Claire,
I imagine it’s as shocking for you to be reading this letter as it is for me to be writing it, though I can’t imagine anything more shocking than learning you are married to Erik Whitaker. Had I known I never would have accepted the position with Ten Chimneys. But you knew this, didn’t you? And now it’s too late to cancel.
Why do this? In what universe would the kind of chance meeting you must have imagined be okay? There is no universe, Claire. I’m not trying to be cruel—I know you’ve suffered too—but I will not talk to you about Lucy, which is the only reason I can imagine you’d go to all this trouble. I haven’t even mentioned this to Nick. He’s happy, and after all he’s been through, he deserves to stay that way.
As to your husband’s lack of forthrightness: It’s beyond unprofessional. That’s all I’ll say. It’s not my intention to make waves for him—or you. My therapist, who believes things happen for a reason (I don’t), thinks seeing you will allow me to finally lock the door I’ve been trying to close for sixteen years. If so, maybe I’ll be able to look at all this with a bit more generosity.
I assume we’ll be seeing each other during the fellowship, and of course we’ll be cordial, but I’d prefer we keep our distance as much as possible.
Kelly
Erik was sitting across from me at the kitchen table. I hadn’t looked at him the entire time I was reading; I’m not sure I breathed. At first, he’d been moving around, silently unpacking the groceries I’d just brought in, although I felt his eyes on me as I read. Finally, he pulled out the chair opposite mine, his knee jiggling, and waited for me to look up.
“So, what’s the verdict?” His face was ashen.
I handed him the letter, my hands shaking.
I couldn’t decipher my feelings any better than I could her words. Surprise, relief, disappointment, shame—and not in that order, because there was no order—had slammed into each other, all in the space of a typed page. Not that I could have identified a single one of those emotions. I had no language for what I felt, which was the equivalent of mixing too many colors and ending up with mud.
I’d gone straight from running to the grocery store that morning and had just finished hauling everything inside when I heard Erik call from the foyer. He sounded upset. As soon as he walked into the kitchen, he handed me the letter. “This was on my desk.”
“What is it?” My name was typed on the envelope; a New York return address.
“It’s from Kelly,” he said.
Abruptly, I sat at the table. “She knows I’m here?”
Now, as I watched him skim over the page, I couldn’t remember a thing I’d read. She knows I’m here was as far as I could get.
When Erik finished, he blew out a big puff of air, leaned back, and stared up at the ceiling. “Jesus,” he said. “What the hell were we thinking?”
“Well, certainly not that she’d believe we set this whole thing up to…what? Lure her out here?” My heart wouldn’t stop racing. “We have to explain to her,” I said. “Can you?”
“I can try.”
“Once she understands…There’s nothing underhanded here. I was scared. I still am.”
“I know, Claire. I do. I just feel like a jerk. I am a jerk. And don’t get me wrong. I’ll never understand her cruelty to you, but with me and the foundation, she’s been generous and aboveboard, and I’ve basically been lying to her.” He looked at me bleakly. “Why did we think she wouldn’t find out you were here?”
“I’m not going to see her, remember?”
He nodded.
“We were never going to blindside her. I know that’s how it looks, but this wasn’t a setup. And once you tell her I’d planned to be gone—and I will, I’ll go to Chicago—won’t that help?”
“Maybe.” His face was tense.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Erik.”
“I know, but that’s not how it looks.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You wanted me to contact her from the beginning.”
He nodded again. And then, “You know what?” He slapped his hands on his knees. “We’re not doing this. We’re not going to beat ourselves up. It’s done. We made what we thought was the best decision based on what we knew.” He glanced around the room as if trying to get his bearings: the half-full coffeepot, my purse on the counter, the cutting board angled into the sink. After a minute, he reached across the table for my hand. “Maybe it’s for the best. She knows you’re here, she has no desire to cause trouble. What else do we want?” He searched my eyes. “Do you feel a tiny bit of relief?”
“I don’t know what I feel.” I paused. “Are you relieved?”
“Not really.” He sighed. “Actually, yes. This could be a hundred times worse. She could have canceled or gone to the board.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Jesus.” He was jiggling his leg again. “Who knows…Maybe something good will come of it. Maybe seeing each other will help you too.”
“What? No.” I pulled my hand from his. “I definitely don’t want to see her. Especially now.”
He was shaking his head.
“Why? She doesn’t want to see me either, Erik.” I looked at him incredulously. “That bit about her therapist was purely to let me know how much she’s been suffering. It’s bullshit.”
“You don’t know that, Claire.”
“Kelly’s pissed, Erik.”
