“I did get pregnant again, after Caitlin was gone. When we were trying. I did get pregnant, but I had a miscarriage. I didn’t tell you, and I’m sorry.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. The room felt closer, more contained. I became aware that my mouth was hanging open. “We had another baby?”
“A miscarriage,” Abby said.
“And you didn’t tell me?” I still wasn’t sure I understood.
“I was protecting you,” she said. “In your state of mind, with Caitlin gone, I didn’t think you could handle it.” She reached up, wiped at her nose.
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because . . . because I don’t want to walk away with you thinking I wasn’t willing to do all I could for this marriage.”
“By lying to me?”
“I have to go, Tom. I really do.” She bent down and grabbed the canvas bag, and without stopping her motion or slowing down, she breezed across the room and to the back door. “Think about what I said, Tom. About getting help. See a therapist. Or ask Ryan. He might know someone. You can work with someone about your family, about your stepfather, about the rejection you felt there. I think you need it.”
And then she was gone.
Part II
Chapter Seventeen
My father died when I was four. Pancreatic cancer. Most of my memories of him are in fragments—little, tattered pieces I carry around with me. They come back at odd moments. I remember the musky smell of his cologne and the rough way his stubbled face scraped against mine. Sometimes when I’m shaving my own face, I wonder how much he and I would have looked alike.
I remember that his hands were big, with thick fingers, and when he picked me up and held me under the armpits, his grip was so tight and strong it hurt a little. A good hurt that I didn’t mind. And I remember his voice, loud and strong, and the way it almost seemed to ring when he called my name or my mother’s name from across the house.
But the most coherent memory of him occurred on a spring day about a year before he died. It’s the only sustained narrative memory of him I have.
My mother wasn’t home. I can’t say where she was or what she was doing, but she wasn’t there, which meant my father was watching me. And I don’t know if he knew he was sick yet or not. If he knew, he would have just found out. More likely, he hadn’t been diagnosed yet, but the cancer was already there, growing inside him, extending its tendrils into his healthy cells and tissue, destroying his body from the inside out.
Our backyard sloped down to the houses behind us. Some kids a little older than me lived back there. Our mothers knew each other, and from time to time they’d let us all run around together under their watchful eyes. On this particular spring day I’m remembering, I was out with those other kids, a boy and girl named Amy and Kevin. The weather was newly warm, the trees and flowers were starting to bud and bloom, and the parents were probably glad to be able to let us all out of the house to burn off energy.
But at some point that day, the skies darkened.
Enormous clouds, thick and purple and looming, grew above us. The wind picked up, making branches and leaves fall to the ground around us. It buffeted our small bodies until we swayed and struggled to stay on our feet.
There’s a gap in my memory. It’s possible the parents of the other children called them in, or perhaps the other kids decided to run home in the face of the threatening storm. I just know that I ended up in our backyard alone as the storm continued to blow. And it seemed as though the entire world had been set in motion. The trees bucked and bent, the fence that bordered the yard shuddered, and everything that wasn’t anchored down—every leaf, every scrap of paper, every grass clipping—took to the air and swirled around me until I felt as though I were standing in one of those Christmas snow globes, the kind that when shaken produce the kinetic spinning of a blizzard.
I turned toward the house, moving my little legs a half step at a time. The wind pushed against me, holding me upright as though I were being restrained by invisible wires. Something flew into my eye, a quick stabbing pain. I pressed my hand against the eyelid and kept walking forward as best I could.