Chapter 16 – Secrets

“He did what?!”

Stephanie had yelled so loudly that Adeline had to hold the phone away from her ear.

“He's asleep in my bedroom, Steph!” Adeline whispered forcefully. “Be quiet or you'll wake him up. You already woke the dead within a ten-mile radius.”

“That – that was not in the grand plan!” Stephanie said. “Where did that come from?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. You're the one who came up with the 'grand plan' in the first place,” Adeline said. “What did you think he was going to do once he fell in love with me – be happy being the other man for the rest of his life?”

“Well, what did you say?!”

“What did I say? I said nothing!” Adeline said.

“Let me get this straight,” Stephanie said. “He proposed to you over a week ago and in that time, you haven't said anything to him?”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“You're supposed to say yes!” Stephanie yelled, making Adeline hold the phone away again. “Or no,” she said more quietly. “You could say no, too. But you're supposed to say yes!”

“Have you forgotten one tiny detail, Steph?”

“Like what?”

“The fact that I'm already married!” Adeline hissed at her. She was trying to keep her voice low, because Lance was still asleep in her bed. He was a pretty heavy sleeper, but she didn't want to take the risk that he would wake up and hear them gossiping about him like high school girls.

“See, if you had stuck with the grand plan like I had written it, that wouldn't be a problem now, Addy!”

Adeline scoffed. “The grand plan – stick with the grand plan? Huh. Okay, first of all Stephanie, I wasn't even informed of the grand plan until the morning after I ended up in his bed. Second of all, I wasn't even asked if 'the grand plan' was what I wanted.”

“You weren't supposed to be. Duh.”

“Third, you didn't even see this one coming, so how the hell was I supposed to? Fourth, and most importantly, I'm not even sure it's legal to say yes to a proposal when you haven't even filed for divorce yet!”

“Addy, that's ridiculous,” Stephanie said with a laugh. “Of course it's legal.”

“Ah, but is it moral?” Adeline asked.

“What the hell is with your hangup on morals?”

Adeline chuckled, but the scary part was that she knew Stephanie was serious.

“Damn morals,” Adeline said. “And damn my parents and Nana for teaching them to me. What were they thinking?”

Both girls were quiet for a moment. Adeline put a bite of her muffin in her mouth and washed it down with coffee.

“So what are you going to do?” Stephanie said.

“You're expecting an answer that isn't 'I don't know', aren't you?” Adeline said after she swallowed.

“I think the one expecting an answer is him,” Stephanie said. “I'm not sure what the half-life of a marriage proposal typically is. If you don't know what you're going to say, you better figure it out – and fast.”

Adeline tore off another piece of muffin and was about to respond when she felt arms wrap around her. She screamed and dropped the food in her hand to the counter, dropping the phone when she jumped around.

“It's me,” Lance said with a laugh, grabbing the phone before it fell. “I thought you would hear me walk down the hall, I didn't mean to scare you.”

She exhaled deeply, feeling her heart beat twice as fast as it normally did, and leaned against her refrigerator as he put the phone to his ear.

“Hello, Stephanie,” he said. He paused. “Well it's not hard to figure out who she's talking to when she's out here whispering about marriage proposals, thinking I can't hear because I'm still asleep.” He turned to Adeline and smiled. “I hear and see everything – have you been in San Fran too long to remember that I'm better than God?” He paused again as he started to walk to her living room. “Oh no, you did not just call me the devil. I see some things haven't changed...”

He disappeared into the living room, and her heart started to slow and recover from the scare. She quickly cleaned up the muffin crumbs from the counter and threw them into the trash before refilling her coffee and leaning against the refrigerator again and sipping it slowly.

Stephanie was right; she needed to give him an answer. She had told him that she needed time, and he had been understanding – but she didn't know that he would be for long.

She had come a long way from where she was a month ago, but things had gotten too serious for her. Her heart screamed for her to say yes and wondered why she was putting it off. Her head was too busy cowering in the corner to say anything.

She had expected Stephanie to help more than she did – more than simply “say yes”. She had expected her to lay out exactly what she thought Adeline should do – say yes, file for divorce, and be done with it because it was that simple to Stephanie – but she hadn't mentioned the evil “d” word that Adeline hated so much. It might have made the huge jump easier if she had.

