“So you decided to take a shower?” he asked.
“It was gut instinct,” she said. “The weight of the last several months coupled with all the unknowns and possible new revelations. My head was spinning. I felt so lost. I couldn’t stop crying. So I decided to give up and cry and went into the shower to do it.”
“And did it work?” he asked.
“I think I was in there a half hour,” she said. “I don’t think I have a tear left. I’m a little tired...”
“When did you last eat?”
“I don’t know. I think a half bagel this morning. But it was a full day.”
“If you want to get dressed and dry your hair, I’ll poke around the kitchen and see if I can throw something together for dinner. For both of us.”
“I think maybe I am a little hungry.”
“Now that I’ve found you safe, I’m suddenly starving,” he said. “Take your time.” He turned her around so she faced her bedroom doorway. “Here,” he said, handing her the purse.
He stood there for a moment as she went into her room and closed the door. He shrugged his shoulders. He wondered if she had any inkling of what might be happening with him right now. Unlikely, given the amount of confusing information she was juggling in her mind.
Joe had always loved her but had never put a romantic spin on it. She was married and not just married to anyone, but to his best friend. Truthfully, he hadn’t really noticed those feelings until he had survived his divorce. Then he realized he liked her, appreciated her, felt she wasn’t getting the love she deserved from Chad. He kept it tamped down. It never in a million years occurred to him that she would one day be single, even though he knew Chad was not the best of husbands.
He went to the kitchen and began checking out the contents of the refrigerator and pantry, coming up with a nice breakfast for dinner of sausage, eggs, Tater Tots and English muffins. He whipped up some hollandaise just to impress her. He could hear the distant hum of a hair dryer and he set their plates and utensils on the breakfast bar and lit a couple of candles.
He poured himself a glass of wine and waited for her. When she came out, he could feel his eyes warm at the sight of her. She had put on a pair of yoga pants and an oversize shirt, very stay-at-home casual, but to him she looked ravishing. No makeup but Anna didn’t really need makeup. She had pulled her shoulder-length hair into a simple bun on top of her head.
“Wow, you went to some trouble,” she said, eyeing the place settings and candles.
“It was no trouble at all. I hope you like breakfast.”
“It’s my favorite meal, even if I don’t indulge every morning. I’m usually in a hurry.”
“Wine with breakfast?” he asked.
“Why not? Sounds like an adventure. You couldn’t have come all the way from your house when you called. Where were you?”
“I was on my way home from Melissa’s in Bodega Bay. I try to see her every couple of weeks. It’s harder for her to get to me in Palo Alto with the little kids and her husband’s work schedule. After you hung up I just took the next exit.”
“Thanks, that was really nice of you. I’m sorry I worried you. I was having a bad day.”
He pulled a clean dish towel off the serving platter, which was nicely laid out with the meal he had prepared. He pushed the platter toward her and poured her wine. “Was there more than your mother’s confusion?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, dishing up her plate. “At one point she said, in all innocence, that she had given up the boy but decided to keep the girl. She didn’t realize she was talking to me. It sounded like she was saying she had given up a baby before me. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out. I can’t exactly count on her to tell me the truth.”
“Then again, she might. Or there are those DNA search firms. If there was a child and he decided to look for his family, it could be even easier.”
“I’m trying to figure out why she wouldn’t have told me,” Anna said. “Me, of all people. She should know better than anyone I wouldn’t judge her.”
Anna told him what she had learned from Amy that afternoon, which had been more about Amy’s childhood than about Chad, and then repeated her visit to the nursing home. Eventually they got around to talking about Chad again.
“Did you know he was unhappy?” she asked Joe.
“Yes and no,” Joe said with a shrug.
“I can’t wait to hear you explain that answer.”
“When Chad was happy, there was no happier guy. When he was unhappy, which was not infrequent, he was dour and depressed. And there was always something nagging at him. I always wondered if he got into psychology because he wanted to fix himself. Because he wanted peace.”
“Well, he found it,” she said somewhat sadly.
“But what about you?” he said. “Over thirty years with him?”
She laughed ruefully. “Believe me, I knew when he was unhappy. Every time.” She got up and walked around the breakfast bar and began to rinse their dishes and slip them into the dishwasher. “That was always the great challenge with Chad. When he was content, he was the best man in the world. He was a perfect partner in almost every way. When he wasn’t, he was flailing around looking for where to place blame. Pretty often the blame fell on Max Carmichael, the CEO of their practice. Sometimes it fell on a client who was challenging him. And then of course there was me. I was a frequent whipping post. But I was used to it. I signed up for it, after all.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Over the years we fell into a routine. Chad was mostly supportive—he was definitely committed to his kids, which certainly helped me when they were younger. And if he was struggling, I found a way to prop him up. But as he got older and I became busier, I grew impatient, and I didn’t want to put my work on hold while we worked on Chad’s latest crisis. I suppose it was very selfish of me, but I was ready to concentrate on my career. Chad was not. He needed a full-time wife and caretaker. I was the one to first suggest a separation. I thought it was time we went in our individual directions. One of our pivotal events was an argument about his rafting trip.”
“But, Anna, he loved you. He admired you. More than once he admitted he didn’t deserve you.”
“He married me because he thought I was strong enough to hold him up. You know the story of how we met. He fell off the pier and thought he was drowning and I was the closest one. So I pulled him out.”
“The most attractive love story I’ve ever heard,” Joe said, laughing in spite of himself.
“It’s quaint, I’ll give you that. But from that moment on he expected me to fix everything. And I did. Eventually I got used to it. I could almost anticipate his mood swings.”
“But you loved him.”
“I did,” she said. “When it was good, it was very good. Just like Chad.”
“And when it was bad?” he asked.
“When it was bad, I became an overachiever. The first time I thought my marriage was over, I went to law school. I felt I was doing that out of self-preservation, but the truth is, I owe it to Chad. If I had been more comfortable in my role, in my life, I wouldn’t have taken on so much.”
“Then there’s the bench,” he said.
“And not surprisingly, that was about all Chad could take. It wasn’t long after I accepted my appointment that Chad, once again, became unhappy. But this time he said he thought we had less in common than ever. That’s when he began to move away. We only went to counseling because I insisted.”
“You outflanked him,” Joe said. “But he was very proud of you.”
“He resented me,” she said. “He once looked me in the eye and said, ‘You think you’re so smart.’ Now what was I supposed to say to that?”
“What did you say?” Joe asked.
“I said I knew I was smart!”
Joe let out a big gust of laughter and Anna quickly joined him. They carried on like that until tears were running down their cheeks, slowly getting back to control.
“You know what I’m really glad about?” she asked. “I’m glad I’m not dead and you and Chad aren’t sitting here talking about what a pain in the ass I was.”
“I always thought you were smart,” he said.
“Chad apologized for saying that but he couldn’t erase the fact that that’s how he really felt. As if I was showing off. He was threatened by me. By my position.”
“And yet you loved him.”
When she nodded, she pursed her lips. “Whatever it was, we didn’t get a chance to fix it or make it better. And now we never will.”
“You’ll have to fix whatever is going on without him. You’re a strong woman and amazing mother. It’s perfectly all right for you to think about yourself for a while. Guilt free.”
“I have to completely reinvent myself and I have an entirely new past to try to build it on. A new set of facts!”