We hadn’t spoken since we’d climbed back in the truck and started the short journey back to my house. I stared out of the window, not seeing any of the trees or the fields as we passed. I just saw his face on the day I told him I was pregnant. It was utter joy. Or was it? He’d covered his mouth with his hands and tears had formed in his eyes. I remember laughing at his inability to speak. I closed my eyes at the memory, wondering if I’d gotten it very, very, wrong.
“We’re here,” I heard. I’d been so focussed on my thoughts, I hadn’t realised we’d already returned.
“Thank you for this morning, I needed that. Just a couple of hours of normality, or escape from my normality, I should say.”
“Any time. I wish I could do more to help.”
I nodded as I climbed from the truck and walked the few steps to the front door. I turned to watch him drive away.
Dad and Christian were sitting at the kitchen table when I walked through. Dad gave me a small smile but Chris hadn’t looked up.
“There’s tea in the pot if you want one,” Dad said.
I grabbed a mug from the draining board and added a splash of milk before sitting and pouring the tea.
“Helen has agreed to a DNA test. Although she’s adamant who the father is, I’ve told her I’ll take her to court if she refuses,” Chris said.
“Can you do that? Take her to court?”
“I don’t actually know, but I am a lawyer so the threat was enough. There are so many things to think about. I mean, I changed my will to leave money in trust for him. I need to rectify that.”
I didn’t answer immediately, I wasn’t sure how. Christian’s bitter tone of voice displayed the anger we both should feel, but Alistair was an innocent party. Chris had been his father for the first few months of his life.
“Can Helen survive, financially, without you?” Dad asked. It was a question on the tip of my tongue as well.
“I don’t care, Dad. She chose the path she’s walked down, maybe she should have thought about that before.”
His words were callous and so unlike Christian. Of the two of us, he was the more compassionate, the empathic one who’d never walked past a homeless person without leaving a pound, or picking up a damaged bird to bring home and nurture when we were children. I could only assume it was the hurt and anger talking.
Dad went to speak and I gently shook my head at him. Christian turned towards me.
“You can understand, can’t you? You must feel as angry as I do.”
I had to think on my words carefully. “I’m angry, Chris, but it’s a different type of anger, I think. I don’t have Trey here to curse and shout at, to demand answers from. I’m all spent in the hatred department. I was angry at Trey for unbuckling that seatbelt, I was angry with him for dying. I’m numb and I’m extremely confused. I can’t channel my anger towards anyone, so I’m swallowing it down as much as I can, right now. Mostly, I feel such an overwhelming sense of sadness and disappointment. And betrayal like I’ve never felt before.”
Helen had been my friend before she started dating Christian. We’d known each other in university and often socialised. She was the straight one, although fun-loving, she was always so cautious to the point of carrying a rape alarm, having a safety contact on speed dial, and prearranging all her taxis. She wasn’t a risk-taker at all.
As much as I felt the stab in my heart at Trey’s betrayal, I also felt the knife she had twisted in me as well.
“Until I have evidence, Chris, I’m trying to contain my feelings. You said the nickname in her contacts was Kitt. I’ve never heard of Trey being called that.”
“I have. When we were away skiing one year, he was chatting to a woman at a bar, nothing untoward, but he gave his name as Kitt. I didn’t really think anything of it, at the time.”
“You didn’t think my husband chatting a woman up in a bar and giving a false name was odd?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. We were getting drinks, she just started talking to him and he replied, being polite, I imagine. I took the drinks back to the table and he followed shortly after.”
“Christian, he gave a woman his name, false or not, that isn’t polite chit-chat with a stranger at a bar.”
Was I overreacting? I couldn’t recall a time I’d had a brief conversation while buying drinks that needed an exchange of names.
“Did you ask him about it?” I asked.
“No. I didn’t think any more of it, until I saw the name on Helen’s phone.”
“Which skiing trip was this?”
“A couple of years ago, I think.”
“About the same time he’s supposed to have started this affair.”
Had Trey taken on a fake name for Helen’s contact list and decided to use it elsewhere?
“You don’t want to believe me, and I can totally understand that, Dani. Trust me, I didn’t want to believe it either. I have wished and prayed that it would have been anyone other than Trey. He was my best friend as well as your husband. He was family to us both. If her affair had been with a stranger, not that my decision to leave would have changed, but I think I could have stomached it a little easier than I can right now,” Christian said.
“When Alistair was born, why was I not allowed to see him?” I decided to ask a question that had been playing on my mind for months.
Christian reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his wallet. He slid a photograph of Alistair from inside and handed it to me.
“I imagine Helen thought you might see a resemblance,” he said.
Alistair was dark-haired and brown-eyed. Christian was blond and blue-eyed. Helen was dark-haired, also with blue eyes. The only one of us that had brown eyes was Trey.
“I don’t see a resemblance, to be honest, but Hannah had blue eyes, so I don’t think there is one colour more dominant than another. I think that’s an urban myth,” I replied.
“Maybe, maybe not. I thought Helen was suffering from depression, but was she? She was the one who seemed to block all contact, and Dad only saw Alistair because I didn’t tell her I was collecting him for a visit. Now I know it wasn’t depression.”
He gave me the consideration in not telling me she was grieving, and I silently thanked him for that.
“I’m going to tell Patricia, Christian. I want to ask her about the nickname and no matter what we think or feel, Alistair is possibly her grandchild,” I said.
“She could also supply DNA for testing, I imagine,” he replied.
I thought Christian had a good point. I had no idea where I’d get whatever was needed for a sample of Trey’s DNA.
“I’m going to take a nap, I have a terrible headache coming on,” I said.
I didn’t have a terrible headache coming on, and it was a daft thing to say. How does one know just how terrible the headache was going to be? I wanted some space, time to breathe and collect my thoughts.
Sitting beside my bed was the letter I was yet to post to Lincoln. I opened the envelope and pulled out the note. A need to rewrite that letter had me grab the pad and pen and settle in my chair beside the window.
Lincoln,
I don’t really know where to start with this letter. I’ve just discovered that my husband was, possibly, having an affair with my sister-in-law. Not only were they having an affair, but also he fathered her child. I can’t articulate how that makes me feel right now.