You Deserve to Know

Chapter 9

9

NOW

Gwen awakens around noon, feeling groggy and hungover. The silence in the house is deafening. Without George’s and Rafi’s voices bouncing off the walls, or Anton’s narration as he moves through the house— guess I’ll get some more coffee now or where did I put that notebook? —the only sound is the clicking of Sababa’s nails on the wooden floor.

Gwen sits up, the morning’s events flooding her mind. Beside her sits a pad of paper with the list she started of things to be done. Contact the funeral home. Draft an email to send to Anton’s colleagues and work. Reach out to his father—best time to call France?

That’s as far as she got this morning after Aimee left until she felt a full-blown panic attack creep up on her. Her heart began to pound at an alarming rate and she couldn’t steady her breathing. She quickly took a Xanax and then wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth, moaning, waiting for it to kick in. When she didn’t feel better after a few minutes, she popped another.

Now it is two hours later, her head feels full of cobwebs, and she feels no less ready to tackle the list.

The thought of picking up Rafi and George from Lisa’s, bringing them home, and breaking the news to them fills her with dread. She has no idea where she will find the words to tell them their father is never coming home. Whatever marital problem she and Anton had, they always presented a unified front with the kids. She was the disciplinarian, the one who enforced rules. He was the one who would crack a joke to ease the tension or tickle a kid to make him laugh if the mood felt too heavy. But she will have to do this one without him. She’ll be doing it all without him from now on.

All of a sudden she longs for her boys. It’s a physical ache deep in her. She throws off the covers and gets up. Putting her hair in a messy bun, she tosses a sweater on and rushes downstairs. At the front door, she slips on some shoes and peers outside first. Her neighbor Paola, an older Argentinian woman who lives alone, is walking a geriatric poodle. Gwen waits for the woman to exit the cul-de-sac, hoping to avoid being cornered by her aimless conversation. The woman repeatedly confuses her with Aimee and asks for advice on her plants, a subject Gwen has no knowledge of or interest in.

At Lisa’s house, Marcus answers the door and gives her an enormous hug. She has to pull back before she starts weeping. He apologizes that Lisa is in the shower, but Gwen is grateful not to have to interact with her. She likes Lisa in small doses, and she can be really helpful, but Gwen knows that if it weren’t for Aimee she would never be friends with her.

“She’ll be sorry to have missed you,” Marcus says. He is wearing a bright-yellow pair of biking shorts and a half-zip top, clearly having just come back from a ride.

Gwen makes a noncommittal noise and then waits for Marcus to get the kids. On the walk home, Gwen thinks about the day she and Anton first stepped foot onto Nassau Court. They couldn’t believe that something so quiet and peaceful lay just a few minutes from the busiest parts of downtown Bethesda.

She could never have imagined that such a bucolic setting would be the scene of her husband’s death.

“And the high school is just a few blocks that way!” the Realtor enthused, so certain that they were a family looking for their forever home.

The Realtor could have no idea that this would be their third home in five years.

That Anton always did something to force them to move.

But three times was a charm. Gwen had really believed that.

A new start.

A fresh beginning. That’s what was so appealing to her about the D.C. area. Not just that no one here knew them, or about their past, but that the whole region was made of transplants. She had scoured mommy boards for different cities, and she kept coming back to D.C. and the complaints that it was too transient, because people moved in and out all the time for their jobs.

It sounded perfect to Gwen.

As she turns up her walkway, the boys zipping ahead of her, Gwen flashes back to last night. How she threw that coffee mug, hitting him in the head. How it landed on the tile floor, shattering, and he stormed off. She was so sure she had cleaned up every last bit of broken ceramic. She must be more careful in the future. All eyes will be on her.

“Gram!” George yells as soon as they are inside the house.

Gwen is startled to see her mother standing in the middle of her living room, fully made-up, her short wheat-colored bob shellacked into place.

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

Her mother steps forward and hugs her stiffly. Gwen can smell her mother’s Yves Saint Laurent perfume, the heady scent she has worn continuously since the 1980s.

“Darling, you poor, poor thing,” she whispers in Gwen’s ear. “I came as soon as I heard.”

Gwen pulls back, trying to do the math. It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from her parents’ house outside Richmond. “But how did you hear?”

“Your friend told me. Lisa something?”

“Lisa called you?”

“Are you staying, Grammy?” George asks, running into the room. “I want to show you a magic trick. Stay there.” He runs off.

“I take it they don’t know?”

Gwen shakes her head. “So, Lisa told you? About Anton?”

Barb looks around the room, as if she is a Realtor assessing the place. “I texted the boys to ask them about Christmas presents. You never responded to that email I sent—”

“Because it’s September.”

“—and she responded. Apparently, Rafi had taken off his watch thingamajig. Not sure why boys that age need a device at all.” She glares at Gwen pointedly. Barb had been opposed to letting the boys have Apple watches, had deluged Gwen with articles about the dangers of screens, even when Gwen explained it would make her feel safer letting them go down to the playground if she could track them.

“But you’re the one who texted them.”

Barb waves away the inconsistency. “And I’m glad I did. When this Lisa person called me and told me what was going on, well, you can imagine my reaction. I tried you immediately, but you didn’t answer.”

“I’ve been busy. It’s been a horrible morning.”

