by Kelly Rimmer
happy as I’d ever been. It was a beautiful place to be. It was a
miserable height to fall from.
As I stepped into the house, I skipped my gaze around the
living room, looking for Patrick. I expected him to be waiting
for me in front of the television, but the set was off. He wasn’t in
the dining room, either, so I peeked in on the children. I kissed
Timothy’s forehead, and put away the metal trucks that littered
Jeremy’s bed even though I’d told him a thousand times not to
play with them when he was supposed to be asleep. I tucked
Ruth in—she was forever kicking her blankets off. And Beth
was missing from her bed, but I knew I would find her in my
own bed instead. I was right—there she was, resting against my
pillow, those beautiful dark eyelashes against the pale curve of
her cheeks. I bent and breathed her in, soaking up the scent of
soap and toothpaste and Beth.
And then I put the blanket up to her chin, and I left my room
to find my love. There was only one place he could be: his bed-
room…our bedroom, in just a few nights.
I was smiling as I walked to his room. I thought he’d be
asleep, too; maybe he’d be under the blankets and I could pull
them up to his chin then kiss his forehead as I’d done for his
children. But the light was on. Patrick was sitting on the bed.
His face was beet-red, his cheeks wet with tears, his eyes wild.
I knew then. Even before I saw the wedding album on the bed,
even before I registered the letters all over the bed cover, even
before I saw my sister’s handwriting on the piece of paper he
clutched in his fist, I knew he’d found Grace’s notes.
In the silence, I took the scene in, and my heart nearly broke
when I realized that the “last place on earth” Grace expected
her husband to look was in their wedding album. She was al-
most right—it took Patrick over 2 years to look at those photos.
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“Where was that?” I asked him stiffly.
“In the bottom of the chest in the living room. I built it… I
built a cavity so we could hide money. I went to hide your ring
there last week and found the wedding album, but I didn’t look
at it until tonight,” Patrick said. His voice was hoarse, but the
words were wound so tight with fury that I winced and turned
away. I’d watched him fight an attempt to take his children, but
I’d never heard him so angry. I’d seen him lose his wife, but
I’d never seen him so hurt. “I promised myself I’d say goodbye
to her tonight. I wanted to look at those photos one last time
and say goodbye.” I’d checked the chest, but I didn’t know to
check the base. How could I? He raised his eyes to me. “Did
you know she wrote these?”
Patrick barely looked like the man I loved. He didn’t even
look like someone I knew. But I wasn’t about to lie to him, and
although I knew he held my future in his hands, I didn’t think he
would hurt me. I still trusted his love for me. I still thought that
after everything we’d been through, we’d get through this, too.
“Yes. I knew.”
“Did you look for them?”
“Yes.”
His brows shifted down, then up and then he closed his eyes.
“Is this why you stayed?”
“I stayed for the children,” I said, but that was half a lie, and
I was determined to tell him the truth. It seemed the only way
we’d survive. “Wait. Yes—I did hope to find the letters, and
that’s why I stayed at first. I mean…” I was flustered and con-
fused, bitterly regretting that last glass of wine as I tried to clarify.
“Patrick, all that I knew was that she had written a note about
the abortion. I knew you’d be angry and I was scared of what
you’d do if you found it, but I also didn’t think it would do you
any good to see whatever else she—” I scanned the notes on the
bed and my heart sink. “How many are there?”
God only knew what else was in those notes. If that last con-
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versation I’d had with Grace had been any indication, her men-
tal state over the years had been dire. I looked at Patrick again,
and there were fresh tears in his eyes.
“So what really happened that day? I deserve to know that
much.”
I didn’t want to tell him, but I knew that I had to. The time
had come for honesty, and there was no avoiding the truth—
no matter how ugly.
“It was exactly like I told you, only I lied about… I swapped
our roles. Grace was pregnant, not me. I found her someone
who could help, and I lied so I could borrow some money from
Father, but it wasn’t enough. That’s why…that’s why she asked
you to get an advance from Ewan.”
“She didn’t ask me, Maryanne,” Patrick spat out. “She insisted
upon it. She manipulated me. It was so unlike her—I should
have known it was all your idea.” I winced, and he scrubbed a
shaking hand over his face then demanded, “And then?”
“I waited for her—”
“Where? Where was this?”
“On the alleyway. Downtown.”
