Kelly was everywhere that summer. Strangers chatted about her at the grocery store or the bank in the same way they’d comment on the weather or how the Brewers were doing. Union House created a drink called the “Sparkling KJ” (Ketel One vodka, Chambord, and a splash of J Vineyards sparkling wine), and in the front yard of a nondescript ranch house on Highway 83, the main road to Ten Chimneys, a hand-lettered poster counted down the days until she arrived.
Because of her, Alfred and Lynn were everywhere that summer too. “At least people know who they are!” Eva said one Saturday night. “You wouldn’t believe how many times, in the middle of a tour, someone asks who the Lunts are.”
“Wait.” Gabe, who had been moving around their table filling wineglasses, stopped midpour. “People shell out thirty-five bucks to see Ten Chimneys without knowing who the Lunts are?”
“All the time.” Eva shrugged. “It’s nuts.”
“Deanna says people constantly stop by the diner to ask what Ten Chimneys is, and when she tells them, they’re like, What? Who? Apparently, that’s happened a lot less since…” Annabelle glanced at me apologetically. “Well, since KJ agreed to come.”
I felt the covert looks they were shooting across the candlelit table, but what could I say? I dreaded her coming, and they all knew it.
“Don’t you just love how every time someone mentions Kelly Jarrell, the room falls silent?” Gabe said.
“That’s not true!” Annabelle turned to me. “Is it?”
“Of course it is,” Gabe said.
Eva looked stricken. “I keep forgetting how difficult this must be for you, Claire.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “The fact that Kelly’s everywhere actually makes it feel almost normal.”
I wanted so badly to believe this that sometimes I think I did.
And it was true I no longer felt my stomach dip every time I saw her name or heard yet another person weigh in on what play she might choose for the final performance. Gabe and Erik both wanted There Shall Be No Night, mostly because it was such an important play, but the rest of us were rooting for a comedy. “Kelly Jarrell is as much drama as I can take,” I laughed whenever the subject came up.
“It’s all I can do not to pull over and rip that sign off the lawn,” I told Annabelle one morning when I stopped by after my run.
Nineteen more days until KJ!
“Ha! Let’s do it,” she said. “Pick a night. We’ll be stealth.” She grinned. “You always wear black anyway.”
“I love you for offering,” I said. “Even as a joke.”
She arched one eyebrow. “Who’s joking?”
The next day the poster was gone. Annabelle feigned innocence, but Saturday night, she gave me a gift-wrapped box. Inside was the sign cut into pieces.
“Christ, Annabelle. That’s trespassing!” Gabe exploded. “Not to mention theft.”
“It’s a poster board!”
“It’s also a class A misdemeanor!”
Except for Gabe, we were all grinning. I couldn’t believe Annabelle had done this, but I loved her for it. She stopped at absolutely nothing when it came to the people she cared about, and I felt—as I had a hundred times before—how lucky I was to be one of those people.
“You’re a nut, Annabelle.” Eva was laughing so hard she was crying. She looked at Scott. “Did you know about this?”
“Shit,” he said. “I was the getaway driver.”
Two days later, on my way to Ten Chimneys, I saw that the sign was back. 15 days!
Erik’s assistant, Christine, was leaving when I arrived, carrying her baby boy in a sling against her chest, a diaper bag over one shoulder “Well, it’s happened,” she said as she unlocked her car. “Your husband is officially besotted.”
“We all are,” I said, stroking Max’s chubby ankle with my index finger. Someone had handed him to me at his christening in February. It was the first time I’d held an infant since Lucy. Afterward, despite a nasty mix of rain and snow, I went for such a long run that the sky had turned dark and Erik was about to come looking for me. I hadn’t known what else to do except keep moving, as if I could outrun the memory of holding my own child.
“Oh, it’s not my son your husband’s besotted with.” Christine placed a hand lightly on her baby’s bald head, and I thought how pretty she looked, soft and rosy-cheeked, her face still carrying the roundness of pregnancy. “It’s Kelly.”
“Kelly?” I shook my head as if I’d heard wrong. “What do you mean?”
“I know, right? He’s been totally blasé about her for months, but they had quite the tête-à-tête this morning on the phone! I guess she told him she was one hundred percent ours while she was here. Anything we wanted her to do—talk to donors, PR—all we had to do was ask.”
“Wow. That’s…it’s great!” I knew Erik had been in contact with her assistant, but to actually talk with Kelly? I couldn’t stop blinking. I’m not sure what else I said. Probably another comment about Max, who made me ache so much I couldn’t see straight.
I’d carried Lucy against my chest in a Snugli like that.
A few minutes later, walking across the parking lot, I was aware of holding myself erect, of taking shallow breaths, as if I were injured. I felt ambushed—They had quite the tête-à-tête this morning—though it was hardly surprising that they’d spoken by phone. And why did it matter? In two weeks, they’d be speaking in person.
Upstairs, the offices were dark, low evening light falling in long slants through the tall windows. The sound of a vacuum echoed from below. “There you are,” Erik called from his office at the end of the hallway, and rose from his desk. He turned to grab his jacket from the back of the chair, saying over his shoulder, “You still want to go to the—” Y, he was about to say, but stopped, his smile fading. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just…I saw Christine.”
“She told you I talked to Kelly.” He came around me to shut the door.
I nodded, tears brimming. “I don’t know why I’m upset.”
“It’s okay.” Erik held my elbows, bending at the knees to meet my eyes. “Talk to me.”
But before I could, my face crumpled and I was crying, hard painful sobs that seemed to erupt from my chest. “You’re besotted?” I wept. I felt humiliated even as I was saying it and immediately plopped down into the upholstered chair behind me, unable to look at Erik. Of course he liked her. Everyone did. She was smart and funny and kind, and she made people feel good about themselves. She’d once made me feel good about myself. The thought only made me cry harder. I felt betrayed and hurt, but mostly, I was just so tired of holding it all in, feigning amusement and nonchalance and cracking jokes and pretending Kelly’s coming here was okay.
Outside the sun was collapsing in a dramatic orange blaze, the trees cutting a jagged line against the darkening sky. I didn’t know how to explain the treachery—and I knew that wasn’t a fair word, but it’s the one that came to mind. The treachery wasn’t that Erik liked Kelly but the fact that he could talk with her. It felt like one more thing in a vast list of things I’d relinquished my right to without understanding how much I was giving up: Not knowing where my daughter lived, if she was healthy, happy—why couldn’t I have had that much? And not being honest about my past, constantly lying to my friends because I was so terrified they’d reject me as Kelly had. Not holding a baby in my arms until I’d held Max! I knew it wasn’t fair to blame Kelly, knew the only person to blame was myself, but in that moment it seemed that if only Kelly had forgiven me, my entire life would have been different.
Erik squatted in front of me. “I hate seeing you torn up like this.”
I inhaled a ragged breath. The light angling through the window shone in his face, which was so marked with worry it made me start crying all over again. “I don’t know why I keep crying,” I sobbed.
“You’ve probably needed to do this since March.”
But he was wrong. I’d needed to do it for thirteen years. Since the day I relinquished my child.
The letter from Kelly arrived a week later.