There was no way they could remain in Chilton, after what Doug had done, though it took them a month or two to realize it. Alison had started the semester teaching, but right before February break she told Tom she couldn’t take it anymore, she was moving, she needed a fresh start. At first he panicked, but after a few days he saw it as an opportunity. The writing was on the wall as far as the shack was concerned; it wasn’t going to turn around, no matter how hard Tom tried. So he sold it to Hugh Nance, who planned to raze it for a gas station. Tom knew he’d let his father down, but if he had to choose between his father and his own child, there was no question; the difference between him and Alison in this regard was, as he saw it, the marriage’s fatal blow.
It took them a few more days to settle on New Hampshire as a place they could both see living in, and raising their son. Tom signed on to a short-term gig with a security company, and eventually Alison’s new school district might need an assistant football coach. Maybe he’d even take some accounting classes at the college in the next town over. He didn’t care what kind of jobs he had to work in the meantime, as long as he could keep paying child support. The lawyers had said they could prescribe custody in the divorce papers, but Alison and Tom agreed they would turn to that only as a last resort.
In his bassinet beside Alison’s hospital bed, the baby made little puckering noises, and when Tom turned to smile at Alison, he saw that her eyes were wet. From here he would take them back to the side-by-side duplex he’d bought with proceeds from the shack, and Alison would let him carry the baby into her half, the left. He’d go out and bring back something for them to eat, along with a bag of frozen peas the nurse had recommended for Alison’s sore and swollen breasts. (So far, though she and the baby had both tried, she had yet to experience what the nurse called “the let-down effect,” when hormones released milk toward the nipples. Don’t worry, the nurse told her, when Alison got frustrated. It’ll happen. And when it does, you won’t be able to hear him cry without leaking.)
After they’d eaten and before she put the baby to sleep, Tom would kiss them both good-bye and go to the duplex’s other side. He might or might not call Natalie, who’d forgiven him when he told her he’d rummaged through her desk drawer that day, taking advantage of her trust. Who’d passed the police exam, gone through the academy, and been hired to the Chilton force by Raul Dominguez, the new chief. Who’d convinced Tom that of course what he’d actually felt under the water that night was a vine or a weed—he’d let his imagination run away from him, thinking it might have been the hand of the dead girl grabbing his own.
And who might or might not visit the next weekend; she’d told him to wait and see how he felt.
But first, they had to get the baby home. “What are you naming him?” asked the aide who came to wheel Alison out of the hospital. Alison held the baby in her lap as Tom followed with her overnight bag, the kit of hospital freebies he’d been psyched to receive until he saw the contents (nasal aspirator, infant thermometer, a pacifier, and extra-thick sanitary pads), and the bouquet of balloons sent by the superintendent at the school Alison would be joining in the fall.
“What are we naming him?” Alison repeated the aide’s question to Tom as they rode the elevator down.
“I thought we picked Matthew.”
“That’s a nice name,” the aide said. “You don’t hear it so much anymore.”
Alison wrinkled her nose. “I was thinking about it, and I’m not sure. Matt Carbone.” She herself would be reverting to Armstrong when the divorce was final; even Tom, who’d never been any good at figuring out symbols in English class, recognized the significance of that choice. “It sounds like a car mechanic.”
“So? He can be a mechanic if he wants to, right?” As they waited for the elevator doors to open, Tom directed his question at the aide, who seemed to sense that she’d stepped into delicate territory and merely smiled to indicate that she preferred to remain neutral. “Or he could be a teacher. He could be a cop. We decided to let him decide, right?”
“I guess,” Alison murmured, sounding unconvinced. But instead of submitting alternatives, she only chirred at Matthew in the backseat during the ride, and when they pulled into the driveway, Tom knew it was safe to think of his son this way. Matthew. Matthew. For the rest of his life, just hearing the name would ignite a fire inside his chest.
When the baby had finished nursing, Tom offered to burp him, and after patting out a couple of deeply gratifying belches, he handed Matthew back to her and got ready to leave.
