Candice shook her head. “I think the story takes place in Tennessee. Maybe late seventies.”
“Intriguing,” Nathan said. “Why there?”
Lindsey raised her eyebrows with surprise. It was now obvious to Lindsey that Candice hadn’t shared anything of what she’d learned about Stella and Sally McGee with her husband. The chasm between them was growing vaster by the day.
“It’s just an experiment,” Candice said.
Lindsey and Henry exchanged glances. Candice smiled. It was her turn to have a secret. It was her turn to work on a novel, or the beginnings of an idea for a novel, or whatever this was. It was her turn to make space for herself and her heart and her creativity.
After cocktails, Lindsey went out to meet friends (including Frank, Candice assumed), and Henry went to his room to make some business calls. His career was still a mystery to Candice. Sarah and Peter went to their rooms, as well, leaving Candice and Nathan on the veranda table, nursing the last of their drinks. Nathan was scrolling on his phone, and Candice was watching the last sliver of light fall into the ocean.
As she sat, she found herself thinking about the nature of honesty. She wondered if her mother had considered that never telling her children about her past had been, in fact, a form oflying. She wondered if her father had kept her mother’s secrets, or if he’d been in the dark just as much as their children.
Maybe these were questions she needed to answer if she was really going to write a book about her mother and her long-lost aunt.
But maybe she needed to get beyond the dishonesty in her own marriage if she was ever going to be honest with herself. Being honest with herself was the only way she could really write again. Wasn’t that what she’d told her students over and over?
“Nathan,” she said, raising her chin. “Why won’t you be honest with me about your affair?”
16
In the quiet after Candice asked Nathan for the truth, Nathan’s shoulders fell. The ocean beside them lapped along the sand. When Nathan opened his mouth to speak, Candice flattened her palm between them and said, “Please, don’t lie again. I can’t take it. Not anymore.”
This shut Nathan up for another full minute. Candice felt on the edge of a cliff, poised to jump. Or had her question about his affair been the jump itself? Was she already in free-fall, headed for a crash?
“I know you know I heard you,” Candice said gently. “That night, the night we had the party at the house, the night my mother died. I was in the guest room, resting, when you and Janie were talking in the hall outside. I heard everything, obviously. I should have spoken to you about it immediately, but…”
Nathan closed his eyes. “You lost your mother. You had other things on your mind. Other things besides your loser husband, who didn’t know how to stay loyal.”
Candice felt as though the window of her heart was opening up. She took a bigger gulp of air than she had in months. He’d admitted it. This was it. Finally, they could face the truth.
Nathan rubbed his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, Candice,” he said. “I don’t know what else to say.” He let his hands fall with a thump to the table, then said, “It’s over. I don’t know if that’s any consolation, but it is.”
Candice was surprised. “What happened?”
Nathan shrugged.
“Did you end it?” Candice asked.
“Things were getting out of hand,” Nathan said. “I was worried, I guess. I don’t know.” His face crumpled after that, and he let out a strangled laugh. “I’m lying again.”
Candice didn’t understand what he meant at first. “What do you mean?”
“I was going to let you believe that I ended things,” Nathan said. “I was going to let you believe that I took this big step forward for our family and for our relationship. But it’s not true. The truth is, Janie freaked out. She hated all the gossip circling about us, and she was worried that it would affect her writing career down the line. More than that, though, I think she fell in love with someone else. There was always some other guy she was hung up on.”
Candice pressed her palms together as hard as she could. It was her turn to pity her husband, to think that for months, he was competing with a twentysomething man for the attention of a twentysomething woman. Maybe he always knew he was going to lose that race. Maybe he always thought he could fall back on his wife and children. But I couldn’t help him with that. It was over.
Tears filled Candice’s eyes, but she blinked them away quickly. She had no interest in showing this man that he’d gotten to her.
“I’m lost,” Nathan said finally, his eyes widening. “I thought I could write my way out of all these awful feelings, but I can’t. My writing is not going well. I hear myself lying to your brother and sister about that, and it sickens me. But for the weeks since Janie broke up with me, for the weeks since you came to the Vineyard, I’ve been walking and drinking wine and watching bad TV.”
Candice didn’t say that he sounded like a person with a broken heart in a film.
“I need the kids to love me,” Nathan said suddenly, turning his face away from hers. “I can’t bear for them to hate me.”
Candice felt another crashing wave of pity. “They’re always going to love you.”
“Not when they find out what I did,” Nathan said. “Maybe they’ve already figured it out, I don’t know. I know Sarah read the book.”
