Mommy Tracked (26 page)

Juliet padded into the kitchen. There, on the counter, next to a neatly stacked pile of mail, was the latest issue of
Mothering
magazine. And next to it was a note written on one of her yellow, lined legal pads, in Patrick’s cramped scrawl:

I took the girls to my parents’ house. I’ll call you later. Patrick.

Juliet stared at the note. What the hell was going on? Patrick’s parents lived all the way down in Boca. Patrick did occasionally take the twins down there for weekends—Juliet was usually too busy with work to go with them, not that she minded missing out on quality time with her in-laws—but it was always something he made plans to do in advance. He’d never just upped and driven down there without even telling her.

Something’s wrong
, Juliet knew immediately. Patrick’s mother, Trish, had breast cancer a few years back. Was she sick again? Or was it his father, Sean, who knocked back three martinis every night and then insisted he was sober enough to drive everyone to dinner?

Juliet immediately reached for the phone and dialed her in-laws’ house.

Trish answered. “Hello.”

“Hi, Trish, it’s Juliet.”

There was a weird pause. “Oh…hello, Juliet,” Trish said. Her voice sounded strange.

Juliet pressed her lips together in annoyance. She and Trish had never gotten along. Trish disapproved of Juliet working while Patrick stayed home and never let the opportunity pass to comment on it. In fact, Trish never missed the opportunity to talk, period. The woman was verbally incontinent.

“I got a note from Patrick saying he and the twins were headed down there. Is everything okay?”

Another pause. “Yes, they just got here. I’ll, uh, let you talk to Patrick.”

Juliet frowned. What the hell was going on? Surely, if Trish or Sean were sick, Trish would have told her.

“Hey,” Patrick said, taking the phone. He sounded odd, like he was upset but trying to contain it.

“Patrick, what’s going on? Is everything okay?” Juliet asked. Her concern made her sound more irritated than she felt.

“No. Everything is not okay,” Patrick said flatly.

“What’s happening? Why did you take the girls down there? When are you coming home?”

Patrick sighed deeply. “I’m not coming back,” he said. “At least not right away.”

Juliet felt an almost electrical shock of fear.

“What do you mean you’re not coming back? What are you talking about?”

“We need to take a break, Juliet. We’ve needed that for a long time. And I need to…well, to decide. Where I want to go from here.”

Oh, God
, Juliet thought, with a great, nauseating lurch.
He knows about Alex. He must have found out somehow
.

But how? How had he found out? It was a two-hour drive down to Boca. If Patrick and the twins were already there, they had to have left home while Juliet was still at the office, before she’d left to go to the Sands with Alex, long before she’d almost—

Almost
. That was the key word, Juliet thought. She’d
almost
cheated. But she’d stopped it in time. Well. Almost in time.

“Patrick, I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t just leave like this,” Juliet said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Yes,” he said. “I can.”

Juliet blinked. He sounded so angry. What was going on? She understood what Patrick was saying, but it didn’t seem real. Surely at any minute the twins would come tumbling through the door, shrieking with delight to see her, and Patrick would be there, his lips curled up in a familiar grin, and everything would go back to normal. A dinner out, bath time, a DVD rental. Just another normal Saturday night.

Juliet suddenly wanted that normalcy with such a fierce longing, she had to grip the edge of the counter for support.

But the door didn’t open. Instead, the house stood silently around her, until it seemed that the quiet would swallow Juliet whole. She noticed that her hands were shaking.

“But…what about the twins? What did you tell them?” Juliet asked.

“Nothing. At least, nothing yet. Just that we were going to surprise Gran and Pops.”

“Look, I’m coming down there. We obviously have to talk,” Juliet said decisively. She grabbed her keys off the counter.

“Please, don’t. I know we’ll need to talk—eventually. And that you’ll of course want to see the twins. I wouldn’t keep them from you, or you from them. But I’d appreciate it if you could give me a few days before I see you. I need to think things through,” Patrick said.

“Think things through?” Juliet whispered. What was he thinking through? Had he somehow sensed her infidelity? Should she tell him that she didn’t cheat? That although she’d walked right up to the edge, she’d stopped and turned back before it was too late? “Look, there’s something I think you should know—” Juliet began.

“You’re not going to tell me that you didn’t say those things,” Patrick said, his voice suddenly cold.

Juliet frowned, confused. “What things? What are you talking about?”

“The article?”

“What article?”

“The magazine is right there on the counter. The one we were photographed for,” Patrick said.

