth tried to hold Petra’s eyes as she spoke, willing her to understand. “There were several reasons I remained silent,” she said. “Most important, I had to ask myself what it was I really wanted, and it was clear that what I most wanted was to protect my family, my children. I had no idea if Chris would agree to keep his being the baby’s father a secret from Hugh. Every scenario I envisioned led to disaster. It seemed the wisest choice was to keep my secret, to bury it as deep as I could, and to atone for what I’d done to Hugh by falling in love with his dearest friend. If I could be a good wife, a partner to my husband, a good mother to his—to all of the children, that might go a long way toward paying a moral debt.”
“You were afraid to tell Mr. Ryan,” Petra said, her voice so low Elizabeth had to lean forward to hear it. “My father.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth admitted. So much had come about because of fear. If only she had been a braver person!
Cam rose from her seat next to Petra. “I need some water. Would anyone else—”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said gratefully, wearily. “Thank you.”
Chapter 21
While Cam was in the kitchen and Jess was angrily pacing the living room, muttering words Petra was happily unable to discern, Petra sat as still as the proverbial statue. She wasn’t opposed to the idea of moving. In fact, if she could have moved she would have leapt from the couch and run from the house. After that?
Suddenly, Petra became aware of her mother getting up, slowly, from her seat. She tensed. Her mother was now crossing the short distance to where Petra was, on the couch. She sat, carefully, less than half a foot from Petra’s side, and reached for her daughter’s left hand where it sat limply on Petra’s thigh. Petra didn’t fight her mother’s touch, but neither did she return her clasp.
Cam came back into the room then, carrying a tray on which were balanced four glasses of water with ice. She distributed the glasses—Petra, finally mobile again, pulled her hand from her mother’s hand to take her glass—and took the seat their mother had vacated.
“I’m asking all of you to keep this a secret,” Elizabeth went on after a long and uncomfortable silence. “I don’t want anyone in Eliot’s Corner to know the truth. This town has been my home for so long, I don’t want my friends and neighbors to suddenly see me for . . . I mean, I have to live here for the rest of my life, I want to live here, and I can’t bear the thought of becoming a topic of gossip and finger-pointing.” She paused. “And I can’t bear the thought of Hugh’s memory being dragged through the mud.”
Jess laughed bitterly. “Don’t worry. The last thing I want is for anyone to know about this! Your secret is safe with me. And yeah, I know, I can be bad about keeping secrets, but there’s no way this bit of family history is going anywhere. For Dad’s sake.”
Petra remained silent. She would keep her mother’s secret to herself. Of course, she would. It touched her too deeply to be spread around like a bit of casual gossip. Besides, she had no one to tell.
“Of course, we’ll keep this news to ourselves,” Cam said then; she had gulped her glass of water as if she had never been thirstier. “But Ralph needs to know. I need to tell him.”
“Yes, you do,” Elizabeth agreed. “I don’t believe there should be big secrets between husbands and wives. I know that sounds like hypocrisy,” she added quickly. “To say or profess to believe one thing and to act another.”
Jess snorted. “It is hypocrisy.”
“Let she who is without sin cast the first stone,” Cam murmured.
“I’m allowed to make a judgment in a case like this,” Jess shot back.
Suddenly, Petra leaped to her feet, surprised by the rush of adrenaline coursing through her body. “Please, don’t fight,” she cried. “I can’t bear it if we start fighting.”
“I’m sorry, Petra,” Cam said abruptly. “Really. I should have been more considerate of what you’re going through right now.”
“Me too,” Jess mumbled. “Sorry.”
“Petra . . .” That was her mother, speaking brokenly.
Petra worked to steady her breathing, to calm her racing heart. Instead of sitting back down next to her mother she went across the room and stood looking blankly out of the window, her back to her family. At that moment, she didn’t feel able to look her mother or her sisters in the eye, though she had no idea why. She wasn’t the one who had done something wrong. She wasn’t to blame. Why should she feel . . . ashamed? If ashamed was what she felt. And not—what? Repulsed? Oddly excited? Angry?
“I suppose you’ll tell Eddie?” her mother asked Jess quietly.
“Why?” Jess sounded genuinely puzzled by their mother’s question.
“For the same reason I’ll tell Ralph,” Cam said. “Because he’s my partner.”
“Maybe,” Jess said dismissively. “I can’t think about it now.”
Petra placed both hands against the glass of the window. Again, she realized that she had no partner, no close friend, no boyfriend she wanted to tell, no one who should be told this explosive news in order to better support and understand her. At that moment, in the presence of her mother and sisters—no, her half-sisters; that made a difference, didn’t it?—she felt more isolated than she had ever felt in her life, more at sea, more . . . unknown.
She remained at the window for what might have been a moment or an eternity until she heard each member of her family leave the room. Only then did she turn back around to face the empty living room. Though she recognized the couch, the rugs, the knickknacks on the coffee table, everything seemed changed, slightly altered, foreign, the painting over the couch sickeningly bright, the statuette of a classical nymph crassly erotic.
