“Cool. He texted me, too,” Ada lied.
Since that night at the jazz club, she and Peter had had very little contact. She’d been sleeping full-time in the music room down the hall, scarcely ever putting the sofa back together again when she woke up because she knew it would only be a few hours before she was back in it. But she was always the first person in the kitchen and the last person off to bed, which meant her kids were none the wiser about their parents’ relationship, or lack thereof.
During their drive back home that fateful night, Peter had asked, “Do you want to know how it happened?” Ada had said she didn’t. After a long and anxiety-ridden silence, she and Peter had agreed to keep news of their “mess” to themselves until they figured out what to do. They’d wanted to preserve their final months as a family. They hadn’t wanted Hannah to feel pushed out of a bad situation at home. Without telling Ada first, Peter had called Katrina and canceled his trip to the Caribbean, which had felt like a brief triumph. He’d told the kids he’d missedhis flight to the orthodontist conference and didn’t want to go anyway. The kids, tied up in their own lives and video games, had shrugged it off.
But just because he’d canceled his vacation with Katrina didn’t mean he’d stopped seeing her.
Now, Hannah’s new roommate, Adelaide, and her family came in, all smiles and Midwestern accents. Ada and Kathy began discussing campus safety with Adelaide’s mother, and they planned when to visit. When the mother learned that Ada was a therapist, she was excited, saying, “Adelaide wants to study psychology. Don’t you, Adelaide?”
Adelaide grimaced and looked at Hannah. “I don’t know what I want to do.”
“Neither do I,” Hannah admitted, and the two of them shared a secretive smile.
They were eighteen-year-old girls, out to discover themselves and the world.
Now that Hannah was all moved in and ready for the first week of hangouts, friend meetings, and introductions to campus life before classes began, Ada convinced everyone to go for a walk-through of the campus. Peter was hours away, and they had time to kill. Now that she thought about it, she should have told Peter not to come at all. His late arrival meant that they’d all have to stay near Vassar for the night, which only extended the pain of this goodbye.
“I noticed that a lot of dads aren’t here today,” Kathy said to Hannah as they drove to a nearby parking lot, where they could keep the car for the rest of the day. “It’s so nice that yours is making the trip over to say goodbye.”
Hannah agreed it was. Ada bit her tongue.Yes, but he’s not here now. He didn’t do any of the work. He could have adjusted his schedule to ensure he could come, but he didn’t.
Ada had no idea if Peter and Katrina were still seeing each other, nor if Peter had come clean to Katrina about his marriage. The image of Katrina finding out that Ada was Peter’s wife often kept Ada awake at night. Katrina had told her so much. She’d rubbed her love in Ada’s face. But Katrina’s love had been proof that Ada’s was over. Maybe it had been good luck. How else would Ada have found out that her husband was cheating?
For the next few hours, the Wagner women and Bushner children explored the Vassar campus. They ducked into old buildings, strolled through ornate auditoriums, posed in front of statues, and got ice cream at the students’ favorite spot near classes. Kade was already talking like he might want to come here too, and Hannah was talking it up, telling him that she’d be a senior when he was a freshman. They could hang out.
“I’ll be home alone!” Olivia cried, furrowing her brow.
“Until you come to Vassar,” Kade reminded her. “I’ll be a junior when you’re a freshman.”
“All right,” Ada said, cutting this talk off. “I don’t want to hear anything more about my youngest going to college!” She wrapped Olivia in a hug and felt her try to squirm out of it.
Peter reached Vassar at six thirty that evening and met them at a pizza restaurant not far from campus. Ada was busy with the menu when he came in and continued to read about the various toppings as every member of the family popped up to hug him. She felt his eyes on her and finally got up to give him a one-armed hug, just to keep up appearances.
“I want to hear about all of it,” Peter said, settling in across from Hannah. “How’s the dorm? How’s the roommate?”
Hannah fell into a beautiful monologue about everything they’d done so far today, the people she’d met, the jokes Adelaide had told her. Peter laughed at all the right times and asked all the right questions. When the server came by, they ordered much more pizza than the six of them could possiblyeat, to which Peter said, “Hannah will want leftovers to take back to her dorm, right, Hannah?”
“That’s the way to manipulate everyone into being my friend, I guess,” Hannah said.
Peter snapped his fingers. “That’s my girl!”
Throughout the meal, the Bushner-Wagner family was joyous, laughing with their whole bellies and eating decadent, cheesy slices of pizza. Peter talked about his time at school and all the friends he kept in touch with. “I feel nostalgic, just coming into a place like this,” he said, looking around the restaurant. “I know you’re going to have a hundred memories here.”
Hannah blushed and looked down at the greasy slice on her plate. Ada bit her tongue, resisting the urge to ask Hannah if she wanted to spend the night in the hotel with them. She knew Hannah needed to be in the dorms. She needed to begin her life.
Suddenly, Kade sipped his soda, twitched, and asked, “Dad, where’s your wedding ring?”
Sure enough, Peter’s massive left hand on the table had no wedding band. Hannah, Olivia, and Kade eyed the empty finger curiously, as though they’d never seen a finger before. Peter tucked his hand under the table and laughed.
“I always take it off during surgery,” he said, digging through his pants pockets and finally procuring the very ring that Ada had slipped on his ring finger twenty years ago. He put it on and showed it off, careful not to look Ada in the eye. “There it is. It’s never far away.”
Ada felt it like a stab of recognition. He’d seen Katrina today. But could she blame him? She’d been sleeping down the hall since mid-June. She’d hardly spoken to him, let alone touched him. They were living in limbo, a state created by his relationship with Katrina. It broke her up inside.
Later that night, after they’d said goodbye to Hannah and driven to the hotel two miles away from campus, Ada checkedeveryone into their separate rooms: one for Olivia and Kade, one for Kathy, and one, supposedly, for Peter and Ada. But after she showed Kade and Olivia to their rooms, and after she knew her mother was in for the night, Ada went downstairs and checked herself into the additional room she’d booked for the night. The room key card was plastic and cold in her fingers, but it was proof of her freedom—and how much she’d been lying to both herself and her family lately.
She returned to her first room only briefly to get her suitcase. Peter was sitting at the edge of the bed, wearing an oversized T-shirt and a pair of boxers (boxers that Ada had bought for him), composing a text message. Maybe it was to Katrina.
“Hey! I was just texting you.” Peter rubbed his chest and looked at her meekly. After a very long time, he added, “I was hoping we could talk tonight.”
