Kate Palmer felt the stares of the other mothers from the bleachers. The humid, chlorine filled air made her clammy and nervous. There was nothing she could do but look forward and watch their children swim laps, back and forth, back and forth. Her eyes strained from the heavy fumes and her close concentration on the shimmery, blue water.

There was a time when the stares wouldn’t have bothered her. There was a time when she described herself as fiercely independent. A time when, just to make a point, she would’ve gone and sat right in the middle of the stuck-up swimming moms, who saw Kate’s decision to stick to the sidelines as a line drawn in the sand. A line that marked them as insiders and Kate as an outsider. But, her confidence had fallen in recent months and it was beginning to feel like everywhere she went, people were talking about her. That they were watching her every move out of the corner of their eyes and waiting for her to turn the corner, so they could gossip about her.

It was absolutely ridiculous. She had never been the paranoid type, but now everywhere she went she watched the other women and wondered. Wondered what the lives of the other women she passed on the street, or in the grocery store, were like behind closed doors.

She looked over at one of the swim moms, withdrew into herself, and began to imagine. The woman was at most, a few years older than Kate’s thirty-eight years. She had blonde hair, and sharp, intense features that gave her a hard look that gave away her age as one of the older swim moms. Maybe her daughter wasn’t her first child, Kate wondered. That or she was a career oriented woman, or someone who married late, or decided to have children later in life for whatever reason the woman may have chosen. Who was Kate to judge? But she couldn’t help herself from wondering.

She imagined the woman coming home to a three story house in the Portland suburbs. Her husband would be someone of stature, or at least someone with a decent sized bank account. There was a hardness to the way the woman carried herself Kate believed she was hardly just housewife. Kate couldn’t put her finger on it, but she couldn’t help but imagine the woman constantly tied to her cellphone, making appointments, setting up meetings, basically getting shit done.

She could be all those things and still be a housewife, Kate reminded herself. It was in these moments of paranoia and isolation where she felt herself losing her sense of self. She detested who she became in these moments. 

Kate had never been the judgmental type. She had grown up with more than enough judgement placed upon her that she was careful not to make overreaching assumptions of people she didn’t know. But when that didn’t stop the judgmental side from coming out when she felt threatened or backed into a corner.

But, she was not being threatened or backed into a corner. As a matter of fact, she was the one who had chosen to sit away from the rest of the moms, on the bleachers furthest away from the diving boards, where she could sit in peace and quiet.

Maybe it wasn’t peace and quiet that she needed. It wasn’t like an indoor pool was a great place for quiet. It was actually, almost impossible to carry out a conversation among the echoing splashes and cheers without having to shout at the top of your lungs. Maybe, she needed the exact opposite. Maybe she needed to go and insert herself in the group. Surely, there would be less judgement if she went and tried to friendly. And if there were judgments, at least she would be able to see them face to face, instead of longingly from a distance.

Kate glanced at her watch. The swim meet was running behind by five or ten minutes. Allison would be up soon. She would swim her one hundred meter freestyle and then they could head home. There would hardly be enough time to adequately socialize with the other swim moms.

Besides, those women were strangers. There was no way they could possibly know the secrets that made Kate feel so insecure. It was all just a figment of her imagination. Even Allison didn’t know. The secrets stayed between Kate and Brad.

God, Brad. How he had screwed everything up for them.

The usual anger swelled inside of her, but she forced it down, where no one could see it. The anger made her want to cry, but with each day it got a little bit better. Each day she was able to breathe a little easier than the day before. Each day, she began to look at her husband with a little less disdain than the previous day, and for that she was thankful.

She had kept her cool. She had kept her family together. And at the time, that was all Kate cared about. That they were making it through and that they would make it through. It was requiring a lot of therapy and lot of forgiveness, but Kate loved Brad. She had always loved him. He swept her off of her feet and they started a beautiful life together. A life that eventually included Allison, who somehow managed to be the perfect distillation of both her parent’s prominent features.

