Eleven months earlier
The 11,000 square foot Georgian style mansion in Chestnut Hill never felt cold or empty when I was a child. It was always a magical place full of adventure and stories. But as Marc pulled his Audi around the circular drive, the ivy-covered brick exterior looked institutional for the first time in my life.
“You know what to say if you want to leave,” Marc reminded me for the third time today.
We had several code phrases we used when we wanted to leave a social gathering: I have to go feed my neighbor’s cat… We have to drop off some papers at the courthouse… I have a ton of papers to grade… The house alarm is malfunctioning again… And my personal favorite, which could only be used with my family: I think I just soiled my poop-free record.
I’d never used that last one. I was saving it up for a special occasion. Maybe that would be today.
My mother invited Marc and me to the house for Sunday brunch to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the publication of my father’s first book, Word Sprinkles. It was a book of whimsical children’s story rhymes, and it was still my favorite of all his works. Surely, my mother must intuit the irony and sadness in commemorating this milestone. I doubted my father wanted to be reminded of what he was about to lose.
But once my mother decided on a course of action, she could not be deterred. Like the time she decided she was going to turn the pool house into a pottery studio. She converted it back to a pool house a few months later when she discovered pottery required her to sit still longer than ten minutes. Mom was always on the go.
As Marc reached for the door handle on the front door — we never knocked or rang the doorbell, lest we get a lecture from my mother and father about how family doesn’t knock — the sight of Marc’s hand on the brass latch reminded me of something I’d read in his secret journal.
Looking into Cassidy’s eyes is like looking at a locked door, one I’ll never have the courage to go through. Because the moment she shows me what’s on the other side, I’ll have to do the same.
Oh, Marc, what are you hiding from me? And what do you think I’m hiding from you?
As we stepped into the cavernous foyer, Marc closed the door behind me as he called out, “Is everyone fully clothed?”
My brother Carter, the youngest of the three of us, came rushing out of the sitting room on our left. “I’ve missed you, Rabbit,” he said, calling me by the family nickname I was given when I was eight years old and addicted to Trix fruit-flavored cereal.
A smile spread across my face as he pulled me into a warm hug. “I’ve missed you too, GB.”
Carter earned the nickname GB in high school when he was trying to bulk up for the wrestling team and eating everything in sight. GB stood for garbage bowl, a concept introduced to the world by my mother’s favorite celebrity cook, Rachel Ray.
“Where’s Lina?” I asked.
Carter and Marc exchanged a look before my brother answered. “She couldn’t make it. The boys have a soccer tournament today.”
I forced a smile despite my reluctance to believe this excuse. Lina didn’t mention a soccer tournament when we had lunch the other day. Based on the look Marc and Carter exchanged, someone probably asked Lina to skip this family gathering. This soon after losing Mira, basking in the glow of her beautiful, healthy, living children might sting a little too much.
I wanted to tell them I was becoming numb to the pain. That my heart had grown a baby-shaped callous. But I didn’t want today’s brunch to turn into a pity party for Cassidy. We’d had enough of those.
Carter tossed his head back to dislodge the flop of light-brown hair from his face as he led us into the sitting room. This was one of four spaces in the house lined with bookcases. The shelves in here were painted white to contrast with the glossy, black baby grand piano in the corner and the red Persian rug.
My father was sitting in his usual rattan lounger, and my mother was seated at the adjacent sofa. They appeared locked in a silent conversation, a reading of body language, as my father liked to refer to it.
Carter stopped in the middle of the room, so Marc and I followed suit. “He’s not having a good day,” Carter whispered to me over his shoulder.
“Is it possible to have a good day in his condition? Knowing what he knows?” Marc whispered.
Neither Carter nor I answered. Marc had a habit of speaking too plainly and truthfully. I didn’t know if this was because, as a lawyer, he dealt with such varied truths in his professional life. Or maybe it was how he was brought up. I wouldn’t know, considering I knew next to nothing about his childhood.
“I’m sorry,” Marc whispered to me. “That was insensitive of me.”
I shook my head. “No, it was the truth. It’s not fair, but it’s true.”
Carter started toward the sitting area, clearly uninterested in acknowledging this uncomfortable conversation. Marc and I followed behind him.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” my mother said, rising to her feet. “Was there traffic near the farmer’s market?”
