“Being a mother was more important.”

  “What does that even mean?” Nathan reached for her hands. “My mother never left the way you did. But there were times when she was so bored with her life that she might as well have been gone. I never knew her when she was passionate about something. I never learned how to fight for what I wanted. I didn’t have examples of that. But being around you these last few months has made me into a man I never knew existed. And if Faith is as brilliant and brave as you say she is, it’s because you raised her.”

  Rachel could feel herself recoiling from his praise. She was a cautionary tale, not a source of inspiration. And never a good mother. But how would she even know what that meant? The only thing Ramona taught her was that good mothers didn’t leave. But now here was Nathan, someone’s son, telling her there was more to good parenting than being present. She could be a safe place. She could be a warrior. She could be the roots that her daughter craved.

  Rachel felt like he’d rummaged through the truth of her and cut away the heaviest parts. Her quiet “Thank you” felt inadequate. She climbed into his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and repeated, “Thank you,” with her love woven through the words. Nathan pressed his ear to her chest. To her heart. Then he closed his eyes and listened.

  Nathan woke up twice that night. The first time was on the tail end of a dream. He was in Mexico, swimming with his cousins. They called him flaco, like when he was smaller, and warned him about swimming out too far. “Come back, or you’re going to miss it,” they yelled. “You’ll be too late.”

  He tried yelling back, “Too late for what?” but he couldn’t speak and swim at the same time. He’d just decided to turn back when the ocean pulled him under.

  He opened his eyes expecting a blue haze of salty sea, but instead he saw Rachel’s hair splayed against the satin pillowcase he’d bought for her. He slid a hand around her waist and moved closer, until her back was against his chest. She woke like he did, with the grogginess of an interrupted dream, and he wedged against her until every inch of his body touched some part of her skin. He’d never fallen asleep seared to another person before. It was sweaty, hot, and addictively uncomfortable. He didn’t want to move away. He didn’t want it to end.

  The second time he woke was to the sound of a door slamming. He reached for Rachel, but the bed was empty. His stomach did a hard flip. Then he saw her standing next to the window, staring with clear agitation.

  “I think your brother is here.”

  That’s when Nathan knew that it was over. Like in his dream, they had swum too far.

  He put on jeans and grabbed a T-shirt. Rachel started to follow, but he shook his head and pressed a finger to his lips. Maybe Joe thought he was alone. Maybe he would assume Nathan brought a date to the lake without telling anyone. The maybes ran through his mind as he took the stairs down to the living room two at a time, but Joe’s expression killed them instantly. His eyes were flint. He said, “Put your shirt on,” with a coldness that Nathan had only heard once in his life before.

  Joe had a pen that Abuelita had given him when he graduated from college. It was a monogrammed Montblanc that he carried around like a witch cradling a magic wand. He would use it to forge their mother’s signature when Nathan brought home another failing test grade. Nathan had loved that pen. He loved the onyx color and the clean lines of ink it left on paper. He had loved how Joe’s penmanship would gleam silver in the light as he wrote out their shared lie. And most of all, he had loved the fact that every now and then Joe would let him use it. He would entrust this beautiful thing that symbolized all his accomplishments to his little brother without a warning to be careful, or to put it back where it belonged. And Nathan had been careful—right up until the day he wasn’t. It took him three days to finally admit that he lost it. Joe hadn’t yelled. He’d stared at Nathan with stony eyes and said, “It’s just a fucking pen,” in that same icy tone.

  That look was worse than yelling. It was Joe, giving up and calcifying his expectations of his little brother. I guess this is who you are. And standing in front of Joe at the lake house, Nathan couldn’t argue. Instead, he shrugged into his shirt.

  Joe looked past him, at the stairs. “Is she here?”

  “Is who—”

  “Don’t lie to me. Matt Abbott told Mia that Rachel was missing. She asked if I’d seen you.” He finally met Nathan’s eyes. “I said of course not. What would Nate have to do with Rachel Abbott going missing? She probably thinks I’m an idiot.”

