Chapter Thirty-One #2
Diana claims the missing photo, taking a long look at the children she loves with a fierceness she can’t adequately explain, and the husband who led her to this chair, to this bar, to this woman.
She clamps down so tightly on the key that its grooves pinch against her skin.
“Why?” she asks, the one word summarizing the many questions that fly through her mind.
“I wanted to see where Tom lived. I came down a few times and drove around your town. I saw places he mentioned, like that café and the library. Your house. I knew your son played basketball and guessed he was on the middle school team. I figured out the schedule and went to one of his games.”
There’s a ringing in Diana’s ears, her body alerting her to how wrong all this is.
Sully’s wasn’t the first time she saw Jessica.
She remembers taking a phone call from Jonathan at Duncan’s last game before she left for Vermont and noticing a woman who sat too close, almost as if she’d been listening to their conversation.
Diana holds still, trying to keep herself from bursting apart.
Jessica sips her drink. “I knew where the key to your house was. Once, I was on the phone with Tom when he came home from a run and realized you’d gone out with the kids. He didn’t have his key and was locked out. It wasn’t a big deal because there was one under the deck.”
Diana glances at the door, trying to guess how many steps it would take to get outside. “If you’ve been following me, why did it take you so long to respond to my text? I assume you wanted to talk to me.”
“I’d like a chance to explain,” Jessica says, wrapping her hands around her glass and squeezing so tightly her knuckles turn white. “For Tom.”
Diana flinches as Tom’s name again comes out of Jessica’s mouth, but she decides to play along. After all, she doesn’t have other options.
“I didn’t intend to go into your house. It just kind of . . . happened.” Jessica shifts in her chair. “No, that’s not a good explanation. The truth is I wanted to see his home.”
“Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to have a stranger in my house? You took a photo of my children.” Diana’s voice rises, and the man at the bar turns around to look at them. She silently counts to five. “How many times did you use that key to go into my house?”
Jessica looks down at her lap. “The day I took the photo was the third time.”
How had Diana not realized someone had been in her house, looking through her things, invading her privacy?
Her safety? This could have ended much worse for her and her children.
Diana wants to ask Jessica exactly what she did on each visit—each intrusion—but she also doesn’t want to know.
She wouldn’t ever feel the same about her house if she knew.
The conversation is delayed by a plate of french fries clanking down on the table along with a bottle of ketchup. “Anything else?” Fiona asks, looking from Jessica to Diana. They decline her offer, and the woman withdraws to fill the glass of the man at the bar yet again.
Jessica smacks the bottle, and the condiment oozes out in a watery pile on the rim of her plate.
“I didn’t respond to your text right away, or the voicemail messages you left with my parents or the letter you sent them, because I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.
I’m in recovery. Getting clean has been hard, and I didn’t want to risk a relapse.
” She pushes the fries around the plate.
“I knew Tom was married and had kids, but he didn’t tell me much about you except that he was proud of your life together.
I’ve always been jealous of that . . . and of you. ”
The truths keep coming, Diana thinks, securing the photo and key in her purse.
“If meeting me was so hard, why are you here? And why this place?” Diana looks around Fiona’s, taking in the pool table, the liquor bottles behind the bar, a broken mirror on the wall.
“Why would someone in recovery want to spend time in a bar?”
“I used to come here a lot. Before I got clean. It’s familiar.” Jessica holds up two fries, dripping with ketchup, and then drops them onto the plate, uneaten.
“I need you to tell me what happened that summer you and Tom were on Grace and William’s farm,” Diana says. “And now, apparently, why you’ve been following me. You owe me that. For breaking into my house, if for no other reason.”
Jessica nods.
“Let’s start with you and Tom,” Diana says. “Had you been in touch since that summer on the farm, or did you reconnect at some point?”
“I bumped into him at the courthouse in Lowell about twelve or thirteen years ago. I was there for a friend’s trial. Tom was walking down the hall, like a dream.” Jessica shifts the plate of fries off to the side. “We caught up. Exchanged numbers, that sort of thing.”
Thirteen years ago, Diana was pregnant with Duncan, buying onesies and painting clouds on the walls of his nursery.
Tom telling her he saw an old girlfriend wouldn’t have been a threat to their marriage.
To explain Jessica, however, would have meant opening up about the fire.
He hadn’t wanted to do that, so Jessica, too, had to remain a secret.
