If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This Read Online Free PDF Page A

think all parents probably—”
    “She told me something else, too.” She’s turned away a little from him now, so Jack can’t see her eyes. “She told me you weren’t entirely truthful about your wife.”
    “Huh.” He looks out toward Lila, kneeling now in her denim skirt, patting the dog along his flank. “Huh,” he says again. “She told you that, did she?”
    “You’d be amazed how many people are terrified of dogs.” Bess is smiling a little at him again, but he can’t quite smile back. “I deal with it all the time, Jack.”
    “I don’t…” He can’t come up with very much more. “I guess that’s right. I guess a lot of people are.”
    “Your daughter’s exact phrase was ‘I don’t know why my dad was so bizarre about this. As if it were leprosy or something.’ ”
    Jack smiles at Bess’s imitation, in spite of himself. Pitch-perfect. He looks down toward his shoes. “That sounds like my girl,” he says. “And I’m sorry about the bluff. I don’t know why I did that. Really, in all honesty I can’t imagine why.”
    And he can’t. There is no real why. Just a further symptom of how messy everything’s become. Ann’s fears: a symptom. His habitual lies: another symptom.
    Bess shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, Jack. I’m not pegging you as some kind of criminal because you covered something up.” She smooths the fabric along her legs again. All the little wrinkles. All the little disturbances. “It probably just felt private to you, which is fine. But I do need to be a little clinical about all this. Something like a doctor, I suppose.” She turns to face him. “I really need to understand Lila’s home life—really understand it. If your wife has a dog phobia, even if it’s just a minor problem, we’ll deal with that. I just have to know about it.” He notices her small, off-white teeth that have never been fixed, a little crooked, a little buck. “We can work around just about anything—I just have to know the truth about what I’m sending Wally into. Wally, and Lila too. They have to trust each other. Which really means that we have to, right?”
    As he nods, Jack’s chest rises and falls in a sigh. He’s probably already broken some aspect of Bess Edwards’s personal code of decency, he understands. She’s trying to be kind, but for a moment, sitting there, he’s oppressed by his sense of the bad impression he must already have made. He looks out to Lila, still kneeling in the dirt, her feet sticking out from her long denim skirt, her face right up against the dog’s. Never lie to her. Never lose her trust. Maybe that would be an easier mandate for an animal to follow.
    “Listen, Bess,” he begins. “Lila doesn’t know everything.” Jack closes then opens his eyes. “There’s a lot more to our home life than her mother’s fear of dogs.” He leans over and picks up a small stick. “My wife and I are separating, after Lila goes away to school. It’s all been decided. I’m planning on moving out.”
    As the words come out, something else occurs to him. This woman whom he barely knows is the first person he’s been honest with about this. Other than Ann. Even Miranda doesn’t know how concrete these plans are. “We haven’t said anything to her yet.” Jack shakes his head. “We’ve had to give our daughter an awful lot of bad news in her life. I guess I just haven’t been able to face doing this. Pretty cowardly, right?” Bess’s eyes give no reaction he can read, and for just a second, he thinks of adding something more. Something about how Ann has told him he’s the one who has to tell Lila, because he’s the one who first gave up on them. Because he’s the guy who wants out. The guy who can’t keep himself from seeking something resembling pleasure somewhere else. That all he can think of when he imagines breaking this news to his daughter is that other terrible conversation. The one he had with her when she was six. The one in which it felt