I’d made salads with roasted vegetables and grilled lake trout, though no part of me could imagine us actually eating dinner together. I couldn’t even picture the conversation where Erik filled me in on his meeting with the lawyer. It all felt beside the point after They’re not your kids. But it also never occurred to me not to make dinner, and when I realized Erik wasn’t coming home, I wrapped his meal for later, though I was tempted to toss the whole thing in the trash. Let him find it there.
I carried my salad out to the back deck. The sun had burned through the mist and clouds, leaving the sky a vivid blue that seemed to deepen once night fell. I stretched out on a chaise longue, a stadium blanket tucked around my legs, and stared up into the luminescent sky. I felt broken every time I thought of Erik’s words, a huge hole in the center of my chest. But I was also angry, which surprised me. I rarely got angry, rarely let myself, as if I’d lost the right to this too. Who was I to be angry at anyone?
It felt good, though. I was angry at Erik for not coming home, angry at what he’d said on the phone, but even more, I was angry that he’d shut me out the previous night, as if I weren’t also devastated. And I was angry, furious really, at myself for accepting his blame without question. Of course it was all my fault!
Except it wasn’t. I wasn’t the one who hauled our kids out of the house. I was angry at Annabelle too—or I wanted to be, though I couldn’t quite summon it yet. Years of her telling not only me but the kids’ teachers, doctors, other parents, Eva, Deanna—God, everyone!—that she couldn’t imagine parenting without me, and in the next breath, she no longer wanted me near the kids? I didn’t know what to do with that. I felt sick every time I tried to make sense of it.
I inhaled a stuttering breath and glanced at the salad I was balancing on my lap. I wasn’t hungry, but I made myself eat, as if some survival instinct had kicked in, or maybe it was just a refusal to punish myself even more. I’d done that plenty in the past, refusing to eat in those months after I found out what I’d done to Lucy. I didn’t think I deserved anything then, not even food.
The thermometer nailed to the railing read sixty-four degrees. I thought of Spencer and felt again the throb of grief that had been with me all afternoon. The night had grown chilly, but I couldn’t go inside, couldn’t sit in that too-clean, too-empty house just waiting for Erik. What would I do if he didn’t come home? Twenty-four hours ago, I would have sworn by our marriage. Now I didn’t know.
The phone pinged, and my hope spiked, then plummeted when I saw it wasn’t Erik but Eva: Hey, lovely! Sending you hugs! All our betrayals of her. Tears burned my eyes as I stared at the phone. I hated how needy I was, how scared. Please call, I silently begged Erik, and then hated myself for that, hated that when he did deign to phone, I’d be grateful the way I always was. That was our narrative: He had given me a second chance, loved me despite what I’d done, and I was grateful and would always be grateful, was, in fact, choking on gratitude.
I was about to go in when Erik’s car pulled into the drive, headlights sweeping over the cypress trees bordering the yard. I listened to the slam of his door and then his voice calling my name as the light came on in the kitchen. A minute later, light filled our bedroom window, then went off, and he was in the family room, where I watched him through the sliding glass, checking his phone. Finally, the light over the patio flicked on. “You didn’t hear me?” he said, stepping outside. “Jesus. I’ve been looking all over the house.”
“You found me.” I glanced at him. “I wasn’t sure you were coming home.”
He sighed and sat on the edge of the chaise next to mine, elbows resting on his knees. He was wearing sweatpants cut off at the knee and the long-sleeved We Don’t Do Bivalves T-shirt I’d made my first Thanksgiving with him. I hated those shirts. I’d been so desperate to fit in, to be the wonderful fun-loving girlfriend, and we’d broken up the next day.
“Have I ever not come home, Claire?” Erik sounded weary and put-upon.
“Well, you’ve never spoken to me like you did today either, so…” I shrugged. “I didn’t know what to think.”
I felt him look at me, felt his surprise that I was upset. Had he expected to find me curled in a ball, begging forgiveness? Well, I’m as surprised as you, I wanted to tell him, and almost laughed, except it wasn’t funny, and I was too close to tears.
