“Were you spying? Eavesdropping?” Scott asked.

She nodded, still smiling. “I’ll start working on the schedule.”

“Devon, you were eavesdropping!”

“I know. Very few perks in this job. I’ll get right on that schedule.” And she turned and left them.

Thirteen

There was something so intimate and protected about a road trip. Peyton and Scott started out at seven in the morning, stopped for a leisurely breakfast in North Bend, then shot up the freeway to the Washington border. Within the privacy of the car, it was time for some details she hadn’t previously shared. “It’s not as though I didn’t see the warning signs. I did. I thought they were warnings we could deal with. It felt like minutes after I moved into his house, he spent less time there. I confronted it immediately. I didn’t mind the unofficial role as stepmother, but I knew his children needed his parenting. The kids competed with me and defied me, signs that they needed their father. He seemed to try, but too soon we were back to the routine of Ted being too busy. When I found myself sitting in parent-teacher conferences, I knew we were in serious trouble. And yet, I kept trying to turn it around.”

“But didn’t you work, too?” Scott asked.

“At least forty hours a week while they were in school or summer programs or occasionally at home under the housekeeper’s supervision. Ted listened to the housekeeper. She would regularly threaten to quit if they made her life miserable. He would threaten the kids. ‘If Mrs. Hardcastle quits, you will all go to boarding schools.’ They would stay pretty invisible on her watch. But Mrs. Hardcastle didn’t carpool or take them to doctor or orthodontist appointments. For that, someone would have to leave work, and it wasn’t the cardiologist.” She cringed. “Red flag.”

“How did you plan to get around all these red flags?”

“By reasoning with him,” she said. “By reasoning with them. I even tried to make friends with the ex-wife, to enlist her help with her kids. That was a futile exercise.”

“How long did you try reasoning?”

She sighed. “Scott, those kids are in trouble. Literally. Conflicts at school, dropping grades, tantrums at home, ignoring rules. Pam was caught shoplifting once, Krissy had marijuana in her backpack, curfews were disregarded. Ted and I fought over discipline—he was inclined to just let things go while I wanted to bring the hammer down. Then there were two or three days a week when they’d be with their mother, and I could breathe deeply. I honestly don’t know if they were well-behaved for her, or if she, like her ex-husband, ignored their antics. I’m inclined to think she ignored. Those kids would be better off raised by wolves.”

“Yet you kept trying.”

“I’ve been called stubborn. But I made a commitment,” she said. “When I agreed to move in with Ted I thought I had a fighting chance of turning those kids around. I did everything I could.”

“Sounds like it was a nightmare,” Scott said. “It also sounds like you were stalwart. You gave a lot.”

“In the beginning I think I had something to prove. That I hadn’t made a mistake, that I wasn’t delusional. I think I wanted to prove it wasn’t that hard to be a good parent.... Shows what I know. That was closely followed by feeling like a fool. I’d complain to my mother or one of my sisters, and they’d say, ‘Peyton, he just wants one more qualified person to work for him,’ or ‘Don’t you see that he’s taking much more than he’s giving?’ and it put me on the defensive. The last people you want to criticize you are family! Couldn’t they see we were doing the best we could with three kids bruised by divorce? I realized I was still there because I was embarrassed to be a failure, to be an idiot. Almost nothing in my life was working. Well, those hours I spent with cardiac patients worked—that was the one thing I got from Ted and his practice—excellent training and experience in cardiology.”

“So he was smart in that,” Scott said.

“He’s brilliant. I hate him like crazy right now, but if my mother had a heart problem, I’d probably take her to Ted. He’s too arrogant to fail at that, even if he despises the patient.”

“Listen, about that commitment thing,” Scott said. “It’s admirable, but—sometimes you have to know when to walk away. At least you didn’t quit too soon.”

“My parents are very serious about commitment. It’s the last bastion. The last barrier to fall. Your word is your life. I have one divorced brother. He was in agony with a crazy wife, and the entire Lacoumette family rallied to offer suggestion after suggestion, solution after possible solution. My brother George, the oldest son, finally said, ‘Enough! Cut your losses!’ And Matt bailed.”

“And did everyone treat him like he failed?” Scott asked.

“In a subtle way. Sometimes among extended family someone would say, ‘That’s Matt, the divorced one.’ Or it was implied he should have saved that commitment for someone he could partner with, which makes it his failure, doesn’t it? I wonder what they’ll say about me.”

“Listen,” he said, holding her hand across the front seat. “Commitment is great. Being sure is great, too. But sometimes we find ourselves up against things we can’t control and couldn’t have predicted. Then, letting go becomes a virtue. A tough one, though.”

“Has that happened with you?”

He gave a nod. “The one that comes to mind was when I was eleven. It’ll sound silly....”

“No, tell me,” she said.

“I played softball. There was a rule to keep things fair—everyone gets to play. I was small. I wasn’t that bad, but I was smaller than some of the ten-year-olds. I could hit a ball a mile even if I couldn’t catch much. The coach left me on the bench week after week, giving me the requisite two innings to keep things fair. The coach’s son was eleven, like me. He pitched every inning and was up to bat all the time. I wanted to quit, but my mother said no. She said I had made a commitment to the team, and they might need me at some point. She talked to the coach and said, ‘You never let Scott play, this team isn’t worth his energy or mine if he never gets a chance.’ And the coach said, ‘I’m playing him. Not a lot but the eleven-year-olds—this is their last year in this league and then they have to move on, so I’m giving them more opportunities.’ And my mom informed him that I was also eleven, and he said, ‘He is? I didn’t realize that.’ So the next week he benched me again—and I was the only kid on the bench. Nine-and ten-year-olds played while I warmed the bench. So my mom talked to him again, and the exchange was exactly the same. ‘Oh? I didn’t realize that.’ By the fourth game of identical conversation, she told the coach she was pulling me off the team and writing a letter to the head of the league. A harsh letter.” He chuckled. “You’ll meet my mother tonight, and you’ll probably have no trouble understanding the kind of letter she can write. But the moral to the story—I was getting screwed on that team. I needed to walk away. I needed some family support to do that.”