Chapter Thirty-Five
After dinner, everyone settles in for the evening, as if leaving Diana’s house will break a magical spell.
The kids pile on the sofa to watch a superhero movie, while her father plays poker with Lakshmi, Ramesh, and Evan at the dining room table.
Her mother remains in the kitchen, scrubbing it to spotless perfection and listening as Francis loses hand after hand.
Andrea and Diana go upstairs to clean out Tom’s closet.
“Three piles.” Diana gestures to the bed. “Keep, donate, and trash.”
“What do you want to keep?” Andrea snaps open a black trash bag and kneels in front of the shoes.
Diana pulls out Tom’s flannel robe and the blue L.L. Bean fleece he wore on winter weekends, along with the cashmere sweater from their first official date. She puts aside his ties for Duncan and a law school sweatshirt for Phoebe. “The rest goes.”
She and Andrea get to work, speaking only when Andrea has a question about an item.
It will take a while for the free-for-all of sisterhood to return; eventually, they will find their rhythm again, though it will be different between them.
Andrea has grown too accustomed to being the one who has it together, the one who “fixes” Diana’s life.
My life doesn’t need fixing, Diana thinks. Or at least, not the kind of fixing anyone can do except for me.
Andrea opens a new bag for Tom’s baseball caps. Diana rescues his favorite Red Sox cap for the keep pile, along with his last pair of running sneakers.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Andrea says.
“We got a letter from Noah’s teacher. She’s putting together a time capsule for the kids to open when they graduate high school.
Could parents please contribute a letter for their child?
Can you believe it? The last thing this family needs is another time capsule.
” Chuckling, she adds the bag to the growing pile in the corner of the room.
Diana offers a small smile. “Even though my experience with time capsules has been”—she pauses to find the right word—“unconventional, that doesn’t mean they’re bad. It’s quite a nice idea.”
“‘Unconventional’ is an understatement. More like ‘screwed up.’”
Diana pulls Duncan’s baseball bat from under her bed and leans it in the corner by the door so she’ll remember to put it back in the downstairs closet. “You should write the letter, Andie. Include a photo of the kids from earlier today, playing in the yard. It will be good to remember.”
It’s past midnight when everyone finally departs.
The light under Duncan’s door tells Diana he’s still awake, and when she enters his bedroom, she finds him propped up against the headboard, watching the door.
She sits next to him, and the mattress shifts with her weight.
She hands him the photo she found in the trash of himself and Tom on the basketball court.
She’s taped it together; strips of cellophane crisscross their bodies.
Their faces are intact, but the basketball is lost in the gash across the middle. “I thought you’d want this back.”
He carefully holds the photo in his palm. “You found Jessica, didn’t you?”
“I met her while you and Phoebe went fishing with Grandma and Grandpa.”
“And?” His tone is so eager, so trusting. “What did she say about Dad?”
Diana taps the rings hanging around her neck.
Tom should have told her the truth years ago.
If he had, Duncan wouldn’t be part of this story now.
She’ll never be able to forgive him for that.
“Many years ago, your father made a terrible mistake. He could never move past it, but we’re not going to hold on to it anymore. ”
Duncan listens as she recounts an abridged telling of Tom’s role in the fire, deliberately omitting his culpability in Carson’s death. She can’t do that to her son.
When she finishes, he drops his head on her shoulder, and they sit quietly, holding hands. Diana is curious how he’s matching this new vision of Tom with his memories of his father, but she doesn’t ask. Maybe later she will.
Duncan breaks their silence with the phrase they’ll think a thousand times, at birthdays and basketball games, on special occasions and ordinary days. “I miss him.”
“Me too.” She understands that Duncan will revisit the story she’s told him again and again. Probably for the rest of his life. “Remember that your dad loved you. He was so proud to be your father.”
“I love him, too.” His voice is drowsy, and soon, Duncan’s deep and even breathing tells her he’s fallen asleep. She shifts him onto the pillow and turns off the light.
