“How's Brad taking it? It must have been quite a shock when he heard in Cleveland.”
For a moment she was tempted to tell him that he'd never been in Cleveland, but that didn't seem fair. She just shook her head and was silent for a long moment. “He hasn't taken it well at all. He's upset and frightened and angry. He blames Phillip for the accident. But in a way, I think he blames me too, for not knowing what she was doing. He hasn't exactly said it, but he implied it.” It was also a way of deflecting the guilt from him. It was a relief to him to blame her for something. “The worst thing,” she turned to him, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears, “is that I'm not sure he's wrong. Maybe it is my fault. Maybe if I'd paid more attention, if I'd been suspicious, or questioned her, if I hadn't believed her …this would never have happened.” She began to sob openly then, from exhaustion and emotion, and he put an arm around her shoulders.
“You can't let yourself think that. We had no reason to suspect them. They'd never done anything like this before, and you can't play cop constantly. We trusted them, that's not a crime, and their lie wasn't so terrible either. Other kids have done the same thing. It was just the result that was so terrible, but who could have known that?”
“Brad thinks I should have.”
“So does Dana. But it's just talk. They need someone to blame, so we're it. You can't take it to heart. He's upset. He doesn't know what to say probably, or who to rail at.”
“Maybe,” she said, and she was quiet for a long time, as she remembered the statistics she'd often read about what accidents to children, or their deaths, did to destroy a marriage. If there was a crack in it somewhere, it would surely break. And their marriage apparently had a crack in it the size of the Grand Canyon. “Actually,” she said quietly, surprising him with her next remark, “things aren't going too well with me and Brad.” She wasn't sure why she was telling him, but she had to tell someone. She had never felt as alone or as miserable in her life, and there was no one else she wanted to talk to. She knew she had to call her mother one of these days to tell her about Allie, but she wasn't ready to do that yet. She needed time to adjust to what was happening herself, before she took on her mother in New York. It was just more than she could handle right then. Everything was, except being at the hospital, sitting with Allyson, or talking to Trygve. “Brad and I …” She started to say the words, and then found she couldn't.
“You don't have to explain, Page.” Trygve tried to make it easier for her. “No one would have an easy time with this. I was just sitting here thinking that Dana and I would never have survived it.” In fact, he still couldn't believe that even after he'd called her, she had decided not to come to see her daughter. She had accused him of negligence, but she didn't want to fly all the way to San Francisco to see Chloe. She just hoped she'd be well enough to meet her in Europe in the summer. She was definitely not a woman he admired, or even a decent mother. He could only wonder how he had stayed married to her for twenty years. Sometimes he felt like a total fool, when he thought about it, but he also knew that for the past several years he had stayed with her so as not to disrupt the children.
Page tried to explain what was happening to them. “Our problem doesn't have anything to do with the accident. It just happens to have come to light right now, in the midst of all this.” She was cryptic, but it was obvious that she was deeply upset about something that had happened with her husband. Maybe an affair, he thought, he had a lot of experience with those, and their impact on a relationship. But that didn't seem likely. Brad had never seemed the type to be unfaithful.
“You can't judge anything in a crisis.”
“Why not? What if it's real? What if nothing is the way I thought it was for all these years? What if it's all been a lie?”
“If it is, you'll know it later. Don't judge anything right now. Neither of you is in any condition to think straight.”
“How do you know that?” she asked worriedly. She had a lot to think about, and in some ways the hospital was a great place to do it.
“I have a lot of experience with difficult relationships, and things that aren't what they seem. Believe me, I know what I'm saying. But I also know that everything is upside down right now. You can't hold each other accountable for what you do or say, or the way you react. Look at you, you're exhausted, you haven't eaten decently or slept in two days. Your child almost died. You're completely traumatized. Who wouldn't be? So am I … so is Brad … so are our other children…. Do you really trust your own reactions right now? Hell, I'm afraid to order groceries, I'd probably order bird food for the dog, and dog food for the kids. Listen …give yourself a break. Try not to think about anything right now. Just try to get through this.”