Chapter Nineteen #2
“A few days after the fire, Tom and Aunt Martha loaded his stuff into her truck and said they were going to head out early to college. They wanted to take a leisurely drive to North Carolina. He seemed distracted. I thought it was the jitters about leaving home and starting college. I had them, too, although I was only going up to UVM. This was before texting, FaceTime, and even email, remember?”
Diana thinks back to her years at college, when she stayed in touch with friends and family through late-night phone calls, the cord of the telephone curling around her hands as she sat in her cinder-block-lined dorm room.
“Tom and I didn’t really connect those first months away. We called but never caught one another. At Christmas, he went on a service project. Aunt Martha was so proud of him that no one was upset that he hadn’t come home.”
“A service project? Where?” As soon as Diana asks the question, she knows it isn’t relevant; those aren’t the details that will explain what happened the night of the fire.
“Alabama, maybe? Or Texas? I wasn’t really paying attention.
Becca and I were together, and we spent most of that break in Burlington.
That first Christmas set a pattern. Whenever Tom had time off and could come home, he didn’t.
More service projects followed. Internships.
Study abroad. He was never here.” Chris empties the wine bottle into his glass. “Want me to open another one?”
Diana holds up her hand, impatient. “I’ve had enough.”
“I probably have, too,” Chris says, though he drinks anyway.
“The Christmas after Aunt Martha died, Tom again said he wasn’t coming home for the holidays.
This was maybe six or seven years after the fire.
I made some smart remark about how he was too good for us.
My mom said I was wrong; it was best, she said, if Tom didn’t come home at all. ”
Everyone knew about this except for me, Diana thinks.
“My mom said Tom had been at the O’Connors’ the night of the fire. When he came home the next morning, he wouldn’t tell Aunt Martha what happened. He did ask her to say, if the police came around, that he’d been home with her. She agreed, though she was frustrated he wouldn’t tell her why.”
“So he was at the farm that night.” This is the first piece of information that directly links Tom to the fire. Everything before this moment could have been explained away. But not this.
“The police chief and Aunt Martha were old friends, so he told her about the investigation,” Chris says.
“He mentioned a cigarette started the fire before it was released to the public. That was when Aunt Martha decided Tom needed some distance from Hamilton. Even though the chief had pinned this on Carson, Aunt Martha didn’t want anyone to look closely at Tom.
She knew he smoked—she nagged him about it all the time—and she was suspicious.
Or frightened. Probably both. She begged my mom not to tell this to anyone, not even my dad.
My mom didn’t talk about it until after Aunt Martha died. ”
“If this secret was so important, why did your mom tell you? Why didn’t she keep it to herself?” Diana’s brain is sluggish and filled with questions.
“My mom said I needed to know, that I couldn’t say anything to anyone. Maybe this insight would help me find a way to reconnect with Tom. Strangely enough, it did. I called him up, and it was like no time had passed. This was all before you two met.”
“Did you ever ask him about the fire or Carson or the O’Connors?”
Chris shakes his head. “I tried. He always changed the subject. Once, he even told me to shut up and back off. So I did. Our lives were so different. I guess I didn’t want to lose what we had.”
“What about your mom and Martha? Why did Martha tell your mom? I’m not following all of this.”
“You know Aunt Martha had heart failure? She needed a transplant but was too sick to qualify for one. She told my mom all of this before she died, when it was clear she didn’t have much time left.
My mom and Aunt Martha were best friends since childhood, practically real sisters.
My mom was a second mother to Tom, like Aunt Martha was for me.
I guess Aunt Martha didn’t want Tom to be alone in this and hoped my mom would support him. ”
Deathbed confessions are a tradition in this family, thinks Diana, though she’s glad she has the good sense to keep this comment to herself.
Chris continues, “Aunt Martha didn’t tell Tom how bad her illness was.
My mom had enough of that and called him up.
Tom was in law school. My mom said he had to get his ass to the hospital to be with his mother.
She was the one who told him his mother was dying.
He was sitting at Aunt Martha’s bedside when my mom arrived at the hospital the next morning.
Aunt Martha passed away four days later. ”
“What about Carson?”
“I haven’t thought about Carson Roy in years.” Chris tips his chair back onto its rear legs. “We played Little League together. He was a good shortstop. By high school, he was high all the time.”
“And Tom was friends with him.” Diana is having a hard time concealing her annoyance with the pace by which this story is unfolding and that the answers aren’t immediately available.
That’s how this secret stayed hidden, she realizes.
If it was easy to see, I might have noticed something a long time ago.
“Were they friends?” Chris again rubs his hands through his hair. “Are people friends with their dealers? Maybe?”
“Dealer?”
“Carson was Alcott High’s resident drug dealer. Pot. Cocaine. Pills. It’s a miracle he never got arrested. I still can’t figure out how he managed that.”
Diana stares at Chris. Did she mishear him? Did he say “dealer”?
