“We’re happy for you!” Yoko cried, always eager to play pretend.
“We are,” Kendall agreed gruffly. “We just don’t know the girl yet, do we?”
“You met last spring,” Liam reminded them, as though a single meeting in April was enough to get to know your future daughter-in-law.
Yoko felt a rushing feeling in her gut, as though time had sped up on her. She willed it to slow down. “We’re so happy for you,” Yoko repeated.
“You’ll be in town next weekend, right?” Liam asked.
Yoko felt a stab of horror, remembering what was coming next weekend. She saw that same horror reflected on Kendall’s face. It was possible that he wanted to go even less than she did. “We’ll be there,” Yoko said. Kendall’s eyes lit up. “I mean, I will be, obviously. But your dad’s really busy with work right now, and…”
“I’ll be there,” Kendall shot. He gave her a look that meant he couldn’t believe she’d spoken for him.
Yoko chewed her lower lip and sat down in the chair by the phone. She wished she could crawl through the phone lines or the radar or whatever it was that linked her with her son and collapse in his apartment and sleep for three days. She’d never admitted anything to Liam, had never shown him an ounce of her soul. But he had to know, regardless, didn’t he? Childrenalways knew more than they let on. She certainly knew too much about her own parents.
How she missed her own parents! What a tragedy that she’d left them behind. And now, they were gone.
She told herself not to dwell on her own devastations and to focus on her son’s triumph.
After another round of congratulations, Kendall and Yoko hung up, and Kendall swept to the front door to get out of there. “Here we go,” he said sarcastically before closing the door behind him.
Yoko guessed he meant it with regard to Lily and Liam, next summer’s wedding, and all the chaos that would ensue. She wondered if, by then, she and Kendall would still be married, and then cursed the idea of breaking up altogether. She and Kendall couldn’t very well get divorced so soon before Liam’s wedding. She didn’t want to set such a bad example. She didn’t want the press to run away with it, either—to talk about the once-brilliant Yoko and how little anyone wanted her now. Kendall was not the only person who’d seemed to turn his back on her. She felt friendless and alone.
Upstairs, Yoko drew a bath and lay in the warm water, staring at the ceiling. She hadn’t bothered to put on music, because her thoughts were so harried that she didn’t think she’d be able to hear it. On her phone, she checked up on Lily Vance and her extended Nantucket family, including Esme and Victor Sutton, Valerie, Rebecca, and the surgeon Bethany. Although there was a ton of negative press about Victor Sutton, it seemed that he’d just gone through a redemption period and come out clean. He was still working as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist here on Nantucket, and his ex-wife (and current girlfriend?) Esme still managed the Sutton Book Club, a part library, part bookstore, part community center, and part restaurant in the Old Historic District. Yoko had been there before and eaten atthe restaurant. It was a quaint, ornate little place that spoke to the family's worthiness and goodness. Like many other families, it seemed they’d gone through their share of hardships but come out on the other side. Would Yoko and Kendall come out on the other side?
It didn’t make complete sense to Yoko that Liam had decided on Lily. She didn’t seem like his type.
Yoko had learned about her husband’s affair by chance.
They’d been out to dinner with some of Kendall’s clients. This was four weeks ago, mid-July or so. Yoko and Kendall had taken the client and his wife to a swanky seafood restaurant not far from their home in Siasconset, where they’d eaten lobster and drank delightful white wine. The client and his wife were frequent travelers with homes around the globe. Soon enough, the client let slip that he’d seen Kendall out on the town in Paris, of all places, only a few months ago. Kendall blinked three times and said, “It must have been someone else. I haven’t been to Paris since Yoko, and I went a few years ago.” At first, this seemed to wrap things up. But the look on the client’s face caught Yoko off guard. It was as though he’d just revealed a secret he’d been asked not to share. All the color drained from his cheeks as he said, “Yeah, it must not have been you. Where have you been working these days?”
