“Do you know my husband was married with children when—Although I didn’t know about you, I knew there had been a relationship.”
“I’m sorry if you were hurt,” she said. Nikit had returned and was beside her again as if he could sense her need. He crouched down, sitting on one heel, his hands on her shoulders so it looked as though he quite literally had her back. “If there’s anything specific I can tell you, I will. Just think about it and give me a call. Or if you’d rather not...”
“I’ll call,” Anna said. “I promise. So...you lost a father...”
“Mrs. McNichol, I never really knew my father,” she said. “I knew about him, that’s all. And I knew that you and your children didn’t know about me. I communicated with him not very long ago and I’m so glad I did.”
“Why now, Amy? After all these years?”
“Because, for better or for worse, living a lie is toxic. Living with the truth can be difficult and require strength but living with secrets is unhealthy at best. My mother had so many secrets and she didn’t have to. I could never have stopped loving her even with the truth. Lies and secrets are just a mistake from the start. Maybe deadly.”
Anna thought about that and wondered what the real difference was between keeping secrets and being private. Shouldn’t everyone be entitled to a private life? But lies? Lies, she had to admit, led to no good.
Anna had a jury selection in a battery case scheduled for the afternoon and so had to spend at least a couple of hours in the office, though she was distracted. She took some small comfort in the fact that Chad probably had not had an ongoing affair for years and years if Amy had never even been aware of him. She needed many more details to better understand the situation. Like, what was that business of him supporting her welfare and education?
She thought it must be Amy who was the mysterious recipient of the ten percent.
The DA and defense attorney were hard at it, selecting jurors; the defendant was also a victim. She had killed her abusive husband, claiming self-defense. This was a case that fell into Anna’s area of specialty; she was a well-known advocate for women in abuse situations and the first order of business, she knew, would be the DA asking her to recuse herself. Since she didn’t know the defendant or the victim she would refuse. This was the kind of case that got her blood moving.
But today she was struggling to stay focused. In spite of that, they got their jury empaneled and scheduled a court date. Although there were calls to return and lawyers who wanted a few minutes, she asked her clerk to handle the details.
She then spent about two hours on the internet researching and found dozens of references to similar situations to her own, in crimes, court cases, tell-all memoirs, articles and bios.
That she was thinking about her marriage and her husband, and the fact that Chad seemed to have lived an entirely secret life, one that included an unknown woman and a child, had disrupted her even more than his death.
She’d thought their relationship, despite its occasional troubles, was cocooned within their family, involving only them and the children—perhaps, on the fringes, their parents. Yes, she knew there had been an affair because Chad admitted it, but what he didn’t admit was it had been so much more than that. He had a second family, whether he had seen them or not. Just because Amy said she hadn’t known her father didn’t mean Chad hadn’t been involved. In fact, might he have been involved with Amy’s mother? Could there have been others? Just how many liaisons might there have been over the years?
Was he ever planning to tell her the whole story?
She missed the Mill Valley exit and found herself driving toward Bodega Bay and before long she was standing on the cliffs high above the ocean. It was light much later in these days of summer. She did a mental inventory of all those intimates who might wonder at her whereabouts. She had spoken to her mother before lunch, texted with Jessie earlier this afternoon. She had seen Mike on the weekend and Bess rarely checked in. She just watched the ocean for a while. Then she got back in her car, drove for over an hour and found herself standing at Joe’s front door. It was dusk.
“Anna!” he said, shocked.
“You were his best friend,” she said. “You knew he had an affair. Did you know he had a daughter from that affair?”
“What?” he asked, clearly shocked.
Suddenly her eyes welled with tears. She’d done very little crying since Chad died, which was not to say she hadn’t been grieving. She’d been grieving deep in her soul and now even more so as she questioned what her marriage had been made of, after all.
“I’m sorry I didn’t even call,” she said softly. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“You can always come here,” he said. “Come in. Let’s talk...”
“Are you sure it’s okay?”
“It’s always okay. Are you just coming from work?”
“I left work hours ago,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I can barely even remember where I’ve been. Driving. I went to the coast north of the city. Then here.”
“Here,” he said, cupping her elbow in his hand. “Come in. Can I get you a drink? A glass of wine or something?”
“I’m not doing shots with you again,” she said with an abbreviated laugh, letting him guide her into his house.
“I don’t even have tequila,” he said, leading her past the small living room and dining room to the back of the town house. This was clearly where he lived, in the back of the house. The kitchen was clean, though there were dishes in the sink. His laptop and a stack of folders sat on the dining table. The small family room was cluttered; a pair of sweatpants and T-shirt were tossed over the back of a chair, shoes lay where they’d been kicked off, a briefcase sat on the breakfast bar and appeared to be emptied of papers. He had to clear a pile of papers and books from one end of the sectional. “Maid’s day off,” he muttered. “Come and sit here,” he said, indicating the cleared space.
She decided against commenting that it looked as though he lived like a college student.
She took her seat and he brought her a glass of wine. Then he darted around the small space to gather up his clothes and shoes and take them away. She didn’t stop him. He was on a mission to make sense of his mess. Maybe it had something to do with how he wanted her to see him. They’d never actually spent any time alone together while Chad was alive. He quickly put his books on the shelf and straightened the stack of papers and folders, closed the laptop and the briefcase and fetched himself a glass of wine. He looked so young, rushing around in his jeans and polo and loafers without socks; it was hard to put him at sixty-three. But then sixty-three was younger these days than it had been.
He returned and sat on the ottoman so closely their knees were nearly touching. His brow crinkled in a slight frown as he reached for her hand. “What’s this about a child?”
“It’s been a very hectic few weeks,” she said.
“Sounds like it,” he said.
“There was the business with the will when we learned Chad had left ten percent to an undisclosed party. I kept it to myself that I suspected a mistress. Turns out I was wrong about that. I took my lunch to the park by my office today and ran into the young woman I had seen at Chad’s service—a woman I had never met. We spoke just briefly today. She told me she is his daughter and has just given birth to his granddaughter. And I never knew this was going on. Of course.”
“Has he known about this all along?” Joe asked.
“The details are still a little murky, but she said she met him when she was a teenager but thought he was a family friend. She learned more about him later and she contacted him recently. She said she knew I’d have questions and she’d meet with me later, after I’ve had time to gather my thoughts and decide what I want to ask. She did say he’s contributed to her welfare and education.”
“But they had no relationship?” he asked.
“Apparently not much of one,” Anna said. “I don’t know about her mother. I don’t know if he had two families. Joe, did you know any of this?”
He shook his head. “No, and I never suspected he was keeping any secrets.”
“He never said anything that made you wonder if his relationship with the woman was ongoing? If there was more to it than a fling? Or even an affair?”
He put his wine on the side table and took her hand. “Listen, here’s how it went. In anger, you ratted him out, told me you’d caught him in an affair and you were leaving him. A lot of excuses and arguing and jockeying for position followed, and while you two stayed together, it was rocky. And then it seemed to smooth out. I didn’t dare ask if you’d forgiven him because all I cared about was that you two weren’t living in misery. I cared about you both. And besides, I was going through my own thing then.”