What was really hanging Adeline up was her lies that kept creeping up on her. It wasn't only the thought of divorce that kept her awake at night with his proposal burning in her mind.

He walked back into the room, changed out of the clothes he had slept in, still talking on the phone.

“The look on her face?” he said into the phone. “She looks like she's about ready to fly head-on into a nervous breakdown...yeah, if it wasn't so terrifying when she actually does it, it might be amusing.”

Adeline shook her head at him.

“She's giving me a dirty look now...apparently it's not so much fun being gossiped about when you're standing in the room listening to it.”

She chuckled and took another drink out of her mug.

“I have to go Stephanie, I have things to do...yeah, you know that thing called work? Where you do things for people and they send you a piece of paper with a dollar sign and some numbers on it – it's called a paycheck. You wouldn't know what that is.” He paused again and smiled. “Do you kiss your momma with that filthy mouth?”

She smiled, imagining the dirty words that were coming out of Stephanie's mouth.

“Same to you, Steph,” he said. “Have a sunshiny day.”

He hung up the phone, and looked up at Adeline.

“Well, I stirred her shit up for the day,” he said with a satisfied smile. He walked over to the counter and started pouring a mug of coffee for himself. “She has a mouth that would horrify sailors.”

“Exactly how much of that conversation did you hear?” Adeline said.

“Pretty much everything from 'be quiet or you'll wake him up',” he said. “By the way, I'm not so much a heavy sleeper like Stephanie probably told you. And what the hell is the grand plan?”

“Don't ask,” she said. “I wish I didn't know either.”

“I understand where you're coming from, being married still,” he said, taking a drink of his coffee. “And if you say no...I understand.”

“I haven't said anything yet,” she responded.

“I know, and that's why I'm telling you that if you say no...it's okay.”

He said it so calmly and nonchalantly that she wanted to snap.

“Do you have a breaking point?” she asked. “Do you have a point where you'll get tired of waiting around for me?”

“No.”

He took another drink of coffee, then dumped the whole thing in the sink and walked over to her.

“I'm here for you, no matter how long it takes, no matter what you decide. When you love someone, you don't abandon them.” He pulled her in for a kiss, pulling away after a second. “Except when the person you love will kill you if you don't go to your meeting.”

She chuckled, and he leaned in for another kiss.

“I'll be home around three, but if you need me just call.”

He broke away to grab his keys from the counter and his coat off her chair. She followed him to the door, holding it open for him as he started to rush out.

“Hurry up, you'll be late,” she said as he stopped in front of her.

He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

“I love you,” he said, brushing her cheek with his thumb as he walked out the door.

After she closed the door behind him, she realized that every time they left each other, it went the same way – they always referred to each other's apartments as “home,” they never walked out the door without a kiss, and they never left without saying “I love you.”

It had been this way since they started seeing each other. It felt comfortable – maybe too comfortable.

She always had guilt for being unfaithful to her husband – a lot more than he had for being unfaithful to her – but it had never stopped her from continuing the relationship with Lance. And she realized that was because her stress was never about making a choice between the two. She had made her choice a long time ago, whether it was obvious to her or not.

Her fear was change, because every time change was brought into her life, it came with devastation. She didn't know what it was like to experience a small change. Chaos followed her around everywhere from the time she was eleven and had lost her parents – since then, every major change in her life brought a loss of someone she loved.

Divorce was a major change. The idea of losing a husband was hard for her to handle, because they had been through so much together. She still loved him – but they had grown so far apart that she wasn't in love with him anymore. And she knew what she had to do.

She was going back to Los Angeles for Christmas; Lance wouldn't like it after the last trip, but it had to be done. She was finally ready to end things.

She fidgeted around the house for a few hours – doing work on her laptop, cleaning up her apartment, and packing a bag – and it was two before she finally picked up the phone to call him and finalize her travel plans.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it's me,” she said, speaking loudly over the voices of people in the background. “I wanted to call and make sure you knew my flight was booked for tomorrow and I would be in LA around five.”