  “Mia knows?” Nathan winced at how guilty it sounded. “What did Matt say to her?”

  Joe’s face was red. “You mean does he know that his wife’s cheating on him with the local laundry boy? Pretty sure he doesn’t.”

  Nathan’s guilt vanished. If Joe wasn’t pulling punches, neither would he. “He’s the one having an affair. I saw him with his mistress at the anniversary party.”

  “And that makes it okay?” Joe shook his head. “What the hell has she gotten you into?”

  Joe looked up at the sound of footsteps. Nathan turned to see Rachel, dressed in the baggy sweatshirt and leggings he’d bought for her. “You can ask me,” she said. “My answers will probably disappoint you, but it’s not fair to take it out on him.”

  Joe shook his head. “The whole way up here, I didn’t believe it. Mom said you two were close, and I thought, well that’s great. My brother needs a mentor. But then I got the notification about the alarm out here being disabled. And then I remembered that Nate’s seeing some woman, and it’s complicated. You two are terrible at covering your tracks.”

  “We weren’t trying to,” Rachel said. She walked down the stairs and stopped before she reached Nathan. He wanted to build a wall between her and his brother. “Nathan’s right, this wasn’t an affair.”

  Nathan could sense Joe winding up to say something cruel and raised his hand. “We didn’t come out here on purpose. It was car trouble. I blew a tire on the east highway.”

  “That was Friday,” Joe said. “It doesn’t take thirty-six hours to fix a tire.”

  Nathan shifted to one side, blocking his view of Rachel. “The rest is none of your business.”

  Joe laughed. “You’re kidding, right? What did you two plan to do, run away together?” Joe paused. “You can’t do that, Nate,” he said, his anger fading into concern. “You can’t disappear again. Not now. Dad—” He swallowed hard and looked at Rachel. “We need him here.”

  Rachel touched Nathan’s shoulder. He reached for her hand, but she stepped past him to face Joe. “We’re not running away,” she said. “And I’m sorry about your father.”

  “If you’re sorry, maybe don’t wreck what’s left of our family before he’s gone.” Joe looked at Nathan. “What do you think will happen when word gets out that you’ve been fucking Matt Abbott’s wife? That guy is on every cable news show in the country. So is she.” He flung a hand at Rachel. “They’ll rip you both apart along with anyone else who gets caught in the crossfire. Me. Mom. Beto.” He looked at Rachel. “You have a daughter—”

  “That’s enough,” Nathan yelled. Joe looked shocked. Nathan had never yelled at his brother before. “Joe, you need to leave.”

  “No,” Rachel said, facing Nathan. “I should leave. If Matt called Mia, it means he knows something. I have to go.”

  Nathan could barely process what was happening. He sputtered, “No. No, don’t,” and moved toward her, but she stepped back and looked at Joe.

  “Can I take your car?”

  Joe offered her his keys. Nathan thought of what Beto said, how he didn’t think before he reached for their mother. That’s what had stopped him from losing her. Holding on.

  Nathan grabbed Rachel’s hand. “Please don’t do this.” If his brother weren’t there, he might have been on his knees. “Stay. We can figure this out. We’ll go back, together.”

  Rachel didn’t look at him. She stared at the floor, rubbing her eyes hard enough to mark her skin. “You have to let me go.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was six in the morning when Rachel finally arrived home. The stillness she encountered when she walked into the foyer made her uneasy. She’d been expecting fireworks. Shouting. Instead, Lenora had quietly taken her bag of dirty clothes and asked if she wanted coffee. Rachel declined because while she was pretty sure Lenora wasn’t trying to poison her, the whole situation was strange enough to make her cautious.

  She found Matt in the kitchen, hunched over a cast-iron skillet. He never wanted her to cook for him when they were dating. He’d pour her a glass of wine, tell her to put her feet up, and listen to stories about her café customers while he struggled with a recipe. The food was terrible. But it was a lot easier to choke down underseasoned vegetables when it was someone’s love for you on the plate.

