JACKS SET HER KEYS down on the counter. The house was still.
“Are the girls asleep?” she asked the nanny, who was ready to leave for her weekend. It was her time off and she had already stayed later than she’d wanted to.
“They’re quiet. Sleeping? I couldn’t say.”
Jacks nodded and said good-bye. As the woman’s car receded down the driveway, Jacks locked the door, turned out the lights.
“Are you coming up?” David’s voice startled her.
“God,” she said. “Don’t do that. Not tonight.”
Standing on the other side of the darkened room, she could barely make out the shape of his face. He’d taken off his jacket, loosened his tie, and was now leaning casually against the doorframe as if they had just come home from a fabulous dinner party, or a play in the city. But the night’s events had been far from any of that.
“Are you coming up?” he asked again, and she could tell by the tone of his voice that he had returned from that other place, not completely, but as much as he could. She stared at his body, let his voice settle inside her, this man she’d lived with for seventeen years. The man she’d loved, and still did after everything. Beside him, she could see the phone that she’d answered that day after Thanksgiving. Beyond him, she could see the hallway and the foyer, the front door where the intruder had entered. And yet, turning her eyes back to him, hearing his voice, she could almost believe that none of this had really happened.
She smiled and walked to where he stood. “I’m tired,” she said. Then she walked past him toward the stairs and he followed, silently. On the second floor, she let him pass and retreat to the bedroom. He looked back at her for a brief moment, but she waved him on. She needed to see her children. Opening the door to Beth’s room, Jacks found her sleeping, her little body all curled up beneath an overstuffed quilt. She walked to the bed and pressed her face against her daughter’s, letting the warm breath touch her skin, and it felt like life itself, pure and untouched. There had been so much talk about undoing damage, damage that had been done to children unknowingly, innocently, by the most loving but ignorant parents. It had gone on for nearly two hours, the lecture then questions and answers, this talk about degradation and self-destruction, the corruption of young bodies, young souls.
She kissed Beth, then left her with her sweet dreams. She went next to Andrea’s room. Her middle child was growing up so fast that she now appeared more like Hailey, a teenager, than a little girl. Still, she was just a child, and Jacks kissed her and tucked her in like a child, then moved on down the hall. Hailey’s light was on, so Jacks knocked softly on the outside of the door.
“Yeah?” was the response. Her teenager was on the computer and not in the mood for distractions. Jacks walked in anyway and sat on the edge of her bed.
“What’s up?” her daughter asked, turning her head for a brief second, then back again. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
Jacks seemed surprised, then realized she’d been crying. She wiped her face and smiled. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“What! What did they fill your mind with at that assembly?”
“Nothing, really.”
Hailey seemed angry. “Mom, I’m fine! Are you gonna cut back my curfew? Just tell me. What did they tell you to do?”
Jacks got up from the bed and stood beside her daughter. Then she leaned down and took her child’s face in her hands, meeting her eyes. It was, she knew, one of the worst things a mother could do to her daughter, so she made it quick.
“I love you, you know that, don’t you?”
Hailey looked away, squirming out of her mother’s embrace. “Okay, yeah,” she said, and Jacks didn’t make her give more. Instead, she kissed the top of her head and left her to her life.
In the hall outside, she took a moment to feel it. They were okay. These children were, somehow, still okay. She placed a hand across her chest as she walked to her room. David was waiting, still dressed and sitting on the bed, his head hanging low. He looked up when he heard her come in and shut the door. His face was anguished.
“Will you ever tell me?” he asked, and Jacks knew exactly what he meant. She had no more doubts about what was real or not real. And the reasons she had been unable to see this before no longer mattered, though she would remember them always. Her husband was sick. He’d been sick for years though she had no diagnosis, no name for the affliction that had spun him out of control, distracted him and made him careless, reckless with their lives. But that was not her job, to find the answers, to cure him. He needed help, and she would stand by him through it because losing the hope that he would return to her was not an option.
Would she ever tell him? No, she never would. What she had done to save their family was something she would carry alone and forever and it would exact a heavy toll. She would always wonder what might have happened if she’d confronted him the day she found that first letter. What had she been so afraid of? Facing the fact that he was ill, or that they might lose this life that they had come to covet? Or maybe the realization that everything she had become over the past seventeen years, the highly skilled professional wife and mother, only held value in the world if she was attached to a man. And so she had turned to Barlow as the only means of escape. She had held on to her conviction that everything, anything she did to save them was justified. But that was a lie. Now she had one job, and this time she knew her motives were pure. History would end here, in this room, tonight.
She looked at David, her mind swimming in all that had to be done. There was still a mess to be straightened out at the firm, with the investors. And David needed to get well. It would take most of the night to convince him of that. So she started with one word, an answer to his question.
Looking at him from the doorway, she shook her head.
“No,” she said. And he never asked her again.