Chapter Nineteen
Sitting on a tree trunk, Diana stares at the frozen pond below.
A crowd huddles on the shore; teenagers tie their laces, and parents help children wobble on skates across the uneven surface.
In the center of the ice, a young girl extends her arms and spins, her laughter rising up through the pine-scented air.
Diana planned to drive straight home from the O’Connor farm, but she didn’t anticipate how Grace’s story would make her feel, how it would settle under her skin and wedge in between her lungs.
After nearly rear-ending a truck a mile back, her mind not focused on the road in front of her, Diana stopped in the parking lot of Hamilton’s main ice-skating spot, crowded today with families taking advantage of the overnight chill for an outdoor skate.
A short walk into the woods to clear her head brought her here.
Grace’s words haunt her: I was so angry. I am still so angry. This didn’t need to be my life. How easy it would be for Diana to share Grace’s path. Her widowhood could define her entire life; Diana could forever be as she is now: hurt, sad, searching for answers.
A list forms: What Would Have Happened If Tom Had Come Clean?
Maybe we wouldn’t have met or fallen in love or made a family together.
I might not have Duncan or Phoebe.
She imagines Duncan and Phoebe disappearing from her life, like an eraser skimming the surface of a chalkboard, removing her children with each stroke. The idea of such a loss terrifies her.
“Enough,” she says, forcing away the vision.
Diana wants to believe if Tom had shared his secret with her, she would have advocated for him to own up to whatever he did and go to the police.
Yet the terrible truth is, if he’d asked her to keep his story private, never to tell anyone, she would have.
She wouldn’t have challenged him, just as she’d avoided arguing with him so many times before.
She would have agreed the past stays in the past, a phrase he often said to her, and she never would have spoken about this ever again.
Diana shifts on the tree trunk and watches two adults, with a young boy between them, hold hands as they skate along the pond’s edge.
She misses her children. This weekend away is the first time she’s been separated from them in over two years, and their absence hurts, like thousands of small needles pressing into her skin, setting her nervous system into overdrive.
Diana presses a hand against the roots of a nearby tree to steady herself, and mud encases her fingers, dark and gooey. Wiping it off on the snow only makes it worse, and she manages to spread the mud over both of her hands. Frustrated, she hikes down through the trees.
In a small creek feeding the pond, Diana finds a break in the ice.
Balancing on a slippery rock, she sticks her hands in the water and scrubs.
Her fingers become numb, and wavy marks appear on the tips as her skin prunes up.
Her wedding band and engagement ring refract the light through the water’s surface, and she remembers Tom’s proposal during an autumn hike up Mount Washington and the confidence she had in him, in their life together.
Without much thought, acting only on instinct, Diana slides off the rings. She clutches them in her right hand, as she wiggles her left hand under the water. She’s astonished that her fingers look normal—not naked or different or lost. Normal.
She unhooks the gold chain she wears around her neck, a birthday gift from Tom years ago. She weaves the chain through the rings and clasps the necklace back around her neck. The metal is cold and wet against her skin, sending a shiver down to her toes.
She still has unanswered questions. Everything she’s uncovered is circumstantial, facts hanging together without the connecting thread. She needs to make that connection for all this to make sense. And she knows who to turn to next.
When she calls Chris, she can tell by the way he pauses before responding that he’s surprised to hear from her. Surprised she’s still in Hamilton, too. “I’ll explain when I get there,” she says.
She stops first at the Hamilton General Store to pick up maple syrup for Andrea and the fudge Grace raved about, along with two bottles of sauvignon blanc and a six-pack of a local IPA. Having decided to tell Chris the sum of what she’s learned, she may need alcohol to make the talking easier.
When she arrives, the sky behind Chris’s cabin is beginning its descent into night, the blue of the day replaced with shades of vivid coral that seem to throb with joy.
As she approaches the house, the screen door scrapes open and slaps against the wood frame.
Chris meets her on the edge of the porch.
Diana shifts the general store bag to her hip and points up. “It’s magnificent.”
“The finest sunsets in the world are in Vermont, so they say.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Rudyard Kipling, though he was talking about sunsets over Lake Champlain. He must have never caught one over the Green Mountains.”
