I heard a door open and gently close, I assumed Miller had slipped out to leave us alone for a while. Dad placed his hands on our backs, encouraging us to sit. He used to do that when we’d fallen out as children. We had to sit opposite each other and talk it out. Then we had to hug. I guessed we were doing it in reverse order.
I watched his eyes widen in fear, his jaw grinding in anger, and the tears fall in sadness. He was going through every emotion at the same time. I took his hands in mine as Dad sat at the end of the table, not wanting to sit directly beside either one of us, but to be able to reach out to us both at the same time.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I told you I found a photograph she’d sent, she was half-naked, well, she had her knickers on, nothing more. It was a pic taken before she was pregnant. The name of the recipient was Kitt.”
I frowned. Kitt didn’t ring any bells in my mind.
“I didn’t twig. She let me believe it was someone at work; they hadn’t had sex just some flirting that had gotten out of control. I sort of believed her, at first. I was bitterly disappointed, hurt, but she’d just had Alistair, so I put it on the back burner for a little while.”
I guessed that answered why we hadn’t seen them, or been invited to visit.
“She changed, I thought she had pre-baby blues, then post-baby blues, or whatever it’s called. Now I know it was grief.”
If I had been a dog, or a cat, or whatever animal, it would have been so visible that my hackles had just risen at his statement. I felt the hairs on all parts of my body stand on end in utter rage.
“She doesn’t fucking get to grieve for him!” I said. I felt Dad reach forwards and place his hand on my arm. I pulled my arm away.
“She doesn’t have the right to grieve,” I repeated.
“No, she doesn’t. But she did, and I mistook it for something to do with the pregnancy. Now, in hindsight, it should have been obvious the baby wasn’t mine. He looks nothing like me at all.”
I noticed the baby and not the use of his name.
“Does he…?” I turned to Dad; he’d met Alistair.
Dad sighed and gently shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t say, for sure. He’s fair-haired and blue-eyed.”
“So was Hannah,” I said quietly.
“So are you, and you,” Dad said, looking between Christian and me.
Christian and I were both dark blonde, I guessed the formal term would be. Our eyes were blue but with specks of brown. We’d often laughed about our strange eyes; pleased they were a mix of our parents. Dad had brown eyes, Mum had blue.
Christian shook his head.
“Tell me more,” I demanded.
“I found letters going back two years. Some of it was just general chat, some more explicit. One or two detailed what fucking fun they’d had on a weekend away.”
I tried to remember times when Trey had been away, either it had been golfing with his buddies, but then Christian was usually included in that, or it had been work. I started to laugh, bitterly.
“How fucking clichéd. I guess they told us it was a work thing when instead they were sneaking away to fuck each other.” I’d spat the words out and caught the wince that had Dad’s eyes partially close and his brow crease.
Christian didn’t reply.
“What did she say, when you confronted her?” I asked.
“She couldn’t do anything other than admit it. I asked her if they were in love, she wouldn’t reply. I screamed at her, I punched doors, threw things. Then I asked her if Alistair was mine and she said no. She looked at me without any fucking emotion on her face, and said no.”
At that point Christian broke down again.
I was numb, stunned into paralysis. I wanted to reach forwards and comfort him but I couldn’t.
I’d lost my baby; she was buried just a half a mile from me. Yet Trey’s blood still ran, his DNA, his genes, were being kept alive through an adulterous relationship.
It was too much for me to take in at that moment. I let go of Christian’s hand and I stood. On shaking legs, I walked to the counter. I needed to do something and I wanted to laugh out loud as I switched the kettle on to boil. How very fucking British of me!
I placed my hands on the counter and stared at the white-tiled wall. One tile had a crack. I focussed on the crack in a wall of symmetry, of pristine. I wanted to laugh. The more I looked, the more the crack stood out against the perfect. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I thought I had the perfect marriage. Trey was my soul mate; we were the symmetry, the pristine. Yet there had been a fucking large crack, which, like that tile, I hadn’t noticed until then.
The steam from the boiling kettle obliterated the crack, and I pulled mugs from the rack and made tea. My throat was sore, I wasn’t sure if that was crying, screaming, or lack of previous use. I actually wanted a cup of tea, something to warm the ice inside my body and fill the hollow in my stomach.
“She sobbed at his funeral. I didn’t think it strange, at the time,” I said, as I placed three mugs on the table. I sat.
“She had no right to sob. She had no fucking right to grieve for him while I was. That day should have been mine, and mine alone. I shouldn’t have had to share grief with her,” I added. Bile rose to my throat.
I wasn’t sure I was making sense to Dad and Christian, but it was crystal clear in my mind. I was burying my husband and my child that day: a husband and child that had been wrenched from me in the most horrific way. And I hadn’t been allowed to be the one who was entitled to grieve the most. She had not only stolen my husband, as such, but she’s stolen that day as well.
There had been many times I’d wished that day had never happened, I’d prayed it would be wiped from my memory, and for a while it had. In that moment, though, it all came flooding back. How she’d sobbed, while sitting in the middle of the front pew. I remembered how her hand shook as she walked to his coffin and placed a single rose on the top, yet she’d ignored Hannah. Her single sob as his coffin was lowered into the ground resonated around my mind. It all made sense.
“I feel sick,” I said, darting from my chair and towards the back door. I needed fresh air.
I pulled the door closed behind me, knowing that in a minute or so, I’d be shivering with the cold. I wanted to be alone, just for a moment, and I hoped the blast of cold air would wipe those memories from my mind.
I gulped in air to quell the nausea. I wrapped my arms around myself, not for warmth but for comfort, and I closed my eyes. I felt myself sway a little, but I didn’t care. I could fall where I stood, it didn’t matter.
Two of the five years Trey and I had been married had been a lie. The thought tore through me.
I heard the back door open and a leather jacket was placed over my shoulders. Miller stepped in front of me, having returned, and although my arms weren’t in the sleeves, he zipped it up, protecting me against the cold. I didn’t speak, I didn’t smile, but I did look at him.
He stared at me without speaking, without blinking, for the longest time.
“Rips you apart, doesn’t it?” he whispered.
It was all I could do to nod.
“The lies, the deceit, the betrayal. If you let it, it will erode your soul, Dani.”
“You’re talking from experience?” I asked.
“Yes. I was married for years. She was having an affair; I didn’t know the guy personally, so I guess that makes it a little easier than your situation. You wanted to know why Daniel and I didn’t get on? She confessed to him, he kept her secret. I can’t forgive him for that.”
I wanted to say that, as a vicar, he had no choice, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. There was also a part of me that sympathised with Miller; family should be stronger than anything else, including faith.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be, it’s not your sin to apologise for. Now, shall we get you back in?”
“Will you stay, just for a little while?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why, but I needed him at that moment.
“Of course. Christian has gone back upstairs. Your dad is hovering over who he should be with right now.”
We walked into the kitchen and I had to wait for Miller to unzip the jacket since my arms were trapped inside. Dad was resting against the counter with his shoulders slumped.
“Go and sit with him, Dad. He needs you,” I said.
“But…”