Hidden

by Catherine McKenzie

  I know the exact time I received the email because I’d been watching the clock on my computer tick over every minute since I sat down at my desk, an email to her open but unstarted.

  This was not the first communication we’d had since we said goodbye in L.A. — we’d kept up a light flow of banter since then—when we’d given each other a brief hug at the airport, when we’d wanted to hold on tightly. But I knew from the first and only word that this email was different, that somehow, in the symbiosis that was us on our good days, we were finally going to have the conversation we should’ve had, maybe a long time ago.

  So … is all she wrote.

  So, I answered back.

  We have a problem, yes?

  Houston, we have a problem.

  Don’t joke. Not now.

  Sorry, I wrote.

  It’s okay. What are you thinking?

  Honestly?

  Of course. Always.

  I paused, trying to think of what to write. Trying to put together the words I’d been puzzling out since I’d come home.

  But there wasn’t any way I was ever going to get this right.

  2 + 2 = 4, I typed eventually with cold fingers and the blood rushing in my ears. We learn this as kids, we teach this to our kids, and unlike so many other things we’re told and we tell others, it’s always true. So maybe that’s why I’ve been trying to add all of this up. But the thing is, the awful thing is, whatever I do, it doesn’t. No matter how I work it, no matter what formula I use, nothing works. Because what I can’t take out of the equation are Claire and Seth, but—and this is harder to say than you could possibly know—if I take you out of the equation, it works. It adds up. At least, I think it does. I’ll never know unless I do it, as much as I don’t want to. Does any of this make sense? Can you possibly not hate me right now?

  I hit Send before I had time to stop myself. Then I sat staring at the screen, wondering what I had done.

  I had to wait a long time for a response. Several hours. Hours with my door shut, my fingers pressed against my eyelids, trying to blot out the worst headache I’d ever had.

  Then, finally:

  Will you believe me if I say that your email is one I’ve known has been coming since the beginning? she wrote. It’s one I’ve known I should be writing. It’s one I’ve written a million times in my head. For all the reasons you’ve said. For all the reasons we talked about. Of course I understand. Of course I agree. Of course you’re right. Only, one thing, okay? I need a soft landing before we rip the Band-Aid off.

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, but what other outcome was I hoping for? That she’d beg me to reconsider? That she’d have the missing piece to the formula I couldn’t figure out?

  Soft landing? I wrote back. Band-Aid?

  Haven’t you ever done that with Seth? When he’s been hurt but then he’s healed, and there’s only the Band-Aid as evidence? So you say, I’m going to rip it off quickly at three, because doing it slowly is worse in the end. I’m thinking that if we do it on a count we agree on, it will hurt like hell for a moment, but not as much as a slow peel.

  Okay, I get that, but not the soft landing part.

  What I meant is that I need some time to heal before I get injured again.

  How much time?

  A long pause, then: April 30.

  A month away.

  Why that date?

  I don’t know. Jesus. It’s not like there’s a rule book here.

  What do we do from now until then?

  Act normal. Be friends.

  And then what?

  We rip off the Band-Aid.

  We say goodbye?

  We say goodbye. Yes?

  One last moment of doubt, then I typed the last word. The hardest word.

  Yes.

  CHAPTER 34

  Rondo

  When Tish leaves my room, I realize I can’t stay in this town any longer. Coming here in the first place was probably a massive mistake. Before, I had questions. Now, I have answers, but can I believe them? Can they possibly be true? If only there was a way to verify them, to not have to rely on the word of someone I don’t know and, instinctively, don’t trust.

  I check online and if I don’t care about arriving in the middle of the night, I can get home. I throw on my clothes, zip up my suitcase, and drive the car back to the rental place.

  I have half an hour to wait at the airport, and those minutes of being alone in a crowd give me an idea. Maybe there is a way I can check some of the things she said. Maybe there’s some certainty I can seek from a third party.

  It’s late, but it isn’t too late for that.

  I use my phone to find a number on the company website and call.

  “John Scott,” he says, his voice rough and slightly slurred.

  “Hi, John, this is Claire Manning.”

  A pause. Ice clicks in a glass. “Claire. My goodness. We didn’t get a chance to speak … the other day. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I … did you need something?”

  I can’t think of any way to say this that won’t make him think I’m crazy, but I have to go ahead anyway, and at least I have recent widowhood to fall back on if I ever need to explain myself.

  “You were at that retreat, right? The one in Palm Springs?”

  “Sure. It was a great time. Jeff won the men’s golf tournament.”

  “He was excited. He … had fun. Look, this is going to sound nuts, but do you remember getting a prize pack there? A kind of gift bag?”

  His ice clinks again, a deep swallow. “Um, oh, yes. That’s right. Something with pictures, and a book.”

  “That’s right. Would you still happen to have it, by any chance?”

  “What’s all this about?”

  I almost hang up, but I have to know more than I care what he thinks of me.

  “Could you check? It’s important. And hard to explain.”

