“I loved him. I think he loved me. Or at least he said he did.”
“Then why did you break up? That night?” I sank to her level, willing to trade barbs. Settle down. She has information you need, Claire.
“His company was transferring him to China. Some executive position, a big promotion. He thought it was a great opportunity, and he wanted to go. It was a two-year assignment, but I’m a violinist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. At the time, I was trying for assistant principal, the youngest in the history of the TSO. There was no way I could go. We agreed to… put our relationship on hold.”
I laughed in earnest. What relationship? I wanted to yell. You didn’t even know his name. Advent had no foothold in China, and if they had, certainly not for a corporate trainer. Greg’s girlfriend hadn’t known him any better than I had. Questions swirled in my mind, but half of them I would never give her the satisfaction of asking.
“Karen, there was no China.” I reached across the table and lightly tapped her hand. “Greg was a bored thirty-five-year-old man in a troubled marriage, with a couple of kids, in the suburbs of New Jersey.”
“He said he didn’t have kids, but that he’d always wanted them.”
I sucked in a harsh breath. The depths of her cruelty seemed boundless. What about Greg’s dishonesty? Did that know no limits? “Do you still love him?” My questions were primal and unplanned, and perhaps just as callous; I didn’t know. I’d lost perspective in the shrinking kitchen.
She shook her head, appearing rattled for the first time. She held up her left hand, displaying a simple solitaire diamond. “I called his cell over and over until one day, after a month or so, the recording said the phone had been disconnected. It took about a year for me to move on. I knew he was American; he said he was from Syracuse, but it hadn’t ever mattered because he was never home, he’d said. I stopped trying after that and met a very nice trombone player. The wedding’s in May.”
She pushed herself up, crossed the room, and rummaged through a drawer. When she returned, she was holding a long strip of paper. She looked at it a moment before handing it to me. Greg’s face stared back at me, pushed up against Karen’s, four squares, various expressions. A photo booth picture strip. I was taken aback. His face was relaxed, free of the worry lines on his forehead. Her mouth was open in a frozen laugh, wide lipsticked lips stretched across straight white teeth. In the bottom picture, they kissed through laughter, her left eye open, peeking at the camera.
“He looks so… happy.” I fingered the picture. I hadn’t meant to say that aloud.
“Oh, that was Greg. He was always such a goofball.”
Will the real Greg please stand up?
Chapter 41
1 month later
Greg came home almost three months after we found him, which was about two months longer than Dr. Goodman had predicted. We found a group home specifically targeted for the brain-injured about twenty-five minutes away from our house. At Dr. Goodman’s recommendation, Greg wouldn’t be living alone for at least a year. His short-term memory was inconsistent, at best. He would undergo the same therapy in New Jersey that he had in Canada, and the group home provided for transportation to and from rehab, as well as staff therapists to aid with social transitioning.
By the time he came back to New Jersey, he functioned as well as any other adult with the exception of some minor differences. He had no filter—what was on his mind came out his mouth, much like Leah. He couldn’t seem to censor himself or recognize what was socially acceptable to say and not say. The group home would help with that. He had to relearn kindness, manners, and other social skills. In other words, he’d make an interesting addition to a dinner party.
The day of his homecoming, we took the minivan and made the eight-hour trip, travelling sixteen hours in one day. Leah and Hannah were impressive, to say the least. Drew came along, and my mouth was dry with nerves because it was the first time the two men would see each other again after the accident. With Greg’s newfound ability to run off at the mouth, I was dreading what he would say.
I warned Drew about that, and he had shrugged. “Anything he’ll say will probably be justified.”
After the weekend Drew had almost left, he seemed to accept our new life with a certain resigned grace. I had been making a real attempt to be open and honest and finally came clean about visiting Karen, the small secret eating away at my conscience.
He reacted with his usual laissez-faire. “It seems natural, I guess. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall, though.”