Chương 2
“Why?” I asked.Marissa looked toward Lily again before answering.“Because once he knows, I can’t take it back.”Ethan gave a disbelieving laugh.“You’re worried about taking it back?”His brother called his name a second time from near the oak, sharper now.“Ethan, seriously, Mom is losing it.”Diane Mercer was indeed losing it, though in the restrained Mercer fashion, which meant she stood beside the photographer with both hands clasped at her waist while smiling so rigidly that everyone within ten feet understood they were disappointing her.Ethan ignored them.“Who is Lily’s father?”Marissa shook her head.“Please.”“Stop saying please and answer me.”I had heard that tone directed at me hundreds of times.It was not loud.It did not have to be.Ethan had a way of making patience sound like something another person had already exhausted.Marissa’s chin trembled once.Then she looked at me.That was when I understood she was not merely afraid of Ethan learning the truth.She was afraid of what he would do with it.I stepped between them just enough to interrupt his line of sight.“Go take the photograph.”“Claire.”“Your brother is getting married once.”“Apparently everybody in my life has decided that today is a good day to tell me what I’m allowed to know.”“You’re allowed to know plenty of things.”“Then tell me.”“Not like this.”He stared at me.The old version of me would have filled the silence.I would have explained why the lawn was inappropriate, why Lily mattered more than his curiosity, why Marissa was frightened, why his brother deserved one hour without becoming collateral damage.Five years away from him had taught me that explanations could become invitations.So I said nothing.The photographer called for the Mercer siblings.Ethan swore under his breath.Marissa wiped beneath one eye with the side of her finger.“Go,” she said again.This time he did.He walked toward the oak without looking back, shoulders rigid beneath his dark suit.Halfway there, Diane intercepted him and hissed something that made him glance toward us.Then she adjusted his boutonniere as if rearranging flowers on a man could rearrange the evening.Marissa and I stood side by side without speaking.The silence between us was not empty.It was crowded with a hospital room, legal forms, a newborn’s cry, and one decision neither of us had expected to follow us to a wedding seven years later.She reached for another cocktail napkin.“You hate me.”“I don’t know you well enough to hate you.”“That sounds worse.”“It isn’t meant to.”She gave a small, humorless smile.“You always talked like that.”“Like what?”“Like every sentence had already been edited.”I looked at her.“You remember that?”“I remember everything about those three days.”The bartender approached and glanced at the abandoned champagne glass.“Can I get either of you something?”“Water,” I said.Marissa said, “Vodka.”I turned toward her.She sighed.“Fine.”Then, to the bartender, she said, “Water.”He filled two glasses and slid them across the bar without asking why both women looked like they had just survived a minor car accident.Marissa drank half of hers immediately.I watched condensation run over my fingers.Seven years earlier, she had drunk apple juice through a bendable straw because sitting upright hurt too much.The memory arrived so cleanly that I could smell the antiseptic.She had refused to look at Lily for the first six hours after delivery.Then, sometime after midnight, I found her with the baby against her chest, tracing one tiny ear with her thumb.“You never told him about her,” I said.“No.”“Why?”She looked at the water.“Because I was ashamed.”“Of Lily?”Her head came up.“No.”The answer came fast enough to be believable.“Of me.”I waited.She folded the damp napkin into smaller and smaller squares.“I had a job I hated, a roommate who stole my groceries, and eight hundred dollars in my checking account.”“That’s not a moral failure.”“I know that now.”“Did you?”“No.”A burst of applause rose from the photography area.Someone had apparently managed to arrange the Mercers into the required formation.Marissa glanced over.Ethan stood beside his brother, smiling for the camera.From this distance he looked perfectly normal.That was one of his gifts.“You need to tell me something before he comes back,” I said.Her fingers stopped moving.“What?”“Does he know anything about Daniel?”The name changed her face.She looked toward me slowly.“No.”“Nothing?”“No.”“You’re sure?”“I never told Ethan his name.”That answer was carefully phrased.“You told him something.”Marissa pressed the napkin flat with her thumb.“Years ago.”“When?”“Early on.”“What did you say?”“That there had been someone before him.”“Someone?”“I didn’t give details.”“Did you tell him that person was married?”She looked away.There it was.“No.”“Did you tell him he knew that person?”“No.”I lowered my voice.“Did you tell Daniel?”Her eyes snapped back to mine.“About Lily?”“Yes.”“No.”I did not believe her.She saw that.“I didn’t.”“You called him from the hospital.”Her mouth opened.Nothing came out.“I was there, Marissa.”“You were in the hallway.”“I heard his name.”“That doesn’t mean—”“I heard you say, ‘She’s here.’”Marissa gripped the edge of the bar.The wedding music changed behind us.A guitar began playing something soft for the bride’s grandparents, who were being guided toward the dance floor.For several seconds Marissa watched them instead of me.“He knew I was pregnant,” she finally said.That was new.Not surprising, exactly.Still new.“How much did he know?”“Enough.”“Did he know he was the father?”“Yes.”“And he knew you were placing the baby?”“I told him.”