Christening (2 page)

She still didn’t have a job, although she’d finished law school, passed the bar, and was legally licensed to practice law in the state of Georgia. Early on, she’d made some attempts to find a position, but the job market was incredibly difficult for lawyers, and she wasn’t a very marketable candidate—over thirty, with two kids and no experience except several years as a judicial assistant.

She hadn’t even attempted a job-search for more than two years, but she tried not to think about it. It made her feel like a huge, lazy slob, who didn’t work, had a domestic staff, and yet still couldn’t manage to follow through with the career she’d always wanted.

Pushing that constant, niggling anxiety out of her mind, Erin went into the master bathroom and drew herself a hot bath.

She’d been taking a lot of baths lately, after the girls went to bed.

Most of the time, she didn’t have anything else to do.

She loved her daughters more than anything. Wouldn’t trade them for the world.

But sometimes she was still so, so lonely.

Even when Seth had been in town this year, he didn’t really seem to be
with
them the way he used to. She knew he was horribly stressed by added responsibilities at work. His prestigious law firm had branches all over the country, and it had recently expanded internationally. For months, he’d been traveling and working longer hours than he had since they’d gotten together. Even when he was home, he was often distracted and would lock himself up in his office for hours.

She knew he loved her and the girls. Never doubted it. But she’d been sensing things going downhill for a long time now, and she couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it.

She didn’t like to think about that either, since it prompted a lurking awareness in her gut that she was still pretending didn’t exist.

Sinking into the bubbly water, she tried to concentrate on what was good. She had a husband who loved her. Two of the sweetest, prettiest, smartest daughters imaginable. A life of ease and privilege. Could buy anything she wanted. Didn’t have to work. Didn’t have a career. Didn’t have to do anything but sit around a luxurious apartment and bask in having absolutely no life outside of her children and a husband who was never around. Didn’t even have to pretend to look for a job—although sometimes she did, in a futile attempt to act like she had something that was purely her own.

She had everything any woman could want…didn’t she?

She soaked in the hot water of the large jetted tub until the heat had finally dissipated and her fingers were starting to prune.

Seth still hadn’t called.

She got out of the tub, put on her pajamas, lay in bed, and pretended to read a current bestseller. Kept waiting for the phone to ring.

By midnight, she had to resign herself to the fact that Seth wasn’t going to call tonight after all. He wouldn’t call after midnight, even if he wanted to. He’d be afraid she was asleep and wouldn’t want to wake her up.

Sometimes she tried to call him. She hadn’t gotten through to him directly in almost two weeks. When he was really busy, he didn’t answer his phone so the calls were transferred to his assistant. Eventually Erin got tired of leaving messages with the cool, snotty woman, so she no longer called unless she had something substantial to say.

Putting down the book and turning off the light, she got under the covers of the big, luxurious bed. Felt small and stupid by herself in it, the expanse of Seth’s side torturing her with its empty presence.

She was thirty-three years old, and she felt ancient, and exhausted, and insignificant, and of no use to anyone but her children.

Determined not to sulk, she tried to distract herself. Since she was physically restless and jittery—a fairly common sensation recently when she was alone in her bed at night—she sorted through her mental collection of erotic fantasies. Ended up visualizing an evening on her honeymoon with Seth. One she could never forget.

Since they’d married just before Anna’s birth, they hadn’t gotten a chance to have a real honeymoon until after Anna had turned one. Then they’d left the kids with her father and Stella and had gone for a week to Hawaii, since Erin had never been.

One evening, they had gotten into an elevator of a high rise, one with a glass wall so they could look out over the coastline as they ascended. Then the elevator had stopped suddenly. Erin had assumed the elevator was stuck, and she had actually been nervous about being trapped.

Until Seth had started to position her, gently pushing her forward so that she was facing the glass wall. Then he’d pressed his body up against her back. He’d taken her like that, hard and fast and dangerous, in a stopped elevator in a lavish high rise, as Erin had stared down with wild eyes at the lush stretches of sky and sea and sand. She’d come so hard she been stifling screams, her skirt bunched up around her hips, her hands clawing at the smooth surface of the glass, Seth pushing into her rhythmically from behind and speaking the most erotic, thick mutters into her ear.

She’d later found out that he had gotten the key from the building manager to stop the elevator on purpose.

After reimagining the memory for several minutes, Erin was hot and deeply aroused, with no other source of relief but her hand.

She used it, as she’d used it nearly every night since Seth had been gone. She seemed to be hornier than ever this year, while ironically having no outlet for her surge of hormones since Seth was seldom around.

After she’d rubbed herself into a quick, efficient orgasm—not a very satisfying one—she got up, went into the bathroom, washed her hands, brushed her teeth, and got back into bed.

When she closed her eyes, she was bombarded with other memories.

Seth, not just when he was arousing her, touching her, making her come. But when he was holding her afterwards. When he was sweet, or funny, or dryly cynical. When he was playing with the girls. When he'd had dinner with them on a regular basis, and often breakfast too. When he and Erin had spent leisurely Saturday mornings in bed, sometimes on their own, sometimes with Mackenzie.

Erin remembered those months so vividly, after Anna was born—perhaps the happiest of Erin’s whole life—when Seth had been committed to spending as much time with them as possible. When he’d been more openly loving with her and with his daughters than he’d ever been before…and had ever been since.

It wasn’t that Seth had—or ever would—stop loving them. Erin knew how much he adored them, knew that would never change. But she should have known all along that kind of cozy domesticity couldn’t last forever.

