Chapter v
v
THAT CONVERSATION WITH KATE SHOOK ME. IT threw me back to the time right after you died, when I felt like I was losing myself, and I didn’t think I could go back to the office that way. So I decided to head home early and work from there for the rest of the day. As I sat on the train, a highlights reel—or maybe I should call it a lowlights reel—from that time after your death played through my mind to the rhythm of the wheels whirring on the tracks.
After I came home from Israel, I was broken. Shattered is more like it. Darren was my only true support, the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about Sam. I couldn’t risk losing Darren—not then. So I stayed quiet. It was selfish, I know. But I guess it was selfish in the way that survival is inherently a bit selfish—you take what you need to make it through, to live.
The secrecy made everything worse, though. I see that now. But then … Oh, Gabe, I couldn’t see anything then but you in my arms in that hospital bed in Jerusalem.
Samuel’s delivery was easier than my first two, but afterward I fell into a deep depression—difficulty sleeping, crying daily. Not even Liam or Violet could make me smile.
At my postpartum visit, my OB talked to me about antidepressants, and taking them eventually helped to stabilize me, but for those first few months, Samuel was Darren’s baby so much more than mine. Darren brought him to me when he was hungry, and I fed him, but other than that, it was Darren who swaddled Sam when he was tired, played with him on the floor, putting Sam tummy-down on his own stomach when Sam didn’t like the mats we used with the older kids. Darren who ate almost all his meals with one hand while he held Sam with the other, brought him to Violet’s soccer games, gave him tours of our apartment, introducing him to every single item in every single room on both floors when he was trying to extend a wake window before a nap. This is the living room. That’s our navy blue couch. This is our navy-and-white chevron rug. Chevron is a squiggly pattern that your mommy really likes. These are our bookshelves. Let’s look at all the books now …
When I overheard it, the narration reminded me of the ridiculous tour Darren gave me of his neighborhood when he and I first started dating. It reminded me how much I loved him. How much I couldn’t keep Sammy’s paternity a secret—not from Darren. It wasn’t fair to him. I couldn’t make him live in my lie. And what if one day Sammy did one of those DNA tests for fun and it came out? Or he needed some kind of medical treatment that exposed everything? I couldn’t live that way, always waiting for the world to come falling down around my ears, destroying our family in the process.
So I made a plan. I decided that once I hit a string of three days in a row in which I hadn’t sobbed for a reason even I realized was absurd, I would be mentally strong enough to have that conversation. When Darren came in that night with Sammy and handed him to me for his pre-bedtime feed, I asked him to sit down.
“How are you feeling?” he asked me.
“Better,” I told him. “Not as fragile. Ready to tell you some things.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me.
It would have been so easy to keep quiet. You were gone. What did it matter? But it did matter. I couldn’t build our son’s life on a lie.
“What things?” he asked.
“Do you remember,” I said, “about a year ago, before you bought our Hamptons house, when you kept getting mystery phone calls from a woman named Linda?”
Darren nodded. “The real estate agent.”
“Right,” I told him. “But I didn’t know that. And then I realized you’d changed the password on your phone without telling me.”
“To keep the house a secret,” he replied.
“Right,” I said again. “Well, I was convinced you were cheating on me.”
“I wasn’t,” Darren said, his face quizzical, like he was trying to figure out where I was going with this. “I can’t believe you would think that.” He was still holding Sammy, and I could see his arms tighten around him, almost imperceptibly.
“I know that now,” I told him, my voice shaking. I was finding it hard to fill my lungs, to get in a full breath. “But then, I didn’t. And I … I thought you had I wanted to I slept with someone else.”
He looked at me horrified. My heart plummeted.
“Who?” his voice was a painful rasp.
“Gabriel,” I whispered. “And—”
“Fuck,” Darren said, and then he looked down at Sammy and cringed, as if upset he’d said that word around our baby. “I never trusted that guy. Never trusted you around that guy. I guess I was right.”
I looked down, chastened, my eyes starting to fill with tears.
“Is that why he made you his health proxy? Why you traveled to Jerusalem during a goddamn war while you were pregnant with our son?”
