Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
When I hear his truck pull up outside, I’m braiding Billie’s hair before dinner. It’s getting so long I still can’t believe it.
I smooth the last stray hairs behind her ear and kiss her head. “Go get cleaned up for dinner before your dad gets inside.”
She stands, smooths her hands over the blue dress she’s wearing, then dashes off to the bathroom.
In the kitchen, I set our small table and fill three bowls with soup.
There’s a storm coming, and this old cabin gets drafty in the winter as it is.
Soup is about the only thing I can stand to make this time of year.
Several minutes pass as Billie and I wait for him to come inside. When it’s been too long, I move to the door, forcing a smile and casting a quick glance her way. “I’ll be right back.”
She nods, but I spot a hint of worry on her delicate features. Even just a few months shy of four years old, she’s intuitive and understands more than she should.
Outside, I find Charles still in his truck. I knock gently on the window, and when he looks up, it’s as if he’s seen a ghost. He leans across the seat, cranking the handle to roll down the window.
“Hi, honey. Everything okay?”
His eyes are glassy, but not from drinking. He hasn’t had a drink in months. This is different. It’s as if he’s not really here. He pats the seat next to him. “Why don’t you, uh, get in here for a sec?”
Slowly, I open the door. Dread settles over me as I brace myself for whatever is coming. “What happened?”
He doesn’t meet my eyes when he says his next words, and I’m thankful for it—I’m not sure what expression my face must hold as I process the news.
“I’m having a baby.”
I chuckle. After we had Billie, I had two miscarriages. My doctor said another pregnancy will kill me. This feels like a cruel joke. “That’s not funny.”
His eyes find mine, and now I understand the glassiness. “I’m not laughing.”
“You…” I suck in a breath, thinking. “You slept with someone else.”
He pauses. “Nancy Mulligan.”
“When? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I’m not sure which of my questions that’s supposed to be an answer to. Maybe both. Rage fills my stomach. “You can’t have a baby with Nancy Mulligan. You’re married to me. Her husband just died last year. She…she already has those two boys.”
She already has two, and I can only have one.
He nods but doesn’t respond. Eventually, he slips out of the truck. Just before shutting the door, he meets my eyes again. He looks tired, empty. I hardly recognize him. “Probably best not to say anything to anyone for now.”
I swallow, batting back tears. By some miracle, I manage to hold them in until he disappears inside the house and have them dried long before I follow him.
The baby comes in the fall. I receive the news over dinner, just after Charles asks me to pass a slice of bread and before he asks for the butter.
A little girl.
A sister for our Billie, and yet, not a single part of me exists within her. She’s not mine.
Charles hasn’t brought Nancy around to Foxglove. I’ve been avoiding her in town, ever since I noticed her stomach showing in church. That bump is gone now, but the pain of it will never leave. Even in the happiest moments.
She hasn’t spoken to me. Honestly, I’m not sure what Charles has told her about us, and I don’t think I want to know. He hasn’t said if they’re still seeing each other, and I’m afraid to ask.
Charles always wanted a big family, and I’m afraid if I push, he might leave me for the woman who can give him that—even if that’s not why the affair started.
I can hazard a guess as to why it started, too.
I’m not blind. Nancy’s been pretty for as long as I can remember. Prettier than me. Prettier than most of the women in town. Bright blonde hair that turns strawberry blonde in the summer. Green eyes.
I expect her daughter to look just like her, but when I see the baby—Violet—all I see is Charles. She has blonde hair like both her parents, but the rest is all him. She’s the spitting image of the man I love.
For several months, little Violet comes back and forth between Foxglove and her mother’s. He takes her home at night but leaves her with me during the day.
I never planned to take care of the girl, but I can’t help falling in love with her. And Billie, oh, my girl finally has a playmate, and how could I take that away from her?
I can’t. Won’t.
Violet shouldn’t be punished for her mother’s sins.
I feed her and play with her. I teach her things—how to count her fingers and toes, how to clap her hands.
It’s me she’s with the first time she laughs.
I hear her sweet giggle before Charles ever has the chance to, and at the end of the day, I decide not to tell him.
Maybe I deserve to have some secrets, too.
Even though she’s not my blood, I love that little girl. I may not be her mother, but I know I’d do anything for her.
That’s why, when she’s just over a year old and Charles says she’s going to live with us from now on, I don’t put up a fuss.