  “Yes, all right. Let me ask Cindy.”

  He clunks the phone down and I hunch over in my seat, a cramp of nervousness attacking my stomach. I take a few deep breaths and straighten myself up, looking out the black windows at the silhouette of the mountains that surround this Springfield.

  A thud. A scrape. “Claire. You still there?”

  “Still here.”

  “Cindy had it. She’s such a pack rat.” He chuckles. A bag crinkles. “You want the inventory?”

  “You still have the whole thing?”

  “It was in her processing area. She has this kind of staging area where she keeps stuff before she turns it into crafts.”

  “Right. Anyway, what’s in the bag?”

  “Give me a sec. Okay, one mini-album of photos from the office, courtesy of Jeff. He used one of those programs, like a computer thing—”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Of course. Ha! Tom’s going to die when I show him this one.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry. There’s a macramé picture frame. That must be from that crone from the other Springfield, and a book of … poetry it looks like. Ah, yes, the golf girl’s daughter.”

  “Would you mind … is there an inscription in there?” “Let me check.” The pages flip. “Here we go. ‘I’m a proud mama.’ Huh. What an odd thing to write.”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “That’s it. Did you need anything else?”

  “What? Oh, no. Only … did you notice if Jeff was … spending any time with anyone in particular over the weekend?”

  He chuckles again. “You mean his dinner companion? I wouldn’t worry about that. He rebuffed her pretty hard. Though I couldn’t see why. Flirting never hurt anyone, am I right?”

  I hear a voice squeak near him in protest. His wife, presumably, reminding him who he’s talking to.

  “Sorry, I—”

  “No, it’s all right.” I force a laugh. “Flirting’s fine. Did Tish … flirt with a lot of peopl
e?”

  “Tish? Oh, you mean Golf Girl? No, it was that girl Tiffany, or Brittany, can’t remember, anyway, that new girl from the secretarial pool. But don’t you worry, like I said, Jeff shut her down.” He lowers his voice. “I think she ended up hooking up with one of the bartenders. She was hot to trot, that one.”

  I force another laugh. “Don’t you go spreading rumours about her.”

  “Who, me?”

  The loudspeaker crackles to life and echoes through the nearly empty airport. My plane is starting to board. “Where are you?” John asks.

  “Nowhere. Could you do me a favour and not tell anyone about this call?”

  “All right, if it’s important.”

  “It is. I’ve got to go. Thanks for your time.”

  “Anytime. And again, we’re so sorry for your loss. Jeff was—”

  I end the call and look at the phone in my hand.

  Is what he said enough?

  Will anything ever be enough?

  Beth shakes me awake the next morning. An angry face greets me.

  “Where have you been?”

  I open my eyes. She’s looming above me, her hair wild, shadows under her eyes.

  “I left you a note. I wasn’t even gone for twenty-four hours.”

  “I was worried sick about you.”

  I sit up and hug her to me. For once, it’s not a touch I want to shrink away from.

  “I’m sorry, Bethie. There was something I had to take care of.”

  She holds me away from her, giving me a hard stare. “You went to see her, didn’t you? Tish?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “I had to. I was going nuts trying to figure out what had happened, if anything had happened.”

  “And now you know?”

  “No.”

  “Did you actually talk to her?”

  “Twice.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She denied it. She had explanations for everything.”

  “What kind of explanations?”

  I fill her in. She sits on the edge of the bed, listening, pushing her bottom lip in and out, in and out.

  “Do you believe her?”

  “I want to. I really want to. But mostly, I wish …”

  “That you never knew any of this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I told you so.”

  There’s a bark of excitement from down the hall. “Eureka!” Seth yells.

  Beth and I run to the study. Seth’s sitting at the computer wearing a pair of board shorts and a ratty T-shirt. Tim’s standing over him, a big grin on his face.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  Seth shoots me a guilty look. “Uncle Tim said I could stay home, since he’s leaving today.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?”

  Tim gives me a slow smile. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “It’s all right. What was all the shouting about?”

  “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “Seth.”

  “Okay, okay. Jeez. We got into Dad’s email account.”

  My heart skips a beat. I look at the screen more carefully.

  They really are in Jeff’s email.

  “Why were you trying to get in there?” I ask.

  “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  “What kind of surprise?”

  “I wanted to get all of his friends’ email addresses, to ask them to send photos, to make this kind of collage for you. Like that AIDS quilt thing. It’s probably stupid.”

  “No, that’s incredibly sweet.”

  He ducks the hand that’s trying to pet the top of his messy head. “Mom.”

  “Well, it is, but how did you do it?”

  I look to Tim. I can’t remember if, in my panic yesterday, I told him I’d been trying to do the same thing. And if I did, how could he have let my son, maybe helped my son, get into a place that could hold something devastating?

  “I didn’t,” he says, looking innocent. “Seth figured it out. Tell them.”

  “I remembered how he used that word abacus for everything, but that wasn’t working. Then I realized that this email provider makes you add a number or a character or something to your password for better security or whatever, so I tried ‘abacus1’ and that worked! See?”

