41
I REACHED FOR THE COUNTER, unable to look at Stephen, scarcely able to breathe. “Please go,” I whispered.
“Claire . . .”
I pulled away. “I’m not strong enough to keep traveling this road, Stephen. It will break me. You call me strong? I’m not. I’m hanging on by a thread. And while I do still love you, it has to be as the father of our daughter, not as a husband. Not anymore.”
He looked stricken as he walked out of the kitchen, briefly pausing as though he might turn back. I prayed God would make him hear—and accept—what I’d said. Because I couldn’t repeat it. Thankfully, he left without a backward glance.
But when the front door closed, the weight of finality and failure drove me to the floor. Grief choked me. The choice was mine, and I’d made it. Yet I felt none of the relief I’d expected. I felt only failure. And loss. And betrayal. Not from Stephen this time, but from myself. Now it seemed I was the one breaking my own wedding vows.
Later, in bed, sleep wouldn’t come. Stephen’s accusations played over and over in my mind. I tried to read in the Psalms, searching for comfort. Or maybe answers. I found the former, though not the latter, before finally turning out the light well after midnight. I slept fitfully.
Sometime later, my phone rang. I pressed it to my ear, only to hear Stephen, his voice flat and resigned. “You’ve got your wish, Claire. I have changed my mind. I am tired of you. I should have told you years ago. Maggie feels the same. So we’re both leaving you. I just wanted you to know.”
“Wh-what? No, Stephen. Please! Not Maggie too. Don’t take her from me like you took—”
The line went dead, and I bolted upright. My head foggy, I scanned the room, half expecting to see Charlotte stooped, weeping at the foot of the bed. But no one was there, only shadows slow-dancing through the tree limbs. And my phone? On my bedside table. Off. I sank back down, shaken by the vivid dream.
The clock read 4:44 when I finally rose, grabbed my robe and phone, and walked downstairs to the kitchen. As I descended the staircase, I imagined, as I often did, how many times Charlotte’s hand had passed over this same rail. Her gaze sweeping the same foyer below. Living in this house felt like living inside history. But I still knew so little about Charlotte. And Nettie. And what had happened to them.
I was eager to finish her journal, to learn whether her precious baby had lived, whether she and Nettie had, indeed, found freedom, finally escaping Achan Crowley’s cruelty. I’d never considered myself capable of killing someone, but knowing what he’d done to Charlotte and Nettie and so many others, I think I could have.
I popped a pod into the Nespresso machine, and the familiar churn and spew comforted me. Still shaken by what Stephen had said, I checked my email. Only junk. No texts either. Gone were the days of being in demand. I opened my text thread with Maggie, then paused, fingers poised over the keyboard, hearing Paige in my head: Give her some time and space, Claire.
Maggie would still be sleeping now anyway, but I longed to touch base with her, let her know I was thinking about her. I typed:
As soon as I typed the exclamation point, I hit Delete repeatedly. Of course things weren’t well. Her parents were getting a divorce. I left , then added and pressed Send.
I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug, fighting a chill despite the house not being cold. The coffee warmed me going down, but I knew what would warm me even faster. I disarmed the alarm and made my way out the back, past the patio table to the crib mattress swing. The air, heavy and humid, cocooned me like a blanket.
A cacophony of chirruping crickets, croaking frogs, and the woodwind hoot of an owl made for a lively chorus. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, what looked to be a million flickering fireflies pirouetted against the dark curtain of trees.
No way would Stephen intentionally turn Maggie against me, would he? He’d been angry last night, sounding desperate. But he wouldn’t stoop to using our daughter as a pawn. He loved her too much. Considering Maggie’s own anger and her stoic silence, she could very well end up shutting me out on her own. But was that a reason to stay with Stephen? Stay with a man I couldn’t trust in order to keep a daughter I could not stand to live without? Still, I’d already lost one child. I could not lose another.
“If I could trade my life for his—for . . . Bryan’s—I would.”
The sultry breeze seemed to carry Stephen’s words back to me, and my throat tightened. I’d forgiven him for that. Years ago. I’d let go of it as best I could. So why then did it still haunt me? But I knew why, didn’t I? Because in my gut I was certain I could have saved Bryan if I’d been there. I could have—
Don’t, the night whispered around me. Don’t go down that road again. It always ended the same. And did it even matter anymore?
The faintest wash of purple-pink touched the horizon as the star-studded sky grew dim. If I were back in Colorado, I’d throw on yoga pants, tennis shoes, and a sweatshirt and drive to the cemetery to watch the sun come up over Bryan’s grave.
If we’d never left Denver, I felt certain Stephen would have eventually made the same choice with Susan Johnson. So why, Lord? Why did you move me all the way to Atlanta, only for my marriage to fail and my relationship with my daughter to disintegrate?
I realized I would have never found the hidden room, and for that discovery alone, I was grateful. For Charlotte’s journal, especially. And word getting out about that could well land me a position with a top design firm, which I needed to help keep me sane. But the discovery had no bearing on my marriage or my daughter. And certainly it wasn’t worth losing her over.
As the fireflies began to dissipate, making way for dawn, I studied the edge of the woods. Somewhere out there, on those twenty-plus acres that held more trees than I could count, lay the bodies of Charlotte’s dear Jonathan and their five children. “Under the massive oak canopy,” she’d written. Some might find it morbid, but I wished I knew where she’d laid them to rest so I could visit their graves, if only to honor their memories. Yet they could be anywhere. On the other hand, what kept me from looking?
Refusing to let practicality talk me out of it, I raced upstairs, threw on a T-shirt and a pair of old jeans, and unearthed my gardening gloves from a box in the garage. By the time the sun had risen, I’d doused myself in insect repellent and hoped my thrashing through the underbrush would scare away any snakes before they could scare me.