But Alison asked him to stay a minute. He sat back down and as she stroked the baby’s head she murmured, “I want my parents to know about him.”
After a moment in which he wasn’t sure how she expected him to respond, he said, “Of course you do.”
“Do you really think the phone is tapped? I mean, my cell?”
He shrugged. “I swear I don’t know, Al. All I do know is they want him back there. And I’d expect them to pull out every stop in the book.”
“You couldn’t find out?” But she already knew the answer. And knew she couldn’t take the chance to test it—not with this baby she’d just brought home, not with her own freedom as well as her parents’ on the line. “You don’t really think he could have done that, do you?” She covered the baby’s ears as if to protect him from their conversation.
For a moment Tom thought she was referring to Matthew. Then he understood. “I think he did plant the mask, and I think he got Harper Grove to say she saw Willett in it.” He spoke slowly, wondering if the incomplete answer would be enough. When he saw that it wasn’t, he added, “I don’t think he would have planned to go after Joy and kill her, if that’s what you mean. But if they met up and she threatened to expose him—you know, a heat-of-passion kind of thing—well, I don’t know.” She hadn’t looked at him the whole time he was speaking. “What do you think?” he asked, but she shook her head and got up to take the baby into the bedroom, where he could hear her laying him down before getting in bed herself.
He waited until they were both asleep, then slipped out the door. This was how it was going to be, for as far ahead as he allowed himself to look, which—these days—wasn’t far. It wasn’t the way he wanted, and it wasn’t the way they’d planned, but once he’d made the decision to find out what happened to Joy Enright, the only way he could have remained with Alison was if she acknowledged the complete truth about her father. When that didn’t happen, this other arrangement had to be made, for everyone’s sake.
One thing he’d learned from all of this: the road was harder to navigate if you tried to see the whole thing ahead of you at once. If he thought divorce, he felt himself slipping. Divorced father, even worse. Better to break life down to its pieces and focus on them one by one. The rhodies outside the hospital this morning. The way the nurse smiled, placing Matthew in Alison’s lap. The sounds of his son settling into his first infant dreams. And Natalie on the other end of the phone line, ready to listen—wanting to.
After that, he might sleep. But he guessed it was more likely that during his son’s first night home, he would lie awake listening to make sure that on the other side of the wall, all was as well as (in spite of everything) he had faith it still could be. Behind him he shut the door lightly, then opened it a crack so he’d know if he was needed.
License
I need the car tonight,” Harper told her father. Truman was skateboarding on the ramp he’d set up in the backyard, and they listened to the sounds of him scraping and banging and swearing as he repeatedly tried and failed to land a kick flip. “Tru is going to ask you, too, but I need it more.” Lately, she’d discovered how much she enjoyed declaring things.
After Joy disappeared and Harper told the police the lie they wanted to hear, she began having a recurring dream of being a passenger in a car that was speeding down the highway, no one in the driver’s seat. Once she broke down and confessed, just before the grand jury was canceled, the dream went away. Her
mother had driven a few times since that brief period in December, but it was her father who took Harper out as much as he could when spring came, forcing her to practice things like merging onto the highway and parallel parking even when she didn’t want to. He told her she would thank him later, and he was right: she did. When she passed the road test in March, she expected Truman to be glad that he didn’t have to drive her around anymore, but instead it presented a new conflict when they wanted to use the car at the same time.
“You know the rule,” her father said now. Whoever needed the car for work got first dibs, but beyond that, they had to figure it out for themselves. Since Truman had lost his job at the dollar store and Harper’s catering service with Eric Feinbloom had taken off, she got the keys more often than her brother and ended up chauffeuring him.
