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CHAPTER TEN

THE MALDONADOS

David wonders when his daughter started hating him. He looks down at the series of texts he’s sent her over the last hour, the escalation of the anger in each message matching the feeling rising in his chest.

We’re at the restaurant.

Where are you?

You know the dinner started at 7?

Seriously, Stella?

Disrespectful to your mom and other parents.

Nina must read the tension in his face. She says softly, “They’re just kids. Let’s make the best of it.”

He swallows the irritation. Placing his phone face down on the table, he turns his attention back to the other parents.

“Since our kids are all running late,” he says to the group, “I say we be college kids for the night.”

The other parents eye him suspiciously.

“I’m getting us a round of shots,” he declares, swinging his leg over the cafeteria bench.

It takes a moment but there’s a groundswell of support. A this will teach ’em nod of heads.

“I’m in,” the tall woman—he remembers her name is Cynthia—says. She gets up from the table, then takes the lead and walks out of the patio toward the bar. David notices one of the serious men standing in the back of the patio say something into his sleeve.

Cynthia already apologized for the intrusion of her security detail but said her job—she’s some honcho at the State Department—requires her “goon squad.” No one needs to worry, she assured them all.

David reaches the bar and discovers Cynthia has already ordered eight shots of tequila.

“All right, all right, all right,” the bartender says, mimicking some movie star.

“Kids, right?” David says.

Cynthia widens her eyes. Her look says, You have no idea.

“Remind me, who’s your child?” Cynthia asks.

“Stella Maldonado.”

“I’d like to say I’ve heard more about her, but my son, Blane, isn’t a fountain of information.”

“Same,” David says.

“Sometimes to get Blane to respond to my calls or texts I have to change the Netflix password,” she says.

“Nice. I’ll have to try that one.”

She’s an attractive woman, this person with a team of bodyguards. It’s not so much her physical appearance, which is almost corporate. It’s the confidence. Which is normally what people say they admire about David. The self-assured way he struts into the exam room, promises his patients he will erase the ravages of time, correct the imperfections, make them more perfect.

“Blane’s pledging a fraternity, so I assume him ghosting me tonight has something to do with that,” she says. “Maybe he pulled your daughter into the trouble.”

“Oh, if anyone’s pulling people into trouble, I wouldn’t count Stella out.”

The bartender places the shots on a tray.

David is surprised when Cynthia picks up a glass. Gestures with her chin for David to do the same.

“Pregaming, as the kids call it.” She taps her shot glass with his. And they both kick back the tequila sans the salt and lemon wedges on the tray.

“Our little secret,” she says, holding David’s eyes for too long.

It’s then that David remembers when his daughter started to hate him. The time she visited him at work and noticed his anesthesiologist give him a look just like the one this woman’s giving him now.

That pain on Stella’s face, that dagger to his chest, made him vow to be a better man. If only he were stronger, had broken it off with the anesthesiologist that night instead of luring her to the park for another tryst. But he is so weak. He always has been. He’s tried to analyze it over the years. Why can’t he be satisfied with the life he has? With his beautiful wife? Why does his sex drive rage like that of a man recently released from prison? Why does he need the attention, the stimulation of something new, something exciting, something forbidden?

Why is he tempted to give this confident woman his cell number? Why does he fantasize about sneaking out while Nina sleeps beside him, going to Cynthia’s hotel room?

And the biggest question, the one he hates facing the most: Why is he such a pile of garbage?