“What did he say?”Her face hardened in a way I remembered from the hospital.Not frightened now.Angry.“He said it was probably for the best.”The words were ordinary.That made them worse.I looked down at my glass.Daniel Mercer had been thirty-one when Lily was born.Ethan’s cousin.His closest friend growing up.The best man at our wedding.The man who had sat across from me at Thanksgiving dinners and once driven me home from a fertility procedure because Ethan claimed he could not leave work.For years, I had wondered which detail was cruelest.There were too many candidates.“What happened after the hospital?” I asked.Marissa breathed out through her nose.“You already know.”“I know what happened to Lily.”“That’s what matters.”“No.”She looked at me.“If Ethan is about to learn Daniel is Lily’s biological father, then I need to know what version of this story he’s going to hear.”Marissa’s eyes narrowed.“You think I’m going to lie?”“I think frightened people tell themselves whatever lets them survive the next five minutes.”“That includes you?”“Absolutely.”For the first time, something in her face loosened.Not trust.Maybe recognition.She picked up her water again.“Daniel disappeared.”“I know he moved.”“No.”She shook her head.“I mean from me.”“When?”“Two days after Lily was born.”“He was still in Savannah that summer.”“I know.”“How?”“Because I saw his stupid vacation pictures online.”Her laugh broke strangely in the middle.“He posted from Tybee Island with people from work while I was sitting in my apartment leaking breast milk into towels because nobody had explained what my body was going to do.”I said nothing.“He changed his number about a month later.”“Because of you?”“I don’t know.”“You never contacted him again?”“I emailed.”“How many times?”“Too many.”That sounded true.“Did he answer?”“Once.”“What did he say?”Marissa closed her eyes briefly.“Do you really need this right now?”“Yes.”She looked toward Ethan.The family photos were almost finished.“He said I had made my decision and he respected it.”I felt something cold move through me.“Respected it.”“His word.”“Did you save the email?”She laughed again.This time there was bitterness in it.“Of course you ask that.”“Why?”“Because you’re you.”“That doesn’t answer me.”“Yes.”My grip tightened around the glass.“You still have it?”“I think so.”“Think?”“It’s an old account.”“Can you access it?”“Probably.”“Then don’t delete anything.”She stared at me.“What are you expecting to happen?”“I don’t know yet.”“That sounds reassuring.”“It isn’t supposed to.”Across the lawn, Ethan stepped away from the photographer before anyone officially dismissed him.Diane caught his sleeve.He pulled free gently but decisively.“He’s coming,” Marissa said.“I can see that.”Her breathing changed.Fast and shallow.I had seen women breathe like that in clinic waiting rooms before difficult conversations with doctors.“Marissa.”She looked at me.“Do not lie now.”Her face tightened.“Easy for you to say.”“No, it isn’t.”“You got the child.”The sentence landed between us.Marissa recoiled almost as soon as she said it.I felt anger rise before I could stop it.“She isn’t a prize.”“I didn’t mean—”“You don’t get to talk about her like somebody won.”“I know.”“Do you?”“Yes.”Her voice dropped.“I do.”Ethan was thirty feet away.Then twenty.Marissa pressed both palms against the bar.“I loved her.”I stared at her.“I know that probably means nothing to you.”“It means something.”“I loved her, and I still signed.”Ethan was nearly there.Marissa’s eyes filled again.“I signed because Daniel said he wasn’t leaving his wife.”I stopped breathing.“What wife?”She looked at me as if she had just realized I did not know.Ethan reached us.Marissa went silent.He looked from her face to mine.“What happened?”Neither of us answered.His impatience sharpened.“I asked a question.”I barely heard him.My attention stayed on Marissa.“Daniel wasn’t married.”Her face crumpled.“Yes, he was.”“No.”“Claire.”“He didn’t get married until two years later.”Marissa shook her head.“That’s what he told people.”“What are you talking about?”She glanced at Ethan.His expression had shifted from anger to confusion.Marissa whispered, “He said he had a wife who couldn’t have children.”Every sound around me seemed to separate from every other sound.Forks touching plates.A child laughing.The guitarist missing a note.A chair dragging against grass.I looked at Ethan.He had gone completely still.Then I looked back at Marissa.Seven years earlier, Ethan and I had been married.Seven years earlier, I had been the wife who could not get pregnant.Marissa covered her mouth with one hand.“Oh, God.”Ethan spoke first.“Say that again.”She shook her head.“Marissa.”“I didn’t know.”“Say it again.”She lowered her hand.“Daniel told me he was married.”Ethan’s face had lost all color now.“To whom?”“I never knew her name.”His eyes moved toward me.Marissa followed them.For a moment, none of us spoke.Then Ethan whispered, “Daniel told you his wife couldn’t have children?”“Yes.”“And you believed him?”“He wore a ring.”My stomach turned.Ethan took one step backward.Daniel had never been married while Ethan and I were together.But he had worn a wedding ring once.I had seen it myself.For three months after his father died, Daniel wore the old gold band he inherited because, he said, it fit and he liked having something of his father’s with him.At least that was what he had told us.Ethan looked at me.His expression held something I had never seen directed at himself before.Doubt.“What did Daniel tell you her name was?”Marissa whispered, “He didn’t.”Ethan swallowed.Then he asked the question neither of us wanted answered.“Did he ever show you a photograph?”
