Family Secrets

Chapter 3

Susan Andrews, née Warner

Fucking Hannah Levy. As soon as I saw her stupid fake vulnerable doe eyes I knew it was over. It was too much to hope she would keep her damn mouth shut. Twenty eight years I'd lived in peace and happiness, correction, I've lived my whole life in peace and happiness, except for those three years when she was in it.

Jack was mine. We grew up together, the children of two of Chicago's wealthiest families. Both our mothers had hopes for a match between us, and ever since I'd hit puberty, so did I. But I knew to be smart about it, and I was patient. I made myself into whatever Jack wanted – over the years I had been his friend, his confidant, his classmate, his work colleague, and from the ages of 19 to 26, his on and off friend with benefits. Only I was insanely in love with him, and he... cared for me, at best. I knew that, I'm not stupid. But I had hoped to wear him down, wait him out, buy my time until he was ready to settle. I've studied him carefully – he never had relationships longer than a few months, he kept talking about his career plans (which then also became my career plans) and always emphasized how important family was to him, which is why he wanted to wait until he was successful enough to then focus on raising a big family. I myself had no desire for a large brood of children, all I wanted was Jack Jack Jack, but for him I'd do anything.

I'd known everything there was to know about the man, in bed and outside of it. But I couldn't have known he would go and fall for that nurse. I called him one night asking whether he could come over because I was feeling frisky, and he informed me that our arrangement had to stop? Because he was now in a relationship? I cried myself to sleep that night, but on the phone I managed to play it off as if I was happy for him, I even said I couldn't wait to meet the lovely Hannah. I kept telling myself it was nothing, I'd wait her out like all the others, but months passed and they were still going strong. When I met her, it was extremely painful to watch my Jack adoringly gaze at her, touching her any chance he got. The very next week I accepted a temporary transfer to the New York branch - I figured it would either help me get over it or show him what he was missing. None of the two happened. Jack got engaged to Hannah and I was more in love with him than ever.

I, of course, kept in touch with Jack, and when he informed me about their engagement I decided to play my last remaining card, to give Jack his dream career. We combined our trust funds and started our own firm. It was a glorious time – it was the two of us against the world, excited, optimistic, young, working crazy hours to make his dream come true, going to bars to celebrate our first clients, eating takeout in his office at 11 pm, working late to make a deadline. I would steal brief touches, hug him every time we had a successful deposition, shrug off my blazer inside his office, and slowly but surely his gaze started wandering, and his touches started lingering, until one night before going home around midnight, we were laughing in the elevator, things between us easy and familiar like always, and at some point he hugged me and almost reflexively briefly pressed his lips to mine. We gazed into each other's eyes and I boldly kissed him one more time, only mine was deep and wet and hungry. When we reached the ground floor, we were both disheveled, his hand in my hair, both of mine up his shirt. When I saw he was about to tell me we shouldn't be doing this, I made a big show of apologizing, saying how I didn't know what came over me and that I simply needed to get laid. I knew his parents hated the nurse, and I knew there was some stress at home for him, he had mentioned little things here and there and I made sure to never pry too much, so it was only a matter of time before he came back to me. I was the one constant in his life all these years, and I would do anything in my power to keep it that way.

One night in May, there was a knock on my door late at night, around 11:30 – it was Jack, his shirt wrinkled, his tie undone, his face tired.

"I need a drink," he'd said and I just opened the door wider for him to pass. They had been fighting, again, so he left to clear his head and ended up at my place. That night he took me in that hot overpowering way of his, and I finally felt home again. I would never let Jack go. I would be his mistress for years, my whole life if necessary, I would take any crumb of his affection I could get.