Juliet’s eyes fell on the copy of
Mothering
magazine. The headlines of the articles stood out in white print against the aqua-blue cover, which featured the picture of a beaming pregnant actress, sitting with her legs crossed in a yogalike position: ARE PTAS A THING OF THE PAST? GO FROM MATRONLY TO HOT MAMA! CAN ANY WOMAN REALLY HAVE IT ALL?

She stared at the magazine for a few minutes, wondering why it had been sent to her—she wasn’t a subscriber. Then it clicked. Oh, right! Chloe’s article. Is that what Patrick was talking about? But wait. It still didn’t make any sense, it didn’t make any sense at all.

“You left because of an article?” Juliet asked.

“You haven’t seen it yet?”

“No,” Juliet said. She flipped through the magazine, until she found Chloe’s byline under an article entitled M
OMMY
T
RACKED
. At first, all Juliet saw was the photo accompanying the article. It was one of the pictures from the photo shoot. In it, the twins were in the basket of the shopping cart, Izzy sitting and Emma standing at the end, on the verge of jumping out. Patrick was behind the cart, pushing it, grinning and looking adorably rumpled. Juliet was in front of the cart, one hand behind her, as though she were pulling it after her. In the photo, she was looking fixedly ahead of her, unsmiling and cold. She looked—well, God, she looked horrible. And so distant from the rest of her family. Juliet dropped the magazine back on the counter, recoiling from it.

But still. Patrick wouldn’t have walked out because she looked lousy in a picture. Juliet leaned forward and skimmed the first few sentences of the article. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly damning about it.

“Patrick. Look. I have no idea what’s going on. And if you want to visit your parents for a few days, that is, of course, your choice. But I don’t understand why you’re making this all sound so…dire. You act like you’re leaving this marriage.” Juliet let out a frustrated noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

There was a pregnant pause. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m considering.”

“But that’s insane! Nobody leaves their marriage over a magazine article!”

“It isn’t just the article. I’ve been unhappy for a really long time. I’ve tried talking to you about it, but you haven’t been receptive. And then when I read that article, when I saw what you really think of me, it just clarified the situation for me.” Patrick sighed heavily. “Look. Just give me a few days to think about things. I’ll drive back up later on this week, or early next, and we’ll talk then.”

It wasn’t the words that worried Juliet, it was the way he was saying them, with such a cool detachment. It was as though he’d already made up his mind.

“May I speak to the girls?” Juliet asked.

“They’re swimming in the pool right now. I’ll have them call you when they get out, okay?”

“Fine,” Juliet said.

There was a long pause.

“Are you going to be okay?” Patrick asked. For the first time, she could hear an echo of the old tenderness in his voice.

Am I?
Juliet wondered. She thought of her mother, remembering the messy, dramatic exhibit Lillian had made of herself during one of her many temporary separations from Juliet’s father—he’d bang out of the house cursing under his breath with an overnight bag slung over his shoulder, and Lillian would dissolve into a wine-fueled sob fest, refusing to leave her bed for days on end, leaving Juliet to take care of her little sister, Angie. And Juliet remembered the promise she’d made to herself at the time: No matter what happened to her, she’d never, ever behave like her mother. Especially not over a man.

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, so that by the time she spoke, her voice was calm and measured. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

There was a pause. “Right. Bye, then,” Patrick said.

And then he hung up the phone, while Juliet stood there, still staring down at the awful picture.

It was only then that she began to read the article:

Can any woman really have it all? CHLOE TRUMAN takes a closer look at the culture clash between working and stay-at-home mothers.

As I write this, I’m pregnant with my first child, and I’m struggling with an important question. It has nothing to do with picking out a name for my new baby or the color I should paint the nursery walls. It’s the far more weighty decision of whether I’ll go back to work after having my baby. Do I trade in quality time with my child to continue building a career I enjoy? Or do I give up the perks of extra income and time among adults to stay at home?

The question divides American women.

“I didn’t have children just to hand them off to someone else to raise,” says Jenn Kreger, a Chicago mom who used to work as a financial analyst but now stays at home with her two children, Regan, 4, and Nathaniel, 3. “I went back to work after Regan was born, and most nights I was lucky if I got home in time to see her before she went to bed. After a while, I started to wonder what I was working so hard for.”

But other mothers relish their time away from home.

“I’m a single mom, so not working isn’t an option. But even before my ex-husband and I separated, I never considered giving up my job. I love what I do,” says Anna Swann, a restaurant critic and mother to Charlie, 2. “My work fulfills me, which in turn makes me a happier mom.”

Juliet Cole, an attorney and mom to four-year-old twin daughters, is more blunt about her decision to return to work after the birth of her twin daughters.