She had Kate’s brown hair and wiry smile. She was average height, the same as both of her parents, and her eyes were deep and mysterious like her father’s and she had his trademark nose. The perfectly symmetrical nose that all of the Palmer women had. There were times when Kate would be staring at her daughter and even though she saw her own reflection in her daughter, she was blind to it, only seeing Brad staring back at her.

At first, it was difficult when Brad broke the news. Well, it was still difficult, that never quite went away, but the hurt lost its sharpness over time.

Kate couldn’t believe it when the words came out of his mouth, but the sadness and desperation with which he confessed, she knew right away that he was telling the truth. They had been together for almost twenty years, married for sixteen, and she had never seen him look or sound so devastated.

It had happened five months ago, but Kate could replay the entire scene in her head verbatim, as if it was a movie and her and Brad were the actors who had every line committed to memory.

The rain was falling that night, like it does most nights during the winter in Portland. The sky had gone dark before Kate made it home from work, but it was finally starting to stay out a little longer. The promises of spring and summer were just around the corner. Allison would be finishing her freshman year of high school and would spend the summer frolicking around with friends. Allison had even shown some interest in taking summer classes to get a jump start on her college courses, but both Kate and Brad agreed that they could discuss it the following year when the prospect of college was closer.

When Kate got home, Allison was already spread out at the kitchen table, working on a school project. The topic or even the class the project was for is one of the few pieces of the memory that Kate cannot remember. There were more important details that demanded to be remembered.

By the time Brad came home, Allison was already up in her room, having chosen to eat dinner there while she listened to music and studied for her upcoming Spanish test. Kate had made a hearty dish of baked penne and it was warming in a casserole dish in the oven when Brad walked through the door that connected their house to the garage.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Kate shouted out when she heard the door close, followed by the muffled rumblings of the garage door behind it.

“Hey honey,” she said as the sound of Brad’s footsteps carried into the kitchen, but when she saw him she immediately knew something was wrong. He didn’t have to respond. His face was down to the floor, his whites of his eyes were red like he had been crying. It wasn’t unusual for Brad to cry, he had always been a crier. Whatever genetic lottery he had won determined that crying was the best course of action when it came to reducing stress. Brad liked to say that he looked forward to his one good cry a month. He saw it as a cleansing of sorts. Kate had seen that kind of crying their entire relationship, but she had never seen him so distraught as he was right there in their kitchen.

“Oh dear,” said Kate as she carefully approached her husband, her mind racing over all the possible reasons that he was so sad. Her first thoughts were medical related. Brad had received a call from his doctor giving him terrible news. But Kate couldn’t remember Brad mentioning having any appointments recently. In fact, it was on February, still early enough in the year that she knew Brad hadn’t had his annual check-up yet. He hadn’t mentioned anything about going to the doctor and they were the kind of couple that would talk about those kinds of matters.

Sure, maybe their communication hadn’t been as great in the last couple of years. There were lots of stresses with both of their jobs, Brad was always convinced he was about to get laid off. There just wasn’t as much of a demand for feature magazine writers, regardless of how small the magazine. He had worked for eight years at a magazine that focused on the general going ons of Portland. If there was a new restaurant in town, the magazine covered it. If an important political figure was coming to town, the magazine covered it. They were practically a newspaper, just printed like a magazine.

The stress from work had made him cagey and withdrawn. Kate had her own struggles too. Three years ago, her mother died. Her mother who had fought so hard to give Kate a better life than she had growing up was gone and Kate didn’t know what to do with herself. Her mother had always been her rock and her loss left Kate feeling adrift at sea without a lifeline.

She fell into a heavy depression that lasted a year and a half before Kate started to feel like she was starting to get back to her old self. She felt herself coming back alive, parts of her that a year before seemed like they would be dormant forever, began to spark with life and vigor.

