Chapter Fifteen
Hours later, Diana stands in Aunt Teresa and Uncle Brian’s kitchen looking for coffee.
Chris wants to get an early start for snowshoeing, an invitation Diana agreed to last night after her second glass of bourbon.
She needs caffeine to be able to participate in the adventure he’s planned.
As she searches through the cabinets, Teresa enters the room, her slippers shuffling against the tile floor.
“I was coming to start breakfast, but you beat me to it,” Teresa says sleepily, flipping on the overhead light. As if reading Diana’s mind, Teresa opens a cupboard next to the stove and selects a bag of organic beans. “Let me do this.”
The kitchen fills with the angry protest of the coffee grinder and the heavenly scent of coffee. “Any chance you have Tylenol?” Diana asks. “I have a killer headache.”
Teresa points to a cabinet across the room. “Get me some, too? I don’t usually drink bourbon.”
Inside the cabinet Diana finds a photo taped to the door. Chris and Tom, dressed in orange hunting jackets, standing in front of a woodpile. The image is blurry, but their smiles make Diana grin in response.
Teresa steps behind her. “That was taken when the boys were around fifteen. They were supposed to go hunting with Brian, but they goofed around so much he got frustrated and left without them. They thought they were so clever. Brian wasn’t having it.
He grounded Chris for being rude. Tom, as I recall, talked his mother out of any punishment.
‘I wasn’t being disrespectful to Uncle Brian,’ he argued.
‘I was exercising my right to bear, or not bear, arms.’” Teresa chuckles.
“It was a ridiculous argument, but Martha could never say no to Tom, especially not after Gary died.”
Diana removes the bottle of Tylenol and selects pills for herself and Teresa. “I’ve never heard that story before.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have.”
“Why do you say that?” Diana asks.
Teresa pours them each water in the tumblers from last night.
“We didn’t see you much up here, did we?
Only that one visit. When Brian and I visited you and Tom for the kids’ christenings or for Easter, it was always so busy that there wasn’t enough time to share stories.
And I doubt Tom talked much about his past.”
“What do you mean?” Diana asks, dread inching down her spine. “Why wouldn’t Tom talk about the past?”
Teresa slugs back the water and the medicine Diana hands her. “I should really get breakfast going,” she says, putting the tumbler in the sink and opening the refrigerator. “I hope you’re hungry.”
Diana remains in front of the cabinet, thinking of the photo of her children and Tom that the intruder stole from her home. Is it a clue to Tom’s secret? Or is it, like this photo of teenage Chris and Tom, a glimpse into a life that’s long gone?
Chris arrives with the snowshoes as Teresa puts a plate of steaming waffles on the kitchen table. “Perfect timing,” she says.
Chris stomps snow off his boots. “Always, when your cooking is involved, Mom.” He accepts a cup of coffee from Diana and looks around. “Where’s Dad?”
“Sleeping off Diana’s bourbon, I’m afraid,” Teresa says. “He misjudged his tolerance for the good stuff.”
They take seats at the Formica table, Diana across from Teresa and Chris to her left.
She watches them under half-closed eyes as they slide waffles onto their plates, pour syrup, and sip coffee.
Her face flushes with anticipation. Before she considers the best way to phrase her question, the words blurt out.
“Does the name Carson Roy mean anything to you?”
“Sure, Tom and I went to school with him,” Chris says.
“And the O’Connors? Grace and William O’Connor?”
Teresa puts down her fork and focuses on her son.
“Mr. O’Connor, our history teacher?” Chris rolls the words around, as if he’s tasting them.
“Tom worked for the O’Connors, didn’t he?”
Chris nods and shovels waffles into his mouth, syrup dripping onto the table, leaving a sticky puddle behind. Diana waits. He’ll be suspicious if she pushes.
“Mr. O’Connor and his wife had the farm over on Route 119,” Chris says after he swallows. “Tom helped take care of their animals and did some yard work, stuff like that.”
Pieces of this story are falling into place.
“Tom liked it there, and he was close with Mr. O’Connor. Right, Mom?”
Teresa refills Chris’s mug. “Yes, that’s correct.”
“What’s all this about Carson and the O’Connors?” Chris scrapes his fork across the plate to pick up the remaining crumbs. Licking the tines, he looks at Diana. “That was years ago.”
“There was a fire? Carson and William died?”
“Yeah, it was terrible,” Chris says.
“Did you know the O’Connors, Teresa?”