“I think I’d go crazy if I had to sit at home all day watching
Sesame Street
and coloring,” Cole says. Her family’s solution is one that’s becoming increasingly popular in this modern era of women executives: Her husband has taken time off from his career as a firefighter to stay at home with their children. The arrangement has worked well for Cole. “Every working woman should have a housewife,” she says.

Juliet didn’t bother to read on. She just stared down at the article. It was a hit job. Chloe, the woman Juliet had come to think of as a friend, had backstabbed her in print.

Every working woman should have a housewife
.

Did I actually say that
? she wondered.
No. There’s no way I said that. Jesus! It’s libel! It’s libel, and I’m going to sue Chloe and fucking
Mothering
magazine
.

Except…Juliet suddenly felt horribly sure that she
had
said it. As a joke. Obviously she hadn’t
meant
it and certainly had never intended for Patrick to hear about it, much less read about it in a national magazine.

Patrick
. At least Juliet no longer had to wonder why he’d left. He’d already been overly sensitive about his domestic role. To find out that his wife had snidely referred to him as her “housewife,” and in a magazine article no less—he’d be devastated, his pride wounded. She knew him well enough to know that.

What she didn’t know was if he’d ever be able to forgive her.

fifteen

Anna

H
ey, tiger,” Brad
said when he opened the door. He leaned over to plant a kiss on top of Charlie’s head. Anna, standing behind Charlie on the doorstep, was pleased to note that her ex was starting to go bald.

Serves him right
, she thought, unable to suppress a gleeful stab of pleasure.
Maybe next he’ll become impotent.

“Daddy!” Charlie exclaimed, beaming at his father. He held up a blue wooden Thomas the Train. “Look! Train!”

“Sweet,” Brad said appreciatively.

“Hi,” Anna said coolly. Brad stepped aside so that she and Charlie could enter his apartment.

Brad had offered to pick Charlie up, but Anna wanted to do her routine once-over to make sure the house had been childproofed tonight. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Brad—he was actually quite good with Charlie, or at least he was when he remembered he had a son—but her ex-husband’s parenting style could be a bit lax at times. Sure, he didn’t leave out open bottles of pesticide or shards of broken glass, but he didn’t always think of less obvious dangers. Like remembering not to leave his razor on the edge of the bathroom sink. Or putting the soft protective bumper up around the perimeter of his glass-topped coffee table. Or installing child gates on the terrifyingly steep staircase that led up to the second-floor master suite.

Why Brad insisted on renting this house, I will never know
, she thought, looking skeptically around the ultramasculine bachelor pad decorated in chrome and glass and black leather. He’d rented it after their separation, moving in just before Charlie was born, but it wasn’t exactly child-friendly. She supposed he was trying to create his own Rat Pack bachelor pad.

The Rat Hole is more like it
, Anna thought darkly.

She was still holding on to Charlie’s hand, not yet ready to let go. Anna suddenly felt nauseated at the thought of leaving Charlie here overnight. It was the first time he’d slept over at his father’s. And, as she looked out Brad’s sliding-glass back doors at the spectacular ocean view beyond, she was flooded with the terrifying possibilities of what could go wrong. What if Brad took Charlie swimming and he got sucked down by the undertow? What if Brad forgot to use the special nonallergenic shampoo when he washed Charlie’s hair and instead used the regular shampoo that caused Charlie’s eyes to swell shut? Or what if Charlie fell and lacerated his hands and face on one of the decorative modern glass vases on the coffee table?

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Anna said, taking a step back.

Brad frowned at her as he reached for Charlie’s bag. “He’ll be fine, Anna. Stop worrying. And it’s about time Charlie started spending the night over here once in a while. I didn’t want to push it at first, especially when he was a baby, but now that he’s a little older, I want to do this more often.”

Anna looked around bleakly at the hard-edged house. “Well. Maybe if you made this place more kid-friendly,” she said.

“It is kid-friendly! I even put up the gates. See?” Brad gestured toward the staircase.

Anna turned and saw a safety gate spanning the bottom of the stairs. She felt slightly better, although she couldn’t resist giving the gate a small shake to make sure it was secure.

“He’s my son too. Do you think I’d let anything happen to him?” Brad asked softly, and looked down at Anna with one of the melting stares that had instantly won her over when they first met. It had been, ironically, at a wedding. Anna worked with the bride and Brad had gone to college with the groom, and they’d both turned up dateless. Anna had been hit by the full force of one of Brad’s irresistible grins, two parts charm, one part smoldering sex appeal, and was instantly smitten when she found herself seated next to him at dinner. She’d even, for a while, fancied that it had been love at first sight.

