“I didn’t realize you were so heartless,” he said.
Then he left. The door clicked shut behind him, gentle, almost polite, and somehow that was worse than a slam.
I sat down at the table I’d spent all afternoon setting.
I stared at his empty chair until the candle wax started pooling on the cloth.
Something finally gave.
Then he left.
***
I don’t remember deciding to go upstairs. I just remember standing in the guest room, pulling open the drawer where Bob kept his old address book, the one with family members’ numbers.
I was shaking with rage. I flipped past aunts and cousins.
And there, in Bob’s handwriting from almost a decade ago, was Uncle John’s landline.
I was shaking with rage.
I dialed.
It rang four times. Then an older woman answered, warm and a little breathless, as if she’d hurried to the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Um. My name is Penelope. You know Bob? I’m his wife. I’m sorry to call so late, but I need you to please tell Uncle John that Bob has his own family and…”
Silence.
I stopped. I was rambling and made myself breathe.
It rang four times.
“I’m sorry, dear. You said you’re Bob’s wife?”
“Yes,” I said. “John’s nephew. He is sister Marie’s son.”
The silence stretched longer this time. So long, I thought the line had dropped.
“Sweetheart,” the woman said finally. “My name is Sylvia. I was John’s wife.”
“Was?”
“Honey,” Aunt Sylvia said, and her voice went soft. “John died 10 years ago.”
“I was John’s wife.”
I heard myself make a sound.
“Are you sure you haven’t mixed something up?” Aunt Sylvia asked so kindly, as if she were trying not to break me. “Maybe there’s another John in the family?”
My blood ran cold.
“No,” I said. My mouth felt numb. “It’s Bob’s mother’s brother.”
I heard myself make a sound.
“That’s my John,” Aunt Sylvia said gently. “And honey, I haven’t heard from Bob in years. Not since before the funeral. He hasn’t come here.”
I sat down on the edge of the guest bed because my legs weren’t going to hold me anymore.
“Aunt Sylvia,” I whispered. “Are you telling me that for three years, every single night, when my husband said he was going to help Uncle John, he was lying?”
“He hasn’t come here.”
“I don’t know where he’s been going,” my husband’s aunt said. “But it isn’t to my home.”
I don’t remember hanging up.
Three years. A thousand evenings. Every one of them a lie told in a dead man’s name!
I stared at the wall and understood, with a cold clarity I’d never felt before, that I had no idea who my husband actually was.
I don’t remember hanging up.
I stared at my own reflection in the dark window and made a decision that surprised me.
I wasn’t going to cause a scene. I was going to give him enough rope.
***
When my husband’s key turned in the front door around 10 p.m., I was already on the couch with a paperback I wasn’t reading. He came in with that faint, unfamiliar scent clinging to his shirt again, something floral.
I was already on the couch.
I set the book down and smiled the softest smile I could manage.
“How’s Uncle John’s dog doing? Is everything okay?”
Bob paused halfway out of his coat, just for a second. Then he recovered with that easy chuckle I used to love.
“Oh, he’s doing great. And Uncle John is feeling better, too. Thanks for asking, honey.”
Then he recovered.
I turned back to my book so he wouldn’t see my face.
A dog. It had been a nonexistent cat when he left. Bob had become so tangled in his own lies that he’d forgotten which animal he was rescuing.
That was all the confirmation I needed. Whatever was on the other end of that 6:30 p.m. drive, it obviously wasn’t an uncle. And I was going to find out what it was.