I planted a kiss on her cheek. “No, just had a little trouble figuring out what to wear this morning. I’m in the stage between maternity clothes and regular clothes.”
My mother’s gray eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Please don’t apologize. I’m… I’m sick to death of hearing the words I’m sorry.”
My mother’s gaze fell. “Of course.” It took her a moment to recover, but she finally turned her attention to Marc. “How are you doing, dear?”
He leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I’m okay. Thank you for asking, Ruth.”
She shook her head, though she was obviously not at all convinced that either Marc or I were okay. “Teddy, would you like us to move to the sunroom? The food’s almost ready.”
She spoke to my father like a child lately. It was only too evident by the scowl on his thin face that he did not appreciate being spoken to like an imbecile.
My father’s brown eyes, the same eyes I inherited, looked up and found me. The scowl on his face melted away, and the dull look in his eyes was replaced by the usual twinkle. “Hey, Rabbit. When did you get here?”
I forced a smile, ignoring the ball of tension in my belly. “I just got here, Dad. Want to go chat in the solarium?”
He nodded, and the dullness returned to his eyes, like a curtain being closed. “Yes. Let’s go to the… I want to go with my bunny rabbit.”
I waited until my mother and father were a ways ahead of us before I whispered to Marc, “I’m going to need you to hold my hand through this. This is the worst I’ve seen him. Did you see that? It was like a light bulb switching on and off. It’s terrifying.”
Marc stood behind me and put both hands on my shoulders as he whispered in my ear, “If it’s terrifying for you, imagine what it’s like for him. The best thing we can do is be strong and not treat him differently. You can do this, baby.”
I sucked in a deep breath and nodded as I let it out slowly. “What would I do without you?”
I immediately regretted these words as I imagined I’d conjured up images of me with another man. Both Marc and I had agreed we would only discuss what we did while we were separated if it was absolutely necessary. We managed to avoid the subject until we got into an argument a few months ago about whether we should learn the sex of the baby.
Marc was reliably playing the part of the more practical partner by insisting we wait to find out until the baby was born. Being the impulsive one, I wanted to know as soon as possible, so I could start putting a name and face in my motherhood fantasies. Of course, this was precisely what Marc was trying to prevent.
In the end, I got my way. And we found out we were having a girl at my four-month appointment. But when we went in for my thirty-six-week check-up a few months later, and they couldn’t find Mira’s heartbeat, I imagined the unspoken words I told you so echoing inside Marc’s head.
On the drive from my doctor’s clinic to the hospital, we got in a fight that would culminate in me admitting to having sex with another man while we were separated. I wanted Marc to hurt as much as I was.
After the delivery, I made Marc come clean about his own tryst. Then, we agreed we’d never talk about it again. Of course, that didn’t stop me from bringing it up the night of Marc’s holiday party.
Sometimes, I felt my job was to hurt Marc as much as I loved him. Sometimes, I felt better when he felt worse. It was a sickness. A vague, sadistic impulse that never quite worked the way it was supposed to.
Brunch in the solarium was a performance, each of us dancing around my father’s cognitive impairment to avoid calling attention to it. But every time I caught him staring off into space, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to make out a distant, fuzzy memory. Or maybe he was simply unable to keep his mind from wandering.
As I passed the dish of maple butter to Carter, my father put down his fork and sat up straight in his seat at the head of the wrought iron table. Marc placed his hand on mine to quiet me as I opened my mouth, ready to ask my father if he needed anything. I pressed my lips together tightly and waited like everyone else. And sure enough, my father had something to say.
His eyes were focused on something in the distance. “I remember… I remember gobbling my food down as fast as I could, so I could go outside and play stickball with the neighborhood kids,” he began, the salt-and-pepper hair that sweeps across his forehead fluttering with the breeze created by the ceiling fan above us. His face split into a beaming smile. “I remember the sound of the wooden screen door slamming shut behind me. Thwack. And my Aunt Viv crying out, ‘Don’t slam the door, boy!’” We laughed softly, not wanting to interrupt him. “And I would run away giggling like a leprechaun. But,” he said, his face becoming serious, “I always stayed gone long enough for her to forget I’d slammed that door. It was important not to incur Aunt Viv’s colorful wrath.”