“Fine, but she’s also geared up to see you—”
“Well, too bad.” I sat back against the chair. “Even if we give her the benefit of the doubt, even if she’s really making the best of this, I guarantee it’s going to set her off, seeing me with you or with our friends or, I don’t know, laughing with Christine….” I thought of that day on the boardwalk, her screaming How dare you over and over. “What if she causes a scene?”
“She won’t.”
“You don’t even know her!”
“I know enough to say that the jury’s still very much out on her wanting to see you, Claire. If she really didn’t want to, she could have said that. But if anything, she practically handed you a script for how this will go.”
After Erik left, I didn’t move from the table. I felt the kind of adrenaline dump you feel after a near miss—the car swerving into your lane, the dog darting in front of you, the slam of brakes. My legs wouldn’t stop trembling. I kept hearing Erik saying what’s the verdict and the jury’s still out, and all I could think was that Kelly had been judge and jury in my life before, and here we were again, all these years later, and I was still on trial. I knew I should feel relieved that she had no intention of “making waves,” but what I felt was rage.
I kept trying to summon gratitude. She didn’t have to send the letter. Erik was right: She could have canceled, could have written to the board, either of which might have cost him his job. But knowing this didn’t help. I resented that this woman I hadn’t seen in over thirteen years, this woman who had nothing to do with my life, still held so much power over it. Over me.
I reread the letter, slowly, and then again, and each time, the blades felt sharper: She never would have accepted the position if she’d known I was here, and her I know you’ve suffered too infuriated me. Too? Really? How had she suffered in the last sixteen years? What had she lost?
I pushed up from the table, needing to shower, to rinse off the sweat that had dried into a salty residue on my skin. I wished I could rinse off the skin itself. The kitchen was bright with midmorning sunlight, the day ticking by. But I just stood there, feeling angry and sorry for myself and panicked at the thought of seeing her again. And no, I did not feel relieved, not even a little, though why not? Wasn’t this what I’d wanted? To not have to cower and hide and run from my own life as I had all those years ago? I didn’t have to go to Chicago. I could see Erik in his tux at the gala, delivering the opening remarks, making the audience care about the theater and the Lunts, his voice crackling with passion as he spoke about why theater was necessary to society, had always been necessary. And I could see Eva in Quadrille, the play Kelly had chosen. This is good, I told myself. But the words felt hollow.
On the counter by the hallway, Erik had lined up items to bring upstairs: toilet paper, ponytail holders for the girls, deodorant for Spencer. Something about those ordinary items comforted me, even if it was small comfort. Knowing who needed what, keeping track of the little things that made our lives run smoothly.
Upstairs, I busied myself with mundane tasks—making beds, emptying the trash cans in the bathrooms, refolding and hanging damp towels. The house felt so still, beams of dust-laden sunlight falling into the rooms. I knew I was stalling. Anyone who’s been in therapy for half a minute knows anger is about survival, a way to protect ourselves from what we can’t bear to acknowledge. I knew I didn’t want to feel whatever was coming.
By the time I got out of the shower, the anger was gone. In its place came the avalanche of everything else the letter had evoked: my bottomless grief about losing Lucy and my outsized disappointment that Kelly’s coming to Ten Chimneys really was a coincidence. I’d wanted my mom to be right; I’d hoped Kelly wanted to reconcile. And I felt foolish for wanting something she’d never even considered, and worse, didn’t want. Seeing you will allow me to finally lock the door I’ve been trying to close for sixteen years. I hadn’t wanted that door closed, I realized. All my enormous pathetic hope, which I hadn’t known until that moment I was holding.
I sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a towel, hair dripping onto my collarbone, and read the letter again. I know you’ve suffered too. The hole in the center of my chest opened wider every time I read that sentence. Had she been suffering? I thought of how there was never any mention of a significant other in the tabloids, of how at the Emmys she’d walked the red carpet alone. I’d made so many assumptions. Had she ever been in love? Ever come close to getting married? She’d turned forty in May. Had she wanted children? I couldn’t recall her ever saying she did, but that was before she fell in love with Lucy.
Yes, the barbs were there, and they stung, but what hurt more was realizing how much time and energy I’d wasted all these months—God, all these years—imagining her as some all-powerful Oz-like character and never once considering that maybe behind the smoke screen of her rage, behind the special effects of her fame, she was just an ordinary woman whose world had also been upended sixteen years ago. At least at first, she had tried to help me, hadn’t she? All those visits in the hospital, sitting with me for hours, my mom said, showing me photos of Lucy and trying to bring me back. But I was so gone, drugged on antipsychotics and antidepressants and whatever else they’d given me to blunt the truth of what I had done to my child. Kelly hadn’t had that luxury, though. Her niece was on life support, her brother was broken, and maybe she was too.
It was easier to forget this. And whatever hold she had over my life now—that was all my doing. I was the one with the secrets; I was the one not being honest about my past, which was the only reason she had any power over me at all.