  Rachel sat at the kitchen island, unnerved as he served her charred bacon with runny scrambled eggs. She took a bite to be kind, but it turned to ash on her tongue. She decided to abandon kindness and get to the point instead. “Why did you call Mia?”

  “I was worried.” Matt poked and glared at the food like it had betrayed him. “The outdoor stops got canceled because of the storm. When I came home, no one knew where you were. I thought something might have happened to you. That you’d been in an accident, or someone had taken you.” He shook his head. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was just frantic about my missing wife.”

  He said it smoothly, like the last few months had never happened.

  “I’m not your wife.”

  Matt poked his eggs again. “We need to talk about that. I want to make a new deal. To save our marriage.”

  She thought he’d exhausted ways to hurt her. But now she knew he’d probably always have that power. They made vows to each other, trusted each other enough to build a life. And he’d waited until now, when they could barely make eye contact without wincing, to decide it was something worth saving.

  Rachel grabbed the edge of the table so she wouldn’t throw eggs in his face. Matt held up his hands and said, “Hold on,” like she’d already taken aim at his head. “I know you’re angry. And so was I, for a long time. But I think that was the problem. I was angry because I thought you’d abandoned me. You seemed so unhappy, that it was like you’d completely checked out of this marriage. But I think I was the one who abandoned you.”

  Matt explained how her disappearance had put things in perspective. “This is our family, Rachel. We owe it to each other, to Faith, to at least try.” He started to reach for her, but she flinched, and he splayed his hand against the table instead. “I don’t expect you to forgive me right away. But I’d like to work on earning your trust again.”

  If he’d said the same thing a few months ago, the night of the birthday party, she might have listened. She might have handed over her heart, again and again, because that’s what “for better, for worse” meant. Matt had always been good with words—pitch perfect and so sincere that you felt them in your stomach. But he wasn’t safe. He was a fairy tale she’d repeated to herself enough times to forget it wasn’t real. She’d never make that mistake again.

  Rachel stood, dumped out her food, and walked out of the kitchen. He didn’t follow her. She went upstairs and called Julia, who was equally skeptical about Matt’s sudden change of heart. “Herman Abbott responded to my request for financial records instead of Matt. They’re closing ranks, so watch your back.”

  She was right. An hour later, Rachel’s father-in-law was on her doorstep. Herman’s smile faltered when she skipped her usual polite greeting.

  “Matt isn’t here.”

  “I’m actually here to see you.”

  She paused. “I was about to head out.”

  His eyes went from her face to her bare feet. The last time he saw her without makeup was probably the family beach trip when she was twenty-five. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “I also don’t want to talk to you.”

  “That I believe.” He placed a hand against the door. “Please, Rachel. A few minutes of your time.”

  His voice was even and polite in a way some people found seductive. Rachel wasn’t fooled. He was pretending to ask permission while his hand blocked the door. She didn’t have the strength to argue.

  “Are you going to stand there?” he asked as he sat on the sofa.

  “You’re wasting minutes.”

  “Okay.” He laced his fingers. “You’re angry. It’s understandable.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My son’s stupidity.”

  “You know he cheated on me?”

  “Yes, I do. I also know that you agreed to stay until the election.” He studied her face. “How much did you ask for?”

  She sighed. He was sitting there, calm as a frog on a lily pad, asking how much hush money his son paid his wife to keep his secrets. This family made her sick. “Not enough.”

  He smirked. “When it’s for your dignity, it never is.” He scanned the room, eyes resting on a framed wedding photo. “I’m impressed you kept things together this long. I never would have known it was so bad if he hadn’t told me. My son can be very shortsighted about his own best interests. He only thinks about what he wants in the moment. At one point that was you.”

  “Which you never approved of.”

