Chapter 7: The Conversation We Should Have Had Years Ago
Chloe stayed for dinner.
I hadn't planned it.
She hadn't planned it.
But after David left, neither of us moved toward the door, and eventually I went to the kitchen and she followed, and we stood side by side at the counter and I made pasta because it was the only thing I could think of that didn't require decisions.
"You used to make this," she said, watching me.
"You remember that?"
"You made it the first Sunday after you moved in.
I didn't come to the table." She paused.
"I could smell it from my room.
I was angry that it smelled good."
I almost smiled.
"I tried so hard that first year," I said.
"I know." She leaned against the counter.
"I knew it then too.
I just — I was seventeen and my mother had been g*ne for two years and my father had replaced her, as far as I was concerned, and I didn't want to let you in.
It felt like a betrayal."
"Of her."
"Of her.
Of myself.
Of the version of our family I was still trying to hold together." She was quiet for a moment.
"And then I found out about Sandra, and everything I'd been holding together just — fell apart.
Because it turned out the family I was protecting had never been what I thought it was."
I put the pasta on to boil.
"How did you find out?" I asked.
"His phone.
He left it on the kitchen table and a message came through.
I wasn't snooping — I just saw it." She crossed her arms.
"I confronted him that same night.
He cried.
He told me it was over.
He begged me not to tell Mum." She looked at the window.
"She had maybe eight months left.
I made a decision.
I kept his secret.
And I have never fully forgiven myself for that."
"That wasn't your burden to carry," I said.
"You were sixteen."
"I know.
My therapist has said the same thing approximately four hundred times." She said it without bitterness, just a dry recognition.
"It doesn't entirely help."
I drained the pasta.
She found the plates without being asked — opened the right cupboard on the first try, the way you do when a kitchen is stored somewhere in your muscle memory.
We sat at the table together.
"After your mother passed," I said, "and your father and I got together — did you ever think about telling me?"
"Constantly." She twirled pasta around her fork without eating it.
"But I didn't know you.
And I didn't know if you knew about Sandra, or if you were — I didn't know what you were to him.
Whether you were another Sandra or whether you were something real." She finally took a bite.
"And then time passed and it got harder and harder to find the right moment, and eventually I just — left.
It was easier to leave than to stay and watch him perform being a good man."
"He isn't a bad man," I said.
And then I stopped, surprised by my own words.
Chloe looked at me.
"I don't know why I said that," I said.
"I think you said it because you believe it," she said.
"And I think that's the most complicated part of all of this.
He isn't a monster.
He's just someone who chose the easy thing every single time, and the easy thing kept costing other people." She set her fork down.
"It cost my mother her right to know the truth.
It cost me twelve years of distance from a woman who might have been — who could have been—" She stopped.
"You can say it," I said quietly.
She looked at me.
"Someone I could have come home to," she said.
I put my hand over hers on the table.
She didn't pull away.
We sat like that for a moment — two women who had been kept apart by one man's fear of his own past, finally sitting at the same table, finally talking.
"I want to meet Rose," I said.
Chloe's face changed.
Something in it opened.
"She'd like you," she said.
"She likes people who cook."
I laughed.
May you like
It came out a little broken but it was real.
"Then I'm already ahead," I said.
