Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
L ucas and Gale took Catherine out to dinner to celebrate yet another piece of the puzzle. Catherine ate heartily for a woman her age and even had a glass of wine she said she hadn’t partaken of in two years. They hadn’t yet passed along this news to Lily. Catherine said she wanted to be the one to share it. Gale said she understood. “You probably speak the same language,” she said to Catherine.
But later that night at the hotel bar, Gale talked again about the secret “twin language” that Anna and Piper had had as babies and toddlers. “I know that Lily and I had a language, too. Losing her must have destroyed me. It destroyed our language immediately because we were the only two people who knew how to speak it.” She worried her lower lip, then added, “I keep wondering if we’ll remember that language when we see each other. If we’ll feel this sense of belonging.”
Lucas held her hand under the bar top and traced a line with his thumb down her wrist. Yet another tear escaped her left eye, and she let it drip all the way to her chin and drop to her thigh.
“I guess my biggest fear is that I won’t feel it,” Gale said. “We’ve come all this way across the continent; we’ve driven thousands of miles. What if Lily and I look at each other and decide we don’t like each other? What if I’m actually the evil twin?” Gale laughed nervously and gazed at Lucas.
Lucas said the only thing he could think of. “If you hate each other, we’ll get in the car and drive home together. But it will be better to know.”
That night, Gale followed Lucas into his hotel room, put on one of his big sleep shirts, and wrapped herself around him in bed. She covered his cheeks and forehead with kisses, and he felt himself drift into darkness. They held hands the entire time they slept. Lucas wondered if they’d managed to have the same dream. But in the morning, Gale said she’d dreamed of her twin girls when they were babies. She dreamed that Peter had given one of them away.
“It was horrible,” she breathed.
Over coffee that morning, Lucas was quiet and contemplative. San Francisco was just across the bridge from Oakland, a mere thirty minutes’ drive. But did he have the nerve to explain to Gale why he wanted to go? He’d already told her that Monica wasn’t his “true love.”
He’d known that Gale assumed Monica was dead. Most everyone assumed Monica was dead. Of this, Stella had told him, “You give off widower vibes.”
Lucas had never wished Monica was dead. He’d never wished her any harm. He’d only wished harm upon himself—something he’d fought through years of therapy. He was past that now. But he still felt the scars.
“What’s up?” Gale asked now, raising her coffee cup and peering across the table.
Lucas took a staggered breath. “Do you mind if we make a pit stop before we drive the rest of the way to Los Angeles?”
“Like at the gas station? You want more snacks?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not at the gas station. No.” He let his shoulders slump.
Gale’s face echoed worry. She gripped his hand. “Whatever it is, I’ll help you through it.”
Lucas raised his chin. “Do you mind if I explain when we get there?”
“I owe you everything,” she whispered.
They skipped breakfast and checked out of their rooms. Lucas wondered if they would even bother renting two rooms at the next hotel. Gale had hardly even entered hers last night. The bed remained fully made.
Lucas drove them across the bridge. His heart pounded, and he had to fight not to ask Gale to look up the symptoms of a heart attack. You’re just nervous.
It was true that Lucas never thought he’d end up in San Francisco. He’d hardly ever looked at it on a map. Just hearing the words San Francisco made his ears ring. But here he was because he’d wanted to help Gale. Gale’s story had felt bigger than his. But now that they were here, he couldn’t ignore it. He had to see.
The steep streets in San Francisco were terrifying to drive. Lucas gripped the steering wheel so forcefully that his wrists began to ache. How did Nora ever learn to drive out here? It isn’t safe.
Lucas had memorized the directions that morning.
“You seem to know your way around,” Gale said softly. “Have you been here before?”
“Never,” Lucas said.
Gale didn’t ask additional questions. She seemed to understand that his head was a tumultuous storm.
Lucas parked Gale’s car near the Painted Ladies houses from Full House. He rolled down the windows, cut the engine, and closed his eyes. The air was salty and fresh, and the California light was soft and clean. He felt far away from everything he understood. This was where she came to get away from me.
“Do you see that house a couple doors down? The white one?” Lucas asked, opening his eyes to nod at the Victorian house with the dark green shutters and the wraparound porch.
Gale said she did.
“That’s where Monica lives now,” he said. “I’ve never seen it before. But the address was on all the divorce papers. It’s tattooed on my mind.”
Gale reached across the car to take his hand. He wondered if she thought it was weird that he wanted to see where his ex had moved. But they’d been through so much. This was just another thing.
“Is that where Nora lives now?” Gale breathed.
Lucas’s heart seized at the mention of Nora’s name. He filled his lungs. “She was raised there. Yeah.”
Gale twisted around to look at him. Her eyes were passionate and dark.
He knew what she was thinking: Lucas didn’t raise his own child. But it was far more complicated than that.