It didn’t seem to bother Tru all that much. He spent most of his free time on his skateboard now, ever since giving up solitaire at the dining room table. “It doesn’t really do anything, does it?” he’d asked Harper out of the blue one day, when she passed through right after he’d lost another game. “I mean, that was kind of mental of me, right? Thinking that if I won, it would make things better.” Hardly able to believe that her brother was admitting such a thing to her, she hesitated, not sure how to respond. “It’s okay,” he told her. “I know it was.”
In the living room, the cat jumped up on the piano and skittered across the keys, causing Harper to exclaim because instead of a constellation of random, dissonant sounds, Chip seemed to have set his paws down on an actual chord. What were the chances? The sound and surprise of it filled Harper with a delight that was new to her. She’d thought she’d experienced every feeling she would ever have again, for the rest of her life—that it would all be repetition from now on (and that this was what being an adult meant)—but Chip’s accidental music caused her to hope, suddenly, that there might be more. In that moment, she resolved to count on it. And to be on the lookout for those new feelings, even—especially?—when it seemed likely they would never come again.
She hadn’t been asked to the prom, but that was okay (really, it was better than okay) because at midnight she was with Eric in the gym—which had been transformed beyond recognition into a combination ballroom/casino/karaoke stage—preparing to serve up food and pastries from the menu they’d been sanctioned to create for the occasion. The kids at Chilton Regional High’s after-prom party would get to sample Eric’s famous ravioli and specialty omelets, topped off by Harper’s red velvet cupcakes decorated with tiny chocolate mortarboards and butter cream diploma scrolls.
When the prom-goers entered just after midnight, most having changed into regular clothes, they dispersed in different directions—some to the poker table, where the principal was dealing out hands; some to the dance corner, where everybody’s favorite gym teacher started a limbo line; some to the pile of Hula-Hoops and others toward the piñata (the art teacher had sculpted the school’s bulldog mascot out of papier-mâché, which contained not candy but gift certificates for music downloads, pizza, video games, and a hot-air balloon ride). Along the back wall, in front of bleachers collapsed for the occasion, Mrs. Carbone was manning the mocktail bar. She’d moved to New Hampshire at the beginning of the semester and had her baby only a few weeks ago, but for some reason she’d asked if she could come back and chaperone the prom. There was a rumor she’d joined AA and quit drinking like her mother, though Mrs. Carbone never announced this herself. Harper was still getting used to the fact that some or most or all of what she’d learned in English last fall had been taught to her by a drunk person. But she was glad if Mrs. C. was better now, especially since she had the baby to take care of. Maybe she’d come back to show her students—and herself—what she could be like sober. She looked alert and happy, showing pictures of the baby to anyone who asked.
A few girls still in their prom dresses came directly to the dessert station and started piling into the food. Among them was Delaney Stowell, who bit into a cupcake and made a sound of pleasure. Only then did she seem to notice Harper behind the table. Harper steeled herself, waiting for Delaney to cut her down.
Delaney seemed to consider it, but then said only, “These are good,” as she placed another cake onto her plate. Then she added “Harper,” before turning back to resume gossiping with Tessa and Lin.
Contrary to what she’d expected, nobody had given Harper too much grief when the case against Martin Willett got thrown out, probably because they didn’t know she’d confessed on the stand to lying. The grand jury proceedings were confidential, she found out afterward. All the news reports had said was that the evidence was insufficient, especially when police had another potential suspect.
More for Eric’s amusement than her own, she’d prepared a Post-it Note (“HAZARDOUS WASTE MATERIAL”) to attach to Delaney’s shawl, on the pretext of adjusting the chiffon around the snake tattoo on her shoulder. But Delaney’s compliment made her change her mind, and she threw the note away.
Since Joy’s death, Harper had often thought she felt the presence of her first friend, and now was one of those times. Joy hovered slightly behind her so that she couldn’t be seen, but the air she inhabited contained the rich weight of their history together, and the warmth of what they’d felt for each other for so long. This was how Harper learned that at least one of the famous Bible quotations—“Love is stronger than death”—was true. Hearing Delaney Stowell call her by her real name, she allowed herself a half smile she imagined only the Joy in her head would see, but Eric noticed, too.
