Chapter 4: The Drive Home
I drove home alone.
James offered to follow me.
I told him to stay.
Someone needed to stay, and I couldn't be the one to do it, not yet, and he understood that without me having to explain it further.
The drive was twenty-two minutes.
I know because I've driven it ten thousand times and I know every light, every turn, every stretch where the road widens and you can see the water tower on the left.
I don't remember any of it that night.
I was just suddenly in the driveway with the engine still running.
I sat there for a while.
Then I went inside.
My mother-in-law Ruth was in the kitchen.
She had put the boys to bed and was washing the dinner dishes with the radio on low, the way she always does when she's waiting for someone to come home and doesn't want to look like she's waiting.
She turned when she heard me come in.
One look at my face and she turned the radio off.
"Sit down," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You're not.
Sit down."
I sat at the kitchen table.
She dried her hands and sat across from me and didn't say anything, just waited.
"James had an affair," I said.
"Two years ago.
There's a baby.
Three days old.
The mother didn't survive the delivery."
Ruth's hands went flat on the table.
"The baby's name is Clara," I said.
Something moved across Ruth's face that I couldn't read.
"He called me to the hospital to tell me," I said.
"And to ask me — I don't know what he was asking me.
I don't know if I know yet."
"Where is he now?"
"Still there."
Ruth was quiet for a moment.
"How old?"
"Three days."
She nodded slowly, the way she does when she's thinking through something she doesn't want to say wrong.
"Did you know?" I asked.
"About the woman.
About any of it."
She looked at me directly.
"No.
I did not know."
I believed her.
Ruth is many things, but she has never been able to lie to my face.
It's one of the things I've always trusted about her.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"That's an honest answer."
"I don't want credit for it."
She got up and put the kettle on without asking.
She set a mug in front of me and sat back down.
"When James's father left," she said, "Clara was two years old."
I looked up.
"My daughter," she said.
"James's sister.
She passed before you and James met — he doesn't talk about her much." She wrapped both hands around her own mug.
"Her name was Clara."
The kettle started to hiss.
"James never told you," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"No."
"He doesn't — he finds it hard." She looked at the table.
"She was four when she passed.
He was seven.
He used to say her name in his sleep for years after."
I sat very still.
"I'm not telling you this to make you feel something you don't want to feel," Ruth said.
"I'm telling you because you deserve to understand what you're actually looking at."
"He named her," I said.
"He told me he didn't know the name until tonight.
But he named her after Clara."
"Or Diane did," Ruth said.
"And maybe James told Diane, at some point, about his sister.
People tell things in the middle of the night that they don't tell their wives in the daytime."
That landed somewhere tender and I didn't push it.
"I had that name picked out since I was nineteen," I said.
"James knew that."
"I know he did."
"So either it's a coincidence that breaks my heart, or it isn't a coincidence, and that breaks it differently."
Ruth didn't answer right away.
The kettle clicked off.
Steam rose from the spout.
"You don't have to decide what it means tonight," she said.
"Everyone keeps telling me that."
"Because it's true."
I wrapped my hands around the mug.
It was too hot to drink but I held it anyway.
"She has my nose," I said.
"That baby.
She has my nose exactly and I don't know what to do with that."
Ruth looked at me for a long moment.
"I know," she said.
And then, more quietly: "I saw it too.
In the photo James sent me."
My head came up.
Ruth's jaw tightened.
She had not meant to say that.
"He sent you a photo," I said.
"Before he called me."
She didn't answer.
"Ruth.
He sent you a photo of that baby before he called me to come to the hospital."
She set her mug down.
"Yes."
"How long before?"
May you like
She looked at the table.
"Two hours."