“I'm having a hard time hearing you,” he said. “Did you say flight? What flight?”

“My flight to LA,” she said, confused. “You didn't know I would be coming back to LA for Christmas?”

The voices in the background died down to a mild level, and she assumed he had walked to a quieter place.

“Addy, I thought you knew – I'll be in Paris over the holidays,” he said. “I'm leaving right now for a month. Then I'll be headed to Prague for another month and a half.”

“Prague?” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, I'm going on vacation.”

“Vacation,” she repeated. “Um...okay. Well, I can fly to Paris I guess. That will only give me three days with you I think, but...”

“No,” he interrupted. “I'm sorry Adeline, I think you're misunderstanding me – I'll be in Paris filming. I'll be working sixteen-hour days. We wouldn't get to spend any time together anyway.”

Her heart sank to her stomach. He was giving her his classic brush-off.

“It's Christmas,” she said.

“I know, babe, but...I'm working. The film industry calls. This new movie – it will be a big hit. Internationally – I mean, this could be my big break overseas.”

“Well, isn't that great,” she said. She couldn't even hide her disgust well. “So when will we get to see each other again, Marc?”

“We'll make some time to see each other when I come back to LA. Your little friend will give you a couple of days sometime in March, right?”

When she heard him say little friend, she heard a slight distaste in his tone.

“Yeah, I guess he probably would,” she said.

“Great. Let me check my schedule.”

She listened to him rustle around, first looking for his planner and then turning pages, and felt the tears start. She was nothing more to her husband than a penciled-in appointment now. Lance never had to pencil her in – he always had time for her, whether he was busy or not.

“How about...oh no, I have something that day. Hmm...” He mumbled to himself as he turned more pages. “I could try to move that around...but then I wouldn't have time for that. Nothing free that week...”

She sighed, realizing quickly how this would end.

“Adeline, I'm having trouble finding an available weekend. Can you give me a while to see if I can move some things around, and we can talk again soon?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We'll talk again soon.”

“I have to go, they're calling my flight,” he said. “Talk to you later, babe.”

“Yeah, talk to you later,” she said, even though he had already disconnected the call. She ended the connection, but she stared at the phone screen for a few seconds, seeing the 3:32 that flashed on the screen telling her how long the conversation had lasted.

Three minutes and thirty-two seconds – that's how long she was worth to her husband, what she had been reduced to.

She had reached her own breaking point – it was more clear now to her than ever who cared, and he deserved to know why she was the way she was.

She dialed the familiar number and waited with the phone to her ear. It took only a couple rings for him to pick up.

“Hey, what's up?” he asked.

“It's me,” she said. “Are you busy?”

“Just got out of my meeting,” he said. “Thought about picking up a late lunch and coming home to you. Want to join me for lunch?”

“Actually, I already ate. I wanted to know if...” She hesitated. “If maybe you'd meet me somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Glendale Cemetery.”

“Glendale is all the way out in Bloomfield, isn't it?” he said. “With traffic, it'll take me almost an hour to get there. Is there a reason you want me to meet you at a cemetery in New Jersey?”

She sighed. She was about to break down into tears.

“Lance, you...you don't know everything about me.”

This time, it was him who hesitated.

“Okay,” he said, confused. “What don't I know?”

“I don't want to tell you over the phone,” she said, feeling her lips start to quiver. “Can you meet me there? I'd rather show you than tell you over the phone.”

“Addy, are you sure?” he asked after a short pause.

“Absolutely sure.”

“Then I'll meet you there in about an hour.”

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A little less than an hour later, he pulled into the cemetery. It wasn't a big one and since it was three days before Christmas with snow falling, he didn't have a hard time finding her car. He parked his behind hers to the side of the dirt path, exited the car, and walked over to her slowly.

She was leaning with her back against a tree, sitting in a bare patch empty of snow under it, surrounded by headstones and holding a cup of coffee with both gloved hands. She stared intently on one headstone in front of her.

“Adeline?” he asked as he stopped a few feet away. “Are you okay?”

“I talked to my husband,” she said.

“Oh.”

