Christmas at the Beach by Wendy Wax

Author:Wendy Wax
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2013-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

Seven

I’m still standing in the hall outside the salon when he gets off the phone. I tell myself not to say anything. That this is not my business. That I should just erase what I heard from my memory banks and go outside to toast the sunset. But I’m a cameraperson, not an actor. And this is my father, not some stranger. The next thing I know I’m in the salon and moving toward my dad. Who’s got a perfect view of my mom and the others gathered near the pool with drinks in their hands. So that she couldn’t possibly overhear him or catch him unaware. The shit!

He sees me and smiles, but I see guilt stamped across his face. Too bad they don’t have big red letter As for men. At the moment I’d be glad to nail it to his forehead.

“Hi, kitten. Did you have a good nap?”

I don’t trust myself to speak. I nod, my eyes pinned to his face while I try to think of any other explanation for what I’ve overheard than the obvious one.

“Is everything all right?” His brow is furrowed as if with concern. But I don’t trust any of his expressions now. He fell apart when he lost all our money and his job, and my mother was forced to step up and try to put our lives back together. And this is how he repays her? By screwing around with someone else?

“I don’t know,” I say. “Is it?” I glance through the floor-to-ceiling windows and see my mother laugh.

He shrugs. “It’s Christmas, and pretty soon it’ll be a brand-new year. There’s nothing like the prospect of a fresh start.”

He looks so smug and happy that I want to gag. I am gagging on all the things I want to say. I feel like I did when I was five and the boy next door told me there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny.

How could you? I think but do not ask. Because I don’t think I can bear to hear his excuses. And if he admits that he’s having an affair, there’ll be no taking it back.

Do all men cheat? Is it just a matter of time? Something that’s hardwired into their DNA, a time bomb set to go off sometime after the day they say I do but before they keel over?

But I don’t care about other men right now. I only care about my father. I had an affair with a married man even though I knew it wasn’t right. But it would have been even worse if Tonja Kay weren’t the nasty person she is. If she were . . . my mom.

“Right. Well, I should get outside.” I can’t meet his eyes, which is stupid since he’s the one who’s doing something wrong.

When I get outside my mother pats the chair next to her and Nikki hands me a glass of red wine.

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