When I was studying cognitive science at university, my father always made sure to tell me how proud he was of me. Then he’d tack on that he didn’t think I was a born scientist. It was never meant as an insult. But he used to watch me boss around my older sister whenever we played pretend schoolhouse. He said I was a born teacher, and one day I would realize that.
I used to think my father had projected his idea of me onto me. But it didn’t take long after graduating from college to realize he knew me better than I knew myself. He knew most people better than anyone ever knew him.
This was probably why I married a man more unknowable than the inside of a black hole. The worst part was that we might never know my father’s deepest secrets, unless he had a secret journal like Marc.
I emerged from the restroom to find Marc and my mother speaking in hushed tones in the kitchen. “Where’s Dad?”
Marc turned away from me and continued doing the dishes as my mother smiled.
“Your father is upstairs. Ginny took him to bed,” she said, referring to my father’s new caretaker. “If he’s not walking the grounds, he’s usually sleeping these days.”
I glance at Marc’s back, then back to my mother. “What were you two talking about?”
My mother waves off the question. “Oh, nothing. Just stuff about the media. You know how they are. They want to know if the rumors about your father are true.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. Marc was an attorney. My father had a perfectly good publicist who would probably have better advice to give my mother on these matters.
“And what did Marc have to say?” I asked, feigning curiosity.
My mother sighed. “I’m not going to get into this with you, Cassie.”
“What do you mean? Get into what? The truth?” I asked, my voice growing louder. “If you’re talking about Dad or me, I have a right to know what’s being said.”
“It’s about the will, okay?” my mother shrieks. “I… I can’t talk about it right now. Please don’t… Don’t make me talk about it.”
My stomach twisted with guilt as my mother wiped fresh tears from her powdery cheeks. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said, pulling her into a hug. “I’m sorry I overreacted.”
She held me tightly as she sniffled. “It’s okay, darling. I know you’re suffering, too. We’re all just trying to get through this in our own way. But I would never lie to you. I’m just trying to protect you.”
I let go of her and stepped back, as the guilt in my stomach grew into a gnawing embarrassment. I had to tell Marc I'd read part of his journal, or the things I’d read in there were going to consume me.
April 16th
Cass missed her period. I want to tell her how scared I am. Not just about losing another baby. I’m scared our child will be born with the same shame I carry. Is this hereditary? Will our child be defective?
As Marc pulled the Audi onto Chestnut Hill Avenue, coming out of my parents’ driveway, I blurted out, “I read your journal.”
I closed my eyes and imagined the black leather notebook with the crisp, ivory pages covered in Marc’s spindly handwriting, so I didn’t have to imagine Marc’s reaction to my words. But as the car slowed and came to a stop, I opened my eyes to see what was going on.
Marc had pulled onto the grassy shoulder that separated my parents’ property from the asphalt road. His gaze was fixed on the steering wheel, his chest rising and falling with each slow, careful breath.
“Say something,” I begged.
He shook his head and glanced at the door handle. For a moment, I was struck with an insane fear that Marc would step out of the vehicle into oncoming traffic. I reached out and placed my hand on his, which still gripped the steering wheel.
He pulled his hand away.
“Why?” he asked, barely louder than a whisper.
“Why?” I repeated his question.
He finally turned in his seat to face me straight on. “Yes. I want to know why. Why you felt the need to violate my privacy. Why, Cass? Why?”
My body began to tremble, but not with fear. I wasn’t scared of Marc’s wrath or the repercussions of my admission. I was terrified of my own anger. I was afraid because I knew I had no choice but to tell him the truth. And I was blind with rage that I had to explain it at all.
I looked him straight in the eye. “The fact that I have to read a book to know my husband should tell you why.”
He rolled his eyes. “This again.”
“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes, I am sick and tired of living with a stranger and pretending everything is okay. Do you only hate your job, or do you hate me, too?”
“What?” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “Are you actually asking me if I hate you? I can’t do this today, Cass. Today of all days. I swear to God,” he said as he shifted the car into drive and glanced over his shoulder to pull back into traffic.
“Are you kidding me?” I shrieked. “What makes today any different than yesterday or a week from today? Were you ever going to tell me how you felt about your job? Are you ever going to tell me who this man I married truly is?”
“The man you married is a ghost,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the man you married is a figment of your imagination.”
“You’re not exactly putting my mind at ease, Marc. What the hell are you talking about? Do you want a divorce?”
