“I know,” she said.
“Milly, I want to tell you…”
But she shook her head. It was too crowded—someone could overhear them—but also, she didn’t want him to pity her. She wanted to remember everything exactly as it was between them. Magical. “You don’t have to say anything, please.”
The week had been a collision of days, of moments she’d never expected.
And that morning, Easter, when she’d heard them packing up the car, she’d forced herself to stay in bed and not look out the window. They’d already said their goodbyes, but she relived their moments together in her head all the same.
What she’d done was wrong. She’d allowed herself to be swept up in a fantasy. She was married and she loved Lloyd, she did, but she’d never had with him the kind of physical attraction or sensation that she had with Wes. She hadn’t even known that kind of passion and wanting was possible. The way her body responded to his touch, the way she was able to convey to him what she needed without saying a word, the way he could make her forget everything around her for those few blissful, ecstatic moments. It was a powerful magic she hadn’t known existed. It almost felt like a sin to have the capacity for that kind of pleasure and not use it, not submerge yourself into it, not to experience it at least once in your lifetime.
Lloyd had made it quite clear by now that he was not in love with her and that he’d fallen for someone else. Why else would he leave his family like this and not come home on Easter? It was only a matter oftime before someone found out, or his new lover insisted he desert them completely. She couldn’t live in fear of what people would think, but she didn’t know what to do about it.
There was no future for her and Wes; she wasn’t naive enough to think otherwise. For one thing, he was young—though, in fact, more like twenty-five than the twenty or so she’d first assumed, not so very far from her twenty-nine years, it occurred to her. But that was beside the point. He was back at UCLA now, around his peers where he belonged, eager to embark on his residency. She’d been a holiday fling for him, and that had to be fine. It wouldn’t be anything else; it couldn’t be.
But the fact was, she was not the same woman she was before she met him. He had brought something in her to life, and she knew now what her body could do and feel, what it craved, what it needed, and she didn’t want to deny that or pretend otherwise. It made her feel different about everything; it made her see the world around her in a different light. She was feminine, she was desired, and she deserved to have that kind of magic in her life.
“Mommy,” Debbie sang as she ran toward Milly, holding Jack’s hand. “Mommy, can we play Skee-Ball?”
“Of course you can, my darlings,” Milly said, standing up and giving her children a kiss on the tops of their heads. They were far too dressed up to be running around this arcade, but she didn’t care. “You can do whatever you want today. Do you know why?”
“Because we’re having an adventure,” Jack said clapping his hands.
“That’s right, we’re having an adventure.”
“And because it’s Easter,” Debbie said.
“An Easter adventure,” Milly said taking her hand and walking them to the Skee-Ball lanes.
“Mommy,” Debbie said. “Why isn’t Daddy here? He’s always with us on Easter. Is he going to miss Thanksgiving and Christmas too?”
Milly swallowed hard, caught off guard in the middle of her own exuberance. “Well”—she hadn’t prepared for this—“well, honey, I think he had to work this time.”
Debbie nodded. “Mommy?”
Milly braced herself. “Yes, sweetheart?” she said crouching down and looking her in the eye.
“Is God calling on Daddy to do a new life?”
“What?” Milly said, shocked.
“That’s what the priest said today.”
“He did?” Milly realized she hadn’t paid any attention to what was being said in the service that morning.
“He said God is calling on us to a new life through Jesus, but I don’t want a new life, because we just got a new life here on Balboa Island, and I didn’t like it at first, but I love it now because Suzanna is my best friend.”
Milly hugged her daughter. “We don’t need a new life, honeypie, we have the best life right here.”
“Come on, you slow pokes,” Jack called out, already at the Skee-Ball game holding the wooden ball in his chubby little hands. “You can’t beat me.”
“Oh yes I can,” Debbie said, breaking away from Milly’s embrace and rushing to her brother’s side to play.