“What I don’t understand is how could I not be the first call that you made, Gwendolyn?”

The old familiar mix of anger and embarrassment burbles within her. “Because I just found out a few hours ago that my husband is dead, so sorry I didn’t call you right away.” She storms off into the kitchen, noting that it took less than five minutes in her mother’s presence for her to revert to an impertinent teenager. She grabs the electric kettle and fills it with water, making sure to bang it around the sink a bit.

Barb follows her in, tsk-tsking. “Oh sweetie, my poor sweetie, I didn’t mean to accuse you. Don’t be upset. Come to Mommy.” She comes around the island, arms open, and envelops Gwen in a hug. “My poor little baby.” Barb pulls back and holds her at arm’s length. “How can I help? Let me help you. What happened? Tell me everything. I’ll take that. You sit down.”

She takes the kettle, puts it back on its base, and switches it on.

Gwen sits down, stunned by the power of Barb. She’s never been able to keep a secret from her mother, so what makes her think she can now? She sits and watches Barb make tea and then lets her mother lead her back to the living room, where she plumps up some pillows and orders Gwen to sit. Barb takes a seat beside her.

Gwen tells her everything, only stopping once George and Rafi return to perform some clunky card tricks they’ve been obsessing over the past few weeks.

“We need to practice more,” Rafi says.

“I think you were both wonderful!” Barb says.

After the boys leave, she turns to Gwen.

“Come back to our house for the weekend. You’re in no condition to be here by yourself. It’ll be good for you to let us take care of you. Daddy can take the boys to the club—did I tell you they upgraded the golf carts? The boys will like that. And I’ll look after you. You need your family at a time like this.”

“I don’t want to leave.” The house her parents live in isn’t even her childhood home. As soon as she left for college, they sold their house in Richmond proper for an immense one farther out in the country. Who buys a bigger house when their kids leave? Her parents, that’s who. More room for her dad’s cars and boats. More rooms for her mother to decorate.

“If you don’t want to come, at least let me take the boys for the weekend.”

“Take the boys?” The idea alarms her. First her husband, then her boys. “I’ll be all alone.”

“Then come. Gwen, honey. There’s bound to be media attention. You don’t want to expose them to that. Imagine the things they will say. The probing. It could get very ugly.”

Gwen lets out a choked sob. Maybe her mother is right. She needs to protect George and Rafi.

Barb opens her purse and pulls out a compact the size of her hand.

“Look in the mirror, honey.” Her mother holds up the compact. All Gwen can see is one of her eyes, swollen from crying and smudged with mascara. “Look at yourself. Is this how you want those boys to see you? Give yourself a few days to get it together.”

“I need to tell them. I can’t keep the truth from them, as much as I might want to.” She stares at her one eye in the mirror. It’s the eye of a stranger, a disintegrating woman. Is her mother right? Does she owe it to her boys to be pretty and pulled together? Barb can confuse her this way, the way no one else can.

“It’s just for a night or two,” Barb coos, stroking her arm. “You don’t want them seeing police coming and going, their mother in tears. Give them one last weekend of pure innocence before it’s all snatched away. Once they learn what’s happened to their father, once they know about their father, well, they can never unknow it, can they? Give them this weekend. It’s a gift to them, believe me.”

“Fine.” Gwen relents. Maybe her mother is right. Maybe by letting them go she is allowing them one last gasp of their childhood. And if she’s being honest, she doesn’t have the guts to tell them. Not yet. Dealing with their grief on top of her own seems unfathomable right now. She’ll be better in a few days, stronger. She’ll use the weekend as a respite, the chance to think, the quiet time to process what has happened, so that when they return she can be the mother they deserve.

Is that terrible? Is she a terrible mother that she doesn’t want to have to be pulled together in front of her boys? Maybe a better mother would plaster on a smile and make dinner from scratch the night after she found out her husband has been murdered. But Gwen feels like she’s wearing one of those weighted blankets, pulling her to the ground.

“Smart girl.” Barb stands up, smoothing out her slacks. “I’ll just pack up a few things. I’ve got bags in the car. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait, what?” Gwen’s spine stiffens. “You brought bags with you? I didn’t agree to anything until just now.”

“I knew you’d see sense.” Her mother is unfazed. She’s heading outside.

“You brought your own suitcases?” Gwen calls after her.

Barb pauses at the door. “I wasn’t sure if you had yours easily accessible and I was trying to make less work for you. Stop trying to make it sound nefarious. Not everyone is out to get you.”

She watches her mother leave the house and return a few moments later with two matching navy carry-on bags, and then take them up the short flight of stairs with the efficiency of a seasoned flight attendant. She disappears into the boys’ room, and moments later Gwen hears drawers opening and closing. She’s filled with a strange sense that her mother has come to take her children away forever.

Her mother is not an ally, has never been. How Gwen wishes she was. How she wishes she could unburden herself to Barb, and spill the poisonous, inky secret that is seeping into every corner of her soul.

Not her secret, but Anton’s. The one he told her last night.

She could use some real advice. She’s going to be navigating treacherous waters soon and Barb would know what to do. But telling Barb what Anton told her would come with too high a price. Her mother would use it to manipulate Gwen forever.

No, Anton’s secret is one that Gwen must manage all by herself.