He had made excuses before, had even canceled at the last minute, but never anything like this. Never left her alone in a bar. Never told her to call him when she had it together.
Holly had a fleeting fantasy of racing out to the sidewalk, hailing a cab, and telling them to follow Jack’s Porsche SUV. Tailing them, no doubt, to Jessica’s apartment.
But what then?
And anyway, by the time she reached the sidewalk, he was gone.
Jon came home for New Year’s Eve dinner a little late but still in plenty of time to enjoy the standing rib roast and new potatoes Jessica had prepared.
“I’m so sorry for this insanity. I’ve already left a message for my lawyer.”
“She calls you Jack,” Jessica said, pouring him a glass of wine.
“As in jack-of-all-trades,” he said nonchalantly. “It was a joke from med school that sort of stuck.”
Later, while they ate, Jessica said, “She seemed surprised she hadn’t heard of me.”
Jon looked perplexed. “How would she have?”
“Maybe she keeps in touch with people at the office?”
“I find that hard to imagine. If she called anyone, it would be Olivia, and I’d hear about that immediately.”
Over the tiramisu, which turned out perfectly, Jessica returned to the subject. “I hope she’s not putting things together. She definitely took note of the fact that I was from Phoenix.”
“It probably rang a bell because I traveled there all the time.”
Part of her ached to see him worry more, drink far too much, even break down over what his soon-to-be ex-wife had put him through. He didn’t, though, and she felt she had to play the whole thing off as another uncomfortable inevitability. “She’s pretty.”
“Yes,” said Jon, nodding. “But the things I liked most about Holly were her intelligence, drive, and what I mistakenly thought was total stability.”
Which was exactly how Jessica would have perceived her had he not told her otherwise. “She certainly doesn’t seem as crazy as—”
“That’s the problem with this whole damn situation,” Jon said mournfully. “Just looking at her, nobody would believe it.”
They rang in the New Year on eastern standard time and were making love at midnight, knowing he’d be out the door again by midday—first to the office, and then off to the airport for a presentation at Duke, of all places.
“Just think, I’d be plucking you out of the crowd in Durham this week if we hadn’t met in Phoenix,” he said, his arm around her.
“Maybe that would have been better,” she said.
“You don’t really mean that, do you, Jessie?”
“Life would certainly be less complicated.”
Jon pulled her close. “Everything is as it’s meant to be.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have noticed me, anyway,” she said, wishing she weren’t being such a downer.
“Impossible.”
“I would have been an oncology fellow, not a doe-eyed resident.”
“Playing hard to get, are we, Doe Eyes?”
“Maybe,” she said, as she felt him harden against her hip. “It wouldn’t have been so easy to lure me away.”
“You didn’t stand a chance then,” he said. “And you don’t now.”
Holly showed up at the club for dinner, of course, not because she was like her mother but because people didn’t treat each other that way—blowing off plans, walking out, seeking private pleasures. She made an excuse for Jack, caring less than usual whether anyone found it plausible that he had an emergency call with an investor in Shanghai who didn’t observe the Western New Year.
If she was believed, it was because she’d been practicing for years. As the waiter brought their menus and directed a busboy to remove the sixth place setting, she wondered whether the lies she’d been forced to tell on Jack’s behalf had compromised her, too. Because once someone stopped caring about the truth, didn’t everything else crumble?
Karen, whose husband Chris’s small investment had so offended Jack, had been Holly’s roommate at Glenlake Academy, and they had maintained their friendship out of comfortable force of habit. Tina and her husband, Lane, were friends from the University of Chicago. It was an odd mix, now that she thought about it—stay-at-home mom, real estate investor, medical school provost, and plastic surgeon—the disparities made more noticeable without Jack to plaster over the cracks.
Holly willed herself to be lively, to ask everyone questions about their kids and jobs, wanting to prove—to her absent husband?—that social niceties mattered, that maintaining connections made a difference. But as drinks and appetizers led to soups and salads, she found it harder and harder to maintain focus. By the time the entrees had arrived (she ordered rack of lamb, because she always did, and because her father had been so proud of her when she announced “I’ll have what he’s having” at eleven years old), she was drifting. Barely there. Nodding and smiling and looking interested while in reality she couldn’t have told anyone what they were talking about.
For years after what she thought of as the Bachelor Party Incident, she had watched Jack closely, worried about a repeat. They were often together in those days—he didn’t travel much yet—and she didn’t see anything that particularly troubled her. And when he did begin traveling, and his itineraries and business deals became too byzantine to keep track of, it all happened gradually. He spoke excitedly of so many people in so many cities that to have given in to jealousy would have driven her insane. She listened dutifully, trying to share his excitement for the big idea while still wondering whether it was even possible. And eventually she lost track of the particulars.
Lost track of Jack.
Until one night, shortly after they’d moved to Barrington Hills. Ava was five, Paige was two, and Holly was four months pregnant with Logan. Their Lincoln Park town house was newly on the market and the Realtor informed them, with an open house scheduled for the next day, that they had overlooked a considerable amount of clothes and toys in the girls’
