“Years ago.”
Caitlin’s mind raced. Then a furious thought pushed its way in. “Does Finn know that he already knows?”
“I have no clue what Finn does or does not know. Which should be more than obvious right about now.”
Caitlin checked herself. She had to tread carefully here. Violet was the one being wronged. Except—all of a sudden Caitlin didn’t know where she stood either.
“Where was Finn when George told you this? Where was I?”
“Not there, obviously.”
“When were you alone with George?” Caitlin heard the accusation in her voice and didn’t bother to mask it.
Violet sighed heavily. “We tend to romanticize those early days, when the kids were babies: It was so much fun to be on maternity leave at the same time, and blah blah blah. But do you remember how exhausted we were? I mean, I came to understand why they use sleep-deprivation as a form of torture. And you had the worst of it, with two newborns on different feeding schedules.”
Caitlin nodded irritably. Of course she remembered. But she’d been so happy to have the twins after lonely years of failing to get pregnant that she’d felt as if she had no right to complain—and so mostly, she hadn’t.
“Well, one night George was trying to let you get some sleep. It must have been midnight, or later. I’d just gotten Bear settled back into his crib and went outside to dump out the diaper pail—it was stinking up the whole house—and George was coming up the sidewalk with the stroller. The boys were asleep in there, but as soon as he stopped to talk to me, they woke back up. I was kind of beyond sleep myself at that point, so I got us a couple of beers and walked up and down the driveway with him, keeping him company. It was the only way he could get them to stay down.”
“And that was such a bonding experience that after one beer he decides to spill his guts that he doesn’t think he’s the father of his kids?”
“It was two beers. And the added factor of no sleep. But yeah, basically. He sort of mentioned it as if I already knew, as if it were something I myself had to have come to terms with too. I remember that striking me as odd. He seemed surprised, almost apologetic that he was the one telling me.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“That he was ‘shooting blanks.’” Violet made little air quotes with her fingers. “Now that I’ve heard your side, I gather that’s why he never wanted to have the test done. He said he’d known since he was a teenager—some kind of sports injury turned it up.”
“A teenager? So his parents know?”
“It didn’t sound like it. Maybe he was eighteen, an adult? He said he was afraid that you wouldn’t marry him if you knew. And then after the fact, his fear was that if you adopted, his parents would be disappointed about the Bryce-Daniels line ending. He seemed pretty humiliated about the idea of anyone knowing. I tried to tell him that was silly—it’s not like it’s anything he can control.”
“So all those years, he knew we couldn’t get pregnant, and he let me keep on hoping? I mean, he knew I wanted to be a mother, and he married me without telling me that he couldn’t father children?”
Caitlin reeled. Through the fog, her high beams illuminated a sign for a rest area two miles ahead. She was going to have to pull over. She didn’t feel safe driving with this tornado swirling around in her head.
Violet’s voice softened a little. “He said he hoped that if he stalled long enough, you might change your mind and decide you didn’t want kids. But then you got pregnant with the twins. And of course he knew they couldn’t be his, but he just—” Violet shrugged. “He just played along. He said as sad as he was to think of you having an affair, in some ways he was actually relieved. You would have what you wanted, his family would never know about his shortcomings, and he would get to continue being your husband and even become a dad.”
But Caitlin’s racing thoughts had stalled. “He was hoping I’d change my mind? So he could blame our childlessness on me? So his parents could resent me instead of being disappointed in him?”
She slowed the car as the off-ramp for the rest area approached. It was as if all the insecurities she’d ever had about not being good enough for George’s family were coming to a head. Of the whole hoity lot, her own husband would have been the one to throw her under the bus.
“I don’t think that’s what he meant, Cait. He probably just figured it would be easier to tell people the two of you had decided against it.”
Caitlin’s very skin was tingling with embarrassment. That Violet had known all this and had never told her—what Violet must have thought of her, of George, of their marriage … And yet even as her fury built, there was something as bizarrely comforting as it was disturbing about the fact that George had known all along and had stayed. George had stayed. Every time Caitlin had imagined him finding out and leaving her, she’d played it out wrong. That was one nightmare, at least, that would never come to life. At least, not the way she’d pictured it.
“If you had any idea what it would have done for me if you’d just told me this—if you’d been enough of a friend to tell me this—” Caitlin could hear the hypocrisy in her words even as they escaped her mouth, but it was too late. Violet’s face changed. Caitlin had rarely seen so much as a hint of sadness, or resentment, or remorse, or even wistfulness from Violet before Finn disappeared with Bear. Now, here it all was—years’ worth, condensed into one searing, disbelieving, mocking, frozen glare.
Caitlin swung the car into a spot near the restroom and switched off the ignition. “All the wrong people know all the wrong secrets here,” she said, her voice small in the suddenly silent space. She tried to manage a nervous laugh, but even to her own ears, it sounded more like a whimper from a wounded animal.
“Sometimes I wish I’d never met any of you,” Violet said quietly.
35
AUGUST 2016
The part where you fathered my children.
Finn actually laughed—until he saw that George was serious. “Whoa,” he said, his smile fading. “Whatever you think you know, you’ve got it wrong.”
“Oh, it’s wrong, all right. Like I said, we’re not friends.”
“We were. We are.”
George’s arm went flying, palm splayed, and caught Finn’s plate at the edge of the coffee table. Peanut butter crackers rained across the room; the dish shattered on the brick hearth. Finn jumped. “Jesus, man, if the kids are sleeping back there, they won’t be for long.”
“So now that the cat’s out of the bag, you’re going to start acting like their father? Way to step up.”