“Obviously, I was angry,” he said. “You don’t think I had a right to be?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just wondering if what you said is how you really feel. I mean, obviously they’re not my children, but I always felt like I was their parent too.” I stopped, clenching my hands into fists. I could feel the anger dissolving and the hurt rushing in, and I couldn’t afford that. I needed to be angry, to let myself feel what it was like.
“Of course you’re their parent, Claire.”
“Am I? Or was the parenting just some bone you and Annabelle tossed me so I’d keep taking care of them and worrying about them and”—my voice cracked—“helping with Spencer’s tuition and putting money in the girls’ college fund—”
“Stop. Jesus. You know that’s not how it is.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to do it. I just have to shift my thinking a little. I thought I was contributing because it’s what parents do, Erik. They plan for their kids’ futures and worry and make sacrifices. I guess it was okay for me—”
“Would you stop? Please?” He ran his hands through his hair. “You’re taking this wrong.”
“There’s a right way to take what you said?”
For a moment we stared at each other, boxers squaring off. He glanced away first. “Look,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said it. It’s not how I feel—at all. But it’s like you were going out of your way to screw things up even more than they were.” The lounge chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “I’m not saying you did it on purpose, but I have to wonder—”
“Don’t.” I pushed off the blanket I had tucked around me.
“What? I’m not allowed to wonder?”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I swung my legs over the side of the chair. “It’s bullshit.”
“You have no idea what I’m going to say.”
“I know exactly what you’re going to say.”
He just looked at me, then said, “Can we step back for a second?”
I didn’t want to fight with him. I knew he was as devastated as I was, and I wanted so badly to make things right. Because the idea that Erik and I were not as solid as I’d believed terrified me. I can’t do this again, I thought. I cannot lose everything.
The only sound was the sough of wind through the trees. The silence stretched thin and somehow made the night feel chillier. I felt an ache in my shoulders. We’re both tired. I made you dinner. The words were there and I wanted to say them, but I couldn’t. It’s as if we were back in those months after I first told him about Lucy, where everything was fine as long as I made no demands. Some part of us had never gotten beyond that.
“All the things you’re wondering about me,” I said carefully, “I’ve spent the day wondering: Was I trying to sabotage myself by telling them about Lucy? Like you said, why go into all that detail? Or maybe I’m just so messed up and always will be that I can’t bear for my life to be good. Maybe deep down I’ve never believed I deserved to be happy.” I glanced at him. “Is that about right?”
“Yes. That’s all I was going to say. Honest to God, I’m trying—”
“Bullshit, Erik. And all of that crap I just recited? It’s incredibly convenient for you, isn’t it?”
He reared back as if I’d slapped him. “Convenient? Are you fucking kidding me? What part of watching my kids get hauled out of here was convenient?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I told Annabelle about Lucy when I did and how I did because I was caught off guard. I didn’t have time to figure out the perfect answer. But even if I had, Erik, I probably would have told them everything, because I believed they would understand, and I had every right to believe this—especially, especially, with Annabelle! She knows what it is to make an unforgivable mistake and then have to live with it. And I’m not saying our mistakes are the same—they’re not, not by a long shot—but in my defense, I didn’t know what I was doing the day Lucy got hurt, and Annabelle sure as hell knew what she was doing when she fucked her best friend’s husband. And if that’s not bad enough, we’ve all been running around keeping her secrets and betraying Eva at every step. So, if you want to talk about fucked up, that’s fucked up! Not me telling them about Lucy. And yeah, maybe I was naïve, but I didn’t tell them because I was trying to sabotage my life. I told them because I believed, and I thought Annabelle—and you!”—I jabbed my finger at his chest—“believed the same thing. That people deserve second chances. But I guess only she gets those. And that you would automatically take her side—”
“Her side? I spent the morning with a goddamn lawyer trying to clean up this mess, Claire! How the hell is that taking her side?” He stood, knocking into me, and moved toward the sliding glass door. Beyond the reach of the light, I could barely make out the shape of him. There was only his voice, which was furious. “All this drivel about you being blindsided—it’s crap. You’ve wanted to tell Annabelle for a long time. And the happier we were, the more you couldn’t bear it, the more you wanted to just raze everything. Well, bravo, Claire. You got your wish.” He started to walk inside, then stopped. “You have never believed that you deserve to be happy—and you know what? Maybe you don’t.”
