“So you got back at me?” He gave her a challenging look. “Because I couldn’t get you pregnant? Found someone who could?”
She shook her head, leaned toward him imploringly. “No,” she said, the word emphatic. “Getting back at you never entered my mind. Keeping you did.” She tried to catch his eye again, but he wouldn’t look at her. “You wanted a child, a family, so much. We were so close to having everything we talked about. I couldn’t face what might happen if we couldn’t.”
“What might happen?” he asked.
Her voice was very quiet, barely more than a whisper. “You might stop loving me.”
She watched as the words sank in, hopeful that they might change the direction of the conversation. But when he spoke, it was clear he wanted to keep fighting—if only, she knew, to keep the pain at bay for a bit longer.
“So you just took matters into your own hands.” He gestured toward the den and the cartoons and the little boy watching them in rapt attention. She was grateful Christopher loved TV the way he did at that moment.
“The next day I left for a work trip, if you remember. It was a trade show, and while I was there I met this recruiter. He was there to scope out the industry’s talent, and he and I talked. We . . .” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. How could she describe what had happened between them? He had looked so much like Everett that it had drawn her to him. He’d been charming, disarming her as they talked and laughed and drank and drank some more. The hours ticked away, and suddenly she was drunk and he was offering,
When she’d woken up the next morning with him beside her, it had been too late to take it back. And when she puked for the first time a month later, she’d known. She’d known that they were having a baby, and she let Everett believe it had happened that same night the doctor told them to just try harder. She’d let him believe it because she wanted to believe it, too. She wanted to pretend.
“You were . . . with him,” Everett finished for her.
“It was . . .” Again, she fumbled for the right words. How could she say it was a mistake when it had given her a beautiful child she loved with all her heart? She tried again. “It was wrong of me to do, and wrong of me to lie to you about it after. And I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.” She willed him to look at her with understanding and forgiveness, to look at her at all. But he did not. “I’ve been sorry every day.” Her voice, hoarse with emotion, was barely audible.
He kept looking at his hands. “I’d like for you to leave,” he said. She leaned back heavily in her chair, thrown by his unexpected request. He looked up suddenly, his gaze angry and hurt. “I’m serious. I need for you to get out of here.” She blinked at him a few times but then complied, rising slowly to her feet. She started to walk into the den to collect Christopher, her mind already spinning as to where she could go.
He stopped her. “You can leave Christopher. I’ll put him to bed. I just need for you to not be in this house for a few hours. You owe me at least that.” She started to go tell her son goodbye, but he stopped her. “Don’t stir things up with him. He hasn’t even realized you’re back, so better just to go.” He looked at her, his eyes pleading. “Please.”
With the briefest of nods, she scooped up her purse and keys where she’d dropped them earlier. She paused at the door to look at him still sitting at their kitchen table. She started to speak, to apologize one more time, but he rose and walked into the den, turning his back on her as he joined the son he once thought was his own.
EVERETT
Everett listened for Bryte’s car to start up and back out of the driveway, but he never heard the sound of the engine. He got up and went to the window to see her walking toward Myrtle Honeycutt’s house, her shoulders hunched forward, her head down, her steps deliberate. She was still going to walk that damn dog even with everything else going on. He watched until she disappeared from sight, then went to put the boy to bed. Could he call him his son still? He didn’t know if he could stop. The thought of admitting that child wasn’t his nearly brought him to his knees. But he forced himself to keep moving.
After Christopher was tucked in with his stuffed elephant and his five kisses (forehead, chin, cheek, other cheek, nose), Everett sat in the darkening house, not bothering to turn on the lights. He thought of his wife, gone for several hours now. In the distance, he heard sirens and wondered idly what might be happening. He wondered if he should worry, but he couldn’t consider another tragedy just then.
He wanted to be angry at her. The baser parts of him wanted to divorce her, deny the child, and start over. Declare the Bryte years a false start. He’d get it right the next time. He cataloged in his mind what it would take to separate their lives. He was a math guy, but he could not estimate the cost. He’d always made sense of things, but nothing made sense anymore. He could not be angry at her because she was not the only one who’d kept a damaging secret.
An image came to mind of him and Jencey as inexperienced teenagers, hunkered at a corner table of the town library in late winter of their junior year. He’d said they needed to research sex before they did it so they’d know how, and she’d gone along with his plan. They’d taken books off the shelf and sat side by side, elbows touching at the most remote table, her eyes taking in the words and pictures along with him, two bright spots of color on her cheeks in the too-warm library. Under the table, he’d reached for her hand. She’d taken his, and he’d known that it was as close to real love as he’d ever find.
That one winter afternoon in the overheated recesses of the town library was what had driven him to find Jencey before he could propose to Bryte. He’d tracked her down, living in Connecticut with a husband and two—two!—children. He’d called her, told her he would be in New York and wasn’t that close to Connecticut, playing dumb. She’d said she could get away, that it would be nice to see him. He’d met her in a restaurant in the city, and they’d had a long dinner, catching up and drinking stiff drinks until they were both just shy of shit-faced.
At the end of the night, she’d looked at him and asked why he was really there. He’d never lied to her before, and he didn’t intend to start. So he said nothing. He signaled the waiter for the check, paid the bill, and reached for her hand. Surprisingly, she didn’t argue. She just took his hand and let him lead her to his car, a rental. He turned on the heat in the car, tuning the radio to a decent station.
“Are you ever going to answer my question?” she asked.
He looked at her, and that was all the answer she needed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For never coming back.”
“I had to know it was really over.” He laughed at himself. “I mean, of course I know it’s over. But . . . seeing you makes it real.”
She started to cry, tucking her head into her chest. “Yes,” she said. “I have a family now.”
“I wanted a family,” he said. “With you.”
“I know,” she said.
“I thought that was what you wanted, too.” He hated the way he sounded, whiny and clingy. But it was how he felt. And he would probably never see her again. He needed to say it before he moved on.
“I did.” She gripped his arm, trying to catch his eye. “You have to believe I did. But then everything happened, and I just had to get away.”
“You said you’d come back.” He felt anger building up inside of him—anger at her, anger at the stalker, anger at himself for not stopping her. He thought of the hazy days after the attack, the shame and pain all mixed together. He was weak. He had failed to protect her. And Jencey had left because of it.