And so, it went that Kate and Brad fell into the pattern that ultimately led to that fateful night, five months ago, in the kitchen.

When Kate finally began to untangle herself from the web of depression that was built up around her, Brad was exhausted. For a year and a half, he was taking care of everything around the house, from making the meals to the general upkeep. Kate did what she could to help around the house, but most of the time it just ended with her feeling like she was in the way and Brad would get stern with her, and then instantly apologize when he saw that she was just trying to help.

Now, here was Kate feeling alive and in love with life for the first time in far too long, and all Brad wanted was a break. He didn’t want to go on a family vacation, he didn’t want to go out for diner. He just wanted to come home after work, get into his comfortable clothes, and relax away the stresses of the day.

This was how it was. They were like ships in the night. Brad got exhausted from having to take care of everything in the house when Kate was down. Then Kate was up, and Brad would be down. It was as if they couldn’t sync back up after Kate’s mother passed. Instead of dealing with their struggles together, they ended up shouldering their own sadness and disappointments, keeping them to themselves to fester and boil.

“Please,” Kate pleaded after Brad offered no response. “Please, tell me what happened.” She wondered if it was something with Brad’s parents. As far as she knew, they were in fine health, but sometimes all it takes is a grain of salt to dismantle the entire machine.

“I’m so sorry,” Brad finally got out, although the words were a mumbled mess that came between sobs that came so deep that they produced little noise on their way out.

Kate’s heart dropped into her stomach. What was he apologizing for? Suddenly, she was no longer calm in her approach. She needed to know what was going on, what he husband was talking about.

“Just tell me what happened,” Kate said with urgency as she placed her hand on Brad’s shoulder.

Brad broke down into tears and told her everything. When it was done, they were both crying, while trying to keep things as quiet as possible. They didn’t want their tears to alert Allison. They didn’t need her to find out about this.

“It was a stupid mistake,” Brad pleaded with his wife. “It didn’t mean anything. I’m so sorry. It was a moment of weakness. Nothing more. I’m a weak fool and I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve me. I fucked everything up. I’m so sorry.”

Snot and tears fell from his face in equal measure.

“Who is she?” It was the only logical question Kate could think of. Was it someone that she knew? Or someone that Brad had mentioned in passing? She couldn’t believe that this was happening to her. Never in a million years had she imagined there would be a time when Brad would be unfaithful to her.

Sure, she knew that he looked at other women, just as she looked at other men, but she never acted on anything and until Brad told her the news, she was steadfast in believing that he would never act on anything either. At least, not before having a long conversation about the state of their relationship. Yes, their sex live hadn’t been great in recent years, but that’s just how it happens sometimes.

It wasn’t that Kate didn’t find Brad attractive or desirable, just the opposite, but sometimes life just gets in the way and whether or not it was true that life was really in the way, it was the excuse that both of them had used from time to time.

Kate thought long and hard about the last couple of months. Brad hadn’t seemed frustrated with the state of their marriage. Sure, there were times that it had been better, but all marriages are like that, Kate told herself. They all have their ups and downs, their good times and their bad.

Kate had never imagined that Brad would be unfaithful, she never once suspected him of going outside of their marriage. She didn’t know how to respond to the news, but what surprised her more than anything, was that one of her first thoughts was they were going to make it through this. The terrified look on Brad’s face told her he was scared she would leave him, but something deep down inside of her, told Kate that she wasn’t going to leave Brad, this time. If it happened again, she would be long gone, and Allison would be coming with her. But for the time being she still loved her husband. She still wanted to make it work.

“It was someone from work,” said Brad after working up the courage to speak. “You don’t know her.”

All Kate could do was nod. She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make her feel better or worse. Kate could see that her lack of response was troubling Brad. Yes, she was breaking down in tears, but there was a resolve inside of her that wouldn’t let this be the end. They had too much history, gone through too much together to just throw it all away.

“I love you so much,” he continued. “I’m so sorry that I did this to you. To us. You know you’re my everything.”