Nancy has her hands full with the boys, after all.
And I still don’t think anyone knows she’s had a baby out of wedlock.
Charles hasn’t said as much, but I suspect he started bringing her groceries around the time Violet’s presence in her womb became undeniable.
I suppose it never stopped. We couldn’t exactly have her roaming around town with a new baby and no explanation, now could we?
It’s better for me, selfish as it is, that no one knows. No one suspects.
The news that little Violet will live with us feels like a reward for all I’ve been through.
She’s better off with me.
Happy with me.
Somehow, we’ve managed to turn this terrible situation into something good.
It doesn’t mean I don’t feel dread in my stomach now and again, or that I don’t sense I’m being lied to. Deep down, I know having Violet here without consequence is too good to be true.
Still, I guess I thought maybe if I don’t ask, I won’t have to know.
Because I don’t want to know.
Not the worst of it. Not the truth of it.
Quite often, truth hurts too much.
When Nancy Mulligan stands on my porch just a few months later, both her eyes are bruised black and blue.
Her pretty face is marked with scars I’ve never seen before, and her once-beautiful hair hangs in limp, greasy strands.
She holds her arm tight against her chest, as if it’s hurting, and the closer I look, the easier it is to see the green bruise on her wrist—a bracelet of fingers that once gripped her too hard.
“Is she here?” Her words are soft. Shaky. She looks like she thinks I might strike her.
“Is who here?” We’ve never acknowledged the child shared by our homes, by my husband, but of course I know whom she means. Try as I might, I can’t stop staring at the cuts on her face. “What happened to you?”
She scowls so fast it must hurt because she immediately winces. “Like you don’t know.”
I stare at her, but I can’t bring myself to ask. I can’t.
“Is she okay, Hazel? Just tell me that.”
“She’s…” My voice breaks when I picture the little girl currently sitting on my kitchen floor, fingerpainting with her sister. “She’s perfect.”
It’s not a lie.
She swallows, looking away as tears fill her eyes. “Please let me see her.”
“You didn’t want to.” I repeat the lie Charles told me, though maybe I knew it was a lie even as he said the words. “You didn’t want her.”
She doesn’t bother arguing, and I guess she doesn’t need to. Eventually, I look away, stepping back so she can come inside.
She rushes past me, gathering her daughter in her arms in a rush. “Oh, my baby. My baby.” She kisses her cheeks. Violet, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to know who her mother is. She pushes her away, whining, and it breaks something inside me. Something raw and wild.
“How long has it been since you saw her?”
“Since she stopped nursing.” She clears her throat, not forcing herself on her child again, though I can see it’s killing her. She sits and watches her as if she’s the most fascinating thing in the world. “He locked me in my bedroom after that. And…she was gone.”
“Charles wouldn’t do that.” He wouldn’t. My husband isn’t a monster. She must’ve done something. She must’ve.
She closes her eyes, squeezing them shut. “Is she happy? Is she…is she safe here?”
I study Nancy, looking for a hint of the villain I want her to be. The homewrecker. The woman who abandoned her child. This would all be easier if she is who I’ve told myself she is. “How long did the affair go on?”
She sniffles, looking down, and from where I am, I’m towering over her as she remains on the floor between our girls.
“It was a mistake,” she says finally. “After William died, I was lost. I was drowning. And…” She smiles, but it’s bitter. “And Charles was there. He was kind to me at first.”
She makes eye contact with me but breaks it in a flash. “I thought he would leave you, and I’m sorry for that. I wanted a family. I wanted my family to be whole again. Charles…he let me believe that would happen.”
She sniffles, adjusting her feet against the dirty floor, pulling them under her.
“But once Violet came, once she was here, it was different. He was colder. He took her from me and locked me in my bedroom. He said I was hormonal. I was tired. And maybe I was. But I needed help, and he just…he left me. Me and the boys.”
She looks away. “And then he started hitting me. Some days, I think he wishes he could kill me. Some days, I think maybe he tries to.” She coughs, and the cough turns into a fit.
“My husband has never laid a hand on me.” The one time he tried—he’d been drinking, and we argued—I pulled a frying pan out and promised to kill him if he ever tried again. I was a different woman then, younger and bolder, full of fire, but I think he saw in my eyes that I meant it.
“Well, goodie for you,” she mutters, holding out her palm to the little girl. Carefully, Violet places her hand into it.
“She loves high-fives,” I say.