“You’re Frankie’s father, aren’t you?”
Despite Louise’s every intention on the drive over to deliver her terrible theory in a calm and measured way, the instant Russ meets her in the doorway, she lets the question bolt from her throat like a spit lemon seed.
For several interminable seconds, his expression is frozen in bewilderment, the shock of her words needing several moments to sink in fully, and when they have, his eyes squeeze so tightly Louise can barely see the pale-blue pools.
His voice comes out more as a breath than a whisper: “What?”
“That’s why you’ve been acting this way, isn’t it? Why you insisted she stay with us, why you’ve been trying to impress her?” She rolls her lips together, her heart pounding. “Is that why you refused to blame Maeve for leaving like she did?”
He glances around, scanning the porches on either side of them for prying eyes, but no one is out. “Let’s not do this outside, all right?” He reaches for her elbow, as if she’s a woozy post-op patient coming out of anesthesia and needing help back to bed, but Louise yanks her arm out of reach, panicked at his choice of words as he steers them into the house. He hasn’t denied her claim, he’s only said he doesn’t want to do this outside. What is this? His confession?
Russ points her to the couch, but she doesn’t dare sit for fear she won’t be able to stand up again. “Now what the hell is this about?”
“I saw you with her, Russ. At the ferry. There was a picture in the archives.” Louise punches every syllable like typewriter keys as she watches his face, waiting for her accusations to break the hard cover of confusion he continues to wear.
“What picture?” He blinks at her. “Saw me with who?”
“Maeve!”
His face falls.
“Around the time she disappeared—you took her to the ferry.”
“Lou.” He rubs his forehead. “Just sit down, okay?”
“I don’t want to sit down!” She’s getting shrill. “I want you to tell me why you were helping Maeve leave with Glory’s suitcase when the rest of us believed she took off without anyone knowing. But you were there.”
Russ grabs the sides of his head, pressing at his temples. “And you think because I was with Maeve at the ferry that I’m Frankie’s father?”
“You haven’t denied it.”
“Because it’s lunacy!” The volume of his voice startles both of them into a sharp silence. Relief sparks behind Louise’s ribs, small still, but enough that she can sit down finally, even if her descent feels more like a collapse.
Russ comes beside her. His voice is calmer now but no less firm. “I gave Maeve a ride to the ferry that night and I waited there with her. It’s true.” He pushes out a hard breath. “She needed my help.”
“And you never thought to tell us? All those months we wondered? And you knew? The whole time—you knew?”
Russ claps his hands on his thighs and pushes off the couch. “You make it sound like I was trying to hurt you.”
“Of course I’m hurt—God, Russ, I’ve been nothing but hurt since you moved into the downstairs bedroom and proceeded to shut me out of everything. And now this?”
He comes back toward her, his eyes pleading. “Lou, I swear to you there was nothing between Maeve and me.”
He scans her face, and she can see he’s desperate for some proof of her confidence, but her mind has already spun in another direction, circling back to his earlier words.
She stands. “What do you mean, she needed your help? Did something happen?” Louise mines his fraught gaze, prickles of understanding crawling up her spine.
He’s protecting someone.
“Was it Mitch?” she says, nearly breathless with her theory. “Did Mitch say something to Maeve that night? Did he do something?”
“It wasn’t Mitch,” Russ says, his voice even and tempered, the tone of truth. And as Louise watches her husband pace toward the window and back again, she takes stock of things in the choking silence. So he’s not Frankie’s father. All right. But the wildfire of this possibility now doused does little to bring her comfort—for a moment she finally had a reason for why Russ has pulled away from her. Now she’s back to having none. And the hole seems larger than before.
Tired of waiting, she’s determined to fill it—his secret meeting with Maeve suddenly brushed from her thoughts like table crumbs after a meal. “Then are you angry with me because I didn’t bow out of the festival when you had to close the practice?”
“Of course not.”
“Is that why you refuse to take the seat on the ethics board? Because you think if you actually find something to occupy you, I won’t ever quit?”
“What? No!” Russ says, harder now.
“What then?” Louise can feel the tears bubbling up, can hear them in her voice. She swallows to force them down. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” she whispers. “If you knew where Maeve had gone, why did you let us all wonder?”
The question out, Louise stares at him, expecting more silence, but his voice shatters the strained hush, rough and weary.
“Because I promised her.”
She scans his fraught features. “Maeve?”
“No.” He sighs. “I promised Glory.”
She stares at him expectantly, craving explanation even as her heart thumps with dread.
And again he pleads: “You should really sit, Lou.”
Something in his gaze chills her. Russ takes her hand and turns her back to the couch, where she sits again. And what should have been the startling sensation of his touch, the dread of possibility is so shocking it overwhelms the simple fact that it is the first time he has held her—any part of her—in months.
“Wait.” He looks toward the window, where a taxi has just pulled into the driveway, Frankie stepping out. “I want her to hear this, too.”