One thing he would miss about Lillian: she never stopped surprising him. She reacted to this by gasping, grabbing him by the arm and exclaiming in a low voice, “I knew it! Oh, my God!”
“What?” Carver said, horrified. “What do you mean, you knew it?”
Lillian held a finger up as she scrolled through her phone. “By the way,” she said, “your parents are sort of ridiculous and jumped-up people, I hope you understand this.”
“I’m aware!”
“Good.” She typed something, then scrolled some more. Finally she held it up and showed it to him. On the screen was an email she had sent herself in 2014.
from:Lillian Hallsten
to:Lillian Hallsten
date:Apr 10, 2014, 10:49?PM
i’m sending this to myself now in case i turn out to be right
i don’t think doug is carver’s real dad
- they look nothing alike
- his mom is smart and smart girls fuck around
- doug always looks at carver like he personally cuckolded him which makes no sense because it’s not like he’s close with his mom, either
“I sent that to myself after the engagement party they threw for us,” Lillian said.
“Thank you,” Carver snapped. “Thank you for that. Congratulations on your truly elite pattern recognition. Seriously, I admire that about you.” His anger was partly a self-indulgent performance: truthfully he was grateful to her for offending him and confirming his decision to leave her.
“Come on,” Lillian said. “It’s not even a rude email. I said your mom was smart.”
“No, no problem. You be yourself, honey. But you see how this might be shocking news for me. I guess my pattern recognition isn’t as good.”
“Sometimes I don’t think it is. You make pretty safe deals a lot of the time.”
Carver made a noise of frustration at her, and she gave him a chilling look.
“I’m going through something,” he said. “This fucked me up. I am shocked. Can you see things from my perspective?”
Lillian drew closer to him, getting in his face a little. “Why don’t you see things from my perspective. You dragged me to your hometown —”
“— you draggedmehere —”
“— you dragged me to your hometown, and then two nights in a row you snuck off for sex with your high school boyfriend, who has fleas, and suddenly you want a divorce?”
“Don’t talk to me like we have a normal relationship. Don’t talk to me like a jilted wife. You know exactly what we have.” Carver spotted a jogger at the edge of his peripheral vision coming down the beach, and went quiet.
They started to walk again, to hasten this person passing them. As soon as they were out of earshot, Lillian said, “There’s no need to get excited. Of course I know what we have. But when I lay out the facts, they sound terrible, don’t they? And how am I not going to point that out?”
“I know they sound terrible. I don’t care how they sound. I want out. Please let me out.” She didn’t respond, and he said more loudly, “Please.”
“Don’t beg,” Lillian snapped. She was quiet for a few moments. “Pitch me on this. Tell me how we do it.”
“Okay,” Carver said, in immense relief.
“And justify it to me, too. I don’t actually care what your justifications are, I just want to make you tell me.”
“Justify it. Okay. I want to have a satisfying sexual relationship with my life partner. Together with that person, not on the side of them.”
