I smile a little at the thought.
“By the time Riley was sleeping through most of the night, Alexis and I had agreed to sleep in different rooms. No one knew, and it made things easier. Alexis was a good mother and a good friend, but we weren’t in a relationship. We were together because of Riley, who we loved with all our hearts.”
“So, let me get this straight, does this mean you have had sex three times in the last three years?”
“Yup.”
“Didn’t you talk about it?”
“I knew it wasn’t a good situation, but I figured that once Riley was older, we could restart the relationship. I guess I didn’t want to address the fact that our marriage was… not ideal. I know that Alexis wasn’t happy about it either, but we were doing our best for our baby girl. Perhaps we hoped that everything would work out in the long run.”
I try to understand what I have just learned.
Ethan shifts and says, “I’m thirsty, can I get you a glass of water?”
While he is gone, I sit there and think over everything. My sister and my ex were in a sexless marriage. I had no idea.
Ethan returns with a glass of water for me. He sits next to me and puts his arm around me.
“We still need to figure out what the hell we’re going to do about Riley, anyway,” Ethan points out. I nod.
“There’s just so much baggage on all sides of the situation,” I say after a few moments.
“Yeah, everybody’s got a stake in this whole… bullshit thing,” Ethan agrees.
“We need to get what’s going on between us right,” I suggest. Ethan frowns in thought and for a few moments I don’t know what he’s going to say. We might, I think, even end up fighting again.
“I guess I have to admit that I never really understood how much pain you were in,” Ethan tells me.
“And now you think you do?”
Ethan shrugs. “It… I guess it sort of hit me, a little bit, at the party,” he explains.
“Why?” I want to hear what he has to say but at the same time I feel almost panicked.
“I just finally really thought about it after the fight,” he says.
“And what did you conclude?” I’m really curious about it now, really interested to hear what he actually has to say for himself.
“I could see, really see, that you were in pain. That it wasn’t just something you’d cooked up to be petty or jealous. And as much as Alexis was hurting the whole time you cut her out of her life, and as desperate as she was to reconnect, you had to… I guess… keep her out of your life so that it wouldn’t hurt so bad,” he says.
I think about that and nod.
“I did. I really thought I did. But it didn’t stop hurting, even when Alexis finally stopped even trying to call,” I admit. It seems almost foolish now, with Alexis dead, that I’d done it in the first place. But I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing her and Ethan together in my parents’ home while it was happening.
“I should have stayed away from her after we broke up. I can’t take the blame, but I shouldn’t have even put myself in that position,” Ethan says.
It’s like I’ve been living with a fishhook buried somewhere deep in my chest, between my lungs. For years, the pain was constant, but I’d gotten used to it, and now, with Ethan finally admitting it, it’s like someone took the hook out of me. It’s not complete relief, but there’s this feeling that someday, I might forget the wound had even happened.
“Thank you,” I say, taking a deep breath.
“I think, I hope, I guess, that we can figure things out between us,” Ethan says.
I nod. If Riley’s going to have any kind of chance to have a somewhat normal life, Ethan and I are going to have to work together. Finally, I feel like we might have a chance at doing that.
Chapter Thirty
Ethan
It’s days before Thanksgiving, and all I can think about is whether or not Lara and I have made a horrific mistake. With both of our parents going to war against each other, we decided, between the two of us, that the best way to try to give them one last chance to settle things was to have a big, family feast, with my parents, Nathan, Riley, me and Lara.
We both were hoping that having a big family meal together, a Thanksgiving to bring the entire family under one roof and at one table, would spark some kind of productive discussion, or at least get everything on the table. I convinced my parents to do it for Riley’s sake, not to make her choose between her grandparents at such a stressed-out point in her life.
Somehow or another Lara convinced her father of the same thing, and we carefully negotiated that it would be at Nathan’s house, that Lara and I would manage the details of the food, that I would bring Riley as well as my parents there. But now with only a couple of days to go, I’m having second, even third and fourth thoughts about our plan.
Riley’s napping in her bedroom, so I take my phone off the charger and call Lara. She should, in theory at least, be home, and able to talk. She answers after three rings, sounding a little sleepy or distracted but not irritated.
“What’s up? Something happening with Riley?”
I shake my head to myself. “No, I just wanted to go over the plan again,” I admit. Things were so much simpler, so much easier, when it was me, Alexis and Riley. Even though Alexis was still hurting then over Lara cutting her out, our parents weren’t at each other’s throats about it, and there was no question of who would
