She went inside and found Addie waiting for her. The girls were not in sight.
“I expected to be questioned about Logan,” she said.
“I think Livvie is on the phone with her boyfriend, and Amber wandered off. So, Logan seems very nice. How long have you been keeping him a secret?”
Justine sat down on the sectional. “I don’t really know how this dating business goes,” Justine said. “I didn’t mean to keep him secret. After a few months of seeing him, I thought I’d better come clean. I’m completely surprised to be dating. Not only didn’t I expect to, I wasn’t looking to.”
“No surprise to me,” Addie said. “You always land on your feet.”
Justine held her tongue. Was that how Adele really saw it? That after what had happened to her, a few dates with a nice guy was landing on her feet? It was going to take a lot more than that to erase the agony of having the man you’d loved and relied on for so long betray you.
She tilted her head slightly, listening. “What’s that sound?” she asked.
Adele shrugged. “Maybe Olivia on the phone?”
“I’m going to check.”
She went up the stairs and listened at Livvie’s door. She heard her talk, then laugh. And still there was that sound. She pushed open Amber’s door.
Her daughter was facedown on her bed, her cries muffled in the pillow. Justine sat on the edge of the bed and gently touched her back. “Hey, bunny rabbit. What’s the matter? Did something happen? Did something someone say upset you?”
She shook her head, rolled over and wiped her eyes. She sat up on her bed.
“What is it? Did meeting Logan upset you? Did I make a mistake?”
“No,” she said with a hiccup of emotion. “He’s nice.”
“So why are you crying?”
Her face contorted. “It’s like I lost my dad!”
“Because of Logan? Honey, I’m not going to trade your dad for Logan. Logan is just a new friend.”
“But my dad is gone,” she whimpered. “It’s almost Thanksgiving. He moved in with her last March. He won’t see us without including her and she’s a creep. Why does she even want to be around us? We don’t want to know her at all. And he’ll never come home!”
“Oh honey, honey... Listen, there’s something you have to understand—your dad left me, not you. Your dad and I won’t be a married couple again. I can’t. I just can’t. I don’t understand this business of him insisting you include his girlfriend—it’s crazy to me. Your dad and I won’t be getting back together. But it’s not because of Logan. It’s because your dad loves another woman. He walked away from everything we built together. He crushed my heart and yours and Livvie’s. I can’t let him do that again.”
She thought about the things she’d tried to keep from the kids—the early mornings of throwing up, the nights she couldn’t sleep or woke up every hour, the mornings of struggling with her makeup so the sleepless nights wouldn’t show on her face. She lost so much weight, she looked emaciated. A doctor friend asked her if she could do with some Xanax, but she was afraid of becoming dependent.
In retrospect, that black hole had passed relatively quickly—a few months. But she had thought about nothing else but her husband and his mistress, obsessed with the betrayal. She thought about all those women who caught their husbands in an affair and didn’t have careers, couldn’t afford to break free.
“We lost him forever,” Amber said. “It’s not our fault, but we lost him.”
“Not really, honey. I think your dad somehow lost himself. He wasn’t feeling strong or important, I guess. And the woman he found made him feel important.”
“But she’s a creep! She’s weird and kind of mean.”
Justine was shaking her head. “I can’t do anything about that. He made his choice. I think in time he might discover he made a bad choice, but it’s a final choice.”