Seth was an intensely complicated man, and he’d lived most of his life alone, clawing his way to the top, pouring his soul into career ambitions as an attempt to shape a secure place for himself into the world.

He hadn’t ever stopped loving them, but other things had been progressively distracting him from them.

And now it just wasn’t like it used to be.

Sometimes, all four of them had piled on the big bed in the mornings. Anna, still a baby in Erin’s arms. Erin leaning against Seth’s side, his arm draped around her. Mackenzie cuddled between the two of them, tiny and affectionate, trying to be near her new little sister.

Those memories were just as powerful to Erin as the memories of any lovemaking she and Seth had ever shared, and somehow even more heartbreaking.

The tears that had been lingering in her eyes all evening spilled over at last, and she cried in choked little sobs into her pillow.

It wasn’t just that she missed Seth—although she missed him so much it seemed to tear her apart. But there was something else there too, something heavy and unspeakable. A lurking awareness she couldn’t yet acknowledge, but that made her sob even harder.

She didn’t cry for long, still trying her best not to feel sorry for herself when she really had a very good life. But it was a long time before she fell into an uneasy sleep, since even after two o’clock she was vaguely hoping that Seth might still call.

Hoping that he wanted to talk to her so much that he’d call her anyway, no matter what time it was.

There had been a time when Seth had wanted Erin—even just to talk to—that much.

***

Erin woke up later than usual the following morning.

In fact, she was awakened by a little hand patting her on the cheek.

“Mommy still sleeping!” It was a piercing, childish voice.

Erin managed to pry her eyelids up. Saw Anna smiling at her proudly.

With some effort, Erin was able to smile back, smothering her instinctive grumbles at such a rude awakening. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi,” Anna pulled down the back of her short nightgown, which had been accidentally tucked into her panties. “Daddy comes home today?”

“Yes. Daddy comes home.” She rubbed her eyes and saw that Anna’s expression was pleading with her silently. Erin knew why, so she reached out her arm invitingly. “Did you want to get under the covers with me?”

Anna’s face relaxed into another smile, and she eagerly climbed into bed, cuddling up against Erin.

Groggily, Erin glanced at the clock and saw that it wasn’t even seven o’clock. “Did you wake up early this morning?”

“Mac woke up first.”

“Where is she?”

“She's reading.” Then Anna added with subdued outrage in her tone, “She said not to
bug
her.”

“Well, this way you get to snuggle with me until it’s time for breakfast.”

Anna giggled happily. She’d always been more naturally cuddly than Mackenzie, another trait she got from her mother as opposed to her father.

Erin relaxed and enjoyed the quiet minutes with her daughter, not really in any hurry to get up. They were getting to the end of the summer now, so they might as well enjoy the leisurely days while they could.

About fifteen minutes later, Anna had dozed off again and Erin was well on her way herself, but then she heard Mackenzie call out from the hallway, “Mommy!”

“We’re in bed, pumpkin.” She wondered why kids always resorted to yelling instead of investigating someone’s location for themselves.

Anna was awake again by the time Mackenzie padded into the bedroom in her bare feet. She was holding Erin’s tablet, which she often played games on.

“Daddy’s on the internet,” Mackenzie announced as she approached the bed.

“Is he?” Erin asked, only vaguely curious. Seth’s picture was online a lot, ever since he’d become a minor celebrity when he’d successfully defended a professional basketball player in a trial that made national headlines.

Mackenzie’s face, however, was tight and worried, and her blue-gray eyes were huge as she added, “He’s kissing a lady.”

“What?” Erin demanded in surprise, instinctively reaching out for tablet.

“See?” Mackenzie affirmed, pointing to the picture.

Only then did Erin realize her daughter had somehow stumbled on a particular tabloid blog, one Erin knew very well, since it often posted gossip about Seth and had been the source of much angst for Erin in the past.

Seth was indeed in a posted photograph.

Kissing another woman.

He was dressed up in evening clothes, as was the woman. They must have been at a cocktail party or something, and Seth was just kissing the woman’s cheek.

In fact, Erin now recognized the woman—knew she was the wife of one of Seth’s coworkers. The kiss was tame and harmless. Probably just a gesture of friendliness or courtesy.

But that didn’t stop Erin from burning with hurt, humiliation, and dismay as she saw her husband splashed over the main page of a tabloid blog, with his hands and his lips on another woman.

Both Anna and Mackenzie were now peering over and staring at the picture too. Mackenzie was trying to read the headlines. “What does sor-did mean?” she asked, sounding out the word as Erin had taught her.

“It means something very silly,” Erin replied distractedly. She tried to always take her daughters’ questions seriously—but she was not going to explain what it meant that the blog claimed their father was having a sordid affair.

“Why is Daddy kissing that lady?” Anna asked.

Erin, by now, had managed to pull herself together. She smiled casually, determined not to worry her daughters by her own involuntary reaction to this. “Daddy is just being nice to this lady, but the blog is making it sound like something bad is happening.”

Anna frowned down at the picture again.

“See,” Mackenzie said helpfully, pointing at a detail in the picture. “He’s kissing the lady’s cheek. Not her mouth, like he kisses Mommy. Sometimes he kisses Aunt Stella’s cheek too.”

“Oh,” Anna said, as if this detail resolved everything. She gazed at her sister admiringly.

Erin sighed, wondering how it was possible that her daughters—four and six years old—would have to figure things like this out. Would have to deal with slurs against their father’s character and have to reconcile them with the daddy they knew.

Erin stared at the picture again. She knew it was exactly what she’d explained to Anna. It was nothing. Never—
never
—would she suspect that Seth had cheated on her.