Chapter Twenty
Diana curls against Chris’s chest. For the first time in weeks—or years, she thinks—she’s at ease.
The strain she always carries is gone, and she relishes the feeling of Chris’s hand on her hip, warm and sure.
He nuzzles her neck, and she rolls over to face him.
She takes in his bare chest and the hollow of his collarbone where, she’s recently learned, he very much likes to be kissed.
Chris smiles and pulls the blanket over her shoulders. “You okay?”
Diana weaves her legs through his. “That was good.”
“Good?” Chris arches an eyebrow. “That salmon was good. The wine was good. What we did? It was much better than good.”
Diana laughs. “Okay, it was great.”
“Was that”—Chris pauses—“the first time since Tom?”
“It was that obvious?”
“Not at all,” he says, winding his fingers through her hair. “I only wondered if you’d been . . . out there yet.”
“Out there?” Diana frowns. “I’m a single mom with two kids, a demanding, full-time job, a mortgage, and a husband who haunts me from the grave. I have no time to be ‘out there.’”
Chris blinks at the bitterness in her voice. “Your life is complicated.” He gestures to the two of them. “This is only difficult if we let it be, and we don’t have to.”
“Okay, so we won’t,” Diana says, though she has no idea if that will be possible.
Chris kisses her temple, and his hand moves down her back in long, lazy strokes. She feels sleep beckoning.
“You’re welcome to stay the night,” Chris whispers. “I’d like you to. Plus it’s late, and you have a long drive home.”
“Yes,” she sighs. “I’d like that.” She ignores her practical, responsible side that says each moment in this bed is a mistake, one that will demand time and energy she doesn’t have.
This is for me, she thinks, unable to remember the last time she did something that wasn’t for someone else—her colleagues, her extended family, Tom, her children.
Her children.
Diana sits up, Chris rising with her, a question on his face.
“I have to call home, and I should get my stuff from the car,” she explains.
She picks up Chris’s shirt from the bedroom floor and pads out into the main room of the cabin, where traces of their meal remain.
Her chair is askew; their plates and empty wineglasses are abandoned on the table.
“I’ll take care of this,” Chris says. He’s followed her out of the bedroom, wearing only a pair of boxers, and Diana swallows hard when she sees him in the bright light.
As he stacks their dishes and heads into the kitchen, she slides on her coat and boots, the door banging shut behind her.
In the harsh porch light, the cold makes her breath float on the air like golden clouds, and goose bumps dot her bare legs.
She runs her fingers along the rough siding of the cabin, trying to center herself.
This evening has not turned out how I expected, Diana thinks, spying Chris through the kitchen window.
How do I explain what happened with Chris?
Or what he told me about Tom? Or why my husband kept so much to himself?
What will Lakshmi say? Andrea? My parents?
What do I tell the kids about what I’ve learned?
Her children . . . The pain of missing Phoebe and Duncan still pricks at Diana. She needs to make sure they’re safe. Diana pulls out her phone to call home.
When her mother answers, Diana hears voices in the background, indistinct and agitated.
“Diana, your father and I brought the children home so they’d be able to go from here to school tomorrow.” The background noise quiets as a door closes. “Where are you?”
“Still in Hamilton.” Diana cringes. She should have called her mother earlier. “Chris and I got to talking, and I lost track of time.”
“When do you expect to arrive in Alcott? Midnight? That’s late to be driving.”
“I thought I’d sleep here tonight. I’ll get up early. I should arrive home as Duncan and Phoebe leave for school. Can you or Dad stay with them tonight?”
“Of course.”
“I’m sorry for the delay, Mom.”
“It’s no trouble at all, sweetheart. It’s the safe choice.” Vivian pauses. “Was the visit helpful?”
Helpful? In a world-shattering, my-husband-lied-to-me-and-I-slept-with-his-cousin kind of way, Diana thinks, though she realizes her mother is referring to her grieving process, not Tom’s secret. “It’s good I came here.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Vivian sighs. “I don’t want to worry you, but there’s something I should tell you.”
Fully alert now, the euphoria of lovemaking dissipating, Diana imagines her parents and children arriving at her house to find the front door unlocked, the house ransacked, and all their photographs missing. “What happened?”
