Good Intentions by Joy Fielding Page A

she asked, wondering why she was persisting in a conversation that was so obviously futile.
    Gary seemed genuinely surprised that she might have any. “Well, I’ll pay for a sitter, of course, if you have plans to go out.”
    “And if I have plans to go away for the weekend?”
    “Do you?” His face became soft, curious.
    That word again, she thought, then admitted after a pause, “No, I’ll be here this weekend.”
    Gary lifted his hands into the air as if to ask what then all the fuss was about. “Would you tell them?” he asked.
    Lynn thought of all the things she could say, the stinging remarks she could administer, the arrows she could fling, then decided there was no point to any of them. Ultimately she would only be hurting herself. “Is there anything in particular you’d like me to say?” she asked, managing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
    “Tell them I’m taking them somewhere special for lunch. Tell them to dress up nicely.”
    They’ll be thrilled, Lynn thought, but said nothing.
    She found Megan in her room sitting on the edge ofher bed, her overnight bag unpacked, her nightclothes strewn about the floor. “You heard?” Lynn asked, though the question was unnecessary. She sat down beside her daughter and put her arm around her shoulder.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Megan said, brushing her mother’s arm aside.
    “There’ll be other weekends.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Megan repeated, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at her mother.
    “I love you,” Lynn offered.
    “So does Daddy,” Megan said quickly.
    “Of course he does,” Lynn told her, though she drew the line at defending his actions.
    Nicholas popped his head in the doorway. “Let’s go,” he said. “Daddy’s waiting.” He looked around the room, his eyes resting on Megan’s overturned overnight bag. “What’s the matter?”
    “Daddy can’t take you for the whole weekend. He’s going to take you somewhere special for lunch instead. He wants you to change and get all spiffy,” Lynn said in a gulp, watching Nicholas’s face drop and his eyes fill with tears. “He says there’ll be lots of other weekends,” she continued as Nicholas walked slowly from the room. Lynn thought in that instant that she hated her husband.
    “Goddamn you, Gary Schuster,” she said out loud after he had left with her children and she was returning Megan’s clothes to their proper drawers. “Goddamn you to hell.”
    The doorbell rang.
    “What? Lunch over so soon?” She checked her watch. Half an hour had passed since her family’s departure. Lynn walked briskly to the front door and opened itwithout asking who it was. Marc Cameron stood smiling on the other side.
    “I thought you might like to go for a walk on the beach,” he said.
    “It’s a very strange feeling,” Lynn was musing as she walked beside Marc Cameron along the crowded ocean strip, “to come into your kitchen and find your soon-to-be ex-husband leafing through your mail, helping himself to something from the fridge, checking things out as if it were still his home.” She tried to smile. “I guess as long as he’s paying the mortgage, that’s how he thinks of it. Not much I can do.”
    “You can tell him to go to hell.”
    “Not if I want him to keep on paying the mortgage, I can’t,” Lynn replied honestly, wondering what she was doing walking along a public beach with this man.
    “It’s probably my fault about tonight,” Marc said.
    “What? What do you mean?”
    “This guy, a wrestler that I interviewed a couple of days ago, sent over some tickets to the match at the Auditorium tonight, and told me to bring my boys. I called Suzette after I got the tickets and asked if it would be all right for me to take them. She said okay. Therefore, Suzette is free tonight. Suzette doesn’t like to spend her Saturday nights alone.”
    Lynn swallowed a sudden rush of renewed anger. “Where are your boys now?”
    “They’re at a birthday party. A