“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.