kid thing. I think it’s why he hates going home,” Kenzie said. “So he doesn’t have to deal with it. With her.”
“Why don’t they split up?”
“He’s afraid she’ll kill herself.”
J.R.’s head snapped up. “Really? He said that?”
“Not in so many words,” she said. “But she’s pretty messed up. He told me once, after we’d had too much wine, that she was hospitalized a month or so after the kid disappeared. She ran a bath, took a bunch of pills. He found her just in time. They kept her in the psych ward for five days.”
She couldn’t read the look on J.R.’s face, but it was making her uneasy. “What?”
“There’s no way they’re going to last,” he said, and it sounded like he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to her. “What they’ve been through, it’s too much. At some point they’re going to separate the whole way. It sounds like they’re getting there. I’m thinking there could be…” He paused, choosing his words. “… an opportunity in it for you.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“Maybe this is the one you hitch your wagon to.”
Kenzie laughed. “How high are you? Since when do you believe in marriage?”
“I don’t believe in marriage. I believe in money. And he’s got a lot of it. More than any of the others.”
“I don’t love him, J.R.,” she said, but what she really meant was He doesn’t love me. She didn’t want to say it out loud. She didn’t want J.R. to know she cared.
He shrugged. “So? To quote the legendary Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it?”
“I’m not a homewrecker.”
“Gold digger, homewrecker, same thing.”
No, they’re not. At all. The one term Kenzie has never liked is homewrecker. She is not a homewrecker, and neither was the woman her father left them for.
Men wreck their own homes.
She understands that J.R. is trying to help her get whatever she can out of this, because someday, this affair will end. Affairs always do, one way or another. It will either morph into something “real,” in which case Derek will leave his wife and ask Kenzie to be with him forever, or it will fade out, and Derek will choose to stay with the woman he married. Either way, what they’re doing right now won’t go on forever. It isn’t sustainable.
Especially since Derek still loves his wife.
Derek rarely talks about his family with Kenzie, but he dreams about them, and his son, all the time. During their trip to New York, he once cried out Sebastian’s name so loudly in the middle of the night that it woke her up in a panic. She turned on the light to find Derek thrashing in bed beside her, his hair matted from sweat. Sebastian. Sebastian. Bash. Come to Daddy. Please.
“Wake up,” she said, shaking him. “Derek, wake up, you’re having a nightmare.”
His eyes flew open, and as he regained consciousness, his face crumpled. “Oh god, I couldn’t get to him. He was right there, and I couldn’t get to him in time.”
“Shhh…” She turned the light back off and settled in beside him. “It’s okay. It was just a dream. Try and go back to sleep.”
In the morning, they never spoke of it. She wasn’t even sure he remembered, and she never brought it up.
But he says Marin’s name, too, sometimes. Not often. Every once in a while. In fact, the first time Kenzie ever heard him speak his wife’s name out loud was the night after his nightmare. His tone was anguished, his words clear.
And what he said was, Marin, I’m sorry. Oh god, Marin. I’m so sorry.
Chapter 17
Three days, and still no texts from Derek.
Kenzie thinks about him as she wipes down the table by the window with Lysol and paper towels, because a small child vomited on it a few minutes earlier. She thinks of this as Derek’s table, because this is where he always sits. He likes to people-watch, and keep an eye on his precious Batmobile. He’ll never admit it, but he loves it when people gawk at the Maserati. Kenzie was sitting with him the afternoon two college girls stopped on the sidewalk and took a furtive look around. One posed against the car while the other snapped a photo. Then they switched places, and hurried off laughing, no doubt psyched to have something to post on Instagram later.
She checks her phone, ignoring the reminder email from her mother’s care facility that the next month’s payment is now due.