Chapter 7: What Caroline Asked Me
The dancing had started.
Daniel had pulled Rachel onto the floor, and the room had shifted into something warmer — music, movement, the sound of people letting the evening become what it was supposed to be.
I was at the bar getting a glass of water when Caroline appeared beside me.
She didn't have Graham with her.
She looked smaller than she had at the start of the evening.
The silver dress was the same.
The jewelry was the same.
But something had gone out of her posture, the careful performance of it, and what was left looked more like the woman I had married twenty-nine years ago than the one who had walked out of our house.
"Thomas."
"Caroline."
She set her clutch on the bar.
Didn't look at me directly.
"I want to ask you something," she said.
"And I need you to tell me the truth."
"All right."
"Did you tell them not to hate me?"
I thought about the question.
About all the mornings I had answered questions I didn't have good answers to.
About the night Rachel, at fourteen, had sat across from me at the kitchen table and asked why her mother hadn't called on her birthday, and I had said — carefully, honestly — that I didn't know, but that her mother loved her, and that sometimes adults made choices that had nothing to do with how much they loved their children.
"Yes," I said.
Caroline pressed her lips together.
"Why?"
"Because they needed a mother," I said.
"Not a villain.
A mother they could one day have a relationship with, if you were ever ready for one.
I didn't want to be the reason that door stayed closed."
She was quiet for a long moment.
"Graham said you poisoned them against me."
"I know what Graham said."
"I believed him," she said.
"For a long time, I believed him.
It was easier." She finally looked at me.
"I think I knew it wasn't true.
I think I knew for a long time.
But knowing something and doing something about it are very different things."
"They are," I agreed.
"I wasted fifteen years," she said.
"Because I was a coward."
I didn't argue with that.
"Is it too late?" she asked.
"That's not a question for me," I said.
"I'm not the one you hurt."
She nodded slowly.
"They're extraordinary," she said.
"All six of them."
"Yes," I said.
"They are."
"You did that."
"We all did," I said.
"Including you.
Whatever you gave them before you left — the good parts — they carried that with them.
Children do."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she picked up her clutch, straightened her shoulders, and turned toward the table where Lily was sitting alone, watching the dancing.
I watched Caroline cross the room.
I watched her stop in front of Lily.
I watched Lily look up at her.
I couldn't hear what was said.
But I saw Lily move her bag off the chair beside her.
And I saw Caroline sit down.
Behind me, the bar was busy.
The music was warm.
Somewhere across the room, Rachel was laughing at something Daniel had said, her head thrown back, her whole face open.
I turned back to my water glass.
May you like
Graham's chair near the exit was empty.
At some point in the last hour, he had left.
