“Don’t get caught, then. Tell him the truth now.”
A panicked feeling wrapped itself around my heart, squeezing tightly. My pencil responded to my feelings, scratching on my sketch pad. “I don’t want to do that. Then he won’t have anything to do with me.”
“You keep telling me you don’t like him, so what would it matter if he stopped talking to you?”
The thought of not speaking to Griffin again crushed me, but I tried to ignore that feeling. “Well, I wouldn’t want to keep Milo away from—”
“Don’t you ‘Milo’ me. This was never about him. You offered to let Griffin come on those playdates so you could spend time with him. Because you like him.”
Her words shocked me, even though some small part of my conscience suggested that she was right.
“Before you start deluding yourself again, and even though you are dismissive of my example, please allow me to point out that Cinderella lied. She lied and lied. She wore a beautiful gown that didn’t belong to her, rode in a carriage made from a large orange-yellow gourd, pretended she had servants. The prince thought she was a princess or a noblewoman. She one hundred percent lied to that dude. She had a great backer in her fairy godmother, but the entire thing was one long con from the beginning to the end of the night. And do you know what the moral of Cinderella is?”
“Always wear great shoes because great shoes can change your whole life?”
At that Alice laughed. “No.”
“Don’t be mean to your stepdaughter because someday she might rule over you?”
“Okay, Miss Comedy, besides being kind to everyone and treating them the same whether they’re an earl or a nanny, the moral of this story is that if Cinderella had been honest with her prince upfront, she would have saved them both a lot of heartache and misery. And to be specific to you, the prince didn’t care that she’d lied. He loved her anyway. Even if you want to deny it, you and Cinderella are the same.”
“Not true,” I said, being stubborn because I didn’t want to admit to the potential insight in her words. “Cinderella had small feet.”
At that Alice laughed so loud I worried she might wake up her kids. “Look out, straws! Hide! Diana’s grasping at you again!”
Now I joined in with her, and the laughing was strangely cathartic. I felt better. “He sees me in this expensive suite at this luxury hotel, going to a charity ball in a designer dress. He thinks we’re the same, but we’re not.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said gently. “If you were living in, well, your old apartment, he’d still like you. He doesn’t care where you live. Tell him. It’s better if it comes from you and he doesn’t find out in some shocking way.”
Like Sheila inadvertently telling him? “What if I confess and he thinks he has some moral responsibility to share it with the Crawfords?”
“You know that’s stupid, right? That you’re literally now making up reasons to stay away from him that have no bearing on reality?”
Okay, so I was being a little Pandora-esque, hanging on to my box tightly because I didn’t want hope to escape.
“So maybe he won’t tell anyone.” I sighed, not sure what to do. “I also don’t want to keep lying to him.” This scruple that I had where Griffin was concerned was annoying and inconvenient, but definitely there.
“That’s a good thing! It’s what we like to call growth. You’re becoming a better person, despite Mom’s best intentions.”
Her mentioning Mom put me on a totally different track, and had me thinking about a concern I had with Griffin. It made me confess something that I’d been secretly thinking but hadn’t ever said. “He confuses me. I can’t figure out what his angle is.”
Now it was Alice’s turn to sigh. “Not everyone has an angle. Mom did such a number on you.”
“So far she’s been right. You married a man who turned out to be garbage.”
“True,” she acknowledged, “but he didn’t have an angle. He wasn’t trying to use me or take anything from me.”
“Just the best years of your life,” I muttered.
“He also gave me Jenna and Jasper, and I’ll always be grateful for that. The best things in life sometimes come from the absolute worst experiences. He and I were in love and it didn’t work out. It happens. Maybe if I hadn’t been so desperate to prove that I wasn’t like Mom, I wouldn’t have married him. There were warning signs about how selfish he could be, but I ignored them. That doesn’t mean he was trying to con me, though.”
It was really hard to see the world through such dark lenses all the time. I was trying to be better, but considering being vulnerable made all the fears so much more intense.
When I didn’t say anything she continued on, “I worried about how the split might affect you. Chad and I were your only real-life experience with a married couple. But Griffin is not Chad. And you’re not me. You wouldn’t settle for anything less than you deserve.”
I shifted on the bed, changing my position, moving my sketch pad. “That’s probably part of the problem. I don’t feel like I deserve anything good in my life. Do you think I’ll ever stop feeling this way?”
“Only when you’re able to forgive yourself. It’s okay to want something good because you are a good person.”
Alice’s words made my throat feel thick, like there were unshed tears stuck there. “But I need to focus on what’s important. To make sure that you’re taken care of.”
Her voice softened so low that it was almost hard to hear her. “Diana, I love you so much. But I don’t want you to stop living your life trying to save mine.”
“How can you say that to me? You know you and your kids are my whole world.”
“You’re allowed to enjoy the attention of a beautiful man and have fun. And if you’re not ready to tell him the truth yet, which for the record I think is a mistake, no one would begrudge you living in a fantasy world for a fortnight.”
I never should have told her that word. I had the feeling she was going to be using it a lot from now on.
She added, “You’re not like Mom; this isn’t the same thing. You’re not trying to cheat or steal from him. Just have some fun. Believe me, if I could trade places with you, I would.”
There were so many thoughts going through my head, all competing for attention, that it was hard to focus in on one thing. My pencil dropped out of my hand, landing softly on the floor.
Alice coughed, clearing her throat. “I know how hard it is to live your life with a ton of regrets. I think you’ll regret it if you let this chance pass you by. Enough lectures from me! I’m going to go to bed. Have fun tomorrow, and I want to hear all about it! Love you!”
I said good night, told her I loved her, too, and hung up.
Glancing at my sketch pad, I realized what I’d drawn. It was a picture of Griffin, smirking at me from the page. I closed the cover. Left to its own devices, my subconscious had drawn him. I didn’t know what that meant.
I decided that it had happened only because we’d been talking about him. No other reason. At least not one that I was willing to admit to. Mostly because if I was totally honest with myself, I’d disregard the rules I’d put into place to protect myself and my job. I couldn’t risk everything for a cute boy.