Which just goes to show what an idiot I was
, she thought.

Now, as their adorably blond little boy let go of her hand and ran to his father, clinging to Brad’s leg and beaming up at him, she felt the familiar conflicting emotions. Brad had been a mistake. Hell, her relationship with him pretty much defined the word. Yet without Brad, she wouldn’t have had Charlie. And that was unthinkable.

Brad watched her watching Charlie, his dark eyes inscrutable.

“We’ll be fine,” Brad said again.

For a moment, Anna softened. She was overreacting, of course, letting her anxiety zoom out of control. But then Brad uttered the two words Anna knew she couldn’t trust coming from him: “I promise.”

Right. I know all about your promises
, Anna thought. She felt her face stiffen as she turned away.

“Before I go, show me where Charlie will be sleeping,” Anna said.

“This was obviously a better idea in theory than it was in practice,” Noah said.

“What?” Anna asked.

“THIS WAS OBVIOUSLY A BETTER IDEA IN THEORY!” he bellowed.

“NO! THIS IS NICE!” Anna lied.

“YOU’RE A LIAR,” Noah said, still shouting to be heard.

“Well, it is a little windy. But I’m still having fun,” Anna said. And this time she wasn’t lying.

“What?”

“I’M. HAVING. FUN,” she shouted.

For their big night out—The Night, Anna remembered with a thrill—Noah had surprised Anna with what was supposed to be a romantic picnic by the sea. He’d even tracked down an old-fashioned wicker picnic basket and filled it with grilled chicken and goat-cheese paninis, wild-rice salad, sliced melon, chocolate chip cookies, and a bottle of cold pinot grigio.

“Yum,” Anna said, peeking in the basket. “This looks great. I didn’t know you could cook.”

“I can’t,” Noah admitted. “But I have a lot of experience at ordering takeout.”

“Good to know,” Anna said.

But no sooner had Noah spread out the plaid blanket on the sand for them to sit on than the wind had picked up, gusting off the water and spraying sand in their faces. Even though they were sitting only a foot apart, Noah and Anna had to shout at each other in order to be heard over the squalling of the wind, and the edges of the blanket blew up and flapped in the breeze. Gamely, Noah got out the food, but the napkins were instantly blown away and Anna’s plastic wineglass toppled over.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Anna said.

“What?” Noah asked.

“I DON’T THINK THIS IS GOING TO WORK!” Anna shouted. “IT’S TOO WINDY!”

She suddenly hoped that Noah hadn’t been planning on seducing her here. Having sex on the beach sounded romantic in theory but wasn’t actually all that fun in practice. Sand tended to get up into uncomfortable places. And Anna had never been turned on by the idea of having sex outside, or in public places, for that matter. She was really more of a plain-vanilla, sex-in-bed-with-the-lights-out sort of a girl.

“Do you want to go?”

“What?”

“DO. YOU. WANT. TO. GO?” Noah shouted.

Anna nodded and pointed toward the car. She packed up the as-yet-uneaten food, and Noah managed to somehow fold up the blanket, although it was a struggle. They jogged awkwardly back up the boardwalk to his car.

“Phew,” Noah said, once they’d climbed inside the car.

Anna lifted a self-conscious hand to her hair. It was finally starting to grow out a bit and didn’t look quite as insane-asylumish, but all the gel in the world wouldn’t have helped against the wet monsoonlike winds. She patted at it, tucking the ends behind her ears.

“Sorry about that,” Noah said, turning to look at her. “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“Oh, really? You weren’t planning on eating a sandwich full of sand?” Anna asked lightly.

“Believe it or not, I thought this would be romantic. I had a vision of us sipping wine while the sun set over the ocean. Just like you always see in the movies.”

The laughter fizzed out of Anna before she could stop it.

“What?” he asked, smiling along with her, even though he clearly had no idea why she was laughing.

“Wrong direction,” Anna explained. “We’re on the east coast. The sun rises over the ocean here. It sets over the beach on the west coast.” She giggled again. “That’s why you always see it in the movies. You know—Hollywood? California? All on the west coast.”

The tip of Noah’s nose turned red, which just made Anna laugh even more.

“Smart-ass,” Noah said, reaching over to pinch her lightly on the waist.

“You think so?” Anna asked, her head resting on the back of the car seat.

Noah nodded. “Definitely,” he said. And although he was still smiling, there was a gleam in his eye that caused the laughter to die in Anna’s throat.

