“Mom,” she said.
“Mmm?” said Charlotte, not looking up from the cheese platter.
“I’m going to need money,” said Regan, balling her fists in her lap.
“Mmm?” said Charlotte, lifting her gaze.
“Matt has, um,” said Regan. Charlotte was looking fully at her now. “I guess it’s pretty clear that Matt and I are having trouble,” said Regan. “I think…well, we might not make it. I might…be on my own. The girls and I will need help. Financial help. I need a lawyer, for one thing. Right away.”
Regan waited for her mother to speak, to make her feel disgraced. She swallowed.
But Charlotte’s face grew soft. When she spoke, her tone was sympathetic, even kind. “I’ve been careful with my savings and I get a pension now,” said Charlotte. “I can help, sweetheart.”
Regan felt relief flood through her limbs. She hugged her mother hard. “Mommy,” she said.
“That’s enough,” said Charlotte, but Regan continued to squeeze her, and Charlotte did not pull away.
MATT HAD, IN FACT,visited Lee’s room the evening before. He’d shown up two hours after the musical revue, just as Lee was settling into bed in pajamas with theSplendido Evening Newsletter.(Lee had charged a pajama set to her mother’s account: it seemed impossible to begin a new, more serious life clad in the filmy negligees of her old one.) “Oh,” she’d said, when she opened her door to find Matt, his face flushed. “What is it, Matt? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” he had answered miserably. “Lee, I honestly don’t know. Something’s wrong with me. With us. I don’t know how to fix it, and I just want to go home.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not really,” said Matt.
“Matt…,” said Lee, blocking the doorway.
“She doesn’t love me anymore,” said Matt. “She has all this pottery. So much pottery from the mall.”
Lee shook her head, dismayed and confused.
“Remember the Hilton Head Island Holiday Inn, Lee?” he said. “I would have married you. I would have!”
“I know,” said Lee. It had been the summer after their junior year. Matt had surprised her with a room on the beach for her birthday. (It had taken him months of working at the Piggly Wiggly bagging groceries to pay for it.) Lee’s period had been a few days late, so they’d bought a pregnancy test at a Walgreens on Palmetto Bay Road. When it had been negative, they’d celebrated with wine coolers and carefully condomed sex. Lee sighed, wanting to tell Matt she might be pregnant now—wanting to tell anyone—but deciding against it.
“I think about it sometimes,” said Matt. “How it might have been.”
“Jesus,” said Lee. “Matt, really?”
“Really,” said Matt. “I meant what I said at the wedding, Lee. I wanted it to be you.”
“It was yourrehearsal dinner,” said Lee. “What did you want me to do?”
“I wanted you to stop me,” said Matt.
“It’s too late now,” said Lee.
“I know,” said Matt.
“So you’re cheating on her?”
He exhaled. “Yes,” he said.
“But your daughters…”
Matt looked up, and a flash of something like anger lit his expression. “You don’t have any idea,” he said. “I came on this fucking trip to try to find some love again. To try to see if there was…anything between us. But it’s over,” he said. “I didn’t want this! But Janet…I met Janet. She’s a single mom. And she needs me, Lee. I’m all she’s got. I love her—I don’t know what else to say. I hate myself about how it all happened, but I love Janet, and Regan and I are done.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” said Lee. “This just makes me so sad.”
