Chapter 7: The Choice at the Counter
Nicole didn't move for a long moment.
Then she stood up slowly and walked to the counter.
She picked up the phone.
She read the message.
She set it back down without answering it.
"I'm not going," she said.
"You've already been going," Richard said.
"For eight months."
"I'm not going tonight." She turned around and her back was against the counter and her hands were pressed flat behind her on the edge of it.
"That's what I said."
"It doesn't matter what you do tonight," Richard said.
"It matters what you've been doing since March."
Ethan looked at Maya.
She gave him the smallest shake of her head.
He picked up his cup and looked at the table.
"Richard." Nicole's voice was stripped of everything except the words themselves.
"I need you to hear me.
I am not asking you to forgive me.
I am not asking you to understand.
I'm asking you to let me tell you the truth before you decide anything."
"You had eight months to tell me the truth."
"I know."
"You had six weeks while Diane was already carrying this."
"I know."
"You had this afternoon," Richard said, "before you pointed at Maya."
The last sentence was not raised.
It was not sharpened.
It was simply placed down in front of her, and it was worse for being quiet.
Nicole pressed her fingers to her eyes.
When she lowered them, her voice had changed — not softer, but emptier, like something that had been held tightly for a very long time and had finally been released.
"He told me in March," she said.
"Paul.
He told me he was unhappy.
With Diane.
With everything.
And I was stupid enough — I was—" She stopped.
"I told myself it was nothing.
I told myself it would end.
And then it didn't end and I didn't stop it and by June I already knew I was in something I couldn't—"
"You could have stopped it," Richard said.
"At any point.
You could have come to me."
"I know."
"Why didn't you?"
Nicole looked at him.
"Because I was afraid you would look at me exactly the way you're looking at me now."
The kitchen was very still.
Richard sat back down at the table.
He didn't look at Nicole.
He looked at his hands.
"What does the message say?" Maya asked.
Nicole looked at her.
"The message from Paul.
What does it say?"
"He wants to talk."
"About what?"
Nicole hesitated.
"The baby."
Maya felt the air in the room change.
Her father's hands went flat on the table.
Ethan was very still across from her.
"He wants you to keep it," Maya said.
It wasn't a question.
Nicole said nothing.
"Does he want to leave Diane for you," Maya said, "or does he want you to handle it quietly so he doesn't have to?"
The silence that followed was long enough that it became its own answer.
Nicole picked up the phone.
She turned it over once in her hand.
Then she put it in her cardigan pocket.
"I need to make a phone call," she said.
"Not to him.
To my doctor." She looked at Richard.
"Whatever I decide, I'm not deciding it tonight.
And I'm not deciding it because of a text message."
Richard looked up at her.
"When did you find out?"
"Three days ago."
"Three days." He looked at the table.
"You found out three days ago and your first move was to put it on Maya."
"It wasn't a move," Nicole said, and for the first time something broke open in her voice.
"It wasn't a plan.
He called me this morning and told me he wasn't going to leave Diane — that he'd changed his mind — and I panicked.
I came home and I couldn't think and the test was in my bag and I—" She stopped.
"I know that's not an excuse."
"No," Richard said.
"It isn't."
Ethan pushed back his chair.
He stood up, picked up his cup, rinsed it carefully at the sink, and placed it upside down on the drying rack.
"I'm going to do my homework," he said.
He walked out.
His footsteps went up the stairs.
Richard looked at Maya.
She looked back at him and thought: he is fifty years old and he is sitting at his own kitchen table and his whole life has just been rearranged without his permission, and the only person he has left in this room who is on his side is twenty-four.
"Dad," she said.
He shook his head slightly.
Not dismissive.
Just — not yet.
He stood up and walked out to the back garden.
Through the window Maya watched him stand at the edge of the grass with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at nothing.
Nicole was still by the counter.
"You're going to have to tell him everything," Maya said.
"Not some of it.
All of it.
Including what Paul said this morning."
"I know."
"And you're going to have to tell Diane."
Nicole's eyes closed.
"She already knows about the affair," Maya said.
"But she doesn't know about the pregnancy.
She doesn't know he called you this morning.
She doesn't know he asked you to meet him tonight." Maya paused.
"She deserves to know that he changed his mind.
She deserves to know what kind of person she's dealing with."
Nicole opened her eyes.
"You want me to call her."
"I think you already know you have to."
Nicole looked at the phone in her pocket.
Then she looked out at the garden where Richard was standing.
"He isn't going to forgive me," she said.
"I don't know what he's going to do," Maya said.
"Neither do you.
But right now the only thing that's going to make any of this survivable is if you stop deciding what people deserve to know."
Nicole's hand went to her pocket.
She didn't take the phone out yet.
But her hand rested on it.
Outside, Richard hadn't moved.
Maya got up and went to the back door.
She opened it and stood in the gap.
"Dad," she said.
He turned around.
"Come back inside," she said.
"There's more."
May you like
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he crossed the garden and came in.