He flashed me a scathing glance. “No, I don’t want a fucking divorce. I want…”
I waited impatiently for him to finish his sentence, but he remained silent. “What do you want, Marc? I feel like I’m beating a dead horse. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on with you? Why do I have to read about you in a book?”
He shook his head. “That journal doesn’t even scratch the surface.”
“Believe me, I know that,” I replied. “I’m ashamed I violated your privacy, but all I gleaned was that you hate being a lawyer, and you think I’m hiding something from you.”
“Aren’t you?” he shot back as he turned onto our street just a few blocks from my parents’ house.
“What would I possibly be hiding from you? You know everything about me.”
“I don’t know why you love me.”
His words took my breath away. I was speechless as he pulled into the garage of our townhome. He parked the Audi next to my SUV and turned off the engine before hitting the button on the remote control attached to the visor. The garage door rolled closed behind us.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, reaching for the door handle.
I grabbed his forearm to stop him. “Please don’t walk away from me.”
He sighed and let go of the door handle. “What do you want, Cass? You want me to tell you that from here on out I’m going to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Because I don’t think you really want that. You think you do, but you don’t. I know you better than you know me, and the Cassidy I know would run from these secrets. And that's the truth.”
My breath came in slow, angry intervals. “I’m done trying to break through your armor.”
“Why can’t you just accept that there are things you don’t want to know? Why can’t you trust my judgment?”
“Because you’re making this decision for me. You’re taking away my agency.”
“This is not about you, Cass. It’s my past. Not yours.”
“This is our marriage. Does that mean nothing to you?” I held up my hand to stop him. “Don’t answer that. You’ve already answered with your actions.”
“I could say the same thing about you,” he replied, throwing open the driver’s side door.
I sat in the car and watched him walking toward the door leading into the laundry room. He stopped at the door and turned to look at me through the windshield. His eyes asked if I was coming with him, but the hard set to his mouth said he didn’t care.
As my throat constricted with a surge of emotion, Marc let out a deep sigh and returned to the car. He slipped into the Audi and closed the door. Without saying a word, he pushed the button on the side of his seat until he was reclined as far as the car would allow.
He closed his eyes and smiled. “Remember the poem your dad read at the wedding?”
My chest ached as I placed my hand on the button on the side of my seat, but I didn’t tilt the seat back yet.
“Amber Sky,” Marc continued with a chuckle. “I joked with him that he was awfully confident to guess the color of the sky on the day and time he would be reading the poem. And he said he didn’t have to guess because he’d written the poem an hour earlier.”
I smiled as I pressed the button to recline my seat and closed my eyes, just the way we used to when we were dating in college. “Well, my dad always says his best work is written the day before a deadline.”
Marc shook his head. “He didn’t write the poem an hour before the ceremony because he was procrastinating,” he said as if he knew my father better than I did. Sometimes, I thought he did. “He waited until then because he didn’t know what he would want to say until the time came to say it. If he’d written it the day before, he would have been merely guessing. That poem is the definition of the magic that can happen when creativity and inspiration meet.”
I let out a soft chuckle, in awe of this observation. “You do know him better than me.”
I closed my eyes and let my mind wander back to the day Marc and I got married. I had a copy of the poem my father wrote that day framed. It hung on the wall in our dining room before the separation, and I’d yet to put it back up.
After a brief silence, I began to feel Marc’s gaze burning into me. Sure enough, when I opened my eyes, he was looking at me with such admiration, it almost made me uncomfortable. I wanted to look away, but I forced myself to hold his gaze, to feel the full strength of his love.
“I don’t deserve you,” he began, and I fought the urge to interrupt him. “But I promise you that someday I will. Someday… Someday I’ll tell you everything.” He reached toward me, gently laying a hand on my cheek. “Once I figure out how to legally chain you to the bed so you can’t leave me after I tell you.”
I shook my head. “I would never leave you.”
His thumb stroked my cheek. “Even if I told you I have no past because I’m a time traveler from the future?”
I nodded. “Yup. Is that your secret?”
“Do you want it to be?”
My stomach clenched at the question, and I shook my head.
He leaned across the console between us and planted a soft kiss on the tip of my nose. “Without written records, our histories fade into the ether, like a long-forgotten dream.”
