Your gut, stupid. What did her heart know? It made her go and sit in his lap, laughing away her worries because how dare she? Her heart was stupid. Couldn’t she see that her husband going behind her back and romancing some young, insignificant woman was treating her like shit? Even if inadvertently?
It was days like those that not only caused a war within her body, but also proved how sad, stupid, and careless this drama queen really could be.
Chapter 8
“Does Lana Know About It?”
Christmas at the Losers Estate really was just that.
“Low-siers,” Inid said to her youngest daughter. “It’s not pronounced like that word!”
No matter how much she tried it, Inid would never be able to escape her maiden name. Like Lana, she had changed it the moment she married years ago. Inid Rothberg, however, never anticipated having to explain such a maiden name to her small children years after the fact.
“Still sounds like Loser to me…” said Collette, the youngest Rothberg child. “Why would someone call themselves that so long ago?”
“Times change, dear. It didn’t used to mean that. I think.” Inid patted her daughter’s head and herded her toward the dining room. “We’ve got dinner, Collie. Now be nice for your grandmother.”
“I don’t wanna. She smells like gross.”
Lana tuned them out after that. She didn’t need to agree with her niece any more than she did. Mother does smell like “gross.” Which happened to be how Lana felt most of the time now.
At first she blamed her period, which was unusually rough – probably compounded by stress, not that she could do anything about that at this time of year. Except then she worried there was something terribly wrong with her, so she went straight to her doctor two days before they left for the Christmas holidays. When he gave her the okay to travel, insisting that she was only “fretting,” Lana nearly threw the biggest fit she ever threw in the doctor’s office.
Ken was an utter gentleman through the whole ordeal. Including now, as he stood behind her at the dining room table, massaging her shoulders while talking to his older brother. At night he would massage her back, taking extra care of her abdomen until the terrible cramps finally abated long enough for her to sleep. He snuggled her. He kissed her. He never asked for the sexual things he sometimes did when they went without for a few days. He was a model husband, and that worried Lana.
Is he being nice because he’s nice? Or is he being nice because he knows he’s doing something bad? How deep did Ken’s morality go? Would he feel bad about cheating on his wife? Shit, if he felt bad, he wouldn’t be cheating on her! Right?
Or maybe the man misunderstood the boundaries of their relationship. Maybe he thought it was okay to fuck the maid because of the way their marriage was set up. Except he would’ve mentioned something by now. Said something stupid, like, “Maid’s got nice tits, right?”
I could also still be making it up. There was a reason Lana hadn’t confronted her husband… yet. She didn’t have the concrete evidence. Everything was conjecture. Damn good conjecture, but a pleasant conversation on the phone and hearsay from the chef didn’t a confrontation make.
So Lana chose to plow through life as it came. Right now it meant tending to her family’s Christmas celebrations.
Even though Lana and Ken were by far the richest and most successful members of the family by every definition – meaning it was their families forced together – Lana’s parents had the most bedrooms to house everyone. So once a year they packed their bags and headed upstate for a few days, relegated to the nicest guest room, even above Ken’s parents, because they were the golden children.
Everyone was there. Lana’s parents and her sister. Inid brought her children and husband, all a very picturesque family whom everyone agreed took the best holiday photos. Then there was Ken’s family. His parents were there, and his three brothers happily were as well. One older, two younger. All but the youngest had a wife and children. Altogether, nine children of varying ages had the run of the place. Lana was the only woman at these functions who had no children, and her mother never let her forget.