Hannah gave her a look that suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced but was willing to let her off the hook. “If you think of it at the store, can you get me some deodorant?” she asked, before slipping out of the passenger side. “Please.”
“Sure thing, honey,” Ada said, grateful for something, anything to do.
As she backed out of the driveway and drove toward the grocery store, Ada’s chest filled with sobs that seemed to explode out of her. Never had she cried like this. Frightened of how out of control she felt, she pulled over at the next turn, cut the engine, and put her face in her hands. On cue, her phone lit up with a text from Peter.
PETER:Be home in ten! What a long day! I’m looking forward to seeing you all.
Back at the burger place, when Hannah had said those pivotal words—she’s Dad’s friend—Ada had done her best to cover up what was, to her, a literal disaster. She’d said, “Yes! She is your dad’s friend. Your father and I met her at the same time. I think it was a sailing outing a few years ago? Her husband has died since then, unfortunately. She’s been through a lot.”
This had been good enough for Hannah, who’d returned her attention to her burger as, beside her, Olivia had parroted a line from Macbeth: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
Hannah’s deodorant forgotten, Ada drove downtown and parked behind a line of pretty bars and restaurants, eager to roam the streets and people-watch and forget about herself and her problems. It was a pretty night, maybe seventy-five degrees. It felt good to stretch her legs and peer into restaurant windows to watch as wealthy men and their dates selected small plates or cracked crab legs or indulged in lobster rolls. She figured thatPeter was back home now, maybe competing with Olivia and Kade in their video game, making everyone laugh.
Where had Katrina and Peter met one another?
Although Ada had kept diligent notes regarding Katrina’s mental health and relationships, she was pretty sure she hadn’t written anything about Katrina’s “romcom” meeting with her new boyfriend. Just in case, she sat on a bench and looked over the notes she’d typed up and kept in the cloud. Nope. There was nothing—no clues as to how Katrina had met and fallen in love with Ada’s husband. If that was really what this was.
But she was fairly certain Katrina had shared the origin story with her. There’d been a fender-bender, she was pretty sure. Katrina had backed into something with her car, possibly a fence or a pole, and she’d panicked, starting to cry. Of this, Katrina had said, “After what happened with my husband, it’s like my emotions are all over the place. I can cry at the drop of a hat.” By chance, Katrina’s soon-to-be new boyfriend had been nearby and had seen the whole thing. He’d come running, consoling her, telling her that nothing was wrong. “And it was just a minor dent!” Katrina had said to Ada during their session. “I think he thought I was a delicate flower. But he took me out for coffee, maybe to calm me down, and we got to talking, and we couldn’t shut up.”
Was that really the romantic story that Peter wanted to hang his life on? Didn’t he remember how he and Ada had met? The romance of the opera! The chaos of Manhattan! The beauty of late nights and sidewalk kisses and not knowing what was next! Didn’t that mean anything to him anymore? Or, when he looked at Ada, did he see only his tired wife and the mother of his children?
Suddenly, she remembered going to the city to see Quinn’s show opening night. Peter had had to make a few phone calls.He’d seemed distant. Meanwhile, she’d been so distracted by what could have been, by the life she felt should have been hers.
Was she one of those women who hadn’t noticed the warning signs?
Was she like Katrina had been last year—realizing the marriage she was in was not the one she’d thought?
Ada got up from the bench and walked without knowing where she was going. When she realized that Peter had texted her four more times, asking where she was, she turned off her phone. She’d never done that and knew it was hugely irresponsible. Immediately, it was like she could breathe again. When she turned the corner, hoping to head back to her car and continue driving around without an end in sight, she heard the sound of a piano, followed by the howl of a jazz singer. A shiver ran down her spine. Before she could stop herself, she redirected her steps toward the little basement jazz bar, a dark and shadowy place she’d never gone into. She opened the wooden door and stepped into the blue-lit room, where ten round tables were positioned in front of a stage. There was the howling woman, voluptuous in her dark dress, her curly hair wild. A man played the piano, and another played a drum set very quietly so as not to overpower the singer.
It was music that seemed to touch Ada’s soul. So different from opera, yet still filled with ache and sorrow and anger and pain. Drawn to it, she sat down at an open table and ordered a glass of wine. It was brought to her in no time at all. After the first song, she realized that there were other loners in the jazz bar, people who looked just as sad and lost as she felt. Were they here for the same reason she was?
The jazz singer was good, but nothing compared to how Ada had once been. Back in the old days, when Ada’s arrogance was the only thing half as strong as her voice, she might have asked the bar staff if she could sing for a while, improving along withthe piano and drums to create something brand-new. Opera had been her everyday, her musical mission, but all other music forms had been hers for the taking as well.
When music had been taken from her, she’d had to start over completely.
She stayed for seven beautiful songs, nursing her glass of wine and trying not to think about Peter and Katrina. Some of the ballads brought tears to her eyes. Others demanded something more of her, asking her, “Is this really how you want to live your life?” When the jazz singer erupted into higher notes, Ada was so overwhelmed that she stood, her heart hammering. She had to confront Peter. She had to ask him, point-blank, if he was having an affair.
But what if he said yes?
She sat down, looked at the bottom of her empty wineglass, and tried to picture the future. Her stomach gurgled. She imagined driving Kade and Olivia to their dad’s place and taking turns with Peter to visit Hannah at Vassar. She imagined Hannah telling her new college friends that her parents were going through a divorce. Ada put her face in her hands and thought,No, there has to be a way out of this.
But why did Ada think she was better than a broken marriage? Because she was a therapist? Therapists got divorced all the time!
After she paid for her wine, Ada left the jazz bar and walked to her car, where she turned on an old song she’d once loved and drove into the night. The stringy, weird voice that now came from her throat couldn’t find the pitch very well, and she soon stopped singing and cut off the speakers. Where on this beautiful island could she go but home? She had no one. No friend. The only person who’d understand her plight, ironically, was probably Katrina, and Katrina was the last person she wanted to see right now.
When Ada pulled into the driveway, all the lights in the house were off save for the one in Hannah’s bedroom. It was nearly midnight, which felt impossible. When was the last time she’d stayed out this late by herself? She crept into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water and listen to the house sigh in the late-night breeze.
Ada knocked on Hannah’s bedroom door gently, but Hannah didn’t respond. Sensing she was out, Ada opened up and turned off Hannah’s light, just as she’d done a thousand times before.
Down the hall, she opened her bedroom door to find Peter already fast asleep, just where he always was, bundled up in sheets but with his feet poking out of the end of the bed. Ada was moved by how much she loved him. Without trying to, her mind flashed with images of Peter, Ada, Hannah, Kade, and Olivia on the night of the graduation party, dancing in the waves.
But she couldn’t get into bed with him. Not tonight. Not when her heart felt so close to breaking.
Instead, she slipped down the hallway to the music room, where she collapsed on the guest bed and fell into a strange slumber. Nightmares crawled through her mind. When she woke up before dawn, she was grateful to find that everyone in the house was still asleep. She went downstairs, prepared a pot of coffee, and waited. And when Peter appeared a few minutes after seven, rubbing his eyes and kissing her good morning, she asked, “How did you sleep?” just as she always did.
“Like a stone,” he said. “And you? I didn’t hear you come to bed.” He furrowed his brow and filled a “World’s Best Dad” mug with coffee. “Where were you, anyway? I tried to call.”
“I ran into an old friend downtown,” Ada lied. “We went to see some jazz at that little jazz club. The basement one?”
