Chương 11
The kettle began to hiss.
Neither moved.
Eleanor looked at her hands.
“He was furious. He said I was keeping him from his daughter. I said his daughter was safer without him that night.”
Nathan swallowed.
“What happened?”
“He left.”
“Driving?”
“No. I took his keys.”
Nathan frowned.
“But he died in his car.”
“He had another set.”
There was no melodrama in the sentence.
That made it unbearable.
Eleanor removed her glasses.
“He went home. Sometime after midnight he got the spare key. He called me at one seventeen.”
Nathan sat across from her.
“What did he say?”
“He said he was going to Lauren.”
“And?”
“I told him if he arrived at a pregnant woman’s apartment intoxicated at one in the morning, I would call the police myself.”
Nathan looked down.
“Was that wrong?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Eleanor blinked.
Nathan continued.
“No. That wasn’t wrong.”
His mother’s face changed.
She had expected punishment.
He could not give it to her just because he was angry.
“He called again,” she said.
“When?”
“One thirty-six.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t answer.”
There it was.
The invisible scar.
Nathan had wondered for years what guilt his mother carried because Eleanor never spoke about Daniel unless forced.
Now he saw it.
“Why not?”
“I was exhausted.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
Only slightly.
“I had spent eleven years answering.”
Nathan said nothing.
“I turned the phone over,” she continued. “I remember doing it. I could see it vibrating against the table.”
The kettle whistled.
Eleanor stood suddenly and shut it off.
She did not make tea.
“At two twenty a police officer called.”
Nathan looked toward the dark window.
His mother folded the kitchen towel once.
Then again.
“I decided after that I would never let Daniel destroy another person in this family.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“So you erased his daughter.”
Eleanor flinched.
“Yes.”
The answer took the anger out of him for a second.
He had expected defense.
She sat again.
“I told myself Lauren needed distance. I told myself you needed to finish school. Your father was barely functioning. The company was in crisis. Daniel had debts, lawsuits, people calling the house.”
“You still hid her.”
“Yes.”
“You threatened Lauren.”
“Yes.”
“I need you to stop agreeing like that.”
Eleanor almost smiled.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
Nathan looked at his mother for a long time.
“Did you believe Mia was Daniel’s?”
“I believed it almost immediately.”
“Why?”
“Because he did.”
“That isn’t proof.”
“No.”
“What else?”
Eleanor stared at the table.
“Daniel left a photograph.”
Nathan’s pulse changed.
“What photograph?”
His mother stood.
She left the kitchen.
Nathan heard a drawer open somewhere down the hall.
When she returned, she carried a small envelope.
Inside was a photograph printed on cheap pharmacy paper.
Daniel stood beside Lauren outside a diner.
Lauren was visibly pregnant.
Daniel had one hand on her stomach.
He looked terrible.
Thin.
Unshaven.
Happy.
On the back, in his handwriting:
My girls. Don’t screw this up.
Nathan stared at the words.
“Where was this?”
“In his wallet.”
“You had this for eight years?”
“Yes.”
Nathan set the photograph down carefully.
“You really did know.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“I knew what I believed.”
“You knew enough to love her secretly.”
His mother’s eyes filled.
She looked furious about it.
“I did not love her.”
Nathan almost laughed.
“You paid her tuition.”
“I pay tuition for hundreds of children.”
“You knew when Lauren moved.”
“For administrative reasons.”
“You guaranteed their rent.”
“They were going to be evicted.”
“You kept photographs?”
Eleanor’s gaze snapped to his.
Nathan understood.
“How many?”
“Don’t.”
“How many pictures do you have?”
She stood.
“This conversation is finished.”
Nathan laughed softly.
“Of course.”
He walked past her into the hallway.
“Nathan.”
He stopped.
His mother’s voice came from behind him.
“Seven.”
Nathan turned.
Eleanor looked ashamed.
“Seven photographs.”
“How?”
“School newsletters. Public posts before Lauren made her accounts private. One picture from the trustee.”
“The school trustee?”
“Yes.”
Nathan stared at her.
“You watched Mia grow up.”
“I made sure she was all right.”
“You watched.”
Eleanor pressed her lips together.
“You wanted to know her.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“No.”
The force in the word startled him.
Eleanor looked away.
“I wanted Daniel not to be dead.”
There was nothing Nathan could do with that sentence.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
A refrigerator hummed.
A car horn sounded somewhere far below.
Eleanor sat.
“I hated that child for existing,” she said.
Nathan looked at her.
“Not her. Never her. What she meant.”
She rubbed one thumb against the other.
“Every birthday reminded me he had missed another year. Every tuition invoice reminded me that a child was growing up because Daniel had not.”
Nathan sat slowly.
“And Lauren?”
“I resented her.”
“For being alive?”
“For having the part of him I didn’t.”
The ugliness of it was so human Nathan almost felt relieved.
Not because it excused anything.
Because finally his mother was speaking without turning herself into either hero or villain.
“She had his child,” Eleanor said. “She got to be angry with him in ways I never could after he died. She could say he had failed her. I had to listen to people call him troubled and brilliant at memorial dinners.”
Nathan looked at the photograph.
“So you punished her.”
Eleanor’s eyes closed.
“Yes.”
There was no absolution in the room.
Only accuracy.
The next morning Nathan told Lauren everything Eleanor had said.
He did it in person.
Lauren listened at her kitchen table while Mia was at school.
When he finished, she sat silently.
Then she stood and washed the same mug for almost a minute.
Nathan let her.
Finally she said, “I hate her.”
“I know.”
“I also hate that she paid my rent.”
“I know.”
“I hate that I’m grateful.”
Nathan nodded.
Lauren dried the mug.
“I wish she’d just been evil.”
“So do I.”
May you like
She looked at him.
“That would be easier for you.”