A wind chime hanging off the porch rings in the breeze, the metal tubes gently bumping against one another, sending out a plaintive song into the evening. “I was about to make dinner,” Chris says. “You hungry?”
Diana nods, her stomach grumbling at the question. She hands Chris the bag and follows him inside.
They keep the conversation light as Chris grills salmon and asparagus, and Diana pours wine and assembles a green salad with slices of crisp cucumbers and ripe avocado.
They meet at a table already set for two.
New, tapered white candles in brass holders sit next to matching plates and silverware.
This is much fancier than Diana expected from Chris; she anticipated pizza or burgers, a greasy take-out box on the counter.
As he dishes out the salad, Diana realizes Chris is wearing an ironed button-down, and his face is clean-shaven.
She was so caught up in what she learned about Tom she didn’t really see Chris until this moment.
“This dinner was for someone else,” she says. “A date?”
Chris focuses on cutting his asparagus into small pieces. “It’s for you.”
“Chris,” Diana says. She’s not sure what to make of this effort or how he pulled it together so quickly.
“You don’t deserve a nice dinner?” A tinge of pink appears on Chris’s cheeks. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here? You missed me, is that it? Couldn’t stay away?”
Diana smiles. How kind he is. Handsome, too. She’s always known this, of course, but there’s something different about him this visit. She can’t quite put her finger on what it is.
Chris clears his throat, and Diana realizes she’s been staring at him. She shifts her eyes to her wineglass, trailing her fingers down its stem. “I went to visit Grace O’Connor,” she begins. “She told me about Tom, or at least the Tom she knew from thirty-five years ago.”
“Why did you need to talk to her? Tom hadn’t mentioned her or Mr. O’Connor in years. At least not to me.”
Diana removes Tom’s letter from her purse hanging off the back of her chair. “You might want to read this and listen to what I’ve learned.”
As Chris reads, Diana downs her wine. He’s quiet, but midway through, he inhales sharply, and his eyes flare. When he’s finished, his face is grim.
She begins with the time capsule, mentions the money missing from Tom’s law practice, and moves back all the way to the fire and the O’Connors. Chris doesn’t say anything while she talks, nor does he ask any questions.
When Diana finishes, the food on her plate is cold, while an empty plate sits in front of Chris. His appetite wasn’t interrupted by her truth-telling; in fact, he had seconds. “Why aren’t you upset?” she asks.
“I knew pieces of this story.” He says the words with compassion, but they slice through her. “I suppose if I wanted to look close enough, I could have figured out the rest, but I never did.”
“Why didn’t you?” Diana asks, though Grace already told her the answer: Sometimes, not looking too closely is the only way to get through a terrible time.
“Tom didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Why didn’t you make him talk?”
“If Tom had wanted to open up, I would have listened. He knew that.”
“Are you sure?”
Chris’s eyes narrow. “You don’t think he knew I was there for him?”
“We both loved him, and yet he didn’t tell either of us. He didn’t tell Jonathan. We were all people he trusted, yet he kept this part of himself hidden. He shared his darkest secret in this letter for me to find after he’s gone. That doesn’t read as trust to me, this from-the-grave mea culpa.”
“His mother knew. Mine did, too.”
Chris’s words slam into her chest, sparking and crackling, as if they’re alive. She reminds herself to breathe.
“I’ll tell you what I know, if that’s what you want.” Chris meets Diana’s eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Diana shouts.
“I want to know. I have to know.” She slams her hand against the table, and the plates shift along the smooth wood.
The tears are hot against her cheeks, and she’s furious for losing her composure, furious all over again that she found the letter in the first place.
“This was a long time ago,” he says softly.
“It’s not long ago anymore. This letter makes Tom’s past my present. Maybe my future, too,” she says, hugging her arms around her chest. “Tell me.”
Settling back in his chair, Chris runs his hand in his hair, and the ends stand up in front.
“Everything was changing that summer,” he says.
“Tom and I were getting ready to leave for college, and each day felt both too fast and incredibly slow. Work took up most of our time. I washed dishes at the diner in town. Tom was at the O’Connors’ farm. We barely saw one another.