Claire shakes her head.
“This lie, as I later discovered, forced me into several more. It’s amazing how quickly one becomes a committed liar. Lies beget lies. But I knew that we needed professional medical opinion on our side. Proof that Cath had died of a natural cause.”
“You succeeded.” Her voice is small.
“I begged Dr. Anthony Paget, the director of studies in medicine at Trinity, to help us. Back then, I didn’t have anything to offer him. Not when my dad had disinherited me for marrying you. The tabloids, I said, would have a field day if it ever emerged that the daughter of a Trinity alumnus had died of a terrible mistake.”
Claire winces.
“Paget studied my tearful face for a long time in silence. The English literature DOS, he said, had once mentioned my name at Formal Hall before passing the port. Mark Henry Evans was one of the most promising students to ever pass through the front gates of Trinity, it seems. It would indeed be a shame if my future were tarnished by an accident.”
I detect a sudden flash of comprehension in Claire’s tear-filled eyes. She might even be making a few relevant connections in her head. Such as the reason why I decided to contribute half my first novel’s advance to Paget’s research work. Fact: The problem with Monos is that they are unable to see the big picture. Their little brains tend to run on limited processing power. So you have to be patient with them.
“I’m sorry,” she says, tears streaking down her face once again. “I thought that…my diary said that…”
“Your diary says what you want it to say. Memory equals the facts you choose to retain. We are all victims of the pasts we prefer.”
“So I lost my mind…”
“While I’ve been dying a slow, painful death for nineteen years. Truth equals suffering, Claire.”
Perhaps Dad was right in the end. Fact: He insisted all those years ago that marrying a Mono was an act of madness and that it was my stupidity that prompted him to disinherit me. I now understand why he did what he did. But even he did not think I would be dense enough to marry a Mono with an occasional tendency to madness. That makes it twice as bad.
“So I’m a monster,” Claire says, her eyes burning crucibles of pain. “Who killed her own daughter.”
I have nothing to say in reply. What could I possibly tell her now?
My wife crawls to the sofa before pulling herself onto the cushions. Her slow, tortured movements are those of a woman who has lost everything. Her eyes are still filled with tears. But I sense a new inwardness to their depths. They are enveloped by a dull opaqueness, turning them from lavender to larimar. It’s the glazed-over look one sees in the eyes of a fish that has been dead for more than a week.
“I’m sorry, Mark,” she says. Her voice is a pitiful whisper. “I now understand why you strayed.”
I freeze. That’s one connection I hadn’t made myself. Perhaps my wife isn’t as dense as I’ve always thought.
“But I don’t understand why you stayed.”
I remain silent.
“Why did you stay with me for so long?” Claire continues. “After what happened to Cath?”
Lust makes you stray, but love makes you stay.
—Mark Henry Evans, On Death’s Door
Chapter Twenty-Six
Claire
My question hangs in the void between us. Horror blinds my vision. Sorrow grips my heart. I look down at my hands, the hands that caused the death of my own daughter.
The hands of a murderer.
I will never be able to forgive myself for as long as I live. Maybe I should slash my wrists again, hang myself from a rope, redeem Cath’s death with my own. I ought to punish myself each day for the rest of my life, spend each waking hour in atonement for my terrible sin.
But why hasn’t Mark punished me more? For killing his only daughter? Why did he not leave at once? Why has he stuck with me—his wife, the evil murderer—for so long?
“You haven’t answered my question.” My words spill out in a tremble. “Why did you stay?”
“I had to,” he says. “My brain kept telling me facts I couldn’t ignore. Like the fact that it was you who kept us going at first.”
I stiffen.
“The fact that I was stupid enough to resign from my Trinity position. I thought it would be easy for me to publish my first novel. I was wrong. Horribly wrong.”
“I know this, but—”
“Trinity didn’t want me back. Those snooty Duo fellows at High Table were appalled that I’d married a Mono.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Your Varsity Blues earnings kept food on our table. When our savings ran out, you forced yourself to return to work. Only three months after Cath’s death. You then kept us going for another fifteen goddamned months before I got my first advance. You even offered to sell your engagement ring when things got really bad, but I said no. These are facts, too.”
“But I still don’t understand why you stayed.”
“Facts, Claire. Facts. It was all down to the facts I’ve learned: we came to depend on each other. Helped each other stay afloat. Alive in this hostile world. I had no one at my side after my family disowned me. Apart from you.”
“I guess we promised Chaplain Walters that we would stick with each other.”
“Deeds outweigh promises. You’ve tried so hard to please me for years. That’s what my diary tells me each time I read it. It also says that I feel twice as guilty whenever you try to be nice.”
“So you wrote these facts down. But why did they make you stay after Cath…after she died…”
A loud sob drowns out the rest of my sentence. Mark frowns.
“I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I really don’t. The what is often easy. Yet the why is usually elusive.”
I remain silent.
“I know what you gave up to marry me, Claire. We both fought to be together, right from the start. That’s a fact, too. A fact that may well trump everything I’ve just said.”
I freeze.
“How on earth…”
With a sigh, Mark stumbles to his built-in bookshelf on the opposite wall and pulls out a thin folder labeled “Miscellaneous Documents.” He opens the file and extracts an old dog-eared document.
“I accidentally found this letter,” he says. “Back in October of 1995, after we moved to 23 Milton Road. I made a secret copy of it so that I could keep reminding myself of what you decided to forgo. For us.”
He hands me the sheet.
“I’ve read it so many times that I can practically recite it in my sleep,” he adds with a sigh.
I look down at the photocopy, its edges brittle and yellowing with age. The authoritative-looking handwriting on it reads:
Ainsley Manor, Buckinghamshire
18 August 1995