Part 7
Evan did not answer.
Owen took another step forward.
Patricia’s voice cut through the room. “She did not drink.”
Evan looked at her.
“She stopped drinking the day she found out,” Patricia said. “You know that.”
“I know what she told people.”
The words left him before he could stop them.
Owen’s face went blank.
Patricia stared at Evan as though he had struck her.
Evan’s breathing changed. He looked toward the front doors, then back. There was nowhere for him to go that would not look like running.
“Explain that,” Owen said.
Evan shook his head once. “You are twisting this.”
“No,” Owen said. “You are.”
“Clare was not who you think she was.”
The sentence came out flat, but beneath it Owen heard something colder.
Not grief.
Not fear.
Control.
Patricia moved closer to Evan. “You do not get to say that about her.”
“I knew her.”
“You knew what she let you see.”
“So did he.”
Owen watched them. Something old and hidden seemed to be moving beneath their words. Clare was absent from the conversation in the most unbearable way possible. Her body was there. Her face was there. The curve of her unborn child was there. But the woman who had made decisions, withheld things, laughed at the wrong moments, forgot where she put her keys, sang one line of songs over and over until everyone around her wanted to scream—she was being argued over like a document.
He hated all of them for it.
He hated himself most.
“What did she tell you?” Owen asked Evan.
Evan’s face changed again, almost imperceptibly.
“Why are you asking me?” he said.
“Because you were here.”
“That doesn’t mean she told me anything.”
“You said she called you for help.”
“Yes.”
“Help with what?”
Evan looked at Clare.
Owen’s voice dropped. “Was the baby mine?”
Patricia gasped.
The words had come from somewhere below thought. He had not decided to say them. They were simply there, suddenly, because Evan had made them possible.
Evan did not answer.
That was answer enough to destroy something.
Owen felt the room lose its center.
He looked at Clare’s stomach. At the white dress. At the bruise. At the flowers framing her body like a lie.
He remembered buying a tiny pair of navy socks at an airport in Chicago because they had little white stars on them. He had brought them home in a paper bag and set them on the kitchen counter. Clare had stared at them for a long time before she smiled.
“You bought socks,” she had said.
“I panicked.”
“They’re very small.”
“I know.”
“They’re hideous.”
“They have stars.”
“That is why they’re hideous.”
Then she had pressed the socks to her face and laughed, and he had believed he was becoming the kind of man who paid attention.
He had not asked why she cried later that night in the bathroom.
He had told himself hormones were cruel.
He had told himself there would be time.
“Owen,” Patricia said.
He did not look at her.
“Was the baby mine?” he asked again.
Evan’s expression remained controlled, but the control had become effort. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“No.”
“Were you sleeping with my wife?”
Patricia made a strangled sound.
Evan’s eyes flashed. “No.”
The answer came instantly.
Owen studied him.
“No,” Evan repeated. “I was not.”
“Then why do you look like you’re waiting for me to hit you?”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I know what grief does to people.”
Owen laughed once, short and harsh. “You know what grief does to people.”
“Yes.”
“Who did you lose?”
Evan’s eyes went blank.
The question had been cruel. Owen knew it. He did not care.
Patricia said, “Stop.”
Owen looked at her.
She shook her head, tears falling now. “Don’t become him.”
Evan’s mouth tightened.
Owen felt something in that sentence and could not yet name it.
“Become him?” he said.
Patricia looked at Evan, then at Clare. “That is what she was afraid of.”
Evan took a step back. “This is insane.”
“What was she afraid of?” Owen asked.
Patricia’s voice broke. “That no one would believe her.”
The words filled the foyer.
Somewhere inside the old house, a pipe clicked. The chandeliers continued to glow. Outside the windows, night pressed against the glass without mercy.
Owen stood very still.
Clare had been afraid no one would believe her.
And he had not known.
May you like
Or worse, he had known enough to know she was unhappy and had chosen not to look too closely because looking closely would have demanded something from him.
He saw the shape of the last month differently now. Her canceled dinner with Patricia. Her refusal to go upstairs alone after Evan had visited. The way she asked whether he trusted her, then became angry when he answered too quickly. The way she had stopped wearing the silver necklace he bought her for their anniversary. The way she had insisted the nursery door stay open.