She should go to bed, too, but she’s kept alert by memories: her own, and now Jessica’s. They met only this morning, but already, the specifics are distorted, as if they’re underwater, worn away by the waves into something colorless and delicate.
Downstairs in the office, Diana turns on the computer and slides the cursor across the screen to a folder titled “Our Wedding.” She sets the images to slideshow, and her screen fills with a photo of Chris and Tom putting on boutonnieres and grinning.
Another of Aunt Teresa and Uncle Brian walking into the church with Tom.
Diana and Andrea, standing in their parents’ yard on that steamy summer day in front of a row of blue hydrangeas, heavy with flowers shaped like stars.
She should be mad at Tom, furious and raging at his betrayal.
Those feelings kindle inside her, a fire seeking to ignite.
Before they blaze, however, Diana remembers Grace’s description of anger’s addictive qualities, how it could become all-consuming: I haven’t been able to let my anger or pain go, Grace said. You should.
“I’ll try,” Diana murmurs, focusing on dousing those embers of pain, one by one.
Another photo appears on the screen. This one is of Diana alone.
She remembers her mother waiting behind the photographer, powder in hand, ready for touch-ups, and the way her thighs, slick with sweat, stuck together as she adjusted her skirt.
She remembers running her hands across the bodice of her dress, the lace tickling her fingers.
She enlarges the image, her face filling the screen.
This Diana was passive. She never questioned Tom too closely about anything, not his family history, not his long hours at work, and not the reasons why he was reluctant to return to Hamilton.
That Diana didn’t demand much from those around her.
If only she’d been different then. If only he had, too.
Diana removes the letter and its copies from her pocket and unfolds the pages on the desk. Would Tom have ever told her about Jessica if he’d had more time?
This thread of the story is unresolved, tied up in a knot she will never unravel. It will always tug at her, especially when she feels his loss most keenly.
The photos continue to advance: Tom and Diana’s first dance, the wedding cake covered in sugar-spun flowers, the crystal chandelier above the dance floor glowing in the sun that streamed through the leaded windows.
The slideshow ends on a black-and-white photo of Tom and Diana posing at the foot of a staircase, both unaware of how life would turn them about.
Her fingers clamp onto the letter. By now, the words are second nature to her. She repeats them like a prayer, her lips moving silently: When I was 18 years old, I did something criminal. Something so terrible I can’t even write the details here. People died. It’s all my fault.
The answer of what to do next comes to Diana like a door opening from a darkened house into a bright day, bringing light to where there was an untenable murkiness.
She opens the desk drawer and takes out the folder containing her research: the items she photographed while visiting the Hamilton Star, the brochure for the O’Connor farm sale, printouts from the internet, Jessica’s cell phone bill, the paper from Grace with Jessica’s Nashua address scribbled in blue ink, the sketches from Tom’s notebook of Jessica and the horses, and Grace’s photo of Tom and Jessica.
Inside she puts the original letter and its two copies and leaves the office.
In the kitchen, she takes the original letter from the folder, tracing Tom’s signature one last time.
She drops the folder into the sink and opens the small drawer where she keeps odds and ends.
Hidden under a coupon for Sully’s breakfast sandwiches, she finds a matchbook.
She opens the cardboard flap and pulls out one match, igniting it with an efficient switch of her hand.
The red-blue flame dances in front of her.
She lets it burn until the heat licks at her fingers.
She drops the match, and the pages smolder, sending off a stinging odor that reminds Diana of almonds.
She lights another match, bringing it to the edge of the folder.
The flames jump across. She sees letters—a D here, a J there—as the papers curl up into themselves and disappear.
After a last look at the letter Tom wrote, the one he held in his hands and left for her to find, she lights another match and positions it at the letter’s corner.
A narrow corkscrew of smoke rises up and out the window.
She holds the letter over the sink, the fire closing in on her skin.
When she can hold on no longer, she drops the paper, watching it fall into the sink and disintegrate.
Diana shovels the ash into a pile, scooping it onto a paper towel. She gathers up what remains and goes outside.
