Chapter Fourteen #2
The dinner that follows is raucous, voices competing to be heard, one-liners and puns thrown back and forth.
Diana spends the meal listening to the Bernie Sanders fan, who has much to say about local skiing conditions and the increasing interest in the area from out-of-state tourists.
She nods along to his monologue, as she drinks the multiple glasses of wine Uncle Brian pours for her and watches the other guests through the candlelight.
Before she knows it, the evening is over, and sleepy children are hustled into the dark for their parents to drive them home through the starlit night.
The dining room table’s lace tablecloth is covered in chili stains and cornbread crumbs, and chocolate icing is smeared across abandoned dessert plates.
Empty wine bottles gather on the sideboard.
Etiquette tells Diana she should aid in the cleanup, but it’s been a long time since she felt this relaxed, and she’s loath to move.
“Teresa!” Brian yells, a little drunk.
“What do you need, my love?” Teresa asks, returning from the kitchen. She dries her hands on her apron and looks at him, half with irritation and half with the sated look of a hostess whose dinner has gone off well.
“Sit and drink this bourbon Diana brought.” Brian’s voice is gruff, and his eyes are full of mischief. He holds out his hand to his wife. “Come.”
Teresa stoops so her face is level with his. Brian places his hands on her hips and kisses her. Their embrace breaks apart only when she giggles.
“You two,” Chris says. He grabs for the bourbon, but his father nabs it first.
“Fifty-three years of marriage, Christopher, is a precious gift,” Brian says. He opens the bottle and sniffs. With a delighted smile, he pours the amber-colored liquor into four etched tumblers and nudges them across the table.
“What shall we toast?” Teresa says.
“Diana, of course,” Brian says. “It’s been a long time since you’ve crossed our door, and we love that you’re here.”
Chris and Teresa echo Brian, raising their glasses to Diana.
“To Tom,” Chris says, meeting Diana’s eyes. The bourbon hits the back of her throat, sweet and woody, as Teresa and Brian repeat Tom’s name.
Brian leans over to Teresa. “A toast to my love,” he says, as they clink their glasses. They hold their heads together, Brian whispering into Teresa’s ear. Teresa blushes and swats his arm.
Diana managed to keep thoughts of Tom away while she sat surrounded by his family and their friends. Now, envy rises up. Fifty-three years of marriage. She’ll never have that.
She lifts her glass. “To Teresa and Brian.”
Aunt Teresa and Uncle Brian’s guest room, above their garage, has white walls and pale-blue carpeting.
Two sets of bunk beds sit in the corners, and a queen platform bed rests in the center under a large skylight.
“Like being in a tree house,” Diana says when Teresa escorts her to the room, both unsteady on their feet. “Like we’re above the world.”
The view outside, overlooking the snow-covered backyard dotted with evergreens, does give the impression of flying, of being disconnected from the earth.
“Sleep well, Diana,” Teresa says, closing the door behind her.
As she settles into bed for the night, Diana’s thoughts drift to her visit to the Hamilton Star. A nagging feeling presses at the center of all she learned today. She’s missing something. What is it?
She rolls over and takes her phone from the bedside table.
She checks the app that controls her new doorbell camera and is grateful to see her empty front porch, no intruders in sight.
She next sorts through the day, beginning with her arrival at the Star.
She relives meeting Kara and opening that first box, reading the newspapers, and discovering the stories about the fire.
Diana scrolls through the pictures she took in the newspaper’s conference room: a photo of the ashy shell of the O’Connor barn, the fire chief’s statement that Carson Roy was responsible for the fire, William O’Connor’s obituary.
Or, more precisely, William Duncan O’Connor’s obituary.
It comes to her then, so forcefully she sits up in bed, choking.
Duncan.
William Duncan O’Connor.
That’s it: William Duncan.
Her son is Duncan William.
In the weeks before the baby was born, she and Tom bantered names back and forth, Diana set on Lachlan or Aiden. Maybe Miles. Tom was unconvinced.
“How about William Duncan?” he said one night as they walked home from getting ice cream, Diana’s craving for mint chocolate chip having established a nightly ritual they both enjoyed.
“You don’t want to name the baby after your dad?” Diana asked, licking ice cream from the corner of her mouth.
“Gary?” Tom wrinkled his nose. “I can’t imagine that as a baby name.”
“In that case, what about Duncan William?” Diana said. “I like that better.”
Tom stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You asked about my dad; what about yours? Would he be hurt if the baby isn’t named after him?”
“Francis would be better as a middle name.” Diana finished off her cone with a triumphant crunch. “We can reserve it for baby number two.”
“Planning ahead, are you?” Tom smiled. “I like it.”
“So it’s settled: Duncan William, if it’s a boy.” Diana smiled back, satisfied. “We should come up with a girl’s name, to be safe, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s a boy.”
“I bet you’re right.” Tom took her hand in his and didn’t let go until they walked through their front door.
He never explained the significance of that name. Another secret.
“Goddammit, Tom,” Diana says, smacking her hand against the mattress.
“That’s my son.” Quaking with anger, her fingers tighten into a fist, and she punches the mattress, leaving a dent behind.
Her muscles clench as she continues pounding, yanking the sheet off from the corner.
Each slam rings through her like a scream. “My son.”
She hits the mattress until her arm muscles spasm. Exhausted, she falls back against the pillow, tears sliding down her cheeks and pooling on her neck.
Why had he deceived her?
What if he had left the letter out of spite?
What if the love they shared was the real lie?
Diana keeps her body rigid for several minutes, until the idea Tom didn’t love her, had wanted to hurt her, disappears into that place inside her where she keeps the hardest of things. Then she sinks into the mattress and waits for morning.