dried her tears with the back of her hand, then gave him an amazed look. Laughing shortly, she said, “Why was I there? Paul, Sacred Heart is my parish church! I might as well ask you why you and your wife and daughter were there. The truth is, I couldn’t have been more shocked. And you may remember that I left the moment I saw you.”
He had to agree that was true, but added, “I guess I never knew you were Catholic.”
She bristled. “Well, all you had to do was ask.”
He took in her large green eyes, brimming with tears, and heard the wounded tone in her voice. She’s right, he thought. We’ve never talked about our lives outside this apartment. That was a rule they had made. Correction—he had made, as if the less he knew about her, the less she infringed upon his life with Gina and Rachel.
The truth was, he had been a thoughtless, selfish bastard, thinking only of himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess my nerves have been on edge.”
Standing, he walked to the window that looked out on the street, three stories down. From here, he could almost see his home near the top of Queen Anne Hill. Gina and Rachel were still out shopping, but he could picture them there later, waiting for him to come home and do all the things Rachel wanted to squeeze in before going back to school. He felt pulled in so many directions it was physically painful.
Turning back, he said, “I really am sorry, Lacey. I haven’t been very thoughtful of you.” He made an attempt. “You go to Midnight Mass every Christmas, then?”
“Just about. It’s the only time I do go to church. No, that’s not quite true. I go on Easter, sometimes. It doesn’t have to be a Catholic church, though. As long as they have palms and lilies and a choir, I’m fine.” She smiled.
Paul returned her smile and felt the tensions leave him. “It was just such a shock, seeing you there. It threw me off balance.”
“I’ll bet. You were afraid I’d come up to you afterward and tell your wife who I was,” she guessed.
“No, of course not.” But he flushed, and he knew that she knew.
Lacey reached for the potato chips and popped one into her mouth, chewing it with her usual gusto for food. Washing it down with a gulp of Pepsi, she said, “And what were you doing there, Mr. Bradley? Churchgoing doesn’t seem like your usual M.O.”
“I…uh, well, Gina and I…” He flushed.
“Oh. Never mind, I get it. You were married there, huh?”
He didn’t answer, and she said, “Now that I think of it, it figures, with her growing up in that neighborhood. So Midnight Mass at Sacred Heart is a family tradition?”
“Yes.”
“And there I was, all of a sudden,” Lacey continued with a grin. “Your worst nightmare.”
“Yes…well, no, I wouldn’t put it that way.”
Standing, she walked over to him and pushed him lightly on both shoulders. “Well, I would. Look, Paul, we’ve talked about this before. You know you don’t have to worry about me. You have to spend holidays with your family, and I understand that. Sure, sometimes it hurts. And I’ll admit that at Midnight Mass I couldn’t stay any longer, once I saw you there with them. I can’t tell you how jealous I felt. But, hey, look at us now. You’re here with me, for heaven’s sake—not them.”
Looking into those beautiful green eyes, the tremulous red lips, he hadn’t the heart to tell her he couldn’t stay. He thought about the fact that he had told Gina and Rachel he was going to the office, and that something urgent had come up.
How many lies had he told since meeting Lacey? How many were still to come before his wife began to sense they were lies and his entire world collapsed around him?
His guilt was nearly overwhelming. But when Lacey put her arms around him, stroking his temple with her fingertips and the hollow at his throat with her tongue, everything else flew out the window. All he could think of then was the way it was going to feel to hold her, to have her warm and naked against him.
There was no way he could ever explain this to anyone, this need for Lacey even as he loved his wife and daughter more than anything else on earth. It was if he were two men, one for Lacey and one for them. He knew that whatever this thing was that had him in its grip, it had to be a sickness. He just didn’t know how to cure it—nor, at this moment, did he honestly want to. He simply wanted it to go on and on, and for nothing bad to ever happen in his life again.
Three days after Christmas, Gina sat with Rachel at the kitchen breakfast bar. They had barely touched their coffee, even though it was a new blend they’d picked up at a café down the street and had looked forward to trying out.
“I’m just saying you’re living in a dream world,” Rachel argued. “You don’t see things the way they really are.”
Gina felt attacked, and responded in kind. “Well, my dear, everyone’s reality is different. That’s something you’ll learn, perhaps, as you grow older—and, hopefully, wiser.”
“Mom, don’t give me that ‘different reality’ thing. I know we all see things from our own perspective. I just think yours is really skewed.”
Gina sighed. “And just what brought all this up?”
Rachel shook her head and didn’t answer.
Gina picked up her coffee cup and took it to the sink, rinsing it out. “If you’re not going to answer me, we can hardly have an intelligent discussion, Rachel.”
And why the hell couldn’t this visit of her daughter’s just have been fun? Why was she trying to stir things up this time?
It reminded her of a period when Rachel was sixteen, and seemed intent on ruining the good spirits of everyone around her. The Spoiler, they had called her then, though not in a mean way, and not to her face. Paul and Gina would lie in bed at night and try to figure out what was bothering their daughter, and why she had to cast a negative light on everything.
Gina frowned. Her daughter was no longer a teenager. It was time to grow up.
“I’m going upstairs to collect the laundry,” she said, drying her hands.
“The laundry can wait,” Rachel snapped. “Mom, I’m talking about Dad.”
Carefully Gina hung the dish towel on the decorative cherry-wood rod affixed to the upper cabinet, next to the sink. She had put it there the day they moved in, rather than have towels all over the counters, gathering bacteria and looking messy.
Sometimes she thought that she liked a neat house because it was the only control she still had over her life.
“Your father?” she said, keeping her back to Rachel. “I thought we already went through all that.”
“Not quite,” Rachel said. She rubbed her face the same way she’d seen her father do for years when irritated, as if the source of the irritation could be rubbed away. “Mom, what if he’s seeing somebody?”
“Seeing—”
