Page 93 of The Husband I Left

“How’s Jeremy settling in at the company?”

Something in his shoulders eases. “Good,” he says. “Very good, actually. He’s got a steadier hand than I expected. The board likes him.” A pause. “He’s not you, but he’s good.”

I don’t remark on the he’s not you. I’m not sure he even knows he said it.

“And you?” he asks. “I heard through the grapevine that you’re working at a community health clinic. Are you…did you find what you were looking for there?” I’m not surprised he knows where I work. I’d bet money he’s had someone look into it, has read whatever there is to read about my employer’s finances, and has opinions about all of it.

“It’s good. We just landed a grant that’s going to fund a diabetes program for two years. First one the clinic’s ever gotten at that level.” I don’t tell him that I wrote most of the application myself and that it felt better than any deal I ever closed at Sinclair Pharmaceuticals.

“And Genevieve?”

“Genny’s great.”

He nods. Fidgets with his glass some more. Outside the window, my parent’s gardener is pruning the roses. My father turns his head and watches him do it for a moment, and then he takes a breath and seems to steel himself for something.

“I asked you here because there’s something you should hear from me,” he says. “Before you hear it from someone else.”

I raise an eyebrow and wait.

“Your mother has left me. She’s filing for divorce.”

I take a moment to absorb that. I try to come up with an appropriate response and can think of absolutely nothing, and what finally comes out of my mouth is:

“Oh. Well. Okay.”

Which is a terrible thing to say to a man whose wife of thirty-five years has just left him. I just can’t think of anything else because the truth is, I’m not sad about it. If I think back over my entire lifetime with my parents, I can’t think of a single moment when they seemed actually happy in each other’s presence. They’ve always been courteous, and they’ve always presented a united front at parties and galas and funerals and weddings and shareholder meetings. But happy? An image flashes into my mind of Joe’s face every time he talks about his Janice, and I compare it against memories of my parents sitting at opposite ends of a twelve-foot dining table, and there is no comparison to make. My parents always had more of a merger than a marriage.

My father doesn’t seem offended by my words. If anything, his expression suggests he was expecting worse. Neither of us says anything for a moment. The groundskeeper moves on to the next rose bush.

“Where is she?” I ask finally. “Has she moved out, or are you moving out, or…?”

“She moved out,” my father informs me. “She’s left the state. Georgia. Her parents left her a small property there, near the coast.” His jaw tightens fractionally. “She didn’t go alone.”

That one gets my full attention. I lean forward. “Mom had someone on the side too?”

He gives a sharp nod.

“Huh,” I say. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised at that. My father had Ellen on the side for years. Why did I assume my mother spent those same years sitting in this beautiful prison with her hands folded? But I did assume it, and now I’m running through the roster in my head, every man who’s orbited this family for the last twenty years, trying to figure out who it could be.

“Who?”

My father hesitates. And then, instead of answering, he says, “You’ll notice Frederick didn’t answer the door today.”

It takes me a second. My brain refuses the delivery, sends it back, accepts it again. When it finally sinks in, a bark of laughter escapes me before I can do a single thing to stop it. I clear my throat, bring my face back under control. My father doesn’t look up, just keeps fidgeting with the glass in his hands.

“Mom ran away with our butler?”

He just nods.

I sit back in my chair, thinking. Frederick was the one who taught me to tie a bow tie when I was fourteen because my father was in Zurich. Frederick knew how my mother took her tea, which florist and flowers she preferred, what time she expected the drapes to be drawn and breakfast waiting in her sitting room every morning. He could tell you, without even asking her, if she was available to visitors. He stood outside the door at every single one of her parties, making sure things went off without a hitch. I comb back through thirty years for signs, for a look, a lingering hand, anything, and I find nothing at all, which is either a testament to their discretion or to how little attention I ever paid to the people who ran our lives.

“How long has that been going on?” I wonder aloud.

“I don’t know,” my father says, and the darkness in his voice suggests he has spent some hours contemplating the same question and didn’t like the answer he got.

I shake my head slowly. My mother. Nancy Sinclair, who wore keeping up appearances like a second skin, has run off to Georgia with the family butler. And the funny thing is, when I picture it, it doesn’t seem scandalous. I just hope, whatever happens next, that the two of them are happy together.

I look at my father. “So what’s your next move then?”