“I don’t trust that boy,” Aunt Valerie muttered.
“Give him a break,” Aunt Bethany said. “They’re adorable. They’re in love.”
“Plenty of people fall in love,” Aunt Valerie said. “But didn’t you read about his father? Like father, like son.”
“I don’t know,” Aunt Bethany whispered. “That could all be a farce, too?”
Lily didn’t wait around another second to hear more of what her aunts had to say about her love life and the love life of her future in-laws. She turned on her heel and fled, hurrying back to the sofa. But there, Yoko sat with Grandpa Victor, nodding along to whatever he told her and sipping her glass of water. Liam was gone.
For some reason, Lily’s first instinct was to think that Liam had left her forever, that he’d gotten up, walked to the door, called a cab, and fled. But then she reasoned that he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. Trying to remember her rational mind, she walked around her family members and looked from room to room, searching for him. Finally, she went upstairs and heard his voice down the long hallway. It came from one of the bedrooms, the one that had belonged to her Aunt Valerie when she was a teenager. Lily was almost too frightened to eavesdrop. What if he’d called Bex Shepherd to tell her how in love with her he was? What if this was confirmation of Lily’s worst fears?
But instead, what she heard was Liam, crying.
“Why did you do it, Dad?” Liam asked. “I don’t understand.”
Lily took a soft step toward the crack in the door. Although she couldn’t see Liam, she could hear that he’d put the phone on speaker. Kendall spoke back.
“It isn’t up to you to understand my life,” Kendall said. “I haven’t asked you to. I don’t want you to.”
“But what about Mom?” Liam demanded, sounding like the teenager he played on television rather than a mid-twenties adult male. “What about what you’re doing to her?”
Lily was touched by how soft and gentle Liam was, how distraught he was over his father’s affair. Did this mean that he saw all cheating as wrong? Did this mean he wouldn’t cheat on her, that he hadn’t?
“Your mother and I have been married a long time,” Kendall said finally. “She understands me better than anyone.”
“She fainted at the grocery store the other day. She’s lonely and lost without you,” Liam shot back. “You don’t know what she needs.”
Kendall let out a long, ominous sigh. It was clear his son was on his last nerve. “Listen,” he said finally. Lily imagined him rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand. “You’re about to get married. Call me in twenty-five years and tell me you understand.” After that, Kendall hung up, leaving Liam in a sharp silence. It was only when Liam started crying quietly that Lily dared to creep back to the stairs and disappear. She didn’t want him to know she knew.
Chapter Eighteen
Present Day
The night of Liam’s return party, he suggested to Lily that they go home with Yoko instead of staying at her mother’s place, like they’d originally planned. Yoko listened with her hands folded on her thighs, marveling at how good her son was at manipulating his future bride. All he had to do was express a need, and boom, Lily was ready to meet it. Yoko hated how much of herself she saw in the young woman, how, after her injury in Australia, she’d been more than keen to step into the bounds of Kendall’s life, have his child, and give up on everything she’d seen for herself.
It went without saying that it had been one of the strangest weeks of Yoko’s life. As she drove home from the Sutton House that night, following her son in Lily’s car, she thought back to the panicked moment at the grocery store. One minute, she’d been upright, trying to remember what she’d written on the grocery list she’d left at home, and the next, she’d been sprawled on the linoleum, looking up at Esme and Valerie Sutton. It remindedher, horribly, of her accident in Australia, all those eyes upon the great tennis player. Now, she was a middle-aged lady, talking to herself at the store, waiting for her cheating husband to come home.
Did she still want him to come back? Now that everyone knew about the affair, wasn’t it too late? The public damage had been done. A part of Yoko was grateful that Coach and Kathy were no longer alive to see Kendall treat Yoko like this. Coach would have looked at Yoko the way he had during her tennis matches.Pull yourself together, Yoko.
When Yoko, Liam, and Lily entered the Reynoldses’ house, Yoko experienced a harrowing moment of déjà vu. She thought back to many years ago, when she’d first moved into the main house with Kendall and Kathy. She’d nursed her wounds and wandered around and tried to make sense of her life without tennis. All the while, Kendall and Kathy had watched her nervously, as though she were a wild animal they’d let into the house.
She didn’t want to think of Lily like that. But she could sense the young woman’s discomfort as she crept through the house, not wanting to disturb anything. Yoko imagined herself saying,Break something! Throw that vase against the wall! Make the space your own!But she worried that the Suttons would think she was even crazier.
“What a nice party,” Lily said, pressing the tips of her fingers together.
“Yes,” Yoko said stiffly. “It was kind of your family to throw a welcome home party for Liam.”
The air between them stiffened. While Yoko had spoken so freely with Lily mere days ago, she found that, with Liam sitting between them, her tongue was tied. They watched television for a little while, an English-language show that Yoko found exhausting and overly emotional. When she looked over at Lilyand Liam, they were both on their phones, not paying attention to the show in the first place. Something about the scene they built was profoundly sad.
After a little while, Lily confessed she was exhausted.
“We’re staying in my old bedroom, second floor, third door on the right,” Liam told her firmly. “There are spare towels in the closet on the left-hand side. Make yourself at home.”
Lily thanked them both, kissed Liam on the cheek, and disappeared. Yoko listened until she heard her future daughter-in-law disappear into Liam’s room. And then, she switched back to Japanese, grateful that she could melt into herself and her language with only Liam around.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” she told her son, overwhelmed with memories. In her mind’s eye, she could still see toddler Liam, stumbling across this very floor.
But something was cold and off about Liam just now. It was as though she’d done something wrong. Staying in English, he said, “How could you let him do this to you?”
