I was silent, watching Margaret’s face, Margaret letting it sink in that I knew about her and Finn. At least I knew there was something I shouldn’t know.
Her voice got incredibly quiet. “Finn told you?”
She shook her head. Like that was the betrayal here.
“It’s not what you think,” Margaret said. “Between me and your brother.”
“Which one?” I said.
She drilled me with a look. “You trying to be cute?”
“I’m trying to take a bath, but apparently that isn’t happening.” I pointed at the sink. “Can you hand me a towel?”
She shook her head. Then she reached over, grabbing the towel, putting it on the bathtub’s edge, but too deep in, the towel falling into the soapy water. “Finn. Between me and Finn.”
“Do you realize how wrong that is? That you even have to specify that?”
“I could do without the judgment, okay?” She paused. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t.”
“So who did?”
She looked at me. “Bobby.”
I closed my eyes. “Margaret, if you’re about to tell me that my brother cheated on you, don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”
“No, but there are a lot of ways to disappear on somebody.”
“What was his?”
“I don’t know . . .” Margaret shrugged, not wanting to say it. I was angry, but then I could see why. I could see why she was hesitating. As soon as she started talking, she began to cry.
I put my hand on top of hers. “What happened?”
“Our marriage. Getting married young. The miscarriage young. And then we decide to wait to have a child. Bobby wants to wait and we wait too long.”
I squeezed her hand, remembering it all too well: Margaret losing the baby five months into the pregnancy. She was devastated, only pulling out after the wedding, only pulling out when they were entrenched in their life together.
“We spent years trying to have the twins. All those fertility treatments. And I was the one who wanted that, but he wanted them too. Then they arrive. And what does he do?”
“He’s not helpful?”
She wiped at her tears, but they kept coming, the towel I’d left on the sink now her handkerchief. “He is helpful. He was absolutely amazing with the twins. Matching me feeding for feeding. Diaper change for diaper change.”
“I’m not sure how that means he disappeared,” I said.
She smiled. “It means I disappeared. At least as far as he was concerned.”
“You’re mad at him for being a devoted father?”
“No, I love that he is a devoted father. But it just made it obvious that there was not a whole lot there when the kids weren’t. Do you know when the last time we had sex was?”
I shook my head fiercely. “I don’t want to.”
“You don’t want to? I don’t want to.”
“So you’ve started sleeping with Finn?”
“No, I’m not sleeping with Finn,” she said. “It was stupid, what happened. Finn came over on July Fourth. For drinks. Burgers. Bobby was running late, of course, and we’d both had too much to drink. And he had his camera there, you know? He had come from doing this terrible shoot of a couple’s dogs. I asked to see his photographs and so he showed me. He showed me the photographs of the dogs. And we laughed about how ridiculous they were. We were really laughing. And it was stupid. But I kissed him.”
I looked at her, speechless.
“But he pulled away. I could tell he didn’t want to, but he did. He put his beer down and walked out. Got in his car. Drove away. Actually, he sat in his car for a solid five minutes. Not getting back out. Then he drove away.”
I felt myself audibly exhale, relieved. Finn had stopped it, whatever Margaret had started. There was no unfaithful act. Except then I looked into Margaret’s face, my relief turning to something else. The longing I saw there stopped me in my tracks. It mirrored perfectly the longing I had seen when I looked at Finn.
She shook her head. “The thing is, Finn . . . he was my friend. He was my friend when I was fifteen years old and I knew he liked me even then. He liked me for the reasons I liked me. But I chose Bobby.” She shrugged. “I chose Bobby for all the reasons that everyone chooses Bobby. I just didn’t take it into account.”
“Which part?”
“The part where someone looks at you, really looks at you, when you walk into a room. You either have that with someone or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re fucked.” She paused. “That’s what I wished I had known going into this marriage, that we didn’t have the one thing you need most.”