Kate nodded again. She was thinking. When she finally spoke, she had a plan. A plan Brad had to agree to if they were going to move forward and make it through this. Kate hated giving ultimatums, and this was no different, but it was necessary.

“Please just say something. Just fucking say something.”

Kate took a moment, wiped her eyes, and tried to compose herself. One look at Brad’s face told her it wasn’t working.

“You’re going to stay at a hotel tonight,” Kate said sniffling through tears.

“Okay,” Brad replied as if he had expected as much.

“I don’t want to sleep in the same bed with you tonight,” Kate continued. “But, I want us to make it through this. Is that what you want?”

This time it was Brad’s turn to nod silently.

“Okay. You’re going to go upstairs, take a shower and make yourself look presentable. Then you’re going to spend some time with Allison. You’re going to ask her about her day and you’re going to act like today was any normal day. Then you’re going to say goodnight to her and then when she goes to bed you are going to pack a bag and go to the hotel. In the morning, I’ll just tell her you had to run into work and finish up somethings early.

“Then tomorrow, we’ll reconvene and see where we’re going to go next. But,” she said with authority. “We are going to be going to therapy as soon as possible. I will look into it tonight and present you with a few options tomorrow and we can make the decision together. Do you understand.”

“Yes,” Brad replied meekly. “I understand.”

And that was how things unfolded. They started going to therapy once a week. They had made the decision not to tell Allison. However, if somehow, she was to find out, they would open and honest with her.

A whistle blew and echoed throughout the high walled indoor pool pulling Kate back from her daydream to the present. She looked down at the two sided programs provided to spectators when they entered the North Portland Aquatic Center. Allison’s race was about to begin.

Kate looked down at the swimmers lining up at the starting blocks. From a distance, they all looked the same with their swim caps and goggles, but Kate knew her daughter’s blue and red swim cap when she saw it. There, standing in the fourth lane, her daughter was calm and focused, breathing deeply and staring mesmerized at the black line beneath the blue water.

There were six racers, standing on their individual blocks, waiting for the horn. Kate always relished in the anticipation of the horn and even with everything on her mind, she focused solely on lane number four. When the horn blew, Allison took off.

At first, through the chaotic splashes, Kate’s eyes trailed away from her daughter’s lane, but by the time Allison had made it half the distance of the pool, there was enough distance between the swimmers that it was easier to focus on her daughter. The pool wasn’t Olympic sized, so instead of swimming the pool’s length twice, they swam it four times.

Allison was in second place when she was halfway complete with the race. She moved through the water like a hot knife through butter as she turned in the water and started her third length of the pool. The girl in front of her had started with a good lead but was running out of gas quickly, and Kate watched her daughter confidently gain ground on her competition.

Kate cheered loudly from the bleachers, hoping that she was loud enough for her daughter to hear through the controlled chaos of cheers for all six racers.

Allison closed the gap as she reached the end of the pool, pushed off the wall and fought against the water for first place.

Allison had always been a strong swimmer and Kate couldn’t have been prouder of her. Kate knew Brad was proud too, but his presence was missed. Perhaps, that was why she was so paranoid of the other moms, Kate thought to herself, before realizing that wasn’t important. What was important was that her daughter was closing in on first and right before she reached the end of the race, they finished so close that Kate wasn’t sure who had won.

There was a small gathering near the starting blocks before it was announced that Allison Palmer had come in second place in the two hundred meter freestyle. Then, the times were displayed on an electronic board that hung on the far wall of the complex like the electronic signs at basketball games. With only a half-second separating them, Kate knew the disappointment that Allison would feel over coming so close. Kate wasn’t sure where her daughter got her competitive streak, it hadn’t come from either her or Brad, but she was happy that her daughter was happy.

That was all she could hope for.