Yes, Petra thought. I am in fact in the middle of a genuine identity crisis.
Chapter 22
Elizabeth was alone in her bedroom, a sanctuary if only a temporary one, curled into the old armchair that had stood in one corner of the room for almost forty years.
The house was quiet. Jess had left once the conversation—if it could be called that—had wound down to a weary and confused silence, Petra staring out the window of the living room, her back to the others. Jess hadn’t so much as glanced at her mother as she left the house and hadn’t said farewell to any of them. Well, Elizabeth thought, that was no surprise.
Dinner later on had been a tense affair, over as quickly as it could be. Cam had been obviously nervous, attempting to make her mother and sister smile, trying to normalize a decidedly not-normal situation. For a caregiver like Cam, failing to make people feel comfortable was painful. She had escaped to her room as soon as they had cleared the table and gotten the dishwasher started.
Petra had been uncharacteristically but not unexpectedly quiet, eating swiftly but without any enjoyment as far as Elizabeth could tell. Before they parted for the evening, Petra had reached for her mother’s hand. “It’s all right, Mom,” she had said so softly that Elizabeth wasn’t entirely sure the words had been spoken. She hoped that they had.
Interestingly, as badly as Elizabeth felt for her children, she felt almost as badly for the two men in her life, both of whom had suffered as a result of her actions. For one, Hugh and Chris had effectively lost their friendship. Elizabeth knew for a fact that it had bothered Hugh more than he let on, Chris’s unexplained disappearance from their lives. As for Chris, Elizabeth felt sure that he, too, had felt bereft.
It was an old story: a woman had come between two men, leaving destruction in her wake. Her affair with Chris had hardly mimicked a classic, tragic love triangle like that among Jules, Jim, and Catherine in François Truffaut’s famous film Jules et Jim, but still, a woman had destroyed, however accidentally and without intention, a true friendship, and that was a shame.
It had been so important for Hugh to introduce Elizabeth to Chris before they married. Though he hadn’t said as much, she knew that Hugh had needed his friend’s approval in order to be absolutely sure that he was doing the right thing. Even back then Elizabeth was aware, if dimly, that, in spite of Hugh’s air of bravado and bluster, he had moments of insecurity like everyone else; in fact, those moments, though not frequent, could be fairly severe.
So, one evening Hugh had taken her to a local pub popular with young professionals like Hugh and his officemates, and it was there that he introduced her to his best friend since childhood, second grade, to be precise. And at the very moment Elizabeth laid eyes on Christopher Ryan, she felt something inside her come to life. It should have been a warning sign, a signal that perhaps she was marrying the wrong man, but she had been so caught up in Hugh’s dynamism and charisma, she could barely make a small decision on her own, let alone consider a major question involving her future. Besides, Hugh had presented Chris, who had just completed his PhD and was headed for “big things,” as “one of those celibate academic sorts,” a man whose ideal woman existed on a page in an old book if she existed at all. Not husband or family material. And Elizabeth had wanted a husband and a family.
It wasn’t until several months later, on the eve of the wedding, when she and Chris had sat together on the bench across the village green from the little stone church, that Elizabeth had finally realized the depth of her attraction to her fiancé’s best friend—and that she had finally known for sure that Chris had feelings for her as well.
Still, nothing had happened. Rather, nothing had been spoken, but something certainly had happened. Something subtle but sure.
Elizabeth looked across the room to the clock on her bedside table. It was past two in the morning. Sleep might not come this night. Better to accept the possibility than to argue against it. She considered fetching the diary from the bottom drawer of her dresser, maybe reading a few passages, and then, a terrifying thought struck her and she dashed across the room, retrieved the diary—thank God, it was still there!—and opened the door to her walk-in closet. At the back of the closet was the safe Hugh had insisted on installing. Elizabeth opened the safe and tucked the little red book at the back, behind a bundle of legal documents. She closed the safe, the closet door after it, and slumped back into the old armchair in the corner.
Only then, her hand around the lavender agate pendant at her throat, did she begin to cry.
Chapter 23
Petra stood at her bedroom window and looked out over the front yard. The street was quiet; only one house at the far end of Lavender Lane was lit up. It seemed an age since her mother had shared the truth of Petra’s parentage with the family, but in fact it had been only a few hours since Petra had learned she was not, indeed, who she thought she was. She never had been.
Not surprisingly, Jess hadn’t stayed on for dinner, and Cam had gone to her bedroom right after the meal. Petra assumed her sister had called Ralph and shared the shocking news their mother had revealed. She wondered what words of consolation he had offered. Ralph was a decent guy, in spite of what was looking like an inappropriate crush on his old girlfriend. Wasn’t he? Now, Petra wasn’t sure. If her mother, the one person—along with her father; Hugh Quirk that is—who Petra had always held above the rest of humankind as thoroughly good and honest, could prove to be merely human after all, then anyone . . . Petra sighed. How naïve she had been all her life. No one could transcend the frailties of humankind, not even parents. Too bad.
