A muscle twitches in Griffin’s jaw. “I’m…not happy.”
The girl frowns. “Mari said counselors only tell parents to leave their kids if something’s dangerous.” She looks at her mother. “Were we in danger?”
Elle tosses her hair and laughs. “You were never in danger, sweetheart.”
Griffin’s eyes darken. I know I should clarify that’s not what I said, but defensiveness won’t help right now.
Sensing the tension, Elle looks from me to Griff and gives a dramatic wince. “Well, this is awkward.”
I need to get her out of here. If there’s any hope of saving things with Griffin, I need this to be a frank and honest conversation.
Lana flashes a too-bright smile. “Patti makes excellent macarons if anyone’s not up for cupcakes. I can text and make sure they stay open late just for us.” She’s using her cheerful PR voice, but there’s an edge to it I’ve never heard before.
Soph looks at Griffin. “Please, Daddy?”
A muscle twitches in his jaw, and he gives a curt nod. “Ten minutes. One cupcake.”
For once, Soph doesn’t negotiate. Just grabs her mother by the hand. “The coffee shop is this way.”
Elle flicks a glance at the camera. I see her searching for a reason to stall, some way to get the limelight shining her way.
“Come on, Ms. Julia.” Lana touches her arm. “We can go over some strategies for your on-camera confessionals we’ll be filming later.”
That gets Elle’s attention. She clutches Soph’s hand and flashes a smile much whiter and straighter than I remember it. “Perfect. Let’s go, sweetheart.”
The three of them glide off down the path. I watch them go, registering the stiffness in Soph’s shoulders, the way Elle moves like she’s walking the red carpet. Just before they turn the corner, Lana turns to face me. There’s an apology in her eyes, a wistfulness I feel deep in my chest.
Good luck, she mouths, then turns away.
I’m going to need it.
With a deep breath, I turn and face the rest of my family. Gabe’s putting away camera equipment while Griff seethes beside me. It’s Lauren whose eyes find mine first.
She presses her lips together in a grim line. “We didn’t know.”
I nod once. I’m not even sure what she means. That I knew Griff’s ex-wife? That I’d fallen in love with him?
They didn’t know the former because I couldn’t tell them, but the latter? That’s on me. And right now, I’m wishing I’d said something. If they’d known, if I’d let my family in, maybe we wouldn’t be here right now.
Lauren clears her throat. “Gabe. That’s our cue to go.”
Our brother doesn’t argue. Just gives me another look of sympathy as he packs up the gear. “For the record, I didn’t want to do it for the show,” he says. “Thought you might want things recorded for your study. For the journal article.”
“Thank you.” I swallow back the lump as I watch them go. My siblings, the people who have my back more than I realized.
I take a deep breath and turn to face Griff. His expression is stony, and I fight the urge to reach for him. “I understand you’re angry. I understand—”
“No, Mari. You don’t understand.”
I flinch at the sharpness in his voice. “You’re right. Why don’t you tell me what you’re feeling now?”
He laughs, but it’s the most humorless laugh I’ve ever heard. More a snarl, really. “Let me see if I’ve got this. You spent months building my wife’s confidence and telling her to spread her wings and chase her dreams or whatever the hell psychobabble you filled her head with.” His words are clipped, like he’s forcing them out. “Until she finally got the ‘courage’—” he makes air quotes with his fingers, eyes flashing with rage, “to abandon her husband and child and—”
“I never knew she had a child.” I recognize right away it’s not much of a defense. “And I didn’t know you, Griffin. All I had to go on was what she told me.”
He shakes his head, looking down at me with contempt. “Convenient. You get one side of the story and you use it to turn a whole family upside down. Do you have any idea what Gabby used to come home and say about you?”
I shake my head and keep my mouth clamped shut. There’s nothing I can say right now that won’t set him off. Now is the time for listening.
Griffin folds his arms over his chest and pitches his voice to a sarcastic sing-song lilt. “‘Oh, Griff—my therapist says I have so much more potential. My shrink says I’m wasting my talents here.’”
I fight back the urge to defend myself, knowing it won’t help. Even if I never used those exact words, he’s not wrong about the sentiment.
“How?” He demands. “How could you look me in the eye—have dinner with my daughter—hell, make love with me—”
“You think I didn’t want to tell you?” My voice snaps out crisper than I mean it to, but there’s no going back now. “As soon as I realized, I tried to reach her. I went through agents and publicists and producers. I couldn’t say a word to you without her permission. Do you understand that?”
He shakes his head, and I’m not sure he’s heard a word I’ve just said. “Then you should have stayed away. From me, from Soph—”
“I tried.” I stamp my foot like some ridiculous starlet from fifties cinema. “Goddam it, Griff—I did everything I could to avoid getting involved with you.”
“Except, oh, I don’t know—not sleeping with me?”
I close my eyes. “This was exactly what I worried would happen.”
“Because you had all the information.” The bark of his shout makes me look up again. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you knew a helluva lot about me, even if you didn’t know my name.” He pauses, gaze locked on mine. “Did she talk about what a lousy listener I was?”
“Griff—”
“Or how I stifled her dreams?”
“Griffin—”
“How about our sex life? Did you hear how I was in bed? Have you been laughing to yourself all along and thinking—”
“Enough!” I never raise my voice with patients, and certainly not with loved ones. But I’ve hit a breaking point. “What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t reach Elle, I couldn’t say a word to you, and I couldn’t seem to stay away. That’s my weakness—I own that—but I didn’t have a lot of options.”
“I see.” There’s a calmness in his voice now that’s worse than when he was yelling. “So you never gave a thought to how well this would play on the show.”
“Absolutely not.”
He looks at me for a long time. “And it never crossed your mind how great this would be for your research. What a terrific opportunity it was to root around in my brain for the sake of the study.”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it.
“What a tremendous opportunity.” Susan’s words come back to me in a flash. “I admire you, Mari. What an incredible opportunity to study human behavior. The Journal of Experimental Psychology is going to eat this up.”