“He'll be in Paris for Christmas.” He noted the disappointment in her voice. “He'll be filming. He was catching his flight when I called him. I'm worth a three minute and thirty-two second phone call before rushing off to get on a plane now.”

“I'm so sorry, Addy,” he said.

“I shouldn't be surprised,” she said, shifting her weight as he came to sit down next to her. “I knew things would be like this when I married him. I should have known that this wasn't the life I wanted.”

He rubbed a hand against her back, and she looked down at the snow-covered ground in front of her, exhaling a breath visible in the cold.

“A year ago this last October, I found out I was pregnant.”

As many things as he had imagined she might tell him on the hour drive to the cemetery, the simple confession shocked him.

“We had been trying for about a year so it wasn't a surprise or anything. In fact, Marc seemed thrilled. He went right out and bought a crib and hired someone to paint the nursery – before he even knew what we would be having. I found out a few months later that it was a girl. We had baby names picked out even before then – Thomas if it was a boy, after his dad, and April if it was a girl, because that was my mom's name.”

She took a shaky breath.

“He went off to work in Canada, and he was gone a month. After that, he came back for a week, and he had a local charity benefit to attend. I don't normally attend those things – I'm so immersed in this world with my job and everything, I prefer to stay out of the spotlight in my free time so I don't lose my sanity. But that night I decided I would go with him. I had been having a few cramps that day, but I thought it was one of those normal pregnancy symptoms. So I got in the shower to start getting ready and after a few minutes, I looked down.”

He finally saw tears run down her cheeks, and he wiped one away with his finger.

“I saw blood running down my leg. I got scared, called Marc in, got dried off and dressed and we went to the hospital – but I knew it was too late. I knew it when I walked into the hospital, and I knew it when they brought me into the delivery room. It was so far into my pregnancy that I couldn't get a D&C – I had to go through labor anyway. He had to leave the room.”

She looked up at the headstone and wiped away the tears from her face.

“We decided to bury her here. He made me think that he wanted to keep my family together, and that's why he buried her here next to my parents and Nana. But I know better, and I always have. He buried her here because it was as far away from us as possible. He never wanted to face it. Maybe he can't handle it. I don't have a choice.”

She sobbed, and he looked at the headstone in front of them. In script, it read April Joelle Sutton – March 20, 2010.

“There's a lady in my apartment building, a single mom that lives right above me,” she said, barely able to speak through crying. “She has a daughter that is almost six months old now, the same age as my daughter would be if she had been born when she was supposed to. And sometimes at night, I wake up because I hear her baby cry. And the funniest thing is that I live in a one-bedroom apartment, have never decorated a baby's room in that apartment – and I still get up to take care of a baby that isn't there.”

“Adeline,” he said finally. “I'm so sorry.”

“I've lost everybody in my life that has ever meant anything to me. My parents, my grandmother, my daughter – and now I've lost my husband, too. And I'm the only one who cares about that.”

She looked up at him.

“But Lance, I don't care anymore. I'm tired of feeling like my worth to him is measured in how many minutes he has before he has to catch a flight. I'm worth more than three minutes and thirty-two seconds.”

“God, Addy, why didn't you tell me this before now?” he asked.

“Who would want to be with a woman that doesn't even know if she can have children?” she asked. “Who would want to waste their time, their chance to have a family? Not my husband. The only decency he has left in his soul is not telling me to my face that that's why he doesn't love me anymore. He always wanted children – not because he cares. Because he wants someone to follow in his footsteps. He wants brilliant children who will go to Harvard or Yale and become doctors or lawyers.”

“I don't know if you've noticed lately, Adeline, but I'm not your husband.”

They exchanged a look, and he reached up to wipe away another tear.

“You should already know that you mean more to me than that. You're worth a lot more than three minutes of my time. I'd love to have children with you, but there are so many more things that are important to me than that. There's so many options – and leaving you because you can't have a baby is not included in those.”

She leaned into his shoulder, dissolving into tears. He caressed her back as he looked to the headstone in front of him.

“You're coming to Mississippi for Christmas,” he whispered into her ear. “To a family, where you're welcome and loved. Because you are – and that's all that matters.”