“And who did it?”
“An unregistered doctor. A man picked her up and she went
with him.”
“You didn’t even go with her?”
“I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed—”
“So you sent her off with a stranger who may or may not have
had any idea what he was doing.”
“He said he was a doctor, Patrick.”
“Do you honestly believe a doctor would have met you on an al ey-
way?” He caught himself and dropped his voice, nostrils flar-
ing. “Go on. What next?”
“Well… I mean, she just never came back. I looked for her
everywhere. I tried to contact the man she went with, but the
call didn’t connect the first day and by the next morning the
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number had been disconnected. I assume something went wrong
with the procedure and—”
“Procedure? You’re calling the murder you ordered a proce-
dure?” Patrick was bawling now, swiping hopelessly at his eyes.
“Patrick…” I started to cry, too, and I took a step toward the
bed. “She couldn’t handle another child. She just couldn’t. She
begged me.”
“You knew I would never have allowed this—”
“It was her life!” I exclaimed. “Her body. Her sanity. I’m tell-
ing you now, she wouldn’t have survived another pregnancy—”
“Well, Maryanne, nor did she survive the abortion that you
arranged for her.” Patrick interrupted me. The room fell heav-
ily silent after that.
“I’m so sorry,” What else could I say to that? He was abso-
lutely right.<
br />
Patrick’s emotions were now completely out of control. I
hadn’t seen him like this since the immediate aftermath of the
discovery of her body. His grief and guilt were fresh and raw and
all of the healing and progress we made over the years seemed to
have disappeared in an instant. I had no idea what was in those
letters, only that the last of them was something of a confession,
and that Grace had found the experience of writing her thoughts
down to be cathartic. I took a step toward him—wanting only
to offer him comfort, but he raised a hand at me in warning.
“You need to go,” he choked out.
“What? Go where?”
“I don’t know. But I need to think…” He waved his hand
around the bed, then wiped at his eyes hopelessly. “I just need to
think this all through. I can’t think with you here.” He glanced
up at me, then looked away and squeezed his eyes closed as a
fresh burst of anger resurged. “Jesus, Maryanne! I can’t even look at you knowing that you took her from us! You sent her with
that man. You all but murdered her yourself!”
I’d been wary and remorseful since I stepped across that door-
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way, but as Patrick’s distress turned to anger, I felt the first hot
flash of my own temper. I was far too angry to shout; instead,
I spoke with deathly, furious intent.
“What else is in those notes, Patrick? Does she talk about how
she thought about ending her own life because you let her down?
Does she talk about how your marriage was such a burden she
could barely stand it? Does she talk about how she almost killed
herself one night, while you slept in your bed, oblivious to her
pain?” I crossed my arms over my chest and my temper ran free.
“If anyone murdered my sister, it was you.”
I regretted it as soon as I said it, but I was far too proud to
apologize, especially when Patrick didn’t even flinch. Instead, he
scanned the notes on the bed, then scooped one up and waved
it toward me.
“This letter alone would be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to prove that you arranged an abortion for her. She
died alone at the hands of strangers, and you made that happen.
Maybe you should pay the price.”
We were getting nowhere, and things would only escalate if
we kept speaking from our pain. I took a step back and tried to
take a deep breath.
“This is absurd. I’m going to go to bed. We’ll talk tomor-
row—”
“Maryanne,” Patrick said suddenly. His hand dropped to his
side, taking the note with it. I glanced at him warily.
“What?”
“I don’t care where you go, but you will leave this house to-
night, or I will call the police and have you removed.”
Patrick held all of the cards, and we both knew it. I had no
idea how seriously the police would take a note like this, but I
couldn’t risk him trying to get Grace’s case reopened.
“You said you loved me,” I whispered.
“I…” He broke off, then ran a hand through his hair in frus-
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tration. “Don’t you understand? How could I just carry on with
you—letting you take her place in my life…in our lives…when you did this to her?”
We fell into silence after that. I didn’t know how to make
things right, but I was still sure there would be a way I could.
We both needed time to think it through.
“I’ll go,” I said heavily. “Just for tonight.”
I glanced back at him, and Patrick nodded, but his gaze was
on the notes scattered all over his bed.
I told Mrs. Hills that Patrick and I had quarreled, and she
made up the sofa. I stretched out and closed my eyes, but I slept
very poorly. Somehow I knew Patrick wasn’t sleeping either.
