Chương 2
Claire sat in the armchair opposite the sofa. She perched on its edge rather than settling into it.
Daniel remained standing.
“Start talking.”
Claire looked toward Eleanor.
“No,” Daniel said. “Don’t look at her. Look at me.”
Claire did.
He had her eyes. At least everyone had always told him that. Gray-green, slightly narrow, darker when angry.
Now, staring at them, he could not remember whether he had ever actually believed the resemblance or had simply been told it often enough.
“Is she my mother?”
Rachel inhaled sharply.
Eleanor closed her eyes.
Claire’s face crumpled for half a second before she controlled it.
“No.”
Daniel waited.
“No?” he repeated.
“No. I’m your mother.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Claire rubbed her palms against the thighs of her jeans.
Eleanor whispered, “Claire.”
“Don’t.”
“Tell him.”
“I said don’t.”
Daniel felt anger returning because anger was easier than the other thing beginning underneath it.
“Then I’ll ask her.”
Claire stood.
“She gave birth to you.”
Silence.
Daniel stared at his mother.
At Claire.
He had to correct the word in his own head now, and the correction made him nauseated.
Eleanor opened her eyes.
Daniel looked down at her.
“You?”
She nodded once.
He took a step backward.
Rachel reached for him, then stopped before touching him.
Daniel’s mouth had gone dry.
He had imagined meeting Eleanor Hayes differently.
Six days earlier, he had not known her name.
He had found her because she collapsed in the parking lot outside a pharmacy.
Daniel had been leaving the hardware store next door with a box of deck screws and a new drill bit when he saw a thin woman miss the handle of her car door twice. She had been standing beside an old blue sedan, trying to pretend nothing was wrong.
He had asked if she needed help.
She had told him no.
Then she folded onto the asphalt.
At the hospital, she woke after fluids and medication and became furious when she learned a stranger had called an ambulance.
“You know what those cost?” she asked.
Daniel had laughed because he thought she was joking.
She was not.
The hospital social worker eventually discovered that Eleanor had been discharged too early from a rehabilitation facility after an insurance dispute Daniel did not fully understand. Her cancer treatment had weakened her; an infection had weakened her further. She had no local family listed.
Daniel should have gone home.
Instead he stayed because the social worker asked if he knew her.
“No.”
Eleanor, from the bed, had said, “Unfortunately.”
That had been the beginning.
The second day, Daniel returned with the cardigan she had left in her car.
The third day, he brought coffee she was not supposed to drink and watched her complain about it before finishing half the cup.
On the fourth day, she asked his last name.
“Reed.”
Her hand stopped halfway to the coffee.
“Daniel Reed?”
He had assumed she had read it from his contractor’s shirt.
He had not been wearing the shirt.
He understood that now.
On the fifth day she asked where his mother lived.
He should have asked why.
Instead he told her.
That morning, when Eleanor learned the rehabilitation center could not take her back until Monday, she had asked him for a favor.
“Take me to Claire Reed.”
He had laughed.
Then he had seen her face.
“You know my mother?”
“A long time ago.”
“How?”
“She’ll tell you.”
He had nearly refused.
Instead, he had called Claire and said he was bringing someone by.
Claire had asked who.
He had said, “You’ll see.”
Now he wished he had answered.
He wished a lot of things.
Daniel lowered himself into the chair beside the television.
“How?”
Claire’s voice was barely audible. “You were born in 1991.”
“I know when I was born.”
“You were born at St. Matthew’s.”
“My birth certificate says County General.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Eleanor.
She had begun rubbing one thumb over the rim of the water glass.
Daniel said, “Why?”
Neither woman answered.
Rachel sat beside Eleanor, though not too close.
“Daniel,” Claire said, “there are things about that time you don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
He laughed once.
It came out ugly.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The sentence people say right before they explain something unforgivable.”
Claire flinched.
Daniel immediately regretted it, which made him angrier.
Eleanor set the glass on the coffee table.
“Your mother protected you.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Which one?”
The question hurt all three of them.
Eleanor’s face tightened.
Claire sat down again.
Rachel stared at the floor.
Daniel pressed his fingertips against his forehead.
“Okay. Nobody talks around it anymore. Nobody gives me half of something because they think the whole thing will upset me. I’m already upset.”
Claire nodded.
Then she said, “Eleanor was my younger sister’s best friend.”
Daniel frowned.
“Aunt Susan?”
“Yes.”
“Susan knew?”
Claire looked away.
Daniel’s stomach dropped.
“Who else knows?”
“Your father knew.”
Daniel stood so quickly the chair legs scraped.
His father had been dead eight years.
There was no one to confront. No explanation to demand. No chance to ask whether every birthday, every scraped knee, every argument over college, every fishing trip had existed alongside this knowledge.
“You both knew.”
“Yes.”
“And you let him die without telling me.”
Claire’s eyes closed.
“That wasn’t how it happened.”
“He had cancer for eleven months.”
“I know.”
“We talked about everything.”
“No, Daniel. You talked about what he wanted you to know.”
Daniel turned away.
He went to the window because there was nowhere useful to go.
Outside, his silver SUV sat crooked along the curb. He had meant to straighten it after helping Eleanor inside.
That seemed like something another man had planned.
Behind him, Eleanor said, “Your father wanted to tell you.”
Claire looked at her.
Daniel turned.
“What?”
May you like
“Tom wanted to tell you when you got married.”
Claire said, “You don’t know what Tom wanted.”