“What?” he said, smiling back.
She knew she would not be able to explain it. She told him Nothing, but he asked again. “Do you ever quit?” she said, and he told her no, he didn’t. So she told him the truth: I feel Joy, she said, and he seemed to understand immediately.
“Me, too.” He stepped a little closer and now Harper felt the two of them, Joy and Eric, one behind each shoulder. Wanting to preserve the moment, she closed her eyes.
They’d be going their separate ways in September, Harper to the Culinary Institute and Eric to the state university up by the border. But they’d only put their restaurant plans on hold; they still intended to open one after Eric graduated and Harper had gained some experience as a bakery and pastry chef. They hadn’t gotten as far as determining where it would be located, or how they would raise the start-up money, or the name or menu or décor. Neither had suggested to the other that anything might happen during the next couple of years and that one or both of them might decide to do something else. Harper knew it was as much a comfort to Eric as it was to her, the vision they’d concocted together back in seventh grade, and she knew that he had no more interest than she did in suggesting it was only a childish dream they’d have to reconsider before too long.
Their serving trays had been cleaned out by their classmates coming back for second and third helpings, the cupcakes long gone from their tiered stand. “Well done, partner,” Eric said, and Harper blushed in a mix of embarrassment and pleasure as he high-fived her. By the time they packed it all in the trunk of Eric’s car, the party was over, and they saw the faint hint of sunrise behind the hill.
Commencement
They had coffee in bed again now, a habit they’d cultivated when they were just married and living together for the first time. Before Joy. Once she was born they hadn’t had the time or the luxury to settle back against their pillows with their mugs and watch the early news before making their slow way up and into the day. It had been almost eighteen years since the last time, but on the middle Monday in May, five months after they buried their daughter and two months after his mother died, Gil got up first and went to feed Salsa. Susanne heard him—noted his departure from the bed—and turned over, praying without thought to be allowed to fall back to unconsciousness. But within a few minutes Gil was back, saying “Here.” Resentfully, Susanne opened her eyes and turned back toward him, saw the mug he held out, reached for it without having to thi
nk. Just that easily they were those newlyweds again, only this time holding between them a grief they could never have imagined back then. She accepted the coffee and they lay propped against their pillows, sipping, as they had all that time ago.
When they’d both finished, she waited for him to say they should get up. He’d always been the one to say it; that had been their routine. When he didn’t, she put her mug on the nightstand and reached for his hand. This was a habit from the old days, too, only they’d both forgotten it until now. He turned to look at her, surprised, but did not pull his hand away.
They’d cleared the air between them, or at least most of it—too late, but it was better than leaving it undone. In March, she’d come home from campus one day to find Gil standing inside the door, waiting for her to enter. “What?” she said. She felt a clutch in her gut, at the same time knowing that nothing could ever give her as much pain as she’d suffered already.
“Why did you lie to me?” He’d seemed almost reluctant to let her pass through the threshold and into her own house.
She assumed he’d found out somehow that the affair with Martin had lasted longer than just one night. How he would have learned this, she couldn’t guess, as she couldn’t guess why this would be important to him now.
“I didn’t think it mattered, in the long run,” she told him. “It seemed like it would be adding insult to injury.”
“‘Didn’t think it mattered’?” It wasn’t sarcasm she heard in his voice; it was a combination of dismay and disbelief. Sarcasm would have been easier. “How could it not matter? How could you let me just sit there and wonder where that money came from?”
Money. She sat down to buy time. “I’m not sure I know what we’re talking about.”
“I went to see Mark Feinbloom. You’re the one who said I should. I thought about it and you were right—I’m not the kind of person who lets something like that slide. And I had to go in about Mom’s accounts anyway.” He sat across from her and rubbed his scalp. “Why would you keep it to yourself, when you knew what he was going to tell me? I really just don’t understand, Suse. Just explain it to me.”
How Will I Know You? Page 33