“For what?” her mother wheeled at her.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you angry before and it’s me who brought this to our lives
“Hey,” her mother squatted down in front of her, “I am not angry with you. I am angry your husband has the morals of an alley cat, and I never noticed it before. I protected you all my life, sweet girl, and I feel I let you get blindsided.”
“This isn’t on either of you,” Phineas said as he reached out and squeezed Maeve’s hand. “Some people are simply far better at hiding the truth than others. I maintain he’s not playing with a full deck. Please do not meet with him unless you there is someone else with you.”
Juniper looked at her phone which was ringing again on the table and knew Phineas was right. Kyst wasn’t himself but what scared her was how much she wondered whether the man she saw in the video yesterday was the real version of him and what it meant for everything she believed in.
She watched through teary eyes as Adil took her phone and opened it up and declined the caller. He then went one step further and blocked the number. He then went through her phone and blocked him on every social media platform application on Juniper’s phone.
“He has Beni’s number,” Adil said seriously. “If he wants to talk, he can call your lawyer. Your lawyer will relay the information back and you can decide what you want to do from there. At this moment however, you are not required to talk to him.”
“I don’t know how to thank any of you. I’m not sure how I would get through this if I’d found out he was cheating on my own. I’d be trying to find a place to live. I’d be worried about finances and debts and trying to figure out a way to make things work. You’ve taken all the things which force a woman to be stuck in a relationship and removed those barriers. You’ve been supportive and kind and hell, Phineas has let me snot and cry all over his shirt and bleed all over his pants and not a single complaint. I heard you guys telling Kyst you were my champions now and I just want to say, I’m really grateful to have you in my corner.”
“Not just us,” Phineas shook his head, “your Mama, my mama, my father really wants a piece of him after he saw the video clip, Beni’s parents know about you, and I believe his mother gave him strict instruction to bring us all over for dinner on Saturday evening. Adil’s parents are on a cruise ship, but he called them last night and they offered their help any possible way. They own an island down south if you ever want to simply get away. They’ll let you stay there, and they said so last night. Our families mean everything to us. It’s why I gave into my grandfather’s requests and honestly, I would do it again tomorrow if he asked me to because I trust him and I love him. She fooled everyone and I thought I was the odd man out because I couldn’t like her as a person. It all came to light at the reception and the next morning and then over the last year when she quit her job to focus on being my wife, her words, but spent far more money a month than she made even when she was ridiculous. Yet, for all of it, if my grandfather working. It was row with another bridal proposition, and I came to me wasn’t already married, I’d do it because he’s family. Family is everything for us. You, Juniper, are now part of our family.”
The next morning Juniper was laying face down in a massage bed, her mother in the one next to her. They’d both just had full body massages and now were both coated head to toe in a seaweed mud. A nature soundtrack of whales and water played in the background.
“This is incredible,” Maeve said quietly. “How are you feeling?”
“Weirdly emotional,” Juniper admitted. “When she was massaging my low back it made me cry. I’m really tired of crying.”
“It will get better sweetheart. I promise.” Her mother said softly. “I saw Lois called you this morning. You didn’t answer.”
“I’m not ready to talk to her. She sent a text too asking me to call her, but I can’t, Mama. I’m angry and I don’t want to take it out on her.”
“I understand but they’ve loved you like their own since you were fourteen years old, Juniper. Don’t cut them out over his stupidity.”
“I know. I won’t but I need a bit of time. A lot of the pressure for a baby was coming from them, especially her. She talks all the time about how she wanted a huge family, but it never happened, and she was so hopeful we’d give her a bunch of grandchildren for her to spoil. It’s not rational but I’m blaming her for putting it into our heads that babies were necessary. I want to be a mom so bad, but her involvement made the pressure a hundred-fold worse.”
“I know,” her mother was sad. “Did she ever tell you about me giving her shit at Christmas?”
“No.” she lifted her head to look at her mother, but her mother was still facing down. “For what?”
“The baby booties Christmas ornament. You’d only suffered the miscarriage a month before and she did the whole thing about how she wasn’t sure whether to give it to you or not, but she’d bought it as soon as she’d known you were pregnant and then decided you might like to have it as a memorial and a reminder you could try again. I was livid. I cornered her and told her it was inappropriate to make you feel bad at Christmas over the loss of your child and furthermore it was none of her fucking business. I know she meant well because there’s not a mean bone in her body, but the lightbulb wasn’t on that day. She was so sad about feeling her own kind of loss she was missing the broader picture.”
She snorted, “do you know what I did with that ornament,
Mama?”
“What?”
“Garbage disposal the minute she went home. Kyst and I did it together. You weren’t the only one who told her off. He took into her hard the next day. He was awake all night thinking of it and really gave her shit the next morning. The phone call actually made me quite uncomfortable.”
“Good, she deserved it.”
“It’s why I don’t understand all of this,” she said quietly. “He was my champion Mama. He would go against his own mother without a second thought for me. He’d never once in all the time we were together ever made me feel I wasn’t the most important thing in his life until this week. How does he go from being such a good, attentive husband to what I saw? How much was fake? Was the person I saw on video the real Kyst Kennedy and I’ve simply been duped all this time?”
“I don’t know, Juni. I’m having a hard time reconciling it as well. I hoped to be able to make sense of it, but I can’t either.”
“I love him so much, Mama. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could say it’s shut off from the minute I saw him slide into her but it’s there, in my chest like an ache I can’t get rid of. I want to hate him, but I keep thinking of him being sad. I keep thinking of him hurting because I won’t talk to him. I feel sick over knowing he’s grieving and I’m not there.”
“Did you want to talk to him?”
“No. Like with Lois, I’m simply too angry. I’ll say too many things I know I’ll regret in a year.”
“Will you though?”
“Yes. I will. I don’t want to remember all of our lives with this burning hatred I’m feeling right now. There were some really good times in there.”
“What did you think of Beni’s offer for you this morning when we saw him in the elevator? By the way, I think he was waiting at his door for you to come out.”
“He’s a nice man and he’s feeling guilty too.” She smiled as she remembered Beni clearly must have been waiting for her to emerge from her apartment for her spa day this morning. “It was good of him to get me a counselling session for tomorrow.”
“They are nice boys, aren’t they?”
“They really are.”
“Phineas seems pretty intense though. I don’t think he let your feet hit the floor even once yesterday.”
“He’s feeling the guiltiest,” she agreed. “The morning, I first met him, he was a bastard, Mama and I think the guilt is making him feel bad over it.”
“He should feel bad. He was out of line for sure. However, he’s a good guy.” Her mother cleared her throat, “I should tell you what I overheard last night though.”
“What?”
“When I was getting you settled in bed and I went to bring your teacup back to the kitchen the three of them were um,” her mother gave another uncomfortable squeak, “discussing which one of them was going to win you over as their new girlfriend.”
“What?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.