Page 27 of The Husband Hour
He didn’t say anything while they put away the dinner plates, but his silence spoke loud and clear to Beth. This was a big mistake.
Fine. Maybe she was naive to think a summer under the same roof would magically make the girls best friends again. Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted Stephanie move into the Green Gable and then insist to Howard that they do the same. But the reality was that they wouldn’t have had to move at all if Howard hadn’t lost their home. She’d spent decades working beside him in that store, the last few years strategizing with him on how to keep things afloat. And yet he never thought to mention he’d taken out a second mortgage.
That was the thanks she got for giving up her dream of having her own catering company to join him in his family business. To stand by his side like a good wife.
“I bought tickets to Florida for next week,” he said suddenly.
“What? Why on earth would you do that?” Beth, stacking dishes in the cabinet, stopped mid-reach. She set the plates down on the counter.
“Bill and Lorraine invited us. They’re having a retirement party. Bill just bought a boat.” Bill and Lorraine were friends from the country club they used to belong to. Howard and Beth had dropped out of the club a few years earlier. Money had become tighter, and Beth stopped enjoying the annual cycle of social events after losing Rory. She had suddenly become high profile, exposed. It was a fraction of what her daughter experienced but enough to take away her pleasure in large gatherings. Bill and Lorraine had also left the club, trading their house in Villanova for a home on a golf course in Frenchman’s Creek, Florida.
“Why didn’t you talk to me about it first?” There was no way she was flying off to Florida. She didn’t want to travel, and she certainly didn’t want to go put on a happy face when everything was falling apart. “This isn’t a good time. We have so much to figure out.”
“I know. But now I’m thinking Florida might be worth looking into.”
“Looking into? In what sense?”
“We’d get more for our money out there. And there’s no income tax.”
“Well, we have no income. So that’s not a huge plus.”
“Can you try to be positive for once?”
“Howard, no. I’m not moving to Florida.”
“You can’t even be open to the idea? Give me one good reason why not.”
“For one thing, I have work. The foundation—”
“Let Lauren get more involved! She needs to get off this damn island. If you stop enabling her, maybe she will.”
She shook her head. “You just get to make all the decisions, don’t you?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Maybe I would have if you’d leveled with me sooner! And what about Ethan?”
“What about him?” Howard said blankly.
“Don’t you want to spend time with your grandson?”
“Of course I do. But Beth, you and I have to rebuild. And Stephanie’s going to have to step up. And you know what? Lauren has to get on with her life. Even if we weren’t selling the house, she should be looking for an apartment. It’s outrageous to heat this place all winter for one person.”
“You’re so hard on them,” she said, feeling heartbroken. “You’re not perfect either, you know.”
“Never said I was. But I did say, from day one, that Lauren was too young to get serious with that boy. Didn’t I? She was so bright, had so much going for her. Now look at her.”
“She’s going to be fine,” Beth said, a whisper.
Howard shut the dishwasher, pressed the buttons so the room filled with the hum of the machine.
“I’m leaving next Thursday. Flight’s at noon out of Philly,” he said, tossing the sponge behind the sink. “I hope you’ll be with me. But I’m going either way.”
Matt didn’t feel like he had a ton of reasons to pat himself on the back lately, but getting the footage of that kid was a stroke of genius.
He barely noticed that the room had fallen dark as the sun set, the only light coming from his screen. Again, he played the clip of Ethan kicking the soccer ball around the beach, the sun-dappled ocean behind him, seagulls fluttering nearby like birds in a goddamn Disney film. Of course, it would have been a thousand times better if he’d been able to get footage of Rory playing ball as a kid, but he’d lost that opportunity when Mrs. Kincaid died shortly after he interviewed her. She’d kept promising to send him some childhood photos and video clips, but it never happened. At least now he could use this kid as juxtaposition. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good enough work-around.
He jumped to footage of Rory’s high-school athletic field: General H. H. Arnold Field, named after aviation pioneer Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold, the only officer to hold a five-star rank in two different U.S. military services.