I closed my eyes to try to remember what he was referring to, and it hit me suddenly. “The play? At the Sydney Opera House?”
He didn’t reply, which told me I was right.
I thought back to our trip to Sydney, and how I had been reluctant to see the play, which had received mixed reviews. But Marc insisted we had to see something at the opera house, and that was the current offering.
The play was an epic family drama, mostly centering around a father and daughter who are at an intergenerational crossroads. Much to the father’s dismay, the daughter ends up uncovering a brutal family history, which puts her entire heritage into question. It was haunting and irreverent and apparently left quite an impression on Marc.
“Come to bed with me,” he whispered.
I swallowed hard as if it were the first time he had ever asked me to sleep with him. When you hardly know your husband, every day can feel like a day full of first times. It was a sickening truth that I loved the thrill of our cat-and-mouse game.
As I allowed him to lead me upstairs to the bedroom, I had a sudden idea that made me question my sanity. Marc had said he wanted to figure out how to legally chain me to the bed, which was a crude way of saying he wanted to make certain I wouldn’t leave him when he told me the truth about his past. Wouldn’t having a child together make it more difficult to leave him on a whim? Is that what he was waiting and hoping for?
It was a reckless thought, but I decided to believe it. Marc wanted to tell me his secrets. But did I really want to know?
I woke to a veil of darkness. Blinking a few times, I reached for my cell phone on the nightstand and saw it was 2:13 a.m. Laying the phone down, I turned over and saw the silvery outline of Marc’s profile as he stared at the ceiling.
“You’re still awake?” I muttered groggily.
He removed his hand from behind his head and beckoned me into his arms. “Come here, beautiful.”
I inched closer to him and settled myself into the warmth of his arms.
He squeezed me tightly for a few seconds as he kissed the top of my head, then he loosened his hold on me and began stroking my bare shoulder with the backs of my fingers. “I want a big Christmas tree this year,” he said, a bright, wondrous quality in his deep voice. “I want to get it from that farm in Hatfield, where you can cut down your own tree.”
I was glad he couldn’t see the confused look on my face from his current vantage point. “Okay,” I replied. “But we’ll have to buy some more decorations.”
“We can go out there today,” he suggested. “I can push back my afternoon depo and take the day off.”
Now I was totally bewildered. Marc never took unplanned absences from work, especially not on a Monday.
“Marc?”
He didn’t reply.
“I want you to quit the firm.” I pushed the words out fast and hard before I could stop myself.
He still didn’t reply, but his fingers stopped absentmindedly stroking my arm.
“Say something,” I pleaded.
The rise and fall of Marc’s chest slowed beneath my head. “Okay.”
My heart stuttered a bit before it sped up. I must have heard him wrong.
“Did you hear what I said?” I asked. Surely, there had been a miscommunication.
“Loud and clear,” he replied. “And I agree. But it will take a few months to wrap up my caseload.”
“That was way too easy,” I remark.
He chuckles. “You read my journal. I’ve imagined a life outside the legal system for a very long time. I’m actually sort of glad you read it, though you never explained why you were looking in my desk drawers.”
My throat constricted as I recalled the day I found the journal. “It wasn’t any one particular reason,” I said, my voice hardly louder than a whisper. “It was mostly my own guilt over…” I stopped myself before I spoke the name of the ex-boyfriend I’d slept with while Marc and I were separated.
He was silent for a long while, then cleared his throat. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
My heart rate sped up again. “What is it?”
He unfolded his arm from around my shoulder and slipped it out from underneath my head. Then he turned onto his side, so we were facing each other. “I didn’t sleep with anyone while we were separated. I only said I did so you wouldn’t feel so guilty about what you’d done.”
I closed my eyes as I allowed this uncomfortable truth to sink in.
“But I don’t want you to feel guilty for doing something you were entitled to. I know you love me, and whatever happened meant nothing to you.”
I opened my eyes again. “How do you know that?”
He smiled at my question, not the reaction I expected. “Because… I told you no one knows you like I do.” His hand came up and landed on my face. “No one knows this face like I do,” he murmured, his breath tickling the hairs at my temples as he laid a tender kiss on my cheekbone. He traced his thumb along the ledge of my bottom lip. “No one knows these lips like I do.”
His hand gripped the back of my neck as his mouth landed on mine.