With her phone’s flashlight, she finds a rusty trowel in a bucket of tools on the corner of the deck and walks across the lawn to the garden. Amid the ever-spreading mint and her temperamental rosebush, she digs. A few inches down, Diana places the ashes.
She reaches into her pocket for Grace’s rock. She rolls it around, running her fingers along its rough surface and pointed end one last time. She places the rock on top of the pile of ashes and sinks both into the ground, her hands settling into the damp dirt.
Diana silently fills the hole, patting the ground with her palms, before standing up to return inside.
The next day, Diana surprises Duncan and Phoebe with a trip to the ocean. The forecast calls for a scorcher, so she wakes them early to get a parking space at Good Harbor Beach before the crowds arrive. The kids tumble into the minivan with sleep still in the corners of their eyes.
They build sandcastles where the waves turn to foam around their feet.
At low tide, they wade out to Salt Island in the frigid water, their lips turning blue, Diana holding Phoebe’s hand as they follow Duncan over the rocks.
After a short rest on damp towels to eat peanut butter sandwiches, the kids return to the water to try out the boogie boards Diana found in the basement.
As Diana stands on the shore, they swim through the chilly Atlantic, Duncan waiting for Phoebe as she works to keep up with him.
Afterward, salt still stuck to their skin, they sit outside at a seaside restaurant, eating fried clams and onion rings, ketchup dripping down their chins.
With achingly full bellies, empty plates in front of them, Diana tells her children that when Tom was a teenager, he worked on a horse farm.
“Remember when I went up to Vermont? I met the lady who owned the farm. She said your dad even cleaned the horses’ stalls, though I bet he didn’t like that too much.
Cleaning wasn’t his thing. Remember how he always left his dirty socks all over the house? ”
“I like it when you talk about Daddy,” Phoebe says.
When you speak of me to Duncan and Phoebe, tell them their father was imperfect, but he loved them, and you, more than anything.
“I do, too,” Diana says. “I’m going to be better at telling stories about him.”
Duncan rubs his palm across his eyes. Diana reaches for his other hand and gives it a squeeze. “That work for you, Duncan?”
He nods quickly and beams a smile at Phoebe. “I think we need ice cream. What do you say?”
“A chocolate and vanilla twist with sprinkles,” Phoebe agrees. She looks up at Diana. “Want one, Mama?”
Diana laughs as she pulls a credit card out of her wallet and hands it to Duncan. “I’m too full. I’ll just taste yours.” The kids scramble off the bench. “A small cone is enough!”
As her children weave between the other tables to a window through which teenage waitstaff sell frozen confections, Diana thinks of Ava. Someday, she’ll tell Duncan and Phoebe about their half sister. Perhaps a trip to Maine would be good for all of them.
Thinking of the future inspires her to pull her phone from her shorts pocket and send a text that is long overdue. Camille, she writes, I’m interested in the library director job, and I’d love to talk with you about it.
Camille’s response is instantaneous: About time I heard from you, I’ll send a meeting invite for this week. We have a lot of planning to do.
Diana looks over to the window to find Phoebe’s face obscured by what is most definitely not a small cone. Duncan, holding aloft his equally oversize ice cream, shrugs as if to say, You said large, right?
Diana shakes her head, laughing, and her children’s smiles are so wide and so joyful that her heart aches in response.
Her phone buzzes, and Diana looks down to find a message from Chris, accompanied by a photo of a pile of wood. I’m making a second Adirondack chair for my porch. Should be ready in a week or so. Think you might like to break it in?
Diana swears she can smell sawdust. I’d like that very much, she texts back.
“Mama,” Phoebe says as she approaches their table, Duncan at her heels. “We figured you’d want more than a taste.” She licks melting ice cream from her hand. “Want to share with us?”
“Absolutely,” Diana says. She wraps her arm around her daughter, kissing Phoebe behind her ear, where she smells of the sea, of childhood, and of everything Diana loves most in the world. “There’s nothing I want more.”