Page 41 of The Affair
I nodded, remembering how she’d been there for me after my very public breakup. Candace and I had never been particularly close in high school, and after, we’d remained merely acquaintances.
There were friends who’d outright avoided me when news of the divorce broke; friends who treated me like I was to blame for my husband’s cheating.
But Candace had sought me out.
She was the true friend I needed, and I wish I hadn’t kept her at such arm’s length for so long.
“I don’t think Sawyer is treated well in his family,” I said, recalling the distant look in his eyes from the night before.
“How so?”
“I don’t know, but looking back, it’s starting to make sense. How he was always there at family functions but usually in the background. I just can’t figure out why. Surely there has to be a reason, you know? You just don’t come out of the womb, hating your family,” I said, giving the child in my lap a brief glance.
“And Reed never said anything to you?”
I shook my head. “He just said they weren’t close, and there was always an implication that it was Sawyer’s fault. I never had any reason to doubt him. All part of that Reed haze, I guess.”
I took a breath, remembering the harsh words he’d said. “He said the whole town was talking about Sawyer and me.”
Her mouth flattened, giving me a less than impressed face. “I highly doubt that. He probably heard it from one person, and somehow, in his small mind, that translates into the entire town.”
I smoothed the tiny curls on Penny’s head and breathed out the air in my lungs. “Yeah, but what if they are? Talking about us?”
“This isn’t something you considered when you hired him?”
I shrugged. “Not really.”
“Oh, it’s just when I asked you about it, you seemed like you’d thought it through—that you were pretty resolute in not caring what people thought, especially Reed.”
I bit my bottom lip, feeling that fluttery feeling in my stomach again—the one I’d felt every time I thought of Sawyer lately. “I guess I just didn’t think of him in that way.”
“And now?” she pressed.
Placing my hands over Penny’s ears, I whispered, “And now, I can’t stop thinking of him that way.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “You know you don’t actually have to censor yourself. She can’t understand what you’re saying. Not that you’re saying anything remotely above a PG rating at the moment.”
“Not in here,” I said, tapping my finger against my temple.
“Eloise Wood!”
Laughter filled the small kitchen.
“Reed accused us of sleeping together. He basically assumed that’s why I’d hired him in the first place, as some crazy scheme to get revenge on him.”
“And so, naturally, you believe the rest of the town shares his sentiment?”
“I mean, why wouldn’t they? It’s good gossip,” I said with a sigh. “He is my brother-in-law.”
“Ex-brother-in-law,” she reminded me. “But let me ask you this: who cares what they think? Who cares what Reed thinks, for that matter?”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she kept going, “If anyone knows how to survive this town’s gossip train, it’s you. When everyone found out about Reed and that girl in the bar, I bet you thought it was never going to end.”
She was right. I had. I’d actually contemplated moving to a new town just to avoid people and their stares.
“But soon, they found something else to talk about, right?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
