Marissa turns the screen so Avery can see it. Along with the missed call is a text: Just checking in to see how you’re feeling.
“Why is he so worried about—” Marissa’s hand flies to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she whispers as the realization hits her: Avery’s personal question, Skip’s overattentiveness, Gabe’s chicken soup. “Skip thinks I’m—”
A child’s shriek cuts through the air.
Just as Marissa could pick Bennett from a lineup based on scent, she can recognize his cry even from this distance.
“Bennett! I’ve got to go!” She races back toward the makeshift campground.
In the time she’s been gone—how long could it have been? Seven minutes? Ten, tops, she assures herself—a medley of tents have been constructed, and the Scouts, in their identical uniforms, are swarming around. Where is her son? she thinks frantically.
Finally she spots the back of Chris’s hunter-green jacket. He is huddled with a few other adults, including the troop leader. Bennett is in the center of the group.
“Bennett!”
He turns around. He is pressing a handkerchief to his thumb.
“I don’t think he needs stitches, do you?” she can hear the leader asking as he opens a first-aid kit.
Marissa’s pulse slows; Bennett isn’t badly hurt. He isn’t even crying. “What happened? Sweetie, did you cut yourself whittling?”
“This is going to sting just for a second, okay?” the troop leader, peeling back the handkerchief, tells Bennett.
Marissa leans over and puts her hand on Bennett’s shoulder. She wants to take him in her arms, but the other children are watching, and she knows Bennett is trying to keep his composure.
The leader pours a bit of iodine on the cut, then begins to bandage it up. “Next time you’ll use a regulation pocketknife, right?” The troop leader winks at Bennett.
“I don’t understand. Bennett has a regulation knife.”
Chris clears his throat. “He was using mine.”
Marissa sees the pocketknife on the grass. Its blade is longer, and likely much sharper, than the one used by the Scouts. Chris reaches over and picks it up, using the palm of his hand to fold the blade back in.
She quashes a surge of irritation. Naturally Chris would give Bennett a bigger knife and expect him to know how to use it; it’s the sort of thing Chris did to Matthew all the time growing up. Matthew had once told her that while he was still in elementary school, his father expected him to take over mowing the vast lawn of their home. Luckily, my mom hired a mowing service to come once a week while my dad was at work, Matthew had said, laughing. He never knew.
Now Marissa straightens up and the other parents begin to drift away. That’s when Marissa sees Avery has joined them. She has finally removed her sunglasses and appears to be taking everything in.
“Why don’t we skip whittling for today,” Marissa suggests to Bennett. “You can make up the lesson when your thumb feels better.”
“He’s fine,” Chris interjects. “Better to get back on that horse.”
Bennett picks up the stick and winces.
Marissa’s jaw clenches, but her tone remains cordial. “I think we should call it a day. Why don’t we take Bennett out for some ice cream?”
“Ice cream?” Bennett’s face lights up.
Chris shakes his head. “Can’t believe his dad didn’t teach him how to at least open a pocketknife.”
In the frozen moment that follows Chris’s harsh words, Marissa witnesses the troop leader avert his eyes, and Bennett’s face turn crestfallen. Avery, as always, seems to catalog every detail.
Anger swells inside Marissa.
The old Marissa would have swallowed her ire. She would have glossed over the moment, pretending it had never happened, to save face in front of the troop leader and other parents. Her need for pleasing appearances would have trumped her need for authenticity.
No more, she thinks as she glares at Chris. Matthew isn’t the only one who is changing the tenor of all of his relationships.
When Marissa speaks, her voice is lower than usual. “Don’t you ever talk that way about Matthew again.”
Surprise briefly flashes across Chris’s face.
“Come on, Bennett, you can show me how to take down the tent.” Marissa deliberately excludes Chris, shifting her body so that her back is to him.
As they walk away, she thinks, my infidelity with Skip might actually have saved me, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
AVERY
I’M UNLOCKING MY CAR DOOR when footsteps crunch against the ground behind me. I spin around to see Marissa’s father-in-law, nearly close enough to touch.
Chris is built like a wrestler, broad and compact. His thick white hair is buzzed short, his skin is weathered, and he wears a hunter-green windbreaker and well-worn khakis. Aside from his light blue eyes, he looks nothing like his tall, polished son.
Chris smiles tightly.
I feel instantaneous dislike, and not just because of the way he insulted Matthew a few minutes ago.
He extends his hand, and after a moment I take it and feel the rough calluses on his palm. “I’m Chris Bishop. What was your name again?”
Again. A strange choice of words; it’s as if in his mind we’ve already been introduced. The moment almost feels like a mirror image of last night, when Skip pretended we’d never met.
“Avery.” I decide not to offer my last name, although I’m not exactly sure why.
He nods, his eyes intent. “You’re friends with my daughter-in-law?”
I’d said goodbye to Marissa, but since she was busy with Bennett, I hadn’t lingered. Chris must have been watching her closely to have observed our brief interaction.
“Friend of a friend.” It’s my default answer when I see a client in public. I pull my hand away from Chris’s and open my car door.
“Nice to meet you.”
I experience a brief flash of déjà vu. Those were the exact words Skip uttered to me last night, even though he and I were far from strangers.
Although I’ve done a little research on Chris as part of my work with the Bishops—I know the name of his lobbying company, and where he lives—I haven’t considered him worthy of much attention.
Now I wonder if I should take a closer look at him. The mother-daughter dynamic gets a lot of coverage, but the father-son relationship is equally complicated. In my years as a therapist and now as a consultant, I’ve learned that if a son has a strained relationship in his present life, it’s not unusual for it to be traced to a past dysfunction with his father.
I watch as Chris climbs into a LeSabre parked across the lot from me. I wait a few minutes, wanting him to drive off first. But even though I see clouds of exhaust coming out of his tailpipe, indicating the engine is on, the vehicle doesn’t move.
Perhaps Chris is making a phone call.
I decide to make one, too.
Marissa had said Matthew was at his office, but I dial Matthew’s cell number anyway, thinking that it’s still probably the most efficient way to reach him.
It rings three times and I wonder if he really had a work emergency or—and this could be me projecting—if it was merely an acceptable excuse to avoid the rambunctious Cub Scout event.