The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [9]
“Drew's still there,” he said this morning from his car.
“So? Besides, he's in the shower.”
“I can't. I'm running late.”
“Well, why in the office, then? Why there?” He usually couldn't wait to get away from the paper. And never stayed until five.
“I have a meeting right after.” Had he sighed?
“So, when you come home, then.”
“We need to talk.”
“Why? What is it, Ken? Tell me. Tell me now.” In the silence she could feel it. The old fear. That night, that man, so long ago. So, he knew, he finally knew.
“I'm just not myself.”
“You're depressed.” Please let that be it. Please, she implored someone. God.
“Yeah. I guess so. Or something like that.”
“Well, that happens, honey. But the trouble is it just never happens to you, so now that it has you don't know how to cope. Right?”
“I don't know,” he said softly.
She parks next to his car. Funny, she thinks, hardly any snow on it, but the usually gleaming black sports car is mud-spattered and skirted in road salt. Clothes are piled on the front seat, pale blue cotton sweater, yellow blazer, polo shirts. Summer clothes. Probably cleaned out his locker at the club, to bring them to the cleaners. Ken cares how he looks. Always has. Like his mother. A beautiful woman, Addie, with jet black hair and bright eyes. Their daughter, Chloe, has her grandmother's dark silken hair and the same gritty laughter that sent men tripping over curbs and bumping into doorways, trying to see the source of that marvelous voice.
Chloe, she thinks, unlocking the back door that leads to the editorial offices. She's in trouble again. That's why Ken's been so preoccupied and troubled. The worst came last year: Chloe and herboyfriend Max Lafferty holding hands in the family room while Max informed them that he and Chloe were getting married. Everything had been figured out, he said, brandishing his spiral notebook of lists. He would finish high school, of course, and then go on to college for his journalism degree. Chloe would work and he would, too, summers and vacations, and the baby would be in day care. They hadn't told his parents yet, but he knew they'd do their best to help. (Mr. Lafferty was a mailman with twin daughters in college.) Plus, Max added, listing the baby as a dependent would look even better on the financial aid applications. Ken was stunned into rare silence.
“What about Chloe?” Nora asked the gangly seventeen-year-old boy Chloe had been dating for less than three months. He didn't even have his license yet. The first time Nora met him he had been on his skateboard.
“We figure she'll go when I'm done,” Max answered, a flush of confidence reddening his freckles.
“It'll be my turn.” Chloe smiled up at him.
“Well, that's not the way we figure it, Max,” Ken said.
“With all due respect, sir—,” the gangly boy began.
“No due respect, just get the hell out!” Ken growled.
“Dad!” Chloe cried.
“Mr. Hammond, I don't—”
“She's sixteen, and how the hell old are you?”
“Seventeen, sir.”
“Right. So leave, Max. Just leave. I'm taking care of this. Not you.”
And so he had. Nora had been the one wanting to wait, so they could handle it sensitively, give Chloe time to talk it through, sort out her feelings, let her get her head on straight so the right decision could be made and she could fully understand the repercussions of her actions. For Ken there was only one decision, and it had already been made. They took her to the clinic and stayed home with her for the two days after, then sped her to the emergency room in the middle of the night when the bleeding wouldn't stop. In the end, as always, it was her father she clung to, her father who always understood her, far more than her mother.
Some daughters have to get far apart from their mothers before they can ever get close, Nora's mother said right before she died. Nora had been trying to apologize not just for her own difficult teenage years but, without actually saying