He stormed into the house then, and I was on his heels, shouting, “You really think the only reason to tell them about Lucy is to sabotage my life? How about telling them because she’s my daughter, Erik? My daughter!” I was shaking I was so angry. “I am not a horrible person, I am not some monster—”
“Have I ever—”
“Yes! Yes! Every time you insist no one could ever understand. No one but you, of course, because what, you’re such a saint? Such a martyr?”
“Was I wrong? Because I sure as hell don’t see a lot of understanding coming your way.” He was banging cabinets, wrenching open the refrigerator. He grabbed a beer, set it on the counter, then reached for the salad and a bottle of dressing and slammed them on the counter too. Everything was reflected in the windows, opaque with night, the blinds wide open. Erik usually closed them. It was one of those stupid things we bickered about because I liked looking out for as long as even a hint of light remained in the sky.
Now, as I watched him move from the window over the sink to the bay windows, yanking the blinds closed, it was one more thing that infuriated me.
I watched him scrape back a stool and dig into the salad. How? I wondered. How the hell do you just sit there and eat? I hated when he shoved food ravenously into his mouth like this, hated the sound of his chewing, hated the way he’d just reached into the fridge for his salad like it was his due to have a meal waiting.
“Thank you for this,” he said, shoveling in another bite.
“It’s what I do.” I barely recognized my own voice. “Kick me in the gut, and I’ll make you a sandwich.”
He raised his eyes to mine, fork midair. “What does that mean?”
“You have no clue why I’m upset, do you?”
He sighed. “I already told you I shouldn’t have said what I did, and I meant that, but if you need me to apologize again, I will. Gladly.”
I was shaking my head.
“What? Is there something else? By all means, enlighten me.” He stabbed a huge forkful of salad, then stopped and held up his hand. “On second thought, don’t. You’re right. I don’t have a clue why you’re upset. All I know is that I’ve spent the day trying to fix the mess you’ve made of my life and my children’s lives—”
“Your children. You hear yourself, right?”
“Fine. Ours.”
I swiped my eyes over him, then walked to the bay window by the table and opened the blinds he’d just closed. There was nothing to see outside, everything black, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t look at him, though I could see his reflection in the glass. “It must be nice being you, Erik.” I crossed my arms over my chest to stop their shaking. “You’re always right, always blameless. You never have to take responsibility.”
“I don’t take responsibility? I don’t?” He tossed his fork into the salad and shoved the bowl away. “What do you want me to take responsibility for that I’m not, Claire?” He looked at me with contempt, got up, walked over to the trash can, and scraped the bulk of the salad into it. And then, turning and jabbing the fork in my direction, he said venomously, “I will take responsibility for a lot of things, but this is one hundred percent your doing. The fact that we’re having this conversation, the fact that my children are not in this house right now, the fact that—”
“Stop confusing me with your ex-wife!” I shouted. “Your children are not in this house because she barreled in here and took them. She traumatized Spencer, and for you—”
“No way.” He shook his head, stepping back as he did. “You will not lay this on me, and as pissed off as I am at Annabelle, you can’t lay this one on her either. You want to talk about responsibility? Let’s talk about the fact that all of this could have been avoided if you’d just contacted Kelly back in March—March! She wouldn’t have come, Claire. She told me that flat out today.”
I don’t know why that stung, but it did. Erik walked his bowl to the sink, but I could sense him watching me. I was still staring outside. After a minute, I moved to the table and lifted Spencer’s chair so the legs wouldn’t scrape, then sat carefully.
He turned on the faucet and began soaping his salad bowl. I stared at him, this too-tall, too-skinny man in his ridiculous cutoff sweatpants and black dress socks, and I had to remind myself that this was my husband, this was Erik, and I loved him.