“We didn’t socialize, if that’s what you mean. This is a small community, so of course, I knew who they were.” Wariness creeps into Teresa’s voice. “Why are you asking about them?”
“I came across their names in Tom’s papers.” It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t the complete truth either. “I hoped you could tell me who they were to him.”
Chris glances between Teresa and Diana.
“As Chris explained, this was many years ago,” Teresa says. “Plus, Tom was a private person, even with us. We won’t be able to help you with your questions.”
Diana is bewildered by Teresa’s reluctance to offer up even one detail. She looks at Chris for help, but his eyes are firmly locked on his coffee. “If you aren’t able to tell me about Tom and the other people in his life,” Diana asks, “who can?”
“These questions should have been asked of Tom, not us,” Teresa says quietly, not giving an inch.
Diana thinks of Duncan lying on her bedroom floor holding Tom’s letter, the intruder entering her house and stealing that photograph, and Tom naming their son after William O’Connor, and she loses all sense of restraint.
“I would love to ask Tom,” she says, an edge to her words, “but he’s dead.
I have no choice other than asking you. I don’t want to make things awkward between us, I just want to understand who my husband was. ”
The room goes silent, with only the hum of the refrigerator in the background.
Diana watches Tom’s aunt and cousin for what feel like the longest minutes of her life.
The waffles sit heavily in her stomach. She’s about to apologize and explain the stress she’s been under when Teresa stands up and drops her napkin on her chair.
“Tom was a good man who loved you and your children. That should be enough.” Teresa clears her throat. “You’ll have to excuse me; I really should check on Brian.” She leaves the room so quickly Diana doesn’t have time to respond.
Chris is also up, balancing the plates and silverware into an unstable pile. “We should get moving if we want to get a parking space close to the trail head.”
Diana brings her plate to him at the sink. “I—”
“Let’s get going.”
She nods, frustration lurking. They’re clearly hiding something, but what? And why?
Chris and Diana snowshoe for two hours, up the back of Hamilton’s ski slope, the sun so bright Diana squints behind her sunglasses.
She treks behind Chris, her shorter legs struggling to keep up, her snowshoes filling neatly in his tracks.
Neither of them speaks. Diana fears she’ll never get him to open up, and that concern carries her all the way up the mountain.
Chris stops at a plateau overlooking the valley, where the air smells crisp and sweet.
Rugged mountains surround them on all sides, and pine trees hug the steep landscape.
Diana surveys the trails below, watching the skiers and snowboarders in their vividly colored jackets speed down the mountain, their movements seemingly choreographed.
“When Becca left, it took me a long time to not see her in every corner,” Chris says, pulling a water bottle from his backpack. He takes a swig and offers it to Diana. “I thought about her all the time. It’s not the same as losing Tom, of course, yet the hole is still there.”
The water is cool down her throat, quenching a thirst Diana didn’t realize she had.
“How much time passed before you were yourself again?” she asks.
Chris has never spoken about Becca before.
She wonders what it’s like to have your marriage end with your partner choosing to leave you.
Is it harder, or is the pain the same as losing a spouse via death: impossible yet inescapable?
“I never went back to being the old me. For better or worse, her leaving changed me.” Chris looks sadly at Diana. “I was different before. More carefree, my mother says.”
Diana thinks about sharing Tom’s letter with him. Would it do to him what it’s done to her? Would it leave him confused about the truth, about who Tom really was?
“People always say time heals all wounds. Yet when you’re in it, in that mess, you want it to be better.
Immediately.” Chris jams the water bottle back in his pack, yanking the zipper closed.
“But the truth is, that old saying is right. The hurt does diminish in time. Everything’s different with time. ”
“Time can also bring clarity to the past,” Diana says.
“You’re asking questions about Tom, I get it.
His death is a terrible loss, and you’re trying to hold on to him.
I did that with Becca. It didn’t get me anywhere.
I ran around in circles for years, grieving, imagining what might have been, hoping she’d come back.
It’s better to look ahead, Diana. There’s nothing in the past that’s important. For you or the kids.”
“Chris—”
“We should start back down.” He swings the pack onto his shoulders and begins his descent. She waits for him to turn around and ask why she isn’t walking, but he doesn’t. Instead, his snowshoes crunch against the snow until he’s enveloped by the pine trees, and she’s alone.
Diana reluctantly follows his trail down the hill, certain with each step that whatever Chris isn’t telling her has been bothering him for a long time.