“Monica found out she was pregnant the year we turned thirty,” Lucas said. “It came as a complete surprise because we didn’t think we could have children.”
The story Bethany had told about trying for a baby had felt painfully similar to Lucas. He’d swallowed it down.
“I was overjoyed, obviously. I’d always seen myself as a future nerdy dad, taking my kids all over the country to check out historical sites,” he explained. “But things were already different between Monica and me. We were fighting more and more. We were using all of our best material to put each other through the emotional wringer. It terrified me. I thought we were supposed to be entering our most joyful time, but we were miserable. I told myself it was just the pregnancy hormones. I told myself it would get better after the baby was born.”
Lucas’s vision was blurry with tears.
“It’s not that I didn’t suspect she was cheating on me,” Lucas went on. His voice caught in his throat. “She didn’t always come home when she said she would. And she was always hiding her phone from me. She’d never done that before. But I believed we’d built this beautiful romance. I believed that we were each other’s ‘ones.’” He sniffed. “Anyway, Nora was born. And it was one of the most beautiful days of my life. I still remember holding her in my arms for the first time. I told her I would take care of her forever. I told her she would always be safe. I took a few months off from the Historical Society to help out at home. I didn’t want Monica to be alone and depressed. I wanted her to have time to heal. But that was when I found the letters from Monica’s boyfriend. She hadn’t hidden them very well, or I’d gone through her things while I was cleaning, or maybe it was a little bit of both. She tried to pass them off as letters from a long time ago, but the timeline didn’t make sense. We started dating when we were in our first year at Yale. And these letters had been written much sooner than that.
“Nora was eight or nine months old when it dawned on me that maybe she wasn’t my daughter. I was suddenly and very passionately angry. I didn’t know what to do with my anger. I approached Monica and asked her point-blank if Nora was mine. She said she didn’t know! I couldn’t believe it. And then, she said something snide to me about my love of history. My love of ‘knowing the truth no matter what it cost.’ That’s when I told her I was taking a paternity test. She agreed with it. But as I waited for the results, she packed her stuff, took Nora, and left. The house was so empty. So quiet.”
Lucas bent his head and stared down at his thighs. A part of him was terrified Monica would walk by the car and recognize him. But another part of him knew she’d look right past him as though he wasn’t there.
Gale’s voice shook. “That’s a terrible story, Lucas. I didn’t know.”
Lucas raised his shoulders. “Most people just think she left me. They don’t know about the paternity test.”
“What did it say?”
Lucas tugged his hair until pain spiked through his skull. “Nora wasn’t my baby.”
Here it is—the single biggest devastation of my life. I’m finally sharing it.
“Lucas…” Gale trailed off. Lucas understood. What could anyone say about this? There was no rulebook. There was no manual.
“Nora’s eighteen now,” Lucas said. “She was raised here in San Francisco. Monica eventually remarried a doctor, which means they’ve had a very comfortable life. It’s the sort of life I never could have given them with my Historical Society wages.”
I’m a fool. A failure.
“Lucas, I need you to listen to me.” Gale sounded formidable. Strong.
Lucas turned to look her in the eye.
“None of that is your fault,” Gale said.
Lucas flared his nostrils. He felt the narrative he’d built swirling in his mind. I pushed Monica away. I wasn’t good enough for her. She did what she had to do because I pushed her there.
“Do you understand? It isn’t your fault that Monica wronged you, just like it isn’t my fault that Peter cheated,” Gale said. “It’s obvious to me that Monica had a lot of baggage. She thought she was too good for anyone. She thought the rules of decency didn’t apply to her.”
Nobody had ever dared talk to Lucas about Monica this way. Everyone in Lucas’s life had known Monica. They’d loved her wit and her laughter and her ease. She’d been Lucas’s “better half,” and then she’d left him behind. How was that supposed to make Lucas feel anything but miserable and not enough ?
Lucas felt a sob escape his throat. He tugged his ear.
“I can’t believe you’ve been carrying this by yourself for so long,” Gale breathed.
Lucas raised his shoulders. “It’s not like I have a bad life. I have the Historical Society. I have Nantucket Island. I have a degree from Yale and good friends and plenty of good memories.”
“But you deserve more memories,” Gale said. “You deserve love and commitment and…” She slid her tongue over her teeth. “You deserve to live and love without worrying someone else will betray you when you let your guard down.”
Gale dropped her head onto Lucas’s chest. He splayed his hand on her shoulder. Together, they looked at that white Victorian—the site where Lucas’s would-be daughter had been raised into a wonderful young woman. A stranger. Coming here for Lucas was a bit like looking at the gravesite for the life he’d thought he’d have forever.
He felt a level of peace he hadn’t imagined possible. He knew it was because Gale was by his side.