Brad Palmer sat in traffic on the I-5 heading north. The radio was droning on about current events that Brad was too stressed to care about. It wasn’t just the bumper to bumper traffic looking to make his commute almost three times as long as it would have been if it wasn’t rush hour that had Brad on edge. There was a lot more to it than that. A lot more.

These nights sitting in traffic were the equivalent to the worst therapy session one could imagine; being forced to sit inside of a metal box, moving at a snail’s pace, having to keep an eye on everyone around you to make sure they didn’t cause an accident. It wasn’t the best place for someone with as much on their mind as Brad. Sitting in traffic became his own purgatory, where he was forced to relive the same past events over and over in his head, as if his mind would not allow him to forget, or even relax during his commute. How lovely that would have been.

When he wasn’t thinking about all the different ways he had fucked his marriage, he was thinking about work. When it came to work, all he could think about was the staff cuts that were looming over everyone’s shoulder. They had already cut their entertainment department from four writers to two and a lot of the behind the scenes roles like the advertising department, were getting split up as well.

It was just all too much to deal with. At least, he had his family. He wished that he could’ve been at Allison’s swim meet that afternoon. He would’ve loved to have been there. Even though it had only been months, it felt like years since Brad last watched his daughter compete. In the past, he made sure to attend every one of her meets, but now, he with work being piled on higher than it had been before, he was finding himself consistently unable to attend.

It broke his heart. He hoped that it didn’t hurt Allison too much. After all, he was doing this so she could go to a good college.

When he finally pulled into the driveway of their northwest Portland home, he was exhausted. It never ceased to amaze him how exhausting sitting in traffic really was. It was an exercise in patience, and while Brad had never been an impatient man, there were times when he felt like an overstimulated child who forgot to take their Ritalin.

Brad shut the engine off and unlocked his phone, which was intent on making sure Brad was no longer driving and it was now safe to operate a cellphone. With the phone unlocked, he had a missed text message from Allison. It was short, letting him know that the race was really close. He was full of anticipation as he walked through the front door.

He found Kate and Allison in the kitchen. Kate was taking a frozen pizza out of the oven while Allison sat at the faux granite marble counter top island in the middle of the room.

“Knock knock,” Brad said as he peered into the kitchen.

“Dad!” Allison said excitedly. Brad couldn’t believe that his teenage daughter was still excited to see him when he came home from work. He was sure that it would only be a matter of time before she gave him the cold shoulder whenever he would ask how her day went or how school was going, but for now, she was happy to see him and that was all he could ask for.

If she knew about what happened between him and her mother, it might be another story, but they had agreed, him and Kate, that they weren’t going to speak of it to Allison unless she asked. When they started going to therapy once a week, they didn’t lie about that, they just left out some of the details.

“How’d the meet go?” asked Brad as he walked into the kitchen. He made his way over to Kate and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Normally, at least before he screwed everything up, they would always greet each other with a kiss on the lips, but Kate was distracted by cutting the pizza and didn’t seem to really notice he was there.

“I got second place,” Allison replied.

“Way to go!”

“It was a split-second finish,” Kate added with a smile. The pizza had been cut and she retreated towards the back corner of the kitchen, fished out two wine glasses, and was uncorking a bottle of red wine as she spoke.

“That’s incredible,” Brad said as he walked around the island counter top and embraced his daughter.

“I was so close,” Allison said, a twinge of disappointment in her voice. “But I’ll get them next time. I set my personal record. Can you believe that? I set it by a whole three seconds.”

Brad felt himself swell inside with great pride. He hated himself for missing the meet.

“I’m really sorry that I couldn’t be there,” he said as their embrace ended. Brad peeked over Allison’s shoulder, math homework was laid about on the counter top.

Brad walked over to his wife who handed him a glass a wine. Brad took a sip of it, savored the taste as it went down and put his glass down on the counter. “I’m going to get out of these work clothes and into something a little more comfortable,” he said, leaving the kitchen and heading up the stairs to the second floor bedroom he shared with Kate.

