Page 37 of The Fadeaway

They parted ways that night after Lyle walked back into the bar to find his date gone. Patty had paid the tab for the clients she’d brought to the Bel Age and gone home to Ruby.

At that point in her life, she’d already given birth to Trixie and lost that beautiful baby, watched her beloved husband die of a heart attack right before her eyes, realized she was alone in the world to raise her young daughter, and pulled herself together enough to put her law degree to use. She’d been through a lot, and Lyle’s secret truly did not faze her. She offered him her unconditional friendship and support, and he, in turn, became something of a protector at work. Whereas before Patty had been given some of the toughest cases and tasked with some of the worst grunt work—all appropriate for someone as low onthe totem pole as she was—Lyle began requesting her to join him on more high-profile cases, taking her along for meals that were expensed and allowing her to work on her cases at home at night while Ruby slept. Gone were the nearly all-nighters in the office, relying on the fax machine there to spit out documents from all over the world at all hours. Lyle insisted that the firm install a fax and a computer in Patty’s home office, which had changed everything for her in terms of being able to work at home in her robe and slippers at midnight, versus sitting around a conference room in the wee hours with the other junior members of the firm.

But befriending Lyle hadn’t been something Patty had done to gain fringe benefits; she actually quite liked the man. His sense of humor was droll, and his delivery of punchlines dry and direct. He’d been raised by British parents who’d relocated to Los Angeles, and that heritage showed in nearly everything he did. Truth be told, Patty adored him.

“Care to do the starlight wine tasting tonight?” Lyle asked her as they wandered through the rows of grapes together. Patty was strolling along behind him, admiring the way the long, golden fingers of sunlight reached between the grapevines and brushed Lyle's shoulders.

"That sounds nice," Patty said, holding her empty Prosecco glass in one hand. She and Lyle frequently sat together at meetings, attended the same functions, and essentially acted like the work-friends that they were. It never bothered her that there was water cooler gossip about the nature of their relationship, nor did she pay any mind to the sly comments she overheard the men make to Lyle. It just wasn't worth her time. But Susan's feelingswereworth her consideration, and Patty wanted to discuss that with Lyle.

"Hey, Ly?" Patty said, taking a few long strides to catch up with him. "Can we talk?"

Lyle stopped walking and turned, sensing the seriousness in Patty's voice. "What's up?"

"It's about Susan," she said, toeing the dirt beneath her flat shoe. "I know you don't like to discuss your marriage," Patty held up a hand to fend off his words, "but I think it's time we talk about her. Last time you brought her to an event I sensed that she was a little frosty towards me, and I'm not keen on your wife thinking that there's something going on here." Patty waved a hand back and forth between them.

"She doesn't think that," Lyle assured her. He reached out and put one hand on Patty's narrow shoulder, holding it firmly. "She knows it's not you."

But Patty was unconvinced. "How do you know? How are you so sure that she isn't sitting at home right now with Zoey and Theo, thinking that her husband is away on a work trip and sharing a room with me? I can't stand that, Lyle. It's not my business how you conduct your marriage, and I don't even ask a lot of questions, but I don't want to be a part of hurting some sweet woman who doesn't know what's going on."

"Patty," Lyle said, giving her shoulder a firm shake. "She does know what's going on."

Patty had been about to say more, but Lyle's tone stopped her. "She does? You told her?"

Lyle tilted his head to one side. "Well, in a manner of speaking."

At this phrase, Patty's eyebrows shot up. "In a manner of speaking?"

Lyle let out a long breath and pulled his hand from her shoulder, running it through his own hair instead. "She found a letter."

“A letter?”

“From Abel.”

“From Abel?” Patty clamped her mouth shut; all she was doing was parroting back whatever Lyle said, and what she really wanted was the full story.

Lyle exhaled again. “She was going through my briefcase and hoping to find a copy of the will we’d done recently so that she could put it in the safe in our bedroom. We’d previously had my sister in place as the guardian for Zoey and Theo in the event that anything happened to us, but then my sister went to rehab, and we realized we should probably revise that, and name a new executor while we were at it. Anyhow, she was searching for that, and found a letter from Abel that he wrote after our weekend away together.”

Patty put one hand to her forehead. She’d been nothing but supportive thus far, and she’d even talked practical things with Lyle because she really did care about Susan. She’d urged him to use condoms with his dates, not because he and Susan were still intimate, according to Lyle, but because she wanted him to stay alive—for all of them. She begged him not to meet strange men in unsafe places. Pled with him to remember that no matter who he met up with, he should think of his kids and remember their feelings as he pursued the lifestyle he felt he was truly meant to live. She’d been the very best friend she could be, but this felt like too much.

“Why did you keep a letter from a man who told you that he’d never be seen with you in public?” she nearly wailed, throwing the hand not holding her Prosecco glass into the air in frustration. “You should have thrown that away!”

Lyle looked wounded. “It was a poem,” he said, looking crestfallen. “It was a beautiful poem. No one has ever written anything like that for me.”

Patty felt the wind leave her sails. “Lyle,” she said softly. “Abel took you to a bed and breakfast in a city three hundredmiles away because he said he never wanted anyone he worked with to see him with you.”

“It’s because he doesn’t want to be outed like that.”

“No, it’s not,” Patty said, taking a step toward him and looking up into Lyle’s eyes pleadingly. She really and truly wanted him to understand that she loved him and was on his side, but she couldn’t let him live in a fantasyland. “He’d been in a long-term relationship with a man.” They both knew this: Abel, a history professor, had been dating another professor from the math department at USC. “He just didn’t want to be withyou.”

At this, Lyle turned and walked away, taking long strides through the grapevines. He cut through them and vanished from Patty’s view.

Patty exhaled. Lyle had been found out by his wife, but she still didn’t know where that put his marriage. Obviously Susan no longer assumed he was seeing Patty, but his wife was still a woman with feelings, and now Patty worried about her even more.

Lyle stayed in his room at the vineyard’s hotel that night, not coming out for the starlight wine tasting after all. The next day when he and Patty finally saw one another again at breakfast, he sat down across from her on the outdoor patio, sunglasses firmly in place.

“I admitted it all to her when she found the letter, Patty,” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a carafe. “She said she knew something was wrong, but she just assumed I was having an affair with a woman.”

“And?” Patty prompted gently.

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