Chapter 5: What Carol Knew
Ryan stared at his phone.
"She's outside," he said.
"She's in the car."
I looked at the window.
Headlights in the driveway, the engine still running.
"Did you know she was coming?" I asked.
"No." He was already moving toward the door.
Carol came in without waiting to be invited.
She was a small woman, sharp-featured, always dressed like she was on her way somewhere important.
Tonight she had her coat buttoned to the throat and her purse held in both hands like a shield.
She looked at Ryan first.
Then at me.
Then at the crib.
"George built that," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Ryan said.
She set her purse down on the table by the door.
"What did he tell you?"
"Everything, I think," Ryan said.
"About the land.
The trust.
The condition." He paused.
"About Nora."
Carol's face didn't change.
That was its own kind of answer.
"You knew," Ryan said.
"You knew about Nora before tonight."
"I've known about Nora for thirty-one years."
Ryan went very still.
"She's thirty-four."
"Yes."
"So you knew before Dad left."
Carol looked at him steadily.
"Your father told me when she was three years old.
He sat me down at the kitchen table — that same table we had in the house on Millbrook, the one with the chip in the corner — and he told me he had a daughter he'd never met.
That her mother had contacted him.
That she needed help." She stopped.
"And then he asked me what he should do."
Ryan sat down on the arm of the couch.
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him to do the right thing.
To step up.
To send money, at least.
To acknowledge her." Carol's voice was flat and controlled, the voice of someone who had told this story to herself many times in private.
"He said he would.
He said he'd handle it."
"But he didn't."
"He left instead." She picked up her purse again, then set it back down.
"Eight months later he was gone.
And I was left explaining to an eleven-year-old boy why his father didn't love him enough to stay."
Ryan looked at his hands.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you worshipped him." Carol's voice finally cracked, just slightly, at the edge.
"You had this idea of him.
This image.
The man who taught you to fish, who took you to ball games, who could fix anything.
And I couldn't — I wasn't going to be the one to take that from you." She shook her head.
"Maybe I was wrong.
George always said I was wrong."
"George knew you were keeping it from me?"
"George and I have disagreed about this for fifteen years." She finally looked at me.
"I'm sorry you're hearing all of this tonight.
Of all nights."
"It's all right," I said.
It wasn't entirely all right.
My back was a steady ache now, and I was exhausted in a way that went past tired.
But I also understood that this room had needed this conversation for a very long time, and that I was part of this family whether the timing was convenient or not.
"Mom," Ryan said.
"Did you ever try to find Nora yourself?"
Carol was quiet for a moment.
"Once.
About six years ago.
I got as far as a phone number." She stopped.
"I didn't call.
I didn't know what I would say.
I didn't know if she'd want to hear from me.
I'm not her mother.
I'm the woman who was married to the man who abandoned her."
"She's been writing to George," Ryan said.
"She reached out to me tonight.
By text."
Carol looked up sharply.
"She has George's number?"
"And now mine."
Something moved across Carol's face.
Not quite fear.
More like the feeling of a door opening that you'd convinced yourself was permanently sealed.
"What did she say?"
"She congratulated us on the baby."
Carol sat down.
She chose the armchair — George's chair — and sat in it with her hands folded in her lap.
"She sounds like a decent person," she said quietly.
"She sounds like someone who didn't get what she deserved," Ryan said.
"Through no fault of her own."
Carol nodded slowly.
The room was quiet.
Then Ryan said, "I want to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me."
"All right."
"Is there anything else?
Anything else about Dad, about the trust, about any of this — that I don't know yet?"
Carol looked at him for a long moment.
Then she opened her purse.
She reached inside and pulled out an envelope.
Old, the paper gone soft at the corners, the seal long since dried and re-pressed.
She held it out to Ryan.
"Your father left this with me when he went.
He said to give it to you when you had a child of your own." Her voice was steady again, but her hand wasn't.
"I've been carrying it for eighteen years."
Ryan took it.
He looked at his name on the front, written in handwriting he hadn't seen since he was eleven years old.
He didn't open it.
He just held it.
"I'll read it when I'm ready," he said.
Carol nodded.
She stood, picked up her purse properly this time, and came over to me.
She put her hand on my shoulder — not a hug, Carol wasn't a hugger — but firm and deliberate.
"Call me when it's time," she said.
"I'll be there."
She let herself out.
Ryan sat with the envelope in his hands for a long time after the headlights left the driveway.
He set it on the coffee table, face down.
"Not tonight," he said.
"No," I agreed.
"Not tonight."
He leaned back and put his arm around me, and I leaned into him, and we sat in the quiet of the house for a while.
Then I felt it.
A tightening.
Low and strong, different from the back ache, different from the baby shifting.
I looked at the clock.
"Ryan."
May you like
"Yeah."
"I think we need to go to the hospital."