At least after that first night, she hadn’t made him sleep on the couch. Everyday there were constant reminders of his betrayal, and everyday there were constant reminders that he didn’t deserve Kate. She was too good for him. She loved and believed in him so much, that she wasn’t willing to let one slip up ruin their lives.

There were times when he hated himself so much, he thought about leaving. In his mind, he always saw it as something that he was doing for Kate, but then he would realize he was being selfish. He could tell himself he was leaving because Kate deserved better, but in the end, he would just be doing it himself to free himself of the guilt that he felt every time he laid down next to her on the bed, every time that he stared into her beautiful hazel, green eyes.

If he left that would be the end of it. He couldn’t do that to Kate who, for some reason that was completely lost on Brad, still believed in him. Still believed that they had something that they could get to work. Allison would never forgive him if he left. Shit, he was pretty sure Allison would never forgive him if she found out he had been unfaithful. He had seen the look of disappointment in his wife’s eyes that night five months ago and he couldn’t look himself in the face for weeks. If his daughter were to look at him with the same eyes, he might as well take his car for a drive to the coast and go flying into the Pacific.

Brad changed into a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt with the University of Washington’s logo on the front. The school was both Brad and Kate’s alma matter, having met during the spring semester of their freshman year of college. They had been almost inseparable from the day they met. They married their first year out of college and then Allison came along a few years later.

The pregnancy had not been planned, but it was seen as a blessing nonetheless. The idea of parenthood excited and frightened them both. Brad knew that Kate struggled with her upbringing and it cast an ugly black cloud, over her when it came time to discuss whether or not they wanted children.

She was afraid of the past repeating itself and rightfully so. Her father was far from a good man. He was a drinker with a nasty temper that put Kate’s mother in the hospital time and time again and not once did she press charges. Instead, she would apologize, say it was her fault, and they would all go back to living under the same room. It was the kind of childhood that explained why Kate had left Minnesota after high school and came out as far west as Washington. She wanted a new start and Brad had ended up being part of that new start.

Brad had only met Kate’s father two times before he passed away. The first time was at the wedding of Kate’s sister. At first glance, the man seemed gentle and kind. He shook Brad’s hand with a firm grasp and smiled when they were introduced.

Then, as the evening went on, Brad started to see the other side. The mean drunk who wanted everyone to be as miserable as he was. Security ended up throwing him out of the venue and the night ended with the bride in tears.

The second time they met was when Kate’s father was dying. He was in a hospital bed, under hospice care, his liver and kidneys had been drunk away many decades before, and he lay there on the bed in hospice care, surrounded by his family as if he hadn’t been the biggest asshole to enter their lives.

Families were complicated, Brad knew, but that didn’t stop him from wondering what they were all doing there. How could they be wishing peace on a man who had gone out of his way to make sure his wife and daughters didn’t have peace? It didn’t make any sense, but Brad went along with it. It wasn’t his place to tell them how to grieve. As long as Kate’s father was in the ground and unable to hurt anyone again, he would leave it be.

Brad returned to the kitchen and the pizza had been cut up into thirds and placed on individual plates around the dining room table where Kate and Allison were already sitting, waiting for him.

“Smells delicious,” Brad said. The smell of the pepperoni and green peppers on the pizza had wafted up to the second floor and teased him and his empty stomach as he changed out of his work clothes.

“It’s just a frozen pizza,” Kate said. But Brad didn’t let the comment stop him.

“So?” Brad replied. “It still smells good. And I’m thankful we all get to eat a meal together. With all that’s been going on with work lately, I’m just glad that I can get home and have a meal with my girls.”

“We’re glad to have you home too,” replied Kate, and Brad knew that she meant it. Kate was a terrible liar and it was easy to tell whether she meant something when she said it or if she didn’t. When she wasn’t telling the truth, she would generally pause for too long before speaking, giving away that she was coming up with or trying to remember what she was supposed to say.