Read Online The Comfort of Lies by Randy Susan Meyers - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Randy Susan Meyers
Ads: Link
children, the world they’d built together, and, of course, love. She never stopped loving him. Forgiving him became her best choice.
She’d finally let go and believed him.
Now Juliette spun right back to asking herself why. Why had he slept with another woman? She’d revered him for the judgement and rectitude she’d believed he possessed.
Tia’s huge orphan eyes had probably begged her husband for love and protection. She must have been exactly the right ticket when Nathan tired of his über-competent wife, good at so many things. Perfect Juliette: providing gourmet meals and mother-of-the-year nurturing, spicking-and-spanning his house. She even brought in more money than he did these days. The idea that he’d turned to that girl because his ego needed lifting drove Juliette insane. She’d always thought so much more of Nathan.
How dare that woman spread her name, cool as aloe, right across the envelope for the world and Juliette to see, as though Juliette didn’t know who she was. As though Juliette hadn’t once followed her for five shameful nights.
Tia Genevieve Adagio. Silky girl, sliding over Juliette’s husband like Salome. Slippery like a baby seal, all dark and tiny, fragile, needy girl, looking up at Juliette’s husband as though Nathan supplied the oxygen she breathed.
And now they had a daughter? More than anything else, this knowledge shut out Juliette. Suddenly Tia and Nathan were the couple, while Juliette pressed herself up to the glass of their secret family.
• • •
Juliette drove up Central Street and parked in the small lot behind the shop. The back as well as the front entrance was marked with their full name: juliette&gwynne//flush de la beauté. They’d wanted to open their shop on a street rife with beauty and flush with money. Gwynne chose the moneyed zip code of Wellesley’s suburban main street for their location, and Juliette had come up with the name, confident that women would fling money at anything French. Juliette created products. Gwynne managed the business. They were synchronized as friends and business partners. When Gwynne sneezed, Juliette grabbed a tissue.
That’s why she had to stay in the car for a few minutes. Juliette was transparent to Gwynne, and Juliette didn’t want her friend reading her mind.
Gwynne would scare the shit out of Juliette if they weren’t best friends. Besides having four daughters ages six to thirteen, a solid marriage, and the dancer’s body that Juliette’s mother wanted for Juliette, Gwynne was smart and funny. Thankfully, she had a wide streak of neurotic self-doubt and anxiety that required a steady diet of predawn runs, Effexor, and an occasional sleeping pill, enabling Juliette to keep her envy in check.
Juliette, privy to the secrets of the privileged, wondered why so many lovely women thought they were garbage. She slipped the envelope from her purse. A light rain fell, pleasing Juliette, offering safety in the confines of her car, hiding her from the world for at least that moment.
She fingered the cheap paper.
The cheap envelope.
Stationery and matching envelopes waited in Juliette’s desk, something to suit any mood. Thick paper so rich it caressed the ink. Ivory. Dove grey. Palest blue. None right for the letter she’d send to Tia. For that, Juliette would go to Walgreens and buy ninety-nine-cent crap in blaring white.
Juliette skimmed the letter again, unable to concentrate on words, feeling only Tia’s contamination.
“Our daughter,” she’d written to Nathan.
“She resembles you.”
Juliette took the pictures from her lap, where they’d dropped. Her fingers shook. This child would wreck their life.
The resemblance to Max astonished Juliette. Like this child, her boy had been fat legged and adamant. The photo marked Savannah as Max’s sister. Lucas’s also, but that wasn’t as screamingly obvious. Savannah? An unlikely name for this solemn-looking child.
She flipped through the pictures,
She’d finally let go and believed him.
Now Juliette spun right back to asking herself why. Why had he slept with another woman? She’d revered him for the judgement and rectitude she’d believed he possessed.
Tia’s huge orphan eyes had probably begged her husband for love and protection. She must have been exactly the right ticket when Nathan tired of his über-competent wife, good at so many things. Perfect Juliette: providing gourmet meals and mother-of-the-year nurturing, spicking-and-spanning his house. She even brought in more money than he did these days. The idea that he’d turned to that girl because his ego needed lifting drove Juliette insane. She’d always thought so much more of Nathan.
How dare that woman spread her name, cool as aloe, right across the envelope for the world and Juliette to see, as though Juliette didn’t know who she was. As though Juliette hadn’t once followed her for five shameful nights.
Tia Genevieve Adagio. Silky girl, sliding over Juliette’s husband like Salome. Slippery like a baby seal, all dark and tiny, fragile, needy girl, looking up at Juliette’s husband as though Nathan supplied the oxygen she breathed.
And now they had a daughter? More than anything else, this knowledge shut out Juliette. Suddenly Tia and Nathan were the couple, while Juliette pressed herself up to the glass of their secret family.
• • •
Juliette drove up Central Street and parked in the small lot behind the shop. The back as well as the front entrance was marked with their full name: juliette&gwynne//flush de la beauté. They’d wanted to open their shop on a street rife with beauty and flush with money. Gwynne chose the moneyed zip code of Wellesley’s suburban main street for their location, and Juliette had come up with the name, confident that women would fling money at anything French. Juliette created products. Gwynne managed the business. They were synchronized as friends and business partners. When Gwynne sneezed, Juliette grabbed a tissue.
That’s why she had to stay in the car for a few minutes. Juliette was transparent to Gwynne, and Juliette didn’t want her friend reading her mind.
Gwynne would scare the shit out of Juliette if they weren’t best friends. Besides having four daughters ages six to thirteen, a solid marriage, and the dancer’s body that Juliette’s mother wanted for Juliette, Gwynne was smart and funny. Thankfully, she had a wide streak of neurotic self-doubt and anxiety that required a steady diet of predawn runs, Effexor, and an occasional sleeping pill, enabling Juliette to keep her envy in check.
Juliette, privy to the secrets of the privileged, wondered why so many lovely women thought they were garbage. She slipped the envelope from her purse. A light rain fell, pleasing Juliette, offering safety in the confines of her car, hiding her from the world for at least that moment.
She fingered the cheap paper.
The cheap envelope.
Stationery and matching envelopes waited in Juliette’s desk, something to suit any mood. Thick paper so rich it caressed the ink. Ivory. Dove grey. Palest blue. None right for the letter she’d send to Tia. For that, Juliette would go to Walgreens and buy ninety-nine-cent crap in blaring white.
Juliette skimmed the letter again, unable to concentrate on words, feeling only Tia’s contamination.
“Our daughter,” she’d written to Nathan.
“She resembles you.”
Juliette took the pictures from her lap, where they’d dropped. Her fingers shook. This child would wreck their life.
The resemblance to Max astonished Juliette. Like this child, her boy had been fat legged and adamant. The photo marked Savannah as Max’s sister. Lucas’s also, but that wasn’t as screamingly obvious. Savannah? An unlikely name for this solemn-looking child.
She flipped through the pictures,
Similar Books
