Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [113]
And then one cold, cloudless, blue-sky afternoon, ten days before Christmas, when I can’t stand it another second, he walks in the door with a look that tells me that he can’t stand it another second, either. His face is chafed, his nose red, his hair windblown. He shivers as I go to him and unwrap the scarf from his neck.
“Where have you been?” I ask, hoping he was out Christmas shopping for the kids. For me.
“In the Common,” he says.
“What were you doing there?” I ask.
“Walking,” he says.
“Alone?” I ask.
He shakes his head, looking mournful.
“Who were you with?” I say, my stomach dropping.
He looks at me and I hear her name in my head just as he says it aloud. “Valerie Anderson,” he tells me. “Charlie’s mother.” His voice cracks and his eyes appear glassy, as if he might cry, which horrifies me, as I have never seen my husband cry.
“Oh,” I manage to say—or something like that. Some monosyllable to indicate that I heard her name, that I understand what is happening here.
“Tessa,” he says. “I have to tell you something.”
I shake my head out of fear. I know it’s not good, this thing he wants to tell me, this thing I already know deep inside, but don’t want confirmed once and for all. Then he falls to one knee, just as he did the day he proposed.
“No,” I say, as he takes my hands, pressing my knuckles to his cold cheeks. “Tell me you didn’t.”
He stares, motionless, then nods, his chin moving ever so slightly.
“No,” I say again.
He pulls me down beside him, right onto the floor, and whispers, yes, he did.
“Was it just a kiss?” I say, looking into his eyes.
He whispers no, it wasn’t just a kiss.
“Did you have sex with her?” I ask, my voice so calm that it scares me and makes me wonder if I love him. If I ever loved him. If I have a heart at all. Because nothing is breaking inside me. Nothing even hurts.
“Once,” he says. “Just one time.”
But he might as well have said ten or a hundred or a thousand. It might as well have been every night since the day we married. And now tears are welling in his eyes, and he is crying. Something he did not do the last time he was on one knee before me. Something he didn’t do on our wedding day, or the day I stood before him with the plastic stick and pointed to the red lines and told him we were having a baby, or the moment he first held Ruby in his arms and officially became a father, or the moment when he learned we were having a boy, that he was going to have the son he always wanted.
But he is here now, crying. For her. For Valerie Anderson. I reach out and wipe a tear from his cheek, wondering why I am doing it, whether it will be our final tender exchange.
“I’m sorry, Tessa. I’m so sorry,” he says.
“Are you leaving me?” I ask, as if I’m consulting him before checking beef or fish on a reply card.
“No,” he says. “I ended it. Just now.”
“Just now?” I say. “On your walk?”
He nods. “Yes. Just now . . . Tessa . . . I wish I could take it back. I would take it back if I could.”
“But you can’t,” I say, more to myself than to him.
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
I watch him, my head spinning, ticking through all the times I’ve seen this scenario unfold. To the greenest of teenaged girls who believe they will never love again and to silver-haired, wrinkled women without time to find another. To ordinary housewives and to some of the most beautiful, famous women in the world. I conjure a list with almost no effort, as if I’ve been subconsciously preparing for this moment: Rita Hayworth, Jacqueline Kennedy, Mia Farrow, Jerry Hall, Princess Diana, Christie Brinkley, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Aniston, Yet the list provides me no comfort, no reassurance that his act isn’t about me, isn’t a rejection of me, of everything I am.
I think of that theoretical conversation—the “what would you do?” conversation, all the times I had it, including very recently with Romy and April, when, for all I know, Nick could have already slept with her. What if Nick did this unspeakable thing to me?