Kendall explained that his business contracts had been taking him to Miami recently. The husband had a lot to say about Miami, and eventually, the wife invited Yoko out on the veranda for another glass of wine and a look at the stars. The wife said, “I hate it when they do that.” Yoko hadn’t understood what she meant, so she probed, unable to let it go. And the wifehad said, “They cover for each other. It’s funny. My husband is awful at it, as you just saw.” She sipped her wine and grimaced. “I hope he didn’t ruin something. I hope he didn’t reveal something you didn’t already know.”
Now, Yoko had too much to consider. That night, long after Kendall had fallen asleep, she did some digging. Kendall was safe with his money. He was organized. But because she’d known him for many, many years, she knew where his flaws were. She knew how to find his weaknesses. By three in the morning, she’d discovered photographs of a semi-recent trip to Paris, plus proof that he’d purchased two round-trip tickets—from Miami to Paris and back.
But who was the woman he was in love with in Miami? There weren’t any photographs of her anywhere, not that she could find at first.
She’d decided to be patient, to watch and listen and wait. She hadn’t wanted to tip her hand and alert Kendall that she knew more than he wanted her to. As a once-professional tennis player, she’d looked at their dynamic like a point she was trying to build within a tennis game. She continued to play along, smiling when he wanted her to, tending to his things when he was in Miami, making his doctor's appointments, and cleaning his car. She felt sure, when the chance was right, she would strike.
She’d discovered the identity of the woman he loved in a sort of hilarious way, in fact. It was all Liam’s doing, God bless him. When Liam came for a visit in July, he’d downloaded a particular app on all their phones, one that let him “follow” his parents and see where they were. “It’s a safety thing,” Liam had explained, laughing.
“We’re not old yet!” Yoko had exclaimed. “You don’t need to watch our every move and see if we’re okay.”
“It’s a nice thing, Mom,” Liam had said. “It’s a way for us all to stay connected!”
Liam, being Liam, forgot about the app a few days after downloading it. Kendall forgot, as well. But Yoko didn’t forget, because she never forgot anything. She’d never been able to. It was why she’d survived this long. Soon, she found herself fixated on the address where Kendall spent the most time in Miami—a place that was decidedly not a hotel. It could have been a rented apartment, she supposed, although Kendall had been quite vocal about how much he liked the hotel in Miami. He’d been so vocal about it that she now understood it was a lie. When she typed the address of the place where he always stayed into a separate map and found a street view, she saw a traditional bright-blue Miami bungalow and a palm tree. Her gut told her that this was where his girlfriend lived. The next time Kendall came home, singing the praises of the Miami hotel he supposedly stayed at every time, Yoko listened and asked questions, which he answered with a precision that suggested he’d studied for her test. Why did he want to stay with her if he had another life in Miami? She couldn’t fathom it.
That afternoon, hours after Kendall left for Miami and hours after Liam’s big engagement reveal, Yoko went to a yoga studio in the Old Historic District, hoping to clear her mind and calm her panicked heart. To her surprise, one of the last people who entered the yoga class, a mat rolled up under her arm, was Esme Sutton—Lily’s grandmother and the owner of the Sutton Book Club. She was regal, her face glowing with health. She spread out her mat alongside Yoko’s and prepared for the class.
Yoko’s palms were sweaty with nerves. Should she introduce herself and explain that Yoko’s son had just proposed to her granddaughter? She wondered if Lily had passed along the news to her family yet. If so, what had they said?
Lily had turned twenty-three only yesterday. She had her entire life ahead of her, as did Liam. For better or for worse, Liam was a C-grade celebrity in some circles, and he was constantly going to auditions for film and television roles, expressing his belief that he had “wide appeal.”
Yoko felt panicked, thinking that Liam might marry Lily and then immediately leave her behind on his quest for fame. At the same time, she panicked that Lily would attempt to hold Liam back, and he’d grow to hate her.
The yoga teacher greeted them and asked them to begin. Yoko tried to settle herself on the mat, but her head was full and swirling with fears—about her husband’s affair and about Liam and Lily’s future. Before the yoga teacher called out the second position, Yoko was on her feet, rolling up her mat and scampering out of there. As soon as she breathed the fresh August air outside the studio, she burst into tears. Nothing in this life was easy. Love was an active verb, and she hoped her son understood this.
Chapter Three
