The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [77]
“The road not taken. You know that saying? I think of it all the time. Things I'd do different. Choices I'd make.”
“Like what?” he asks softly, yielding to another of her confidences.
The telephone rings. Glancing at the caller ID number, she gets up quickly. She answers it in the kitchen. He wanders over to the bookcase, pretending to read the titles. He takes down a book and opens it. The words are a blur. From around the corner her voice is breathless, expectant; not the husband, he can tell.
“I got it … I did … It's enough … Thank you. But that's not why I called … I know … I'm sorry … But I'm having a hard time … It's just, I … I know, but I miss you … I miss you so much … I know, but when … He could be like that forever … It's like I've stopped living …”
Suddenly, screaming from above. Running feet, the shrieking child on the staircase. “Mommy! Mommy!” she howls, then freezes, staring down at him in terror.
“Lyra, it's okay, baby. It's okay. Mommy's here. Here I am.” She rushes past and scoops up the child. She sits on a step, rocking the girl in her tight embrace while he swallows against the bile searing his throat. He doesn't want to hate her like this. But it's as much a reflex as flinching from a blow. The good and the bad, love, hate, they always end the same—with this deadening reminder that innocence is false. An alluring snare, another trap set in his way.
ora and Ken are on their way up to bed. Everything seems natural enough about their end-of-day routine. And yet there is this sting in the air, a kind of static charging their nearness with expectation, all that remains unspoken, unasked, making each acutely aware of the other. Lately at bedtime, one usually lingers behind, so the other can get under the covers first, lessening any occasion of intimacy with the awkwardness of their parallel, though bleakly separate lives. Tonight, as Ken turns out the lights and Nora locks the doors, she has been telling him about lunch today with Stephen. They were at Bollio's, and who did they run into but Annette and Thomas. Thomas? Ken asks. Thomas: from the gallery, she reminds him, her hopeful mood snagging on the memory of that difficult night. But it's a brief stab, lasting only a moment, because they have to move on, and if this is to work, she has to. Maybe even more than he does. Anyway, Stephen was absolutely beside himself to see Annette with a man. Since his cousin's stroke, Stephen's devotion has begun to border on the obsessive. He was making such a nuisance of himself at the rehab hospital, visiting at least once a day, pestering doctors and criticizing therapists, that Oliver begged Ken to tell him to stop coming so often. Ken hated to, but he did, and, now, just as he told his brother would happen, Stephen is terribly hurt. Devastated. And he blames Ken for his banishment, not Oliver.
“I'm surprised he asked you out to lunch,” Ken calls in to her.
“Actually, I asked him,” Nora calls back from the kitchen where she is pouring detergent into the dishwasher. She forgot to run it earlier. “It's the Medical supplement, I need his help.”
“Still, I'm surprised he went. Under the circumstances,” Ken says from the doorway. Your being my wife, he means. And this easy avowal of their union floods her with warmth. “He's such a head case.”
“Ah, but he's our head case, isn't he?” she says, and, of all things, winks as she closes the dishwasher.
“I guess,” he sighs.
It's been a pleasant evening, the first in months that they talked so much, even after dinner was over. With prodding, Chloe finally read them a few interesting passages from Max's long e-mails. That prompted Nora's recollection of her first newspaper assignment. It was supposed to be