  He turns the screen towards me. My eyes devour the long list of emails. Ones from me, from Seth, from Tim, his mother, his college friends. I look and I look but I don’t see her name anywhere, or even any name I don’t recognize. She’s not there.

  She’s not there.

  “Claire, you okay?” Beth asks. I lean my back against the wall.

  “I’m okay,” I say to Beth. “I think I might be okay.”

  An hour later, I’m driving Tim to the airport.

  “You didn’t have to take me,” Tim says, his fingers drumming out a pattern on his knee.

  “No. I wanted to.”

  “Well … thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “Is it okay that I’m heading out? I could stay longer, if you’d like.”

  “It’s fine. You have your life to lead, you should get back to it. We’ll be okay.”

  I turn off the highway onto the road that leads to the airport. It’s so weird to think that this time yesterday I was on this same road, in a panic, heading towards I didn’t know what.

  “What about you?” I ask.

  “Me? I’ll be fine, but I’d like …”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d really like to stay in touch with you and Seth. I’m going to try to come home more. Be a man in his life.”

  “I’m sure he’d like that.”

  I pull into the drop-off area and cut the engine. It cycles down, knocking in a way I probably shouldn’t ignore for too much longer.

  “What about you?” he asks. “What do you want?”

  I turn towards him. I used to think that he and Jeff looked so much alike, like brothers, of course, but something more than that. But now he’s just Tim, and Jeff is … I’m not sure yet, but he’s separate.

  “I want you to be happy, Tim. I really do.”

  “Thank you.”

  He opens his door and climbs out. I pop the trunk. He removes his suitcase as I come up next to him.

  “You know we can’t …” I say.

  “I didn’t mean that. I wasn’t trying to replace Jeff.”

  “That’s the past, Tim. Us. It’s what we used to be, and whatever happens, however I figure out how to be now, I’ve got to put all that behind me.”

  “For Jeff?”

  “For all of us. Do you understand?”

  “Of course.”

  He fiddles with his suitcase, trying to unlock the rolling handle. I click the plastic button that will release it and it springs to attention.

  “Thanks,” he says, but he won’t look me in the eye.

  “Hey, come here.”

  I put my arms over his shoulders. He straightens up and stands immobile for a moment, then puts his arms around my waist, pulling me towards him.

  My face is in the front of his shirt. Citrusy laundry detergent fills my nostrils. I hug him tight, counting to ten in my head, because on ten I’m going to let him go.

  “I never stopped, you know,” Tim says. “Loving you.” I step back. It’s been ten seconds.

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  He shakes his head. “And I wanted to tell you that, despite everything, how angry I was, how I took it out on you and Jeff, the crappy things I did, it was because I loved you. It was because I didn’t know how to be without you.”

  “But you were always okay without me, Tim.”

  “I wasn’t. Not really. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t come with me, or why you chose Jeff. I never thought he was the consolation prize. I knew he wasn’t. And I told him that.”

  “Did Jeff believe you?”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, I think so.”

  I kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “Telling me. It … it helps, knowing that Jeff believed it. It helps a lot.”

  “I’m glad I did something right.”

  “More than one thing.”

  He smiles and grabs the handle of his bag.

  “Keep in touch,” he says.

  “You too. Have a safe flight.”

  He nods and turns. I watch him walk into the building, then climb back into the car and start the engine.

  And when I look back towards the terminal, he’s gone.

  It’s a strange next couple of days, and given how my life’s been going recently, that’s saying something.

  But maybe it’s more that it’s strange inside my head, rather than outside, in my life, because as I go to work, and care for Seth, and half-listen to Beth’s (I can only call them) lectures, my mind is striving towards forgiveness. No, that’s not even the right word. My mind is striving towards … doubt, towards giving its benefit to Jeff, towards acquittal, and eventually, towards innocence.

  It’s hard to say what tips the scales. I replay the conversation with Tish over and over and over, and a line from Pride and Prejudice keeps coming into my mind: “There was truth in his looks.” But that thought is confusing because the person Elizabeth Bennet is talking about (the charming but dastardly Wickham) is anything but truthful. Regardless, Tish looked innocent, she sounded innocent, and everything she said, everything I could verify, has been borne out.

  I spend more hours in Jeff’s email, find and check his cell phone bills, and that bears them out too. There’s nothing in his inbox, his sent messages, his deleted files, his calls or texts. If they communicated on a regular basis, then nothing she wrote was worth keeping, and that means something, doesn’t it?

  Doesn’t it?

  Jeff stayed. When I strayed, when I let him down, when I acted the fool with Tim, Jeff had every reason to pack up and leave. But he didn’t. I stayed in Springfield for him, and he stayed for me.

  This I know. Of this I am certain.

  “What do you think you’re going to find in there?” Beth asks when she finds me in front of the computer for the second morning in a row, still investigating, still searching, still trying to make sure before I decide.