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Helen shakes her head as they watch Sunday pull away from them, sand kicking up behind her as she goes. “She’s a doozy, that girl. Fifty-four years old and running across the beach like a teenager on the way to meet her crush.”
“I wish she’d find someone to have a crush on,” Ruby says wistfully. She readjusts her baseball cap, pulling her hair from her neck and twisting it up so that she can tuck it into her hat. “She’s put up with a lot over the years.”
“She has,” Helen agrees, nodding once. “And he just keeps stringing her along.”
“How? The kids are grown. He’s not making a run for the White House again—or is he?”
Helen lifts her shoulders and lets them fall. “Not officially. I’ve heard rumors. But he has her believing that she owes him more.”
“More than thirty years of her life spent married to a man who—“
Helen holds up a hand. “I know. But honey, people make all kinds of bargains and arrangements. You know Sunday as well as anyone, and why she’s tolerated it all these years is beyond us. But she has, and she does. So there must be a reason.”
By the time Ruby and Helen get to the porch, Sunday is already out there with a chilled bottle of rosé and three glasses. She’s sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs with her feet tucked under her, smiling up at them gleefully.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Sunday says, handing each woman an empty glass as she pulls the cork out with a corkscrew. “I don’t ever want to leave.”
Without thinking, Ruby says: “Then don’t. You can afford a place here, Sun, and until you find one, you can just stay with me.”
Helen has just gotten herself settled in a white-painted Adirondack of her own, and she looks up at Ruby with wide eyes.
Sunday’s gaze sweeps the beach and the horizon. She frowns and pours herself a glass of wine before passing the bottle to Helen. “I could,” she says, narrowing her eyes again as she considers it. “I really could. You started over, Rubes. I could too.”
“Of course you could,” Ruby presses. She can feel Helen giving her a sharp look, so she backs off a hair. “If you wanted to. If the timing was right.”
“When is the timing ever right?” Sunday asks, looking up at Ruby, who takes the bottle from Helen, fills her own glass, and sits in a third chair.
They’re all in a line, staring out at the sand. Ruby puts her bare feet up on the railing of the porch and sips her rosé.
“That’s true for so many things,” Ruby agrees, pausing as a wave crashes on shore. “If you always wait until the time is right, you might miss out on some of life’s most wonderful moments.”
“I was definitely not ready to have kids when Kent and I found out that Abigail was coming,” Helen admits. “I’d just started a job, and he was working on his master’s degree. We lived in a tiny apartment, and I knew money would be tight. But not having Abigail would have been terrible. We jumped in with both feet. Best decision ever.” Helen knocks back a sip of wine like a punctuation mark at the end of her sentence.
“I wasn’t ready to walk in on Peter with William,” Sunday says, holding her glass out to Ruby for a top-off. “But when is the timing ever right to catch your husband in bed with a twenty-three-year-old congressional aide?”
Ruby pulls a face; she knows that Sunday has to joke about things in order to cope, but there are times when she feels like her friend might be pouring salt on her own wounds. Instead of saying so, she reaches over and takes Sunday’s hand in hers.
“And to bring it back to the matter at hand,” Ruby says, “moving somewhere new only has to feel right in your heart. But could you actually make it work? Would Peter be okay with you moving down here, or…?”
Sunday pulls her hand from Ruby’s and runs her long fingers through her windswept hair. “That’s partially why I wanted to come down here with Helen,” she says, turning her flashing eyes on Ruby. She’s obviously gathering as much confidence as possible for her big declaration. “I’m leaving Peter, and I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it anywhere else.”
Ruby’s mouth falls open. She’s always hated when characters in books are so stunned that their jaws drop, but hers truly does. She stares at Sunday for a long moment.
“You are? You’re truly leaving him? Like, publicly, or just privately?” Ruby knows there’s a difference. Throughout her years in Washington with Jack, she’s known many couples who are only together publicly or on paper. At least half of the biggest “power couples” she knows are actually two totally separate individuals living their own lives in private, then coming together to make appearances and to present a united front. The reasons vary, but in many cases it serves one or both parties to be seen as a traditional, solid unit.
Sunday lifts her chin defiantly. “Publicly. He’s being served with papers while I’m down here.”
It’s Helen’s turn to have her jaw dislocated by a piece of stunning news. “Sunday Bond!” she shouts, reaching over and slapping Sunday’s thigh. “I didn’t know you had that kind of get-up-and-go, girl.”
Sunday frowns at her. “You didn’t?”
Helen tips her head from side to side. “Okay, I hoped you did, but there have been a lot of times over the years when you’ve stuck by that man’s side and I truly didn’t think he deserved it.”
“That’s true,” Sunday says. Her eyes fall as she thinks for a minute. “There have been so many times that I’ve felt humiliated by things Peter’s said or done, but I do have to say that he’s been a wonderful father. I’ll give him that much.”
The three women look out at the ocean again, each pondering the image they have of Peter with the two little girls that he and Sunday adopted as infants. Olive was born in China and Cameron in Guatemala, and Peter has always been completely besotted by his little girls, who are actually grown women now.
“Well, credit where credit is due,” Helen allows, nodding firmly. “But it’s high time you pulled yourself up and got the chance to be your own woman. You stuck with him while the girls were young, you stood by his side while he was VP, and you’ve never spoken an ill word of him in the press—not one. It’s admirable.”