Noah leaned forward and brushed his lips—which tasted of salt from the sea wind—against hers. He gently rested his hand on the side of her neck, his thumb at her jawline, and pulled her into the kiss. Anna felt the rest of the world recede as she lost herself in the sensations of him. She touched the exposed triangle of skin just under his throat, her fingers grazing the coarse dark hair growing there. Her fingers dropped, and she unbuttoned the top button of his blue broadcloth shirt. Then she unbuttoned another one. And another.

When she’d finally gotten his shirt off and splayed her hands across his chest, Noah murmured, “Now it’s my turn.”

He pulled her short-sleeve cotton sweater up over her head before deftly slipping off her skirt. His pants followed, and then their underwear. It was all a bit tricky in the confined space, although they managed just fine (except when Anna banged her knee against the gear shift and let out an involuntary “Oh, shit!”). And then Noah was pulling her onto his lap so that she was facing him, her legs straddling his.

Anna hesitated then, looking at Noah, their faces only inches apart.

“I haven’t done this in a long time,” she said softly. It felt like a confession.

Noah looked back at her, a smile playing on his lips.

“And if I said it was just like riding a bicycle?” he asked.

Anna laughed in response. She leaned forward and caught his lips against hers.

And then they made love—in a very non-plain-vanilla way—right there in the front driver’s seat of Noah’s car in the deserted beach parking lot.

It wasn’t until sometime later—after they’d gotten back to Noah’s house and made love yet again in his big walnut four-poster bed—that Anna suddenly had the premonition: Something was wrong. They were lying quietly together, Anna’s head tucked against Noah’s shoulder, when the creeping dread suddenly spread through her.

Charlie
, she thought, and her body stiffened with fear.

“What’s wrong?” Noah asked sleepily, as he felt her body shift away from his.

“I don’t know…” Anna hesitated, not wanting him to think she was crazy. And then suddenly she yelped, causing Noah to start. “My cell phone! I forgot to turn it on!”

She hopped out of bed and rummaged through her purse, until her fingers closed around the small silver phone. She powered it up and waited a minute to see if the message icon was blinking. It wasn’t. Anna let out a relieved breath and closed her eyes for a minute. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. What if something had happened to Charlie? Brad wouldn’t have been able to get hold of me.”

“You didn’t tell him where you are?”

“No. I felt sort of weird about it. It felt too much like I was announcing to my ex-husband that I was off for a wild night of sex,” Anna admitted, sliding back into bed.

“Mmmm. I like the sound of that,” Noah said, pulling her to him.

“Really? Already?” Anna asked.

“Maybe in a few minutes,” Noah conceded. “Are you hungry? We never did eat.”

“Famished. Did you bring the picnic basket in?”

“No. But I’ll go get it.” Noah got up slowly, reluctantly, and pulled on his jeans. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” Anna said. Once he’d gone, she leaned back against the pillows, pulled up the navy-and-white-striped comforter to her chin, and stretched her hands over her head, trying to relax. Everything was fine—no, it was better than fine. It had been a perfect, perfect night.

That was when her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. Brad. Anna frowned as she hit the answer button.

Don’t worry
, she told herself.
He probably just forgot what time Charlie goes to bed or something like that.
An irritating interruption, yes, but nothing to get worked up about.

“Hey, what’s up,” she said.

“Anna…” And just from the way Brad said her name, Anna knew something was very, very wrong indeed.

Charlie was missing.

After something bad happens, people always claim that it was all a blur. But not for Anna. Everything that happened that night was frighteningly clear, every moment precisely defined: Grabbing her clothes off the floor. Dressing faster than she ever had before in her life. Running out of the room, holding her shoes in one hand. Meeting Noah as he was just coming back in with the picnic basket. The color draining from Noah’s face when she told him. Running outside, out into the darkness, to Noah’s car. The seemingly endless drive to Brad’s beachside house.

Oh, God, the beach
, Anna thought. What if Charlie was out on the beach? He always ran straight to the water, always, with a fearless joy that never failed to make her heart lurch. What if he’d gone out intent on a midnight swim? It was nightmarish, but horrifyingly possible. A scream rose in Anna’s throat, and she had to cover her mouth with one hand to stifle it. If she started screaming, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop.

“I put him to sleep in the guest room at seven-thirty,” Brad had told her over the phone. “I went in to check on him at nine, and he wasn’t there. Oh, Christ, he wasn’t there. We’ve looked everywhere. He’s not in the house.” Then Brad had broken down in tears.

“We?” Anna asked dumbly, the news not immediately sinking in.

“We” turned out to be Brad and his new girlfriend, Bridget.