  “Not at first, no.” He paused. “But I was wrong about you, Rachel. I know I should have said something before now, but sentiment doesn’t come naturally to me. You’ve been a good influence on him. Calming. Rational, when he lost focus.” He leaned forward. “When we poll Matt as an unmarried candidate, he’s unelectable. No one trusts him. Not without you there. Beautiful. Respectable. You convince voters he’s more than just another trust fund, Ivy League kid.”

  The revelation turned her stomach. She should have known Matt’s change of heart was prompted by the numbers on some spreadsheet. “Why are you here?”

  “To fix his mistake.” Herman leaned back and crossed his legs. “Neither of you has any idea how to negotiate. He should have made the initial offer. And you should have demanded enough to make following through worth it. You have no incentive to keep your word.”

  “I won’t tell anyone about his affair.”

  “But you won’t stay either.” He tilted his head. “Will you?”

  It was like being pinned beneath a microscope. She needed to get rid of him before he started plucking away her defenses like the wings on a dead fly. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Because you’ve decided money doesn’t matter,” he said. “But what about Faith? Matt told me how well she’s doing at that expensive culinary school. And that apartment in New York? It’d be a shame to lose all that so suddenly.”

  His nonchalance was terrifying. She eyed a nearby vase. It was light enough to throw but heavy enough to do damage. “Are you threatening her?”

  Herman looked insulted. “Faith is family. I don’t threaten my family. I help them.” He pulled out a white envelope from his suit jacket. “This is an agreement, already signed.”

  Rachel stared at the envelope. Deciding whether to accept it felt like haggling over her soul. But her curiosity won. She snatched it from his hand and pried it open. The amount made her gasp. “Oh my god.”

  She looked up at him, and he stared back, inscrutable. “You’ll stay through the congressional primary next year and we’ll negotiate an additional agreement after. You and me. Matt will have nothing to do with this.”

  She wanted to fling it back into his face. She wanted to have never seen the trust agreement, with all the zeros under Faith’s name. But her fingers tightened around the envelope, like they had a will of their own. “I need to think about it.”

  Herman stood and straightened his jacket. “I would expect nothing less. Like I said, Rachel. You were always the smart one.”

  Nathan had expected Joe to leave for the office as soon as they reached the laundromat. Even on a Sunday. Instead, he stood in the middle of Nathan’s apartment, scowling at the air. His brother was never this quiet. It went on for so long that Nathan finally lost patience. “Is this silent treatment some kind of punishment?”

  “She’s a distraction,” Joe said. Nathan started to protest, but Joe lifted a hand to stop him. “It’s what you do. Escape somewhere…” He glanced at Nathan’s sketchbook. “Into something, so you don’t have to feel anything.”

  “You’re wrong.” Joe had it backward. He felt too much, all the emotions, firing on every cell at once. “I’m in love with her.”

  Joe looked pained, like it was the worst thing Nathan could have said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  That’s when Nathan realized that a part of his brother, the romantic, was slowly being poisoned by his two broken hearts.

  “This family needs to heal,” Joe continued. “You don’t get to flit around infatuated, while the rest of us are putting in the work. Not this time.”

  Nathan thought about his last fight with Beto. How he’d frozen when confronted with his father’s suffering. The next day he was in New York with Rachel, pretending it never happened. “The trip was last minute,” Nathan said. “I wasn’t trying to run away. I just needed a break to get my head on straight.”

  Joe laughed, and it was so sad and bitter that Nathan’s throat tightened. “A break? I’ve lost my wife. I might lose my kid. The livelihood of our entire family—no, half this goddamn city—is about to be on me!” He flung a hand at Nathan’s chest. “And now I’ve got you, trying to make a terrible situation immensely fucking worse, by going down in flames where the whole world can see.”

  Nathan could feel himself retreating, his body instinctually trying to escape his brother’s wrath. Joe was right. He’d been hiding from this. Cowering on the other side of town, behind a wall of fucking dryers. “I’m sorry,” he said, even though the words felt thin and inadequate. “You’re right, it was selfish. I’ve just always been—” Nathan stopped, because he’d nearly said alone. But it wasn’t true. Because Joe had been there. As always. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31