so quickly. From all accounts it won’t be long before they are living together.When Jess talks about her, Daff listens and murmurs validation of whatever it is Jess is saying. “She’s so annoying,” Jess will say, and Daff will say, “I understand it must be annoying for you at times.”
“She’s taken my daddy away from me,” Jess will cry, during those times when she’s overwhelmed and tearful. “I know it’s hard,” Daff will murmur, rubbing her back. “But no one can take your daddy away, he loves you more than anything and nothing’s ever going to change that.”
“So where was he at the baseball game last week?” Jess looks up at her mother. “Where was he at the school concert? If he loved me so much why wasn’t he there?”
“He has work,” Daff says, but she wonders the same thing.
How is it she is the one doing everything—she washes Jess’s clothes, makes sure her homework is done on time, packs her snacks, shows up for all the school events, the plays, the class performances, the baseball games, the ballet workshops, liaises with her friends’ parents, never misses a single beat—yet she is the one Jess hates most of the time?
Why is it her father, who may spend time with her every other weekend but doesn’t do any of the day-to-day stuff that moves Jess through her life, doesn’t appear at any of the events because he’s too busy working, wouldn’t know Jess’s teacher if she sidled up to him at a singles bar . . . why is it he can do no wrong?
This is when she resents him. She is working so hard, doing so much, while Richard does so little, and still Jess has him on a pedestal.
Daff sighs and goes into the kitchen. Once upon a time she would have knocked on Jess’s door to see if there was anything she needed, but Blue October is already pounding from her room, so Daff opens the fridge and pours herself a glass of wine.
Chapter Ten
Daniel is surviving on a mixture of fear and adrenaline. He has promised Dr. Posner he will explore this further, not rock the boat just yet, wait until he and Bee are with Dr. Posner to tell her, if, in fact, that is the route he chooses, but now that his secret is finally out, now that he has told someone, he wants to stop living this lie immediately, wants to be able to be who he really is.
Every night when he parks his Land Rover next to Bee’s Mercedes wagon in the garage, walks in the mudroom door of their beautiful center-hall colonial, puts his briefcase down, walks through into their huge kitchen where the girls are curled up on the sofa at one end, watching Hannah Montana on the HDTV flat screen that sits above the stone fireplace, he feels his heart pound, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can pretend.
He is not sleeping at night. He lies awake for hours, sometimes looking at Bee, wondering how he can tell her, what words he will use, so scared of the pain he will cause her. He loves her. He just doesn’t love her the way he needs to love her. But she is his partner and the thought of hurting her, causing her pain, is almost unbearable.
Bee is so strong, but he can see this destroying her. And what about her friends? The close circle of friends Bee has found while he is at work, the people they hang out with at barbecues in the summer, meet in town for riotous dinners at Zest. Not that any of the men are necessarily his type—Daniel has always felt more comfortable with the wives—but he has tried to fit in, has done a pretty good job, he thinks, even making sure he knows the latest sports news before they get together so he can pretend to be interested.
And everyone is interested in property, so they all find common ground. Most of the husbands work in finance, but all of them want to invest in real estate, build houses, do what Daniel is doing, and they all know everything about the real estate in the town, spending Sundays going to Open Houses and inspecting layouts and finishes, scouring the local paper and memorizing the property transfers by heart. Real estate, Daniel has decided, is porn for married people.
“How about that house on Old Hill Road?” one will say. “Can you believe it’s on