Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,119

to eat for dinner and whether they needed paper towels. They both understood this without discussing it.

Elisabeth found it reassuring in a way. Things were rocky, but neither of them was going anywhere. At least not yet. She missed Andrew, though. He was there, in her presence, but not the same.

Since the baby, since the move, they’d had spats about money, and their parents, and whether to have another child, and who was doing more. The things they had heard married people argued about, and yet she remained surprised when it happened to them. But they always made up quickly.

This was something else.

Every time she allowed herself to think of how she had jeopardized them for her ungrateful sister, Elisabeth wanted to scream or cry or beg him to forgive her. Andrew kept asking why she’d done it. She didn’t tell him that the decision had been a selfish one, that she couldn’t bear to give her father the satisfaction of Charlotte coming to him for help. When she thought of this now, Elisabeth could see how deranged her own thinking had been. Had the timing lined up, she might have tried to blame it on pregnancy hormones or postpartum psychosis or something. As it was, she’d given her sister the money long before all that, and so she could only sit with the fact that she had done a stupid thing for a stupid reason.

She hadn’t spoken to any of her family members since Christmas, which wouldn’t have been unusual under normal circumstances, but seemed noteworthy given how they’d left things.

In mid-January, Charlotte sent a text: I’m doing a spiritual cleanse for the New Year. To that end, I want to say I’m sorry for the misunderstanding and I hope you know I still intend to pay you back someday.

Elisabeth read it over and over again. She sent a screenshot to Nomi. They decided her sister needed an editor. If Charlotte had simply said she was sorry, without calling her own devious behavior a misunderstanding. If she hadn’t mentioned the cleanse or added that amorphous someday.

Elisabeth didn’t reply. By then, she knew for certain what she had probably known for a long time but been unable to admit to herself. The money was never coming back. Their savings were gone.

A week after Charlotte’s text, a letter from their father’s accountant arrived. It contained a check for three hundred thousand dollars, made out to Gil. The letter specified that the money was to be used for his education and living expenses.

Elisabeth was enraged. Even more so because her father had involved Gil.

“It just happens to be the exact amount Charlotte owes me,” Elisabeth said.

“He’s trying to find a way around that,” Andrew said. “To respect your wishes, sort of.”

The check now sat on her dresser, a question mark. Andrew thought she should accept it. Elisabeth couldn’t believe he would ask her to. But she told him she would consider, if it would help fix things between them.

The situation at home was bad enough already when, the first week of February, Andrew received an email telling him he had not been selected to attend the conference in Denver he had been planning on for months. For a day or two, he seemed adrift, but then he doubled down, as if he would prove them wrong by sheer force of will. He was working harder than ever now, staying even later at work. Sometimes Elisabeth wondered if he was just trying to escape her.

She was pleased he had taken Monday off so they could stay an extra day in the city.

“I made an appointment for a couple’s massage on Monday morning,” she told him as they finished packing on Saturday.

Gil sat on the floor, pulling each item from the suitcase as soon as she placed it inside.

Andrew scrunched up his nose.

“A couple’s massage? You really want to?”

“It’s not for me and you, it’s for me and Nomi.”

“What time? I made us an appointment for noon that day.”

“With who?”

“Dr. Chen?”

He said it that way, like he wasn’t sure.

“You’re kidding.”

In all the months they had spent doing IVF, Andrew had never once been the one to contact the clinic. So this was why he wanted to go to the city, she thought. Not to smooth things over with her, but to accelerate the new-baby conversation. Or maybe it was both.

In one of their many arguments since Christmas, Andrew reminded her yet again that he had only agreed to IVF in the first