“It wasn’t a—” I started, but sighed and wiped the tears that had started falling from my eyes. We’d had that conversation so many times. It wasn’t a war. But that wasn’t the point. “Yes, it’s why I went,” I said. “But there’s more. I’m sorry, Darren. I’m so, so sorry.”
At this point, I was whispering so quietly, he had to lean in to hear me. Because I was so ashamed, I couldn’t speak any louder. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I knew I had to.
“What is it?” he said back, louder, his eyes both angry and anxious at the same time.
“Samuel is Gabe’s son.”
Darren stared at me, an unreadable look on his face, then handed me Sammy, got up, and walked out of the room. I heard the front door slam.
Darren went to our Hamptons house and stayed for a week, a week where the kids missed him, Sammy especially. A week where I missed him, too. When he came home, Violet and Liam were in school, and I was on the couch with Sammy. He sat on the edge of the coffee table facing me and said, “I want to stay. I want you to stay. I want us to work through things. For the kids, but also for us.”
Sammy turned his head at the sound of Darren’s voice. Darren scooped him out of my arms and held him close. “Missed you, buddy,” he said. I could see tears in his eyes. I could feel them in my own.
His request wasn’t what I’d expected, but knowing Darren, knowing how he felt about family, about love, I wasn’t entirely surprised either.
“Okay,” I said, tears of gratitude spilling onto my cheeks. “If that’s what you want. We’ll work it all out.” I was willing to do anything to fix my mistake, to repent.
EVEN THOUGH I PUT MY ALL INTO OUR RELATIONSHIP , into healing our family, I knew pretty quickly that it wouldn’t be enough, that we were just prolonging the inevitable. But sometimes you need more time. Sometimes you can’t face an ending—and we couldn’t, not then. The decision had to make itself.
After six months, we started therapy. The sessions always ended with Darren and me doing our best to hold back tears or harsh words or both—and rarely succeed ing. After one of those sessions, nearly a year after I first told him the truth, just after Sammy turned fifteen months old, we were heading back to the subway together when Darren stopped walking.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This isn’t going to work, is it?” he said.
It was a thought I’d been having but hadn’t voiced, not even to Kate. Barely even to myself.
I couldn’t look Darren in the eye. “I don’t think so,” I whispered.
The decision made itself.
“Lucy,” Darren said, his voice thick. “Lucy, look at me.”
I looked into his liquid brown eyes and felt the guilt wash over me, as if it were the only feeling I’d ever be able to feel. I knew this was my fault. It was all my fault. Breaking up our family, leaving Darren alone.
“I wish I could trust you again,” he said. “I wish I wish I’m sorry. It’s just impossible. Every time I see Samuel I remember, and I’m gutted all over again.”
“I understand,” I whispered, my throat full of tears. “I’m sorry. I wish I wish so many things.”
Darren cleared his throat. “I don’t want to make this hard. We sell the apartment, split the amount fifty-fifty. Sell the beach house, split that, too. And then the kids can go back and forth—one week with you, one week with me.”
I realized he must have been thinking about this arrangement for a while. He’d had a backup plan.
“Okay,” I said. “Half the apartment, half the house, and joint custody with Violet and Liam.”
“And Sam,” Darren added.
“But you just said …”
“Sam is mine, too,” Darren said. “In all the ways that matter. I love him just as much as I love Violet and Liam. I was there when he was born, I fed him and changed him. I was there when he was sick—when you were sick. Would you rather he have a dead father he can never meet than me? That’s not fair. Not to him. And not to me.”
His voice broke on the last sentence, and I watched him battle his tears. In that moment, I thought he was right. I thought it was better for Sammy. And I couldn’t bear hurting Darren more. He was such a good father, and he loved Samuel so much. I was grateful for that, grateful that Samuel would have that love.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. They’re all yours. All three.”
Darren let out a breath. “Thank you,” he said.
“You love them all,” I said. “I don’t want to take that away from them—or from you. But we will have to tell Sam the truth one day. I don’t want a family built on secrets.”
“Eventually,” Darren said. “He’s only one. We’ll find the right time.” But we didn’t. Every birthday, every Father’s Day, every time Sammy made an expression or said something that brought the words You just reminded me of your dad to my lips, only to linger there unsaid, I felt caught between Darren’s pain and my promise to you.