“Later, I got arrested for possession and needed a lawyer. Tom helped get me probation.”
“You only saw him when he represented you?”
“Do you want to know about that summer?” Jessica’s voice, which softened as she remembered reconnecting with Tom, grows stony again.
“I’m listening,” Diana says. She notices Jessica didn’t answer her question about how often she saw Tom.
“My parents sent me to Vermont that summer because they’d found coke in my backpack and freaked out.
They thought a few months on a farm in the middle of nowhere would straighten me out.
It wasn’t awful. Uncle William and Aunt Grace didn’t hang all over me like my parents did.
They gave me chores but mostly left me alone.
And there was Tom. I could tell he was into me.
” Jessica looks up, as if expecting Diana to be mad.
But Diana is too close to the truth to get upset about things that don’t matter.
“He followed me around, trying to talk to me, even doing my chores. I had a boyfriend at home; it was his coke my parents found. He dumped me soon after I got to Vermont. I had a habit of dating guys who were losers. It took me years to figure that out.” Jessica’s tough exterior slips away, providing Diana with a glimpse of the insecure woman beneath.
“Tom was different. He listened when I talked. He was funny, too, and kind.”
He always was the same person. From his teenage years through to adulthood, he was always Tom—even if he kept part of himself from her. The essence of him was there. If Jessica says nothing else, Diana will be grateful for this revelation.
“I was the one who kissed him.” Jessica finishes off her soda and sits back in her chair, her attention completely on Diana.
“We were in the barn, cleaning out the stables. It was an oven in there, and the shovels were heavy, so we were taking a break in the middle of the horse shit and hay. A bird had gotten stuck inside and couldn’t find its way out.
Tom said it was a mourning dove. He could tell by the sound it made—kind of sad, like it was looking for someone. ”
Diana crushes her hands together so she won’t be undone by Jessica’s memory.
She pictures it all: the breeze sweeping the bird through the barn; dust gliding along the sunlight; the rough, splintery wood of the shovel handle in her hand.
She sees Tom, not yet the man she will love but on his way to that person, to that future with her.
“Tom stood next to me, staring at that damn bird. I remember the sweat trickling down the side of his face. He wiped it away and turned to me. He tasted like salt. I remember that.” Jessica pulls a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and taps it against her wrist.
Diana licks her lips, and salt is on her tongue. The stale-beer odor of the bar is replaced with the loamy smell of dirt and hay and horses. She’s lightheaded and eager. She hadn’t expected Jessica to make Tom come alive like this. Tell me more, she thinks.
Instead of more, though, Diana is jarred back into her chair by Fiona’s return to their table. “You can’t smoke in here,” she says. Fiona picks up the plate and glasses, her eyes on Jessica.
Frowning, Jessica stuffs the cigarettes into her pocket and strides to the bathroom.
“She can smoke in the parking lot,” Fiona continues. “Just pay your tab first.”
Standing at the bar, distracted by Jessica’s description of Tom, Diana is unable to accurately calculate percentages and leaves an extravagant tip for their order of carbonated beverages and french fries.
Fiona reviews the receipt and disappears through the swinging doors.
The beer-drinking man ignores Diana, his eyes on his rapidly emptying glass.
Diana contemplates the door to the women’s bathroom.
Should she go in and check on Jessica? While Jessica said she’s clean, she also mentioned she was worried about holding on to her sobriety.
Diana should have expected this and asked Andrea for guidance.
Her sister’s medical training would have been helpful today.
No matter what’s happened, Diana needs her sister. She will make things right with Andrea when she gets home. It’s time.
The bathroom door flings open, and Jessica emerges. When she doesn’t see Diana at the table, confusion—and perhaps disappointment—ripples across her face.
“I paid our bill,” Diana says, waving. “Do you want to go outside? We can talk while you smoke.” Diana isn’t confident being alone with Tom’s ex is a good idea, but she has to take that risk if she wants to hear Jessica’s story.
Jessica nods and opens the door with her hip.
Once outside, Diana stops, holding her face away from the sun to let her eyes adjust. It’s then she spies a gleaming copper penny on the ground.
She thinks of Phoebe and the pennies she hid inside Bear Bear.
A message from Tom, she said. Maybe it is.
Diana bends down to pick up the coin, holding it between her fingers, the metal hot with sunshine, before dropping it into her purse.