because he was good with people. He was the fun and entertaining one. But it was probably when they moved in together, right after college, that she slowly began to give away any decision-making power in the partnership. And once she became a lawyer, she began to defer to him lest he feel that masculine bite from being the less successful of the two.
When she thought about it, he was quite eager not to work. She had always assumed they would both work and find a nanny or a reasonable day care. She had no problem after thinking about it. And in practice, it seemed to work. It seemed so modern and progressive.
Oh, but the neighborhood women loved him. He showed up at all the school events, was usually the only man to volunteer in the classroom, went on school field trips, had coffee with the stay-at-home mothers. They used to fuss over him, comparing him to their working husbands who never pitched in. Justine had wanted to say, “He has a cleaning lady, you know,” but she said nothing. And Scott had many limitations—he refused to do laundry and he wasn’t very helpful with homework. “You’re the teacher,” he always said.
So, what did he actually do? He took care of the kids and he was very good at it. He tidied up the house after they were safely dropped off at school. He paid the bills and managed their retirement funds. Those funds she now needed to get up to speed on.
Five years ago Scott had received a text at 5:00 a.m. and she’d wrangled the phone away from him to read, Coffee later? on the screen. It was from one of the elementary school teachers, a former teacher of Olivia’s. They’d had a big fight over that. She told him he should not be texting with or meeting a woman for coffee. It was inappropriate! So he said, “Fine, I’ll tell her. Consider it stopped here and now.” Justine asked a few times if that nonsense had stopped, and he offered her his phone. She didn’t take him up on the offer. She wanted to believe him.
Now, suddenly, she wondered if there had been inappropriate liaisons all along. She tried to envision Scott kissing a woman in a public place, and it made her sick to her stomach. She had to go home and face him. She’d talked to him twice today and he said he wasn’t planning to go anywhere in the evening, so she’d have to wear a poker face. She could plead a headache. She was in the mood for a very large martini but she’d be careful; a too large martini could loosen her tongue and cause her to scream, “You’ve been cheating on me, you lowlife son of a bitch!”
There was no one to talk to about this. It was important that while Logan Danner did his investigating, she not tip off Scott. She knew a couple of women from work who had gone through messy divorces, but she hadn’t paid close attention because she’d believed that was never going to happen to her.
She thought about Addie. She wished she could talk to her but felt she couldn’t show any vulnerability or weakness to her younger sister. Yet the circumstances they both suddenly faced called to her. They had both become isolated—Addie because she chose to take care of their parents and Justine because she worked, worked, worked and let Scott decide how they’d spend their time. Even among their couple friends, she didn’t have a lot of time to spend with the women.
Addie and Justine had become loners. For Justine it was almost twenty-five years ago, after passing the bar and settling into her job. But for Addie, just eight, when she came home from school with a baby bump and never went back.
Justine was overwhelmed by the feeling that she had failed everyone. She’d failed her daughters, who would be devastated by this family crisis; she’d failed Adele, to whom she should have shown more support. And she’d failed herself. Here she was, fifty-two and had never felt quite so alone. She had done nothing wrong and yet couldn’t escape the feeling that everything was all her fault.
* * *
Scott was snoring loudly as Justine came to bed. It was something