The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [113]
“And then came the stroke, so what could Ken do, he had no choice but step up to the plate. Brilliant move, though, the detective.” He winks at her. “Because that's when Kenny's dark little world started spinning out of control. Finally, somebody had to do something.”
Everything makes sense now And nothing does. So much that never will. The phone rings. She's afraid to answer. Afraid of Eddie Hawkins, afraid of friends, neighbors, her own sister, who keeps leaving messages: she really wants to come visit, why won't Nora call, is something wrong? There is, isn't there? In her bathrobe for days, blinds drawn, sleeping while the children are in school, claiming she has the flu, she can barely go through the motions when they get home. Chloe steeps bay leaves in mugs of broth, carries up dry toast points. Her miasma ends this afternoon with Drew and Chloe, arguing. She runs downstairs to find him screaming at his sister. Over nothing, really. Chloe told him to stop complaining he was out of clean underwear and wash his own damn clothes. He punched the laundry room door, stands there now holding his hand. He can't stop crying. Chloe is hysterical. Get away, he warns them both. Leave him alone. Just leave him alone. She won't, she can't, she says, holding him.
An examined life, Father Gendron said. How could she have been so blind for so long? That her own children knew the truth about Lyra devastates her, not because they kept it from her. She understands their reluctance to see her hurt and, probably, even more compelling, their fear of breaking up the family. But what she can never forgive Ken for is the painful weight of their guilty burden, entangling them in his secret. It tears her apart now as Drew finally tells her how he found out.
“Ask your dad. Go ahead, ask him,” Clay growled in his ear, pummeling his own shame and rage into his childhood friend, who didn't believe him.
Days later, Drew confided in Chloe. She said he was crazy. Clay Gendron was sick, a liar, she declared, a sadistic asshole. Of course, it wasn't true. It couldn't be, she insisted. Whatever had happened between Dad and Mrs. Gendron (Chloe no longer calls her Robin) was bad enough, but there was no way Dad was Lyra's father. It had been the night Nora went out with Kay that Drew finally confronted Ken, with Chloe looking on in disbelief Ken refused to answer his son. He didn't admit or deny it.
“This is not a conversation I'm going to have with either of you. Now or ever again,” he said coldly before walking out of the room.
“Then it's true! It must be!” Chloe cried on her father's heels, all the way up the stairs. “It is, isn't it?”
The click of his bedroom door lock was all the answer she got, or needed.
“I can't believe this. I can't believe this is happening,” she sobbed on the landing. Her father never opened the door. Drew came up and calmed her down. It would be their secret. Their mother had been hurt enough.
On Saturday Nora is clearing out closets, a catharsis of almost manic energy. She can take care of everything, her children, herself, and doesn't need anyone. It's a relief to be getting rid of it, all the excess. And yet, she's quickly tiring. It's not the physical effort that's so draining, but this mind-racing intensity that makes her realize how close she is to the edge because there's nothing she can do to make things right, but, my God, she has to do something, has to keep moving, keep busy. Staggering under armloads of winter coats and jackets, hers and the children's, she carries them out to the garage, piles them into the back of her car. This afternoon she will bring them to the dry cleaner. Next, she jams Ken's coats and jackets into two jumbo trash bags, drags them into a corner of the garage, along with the other bags of his wrinkled clothes. Vindictive and juvenile, but better than putting them curbside for trash pickup, which she had actually considered. So far, she has managed to avoid him at the paper. Thursday and Friday she called in