Even so, I eventually talked myself around to hope that night.
I wondered if Patrick’s fury was rooted in guilt and shame, just
as mine had been. Grace probably had revealed a depth of pain
he wasn’t aware of in those notes. I just hoped I’d get the chance
to sit with him down and to talk it all through in the cold light
of the new morning.
“You’ll see,” Mrs. Hills said sagely as we nursed cups of cof-
fee as the sun rose. “Young love is always volatile, but today you
two will sort this out and everything will be fine.”
“I hope so,” I said. I knew our situation seemed simpler to
her than it really was, but she was probably right. Patrick and
I were both quick to anger sometimes, and as passionate as we
were about one another, we also could be impulsive and tem-
peramental.
There was a quiet rap on the glass in the back door, and I
turned my head sharply to see Patrick standing there. As I feared,
he looked so weary, but the exhaustion and sadness on his face
renewed my hope. A man doesn’t sit up all night torturing him-
self over a woman he doesn’t love.
I flashed Mrs. Hills a knowing smile and almost ran to the
back door.
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I expected him to embrace me when I stepped outside. I ac-
tually expected an apology and a plea for a fresh attempt at a
conversation, but what I found was something different. Pat-
rick stood among a collection of boxes and bags that I imme-
diately knew contained my possessions. My heart sank all the
way to my toes.
“We can get past this—” I started to say as my vision blurred
with hot tears.
“I won’t go to the police. But you need to do something for
me in return.” He sighed heavily, then pleaded with me. “Mary-
anne, I need you to go quietly.”
The idea of it was unbearable. To leave was already too much
to ask, but to leave quietly? Without even saying goodbye to the children I’d come to love as my own?
“But I need to say goodbye to them—”
“You’re not their fucking mother, Maryanne!” he snapped.
I flinched as if he’d slapped me. He sucked in a sharp breath,
then whispered fiercely, “Even if I could forgive the secrecy and
the lies, I can’t get around this one simple fact—you knew the
truth about what happened to Grace that day, and you kept it
to yourself. Who knows? If you’d gone to the police right away,
maybe she’d still be here.”
“But…honestly, Patrick, I thought she’d come back, and then
I was so scared—” I was weeping now, barely resisting the urge
to throw myself at him and to cling to him so he couldn’t walk
away. It wasn’t just us he was tearing to pieces—it was our fam-
ily, and I can’t bear it.
“Last night you accused me of murdering my wife,” Patrick
said suddenly.
“I was
angry—”
“And I accused you of murdering your sister.”
“Patrick—”
“We can’t just ignore this,” Patrick said, his voice breaking.
“Maybe we did the wrong thing all along, just pretending it
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never happened. But now that we know what we know, we
can’t just carry on, Mary. We have to go our separate ways.”
He turned around then, and walked back across the front
lawns and into the house.
I was far too stubborn to give up that easily, and I lingered
at Mrs. Hill’s house for several days. I got up early and watched
out the window to see what he was doing with the children
when he went to work. I was startled to see him loading all four
sleepy children into the back of the car each day, and them dis-
appearing down the street. After two days I had Mrs. Hills go to
Patrick’s house to ask him what he was doing for childcare. She
returned with the news that he had temporarily arranged for the
wives of the work crew to watch the children while he worked.
“He’s still so upset, Maryanne,” she muttered, shaking her
head. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but this isn’t something
he’s going to get over quickly. I think you should consider look-
ing for somewhere else to stay until you sort this out with him.”
It was the last thing in the world I wanted, and so I resisted for
another day. But the weekend was coming, and when Mrs. Hills
pointed out that it was only a matter of time before the children
came for a visit and saw me, I finally realized I had no option
but to look into temporary accommodation elsewhere. With
very little money on hand, there was only one place I could go.
“Maryanne?” My mother gasped when she opened her front
door and found me and my meager belongings on the door-
step. “But—”
“I just need to stay a few days, maybe a week,” I blurted.
She stared at me, mouth agape, then peered around me to-
ward the drive.
“But where is Patrick? Where are the children?”
It was my turn to look at her incredulously.
“You actually thought I would bring them for a visit after
what you tried to do?”
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Mother’s nostrils flared.
“I had their best interests at heart.”