“Tom never talked about high school?” Chris asks.
“He told me he played basketball, that’s about it.”
“Tom was a big partier. Occasionally I joined him, but getting high and trying every kind of illegal drug out there wasn’t my thing.
During the school year, his partying was only on the weekends.
Since our grades were good and we managed to avoid real trouble, our parents gave us a lot of leeway.
Aunt Martha wasn’t really on top of him, anyway.
Those days, she worked two jobs, trying to save up for his college.
More and more during our senior year, it was a mystery where Tom was or what he was up to.
It was like whatever he was doing, he knew I wouldn’t approve, so he cut me out. ”
The room starts to whirl, and Diana’s vision fogs. Wheezing, she bends down and puts her head between her knees.
Chris is around the table in an instant, crouching by her head. “What’s happening?”
“He . . . he didn’t tell me any of this,” she says, the words coming out in a staccato beat between gasps. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Let me get you water.” Chris runs into the kitchen and returns with a glass filled to the brim. “Can you sit up?”
Diana slowly raises her head and sips the tepid water Chris offers her. The room is still again, but his words echo. Tom was a big partier. Occasionally I joined him, but getting high and trying every kind of illegal drug out there wasn’t my thing.
“I don’t know why he didn’t tell you,” Chris says. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Diana is lining up the pieces of this story, one by one. “Tom said coming home to Hamilton was painful, which is why we stayed away. I thought this place held too many bad memories for him.” She snorts. “I guess I was right.”
“Diana—”
“He didn’t tell me about who he’d been in high school because he was afraid it would lead back to the fire.
” She is making conclusions, but that’s what she has to do.
Assemble what she’s learned and try to sort through all the different versions of Tom—the star basketball player, son, cousin, friend, responsible business owner, possible thief, successful lawyer, beloved husband and father—to discover his core truth.
She continues, “One of the qualities about Tom that I found most endearing was how good he was. He was always calm and in control. Everything he did fit the image he wanted me and everyone else to believe. Tom, the driven lawyer committed to defending against injustice. Golden and good.”
“He was a good person, Diana.”
“Was he like that because it was his true nature? Or because he had to be that way to make amends for a mistake he never owned up to?”
Chris returns to his chair. “Maybe Tom was there with Carson that night, maybe he was at the farm for a completely innocent reason. Or maybe we’re wrong, and this isn’t even the story Tom meant in his letter.”
“The timing lines up, Chris. He did something he was ashamed of—haunted by—when he was eighteen. He never visited the O’Connors in the hospital or contacted Grace later to check on her.
He left town earlier than planned. He avoided returning home for years afterward. These are signs of someone who—”
“Had something to hide,” Chris finishes, frowning.
The rage that threatened to consume Diana in Uncle Brian and Aunt Teresa’s guest room, after she’d learned the origins of Duncan’s name, flares back up again, bright and searing.
“What did he do?” Diana stands up from the table, kicking aside the chair.
It skitters across the floor, bumping into Chris’s sofa.
“Not only did Tom leave this secret for me to unravel, but these people he mentions . . .”
The missing photo of Tom and the kids flashes across Diana’s vision. She can’t get enough air into her lungs. Dizzy, she sinks to the floor, arms wrapped over her head, panting. Chris comes to her side and pulls her into his lap. He holds her gently, murmuring her name.
After several minutes, Diana’s breathing settles.
She slowly releases her arms and tucks herself against his chest. Chris pushes her hair from her face, and his calloused fingers are rough against her overheated skin.
Her stomach tightens in response. Diana looks into Chris’s eyes and sees not the sympathy she’d expect from someone who just watched her fall apart, but something completely different. Desire.
She didn’t understand until this moment how much she needs a man to look at her the way Chris is looking at her now.
Her body sings with her attraction to him.
She heard this song yesterday when she first arrived at his home, and it’s still there, urging her on.
She doesn’t care that Chris is Tom’s cousin, that he looks so much like her husband, that acting on his desire and her own need is likely a bad idea.
She wants him to hold her closer, to touch her. How she craves to be touched.
Letting his sawdust and cotton scent fill her lungs, Diana traces her fingers along his cheekbone and down to his mouth, pausing to rub her thumb against his bottom lip. Chris’s hazel eyes are wide and glowing.
She slides her hand to the back of his neck, and his arms tighten around her. Diana’s lips are only inches away from his.
“Diana,” Chris whispers.
She presses her mouth against his, and he holds still for the briefest of seconds.
She nudges his lips with her tongue, and when he responds, Diana forgets everything that happened before this moment.
She thinks only of how Chris tastes like wine, how good he feels against her, and how he’d feel inside her.
She runs her hands down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt.
When her fingers dance across his bare skin, Chris groans and pulls her onto her feet.
His lips never leave hers as they maneuver toward his bedroom, shedding their clothes with each step.