“When we got to your house, Duncan asked if he could use the computer before bed. He wanted to watch a video of his last basketball game to prepare for this week’s practice.
He said something about how the bigger screen of the computer makes it easier to view everyone’s footwork.
Your dad agreed. About fifteen minutes later, your father left the kitchen to turn off the outside lights and lock up, and when he came back in, Duncan was agitated and crying.
I was helping Phoebe wash her hair, so I wasn’t there. ”
Dammit.
Diana knows exactly what happened. She used the laptop she and the kids share to research Tom, always closing out of the browser when she was finished.
Except she hadn’t cleared her search history.
Duncan could see what she looked up: all the Thomas Morgans and their crimes, Tom’s college newspaper, criminal statutes in North Carolina and Vermont, and much more.
It’s one thing to be told she’s investigating Tom’s past; it’s another to stumble upon evidence of that search. How could she have been so careless?
“Can I talk to him?”
“He’s with your father in his bedroom. Talk to him tomorrow. I wanted to give you a heads-up, that’s all. Let him get some rest.”
This is why The General is such an apt nickname for her mother. Vivian prides herself on her ability to address a problem and identify the solution, often before Diana processes what’s happening. Duncan is her son, her responsibility. Hers.
Tom managed her like that, too, didn’t he?
He took over the decision-making, shutting her out.
He avoided asking her opinion on matters big and small, like which color they should paint the house or which car they should buy to replace Diana’s old sedan.
When he decided Duncan would play basketball instead of baseball or hockey.
When they named Duncan after a person Diana didn’t know. When he left her that goddamn letter.
Why hadn’t she been mad when Tom made decisions without her? Why hadn’t she spoken up? Maybe if she had, things would be different.
“Diana? Are you still there?”
If she makes her mother put Duncan on the phone, it might make this situation worse. “Yes, I must have cut out. Cell service up here is terrible. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“Drive safely, and we’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”
“Good night, Diana. I love you, too.”
After the phone call with her mother, Diana slides back into bed with Chris. They make love again, this time with an intensity that makes Diana already regret having to leave in the morning.
Afterward, she lies in his arms, her head next to his on the pillow. “Now that was great,” he says, his lips on hers as his fingers trace circles across her thighs.
“Better than great,” she murmurs before falling into a dreamless sleep.
Diana wakes before dawn, the alarm on her phone beeping insistently. She tiptoes out of Chris’s bedroom. He follows, pulling on his boxers again. “Do you want me to make you coffee or breakfast before you go?”
“No, thanks,” Diana says, looking for her clothes. “I’ll stop somewhere.” She finds her underwear first, in the hallway.
“Can I ask a favor?” Chris says as she hooks on her bra, his eyes lingering on her chest.
Diana’s skin warms under his attention, and she reluctantly pulls on her sweater.
“Yes,” she says, uncertain what she’s agreeing to, but they’re in a precarious place.
Their relationship—Dalliance? Affair? She’s not sure what to call it—can be easy or very, very difficult.
She already has enough problems in her life; she’d much prefer easy.
“If you have other questions about Tom, come to me. I promise I’ll help in any way I can. My mom was upset after your questions, and I’d like to leave her and my dad out of this.”
As much as she would love to get Teresa and Brian to talk to her, Diana would ask the same to protect her parents. “Okay,” she agrees, yanking on her jeans. “But there is someone else.”
“Who? They’re all dead,” he says, grimacing. “Everyone else you could talk to is gone.”
“Remember Jessica?” Diana locates one of her socks under the dining table and another, oddly enough, under the sofa. “The O’Connors’ niece? She might have the answers I need. I have her address in New Hampshire.”
“You know, I met her.”
Diana stills. “What was she like?”
“A few times that summer, she came into the diner with Tom. I wasn’t supposed to leave the kitchen, so I’d say hello and go back to work.
They’d sit at the counter and get something to eat.
I thought she was a casual friend, maybe a summer fling.
No one of consequence in his life,” says Chris, running his hand through his sleep-tousled hair.
“I don’t think I ever asked any questions about her. ”
Would Diana have uncovered all this sooner had she asked Tom different questions? Or been more observant?
She stuffs her feet into her boots and grabs her coat. “Why did you tell me all of this? You didn’t have to.”