“Can you just put it in the dishwasher?” I asked. Another irritation. His insistence on washing things by hand. Half the time they weren’t clean and I ended up putting them in the dishwasher anyway. I don’t know why I cared. I don’t know why any of it mattered, except it felt like one more thing I shouldn’t have had to ask for over and over and over.
He finished washing the bowl and set it in the dish rack, then stood there, hands on his hips, and said quietly, “I have had your back for six fucking years.” His voice was shaking with anger. “I have kept your secret, I’ve compromised myself at work, I’ve deceived Annabelle—”
“Deceived?”
“Yes, deceived, Claire. And fine, I’ll take responsibility for that choice, but she had a right to know.”
“No, Erik! No, she didn’t! And don’t get me wrong: I wish to God I’d told her a year or two years ago, but not because she had a right. I should have told her because she was my friend and she trusted me, and there was a way to do this so it didn’t have to happen how it did. But you were adamant, Erik, and I respected that. Now, though, now suddenly, she had the right to know?”
“She’s their mother, Claire.”
“And what? You didn’t know that six years ago? Or, hell, six months ago? Why are you doing this?” He was revising our entire history. “You know what happened with Lucy could never happen again or you wouldn’t have come back to me. And you know—you know!—that had we told her six years ago, she would have come between us. It’s that simple. So, you can talk about this all you want, but maybe what you really mean and don’t have the balls to say is that you wish we weren’t together because it amounts to the same damn thing!”
“Fine. You want the truth so badly? My life would be easier if I’d never come back.”
I sat against the chair, my pulse roaring in my ears. He doesn’t mean that, I thought. He can’t. I blinked at him, expecting he’d take it back, but when his eyes met mine, there was no give, no warmth. I felt gutted and frightened. “Why would you say that?” I finally said. “You haven’t been happy?” The word came out as a croak. All the fight in me was gone.
“I’m not saying it’s how I’ve felt all along, but it’s how I feel right now. I don’t know that I can get past this, Claire. The only thing I can see clearly is that I’ve lost my kids. And if I have to choose between you and them…”
“You think that’s what this is about?”
“That’s what it feels like.” He picked a piece of lettuce off the cutting board and walked it to the sink, then stood there, hands on the counter, staring straight ahead.
“This isn’t about choosing between me and the kids,” I said quietly. “It’s about choosing between me and Annabelle.”
“Are you serious?” He barked out a laugh. “Jesus, that’s what you think?”
“Do you remember the day you introduced me to them?” I stared at my hands. My wedding ring.
“Of course I remember.”
“Did it ever seem odd that you didn’t arrange for us to meet someplace neutral? The zoo or the park or McDonald’s?”
“Considering I have a son who doesn’t do well in strange places? No, Claire, it didn’t seem odd at all.”
“Why not your house, then? Why Annabelle’s?”
“I don’t know, Claire, but since you seem to have all the answers, why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t think it was about meeting the kids at all, Erik. I think that day was about meeting Annabelle, getting her seal of approval. It was an audition.”
“Fine.” He lifted his shoulders. “So sue me. I thought it important that the mother of my children get along with the woman I was falling in love with. What is this? You’re jealous of Annabelle?”
“Not in the least. I love Annabelle—” I swallowed hard. “I loved being her friend. But you have never had to choose between us. And even that was okay because it was always little shit, and I didn’t care. But last night? What happened happened to both of us, Erik; it happened to our family, and instead of us being in it together, you tossed me aside, and I let you. Did it cross your mind even once in the last twenty-four hours that I might feel just as devastated as you? That I know what it is to have a child taken from me, and to have that happen again? I wasn’t okay; I’m still not. But I’ve had more care and concern from Eva—who, apparently, it’s fine for you to betray—than I’ve had from the person who’s supposedly ‘had my back’ all these years.” I pushed myself up from the table. I felt the bitterness in my voice, could taste it. “I don’t know that I can get past this,” I said quietly. “I don’t know that I want to.”