“I saw you sleep when you were home for Christmas,” Barbara said.
“You checked in on me?”
“Every night. Just like I’ve done since the day you were born.”
Okay, that was weird. Or was it?
Would she ever know how a mother felt when she did that? She’d had her thirtieth birthday and...
No, now, that really was maudlin. She had lots of time before she had to start worrying about biology and her clocks.
“Tell me about this editor of Liam’s,” Barbara said next. Completely random. And yet Marie wasn’t surprised her mother had picked up on the topic.
Gabi had mentioned that Liam had been texting with his editor before he left their room to go downstairs to play cards. Gabi had half thought Liam might be back upstairs early, to do some last-minute revisions. But had said she’d still stay for their girls’ night together.
Marie rolled to her back. Staring at the mirror—she could see her mother, who was also lying on her back, without actually turning to face her in the bed. “What’s to tell?” she said. “She’s publishing a series he’s writing on his father.”
“You asked Gabi about her on three different occasions.”
No. She’d just asked about her once. When Gabi had mentioned the text. And...no, wait, there’d been that second time. They’d been talking about Walter’s affairs and Liam’s taking over a lot of the responsibility of his father’s company, and Marie had asked what June Fryberg, Liam’s editor, had thought of the move in light of the story Liam had been writing.
Oh, and then there at the end, when Gabi had been leaving and Marie had wondered if Liam would be up late writing...
Okay, there had been no reason to bring up the editor again that last time, but...
“I’m just... I don’t want Gabi hurt...” Marie’s voice faded off. She didn’t want Gabi hurt the way her mother had been hurt. Loving a man who might adore her but not be able to be faithful. A good man. Like Marie’s father. One who would do almost anything for her.
And whose one weakness was enough to debilitate her.
“And you think Liam will hurt her? Something to do with this editor woman?”
“No!” Well. Maybe. “It’s just... Liam has always had a bit of a roving eye where women are concerned. He used to talk to us about his girlfriends. And he told us how even when he was steady with someone...well, other women still attracted him.”
“You’ve always told me Liam was the best man you’d ever known. You and Gabi, both. He’s your best friend. You trust him with your lives. You went into business with him.”
“He is! We do! I don’t... I never expected the two of them to get married. I mean, I saw it happening, and I was happy for them. I am happy for them. I want them together. It’s just that it was all so fast—going from best friends to...more than that. And I want them together forever. Not just for now.”
She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. And knew that while she’d give her life for Gabi, it wasn’t really just Gabi she was worried about. If she was going to believe that Gabi and Liam could make their marriage work, she had to open the door to the fact that a lot of marriages did work. That maybe Barbara and Bruce would live happily ever after, too. That maybe she’d been depriving herself of any chance to find out what that meant.
“More marriages work than fail, sweetie.” Barbara’s tone was soft. Somber.
Marie turned her head, looking at the woman who’d raised her, single-handedly when necessary. The woman who, no matter what she’d been going through, had always been there for her only child. “That’s not what the most recent studies show,” she said, though, as she’d told Elliott, she took the studies with a grain of salt.
Still, there was some truth to them. And Barbara had put a lot of stock in them.
“A psychiatrist, one of Bruce’s colleagues from Harvard, actually, recently had an article published in a national journal of psychology. He says that some of those studies, the ones I used to take to heart and repeat to you, were not created by real statistics garnered from scientifically gathered information, but were results of skewed polls conducted by marketing companies who had been hired to promote companies that help others get over infidelity. Online relationship finders. That kind of thing.”
“Places like the one where you read that seventy percent of men polled admitted to cheating on their wives?”
“Yes.”
“But the US has national statistics. And those show that forty to fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce.” She hated to admit it, but she’d looked. Three days ago.
“They also show that the divorce rate is declining. That ninety percent of the American public is married by age forty, and that women with college degrees who marry after the age of twenty-five are at the lowest risk of divorce.”
Yeah, she’d read that, too. But...
“I made some mistakes, Marie.” Barbara’s tone was serious. “With you. I quoted statistics and figures, and maybe made some of the more bogus ones sound legitimate, because I was so afraid for you. You’ve always been so social. So open and loving. Ready to like everyone. You’ve got a huge heart. I was scared to death that as you got into your teens and early twenties, you’d be gooey-eyed like I was. And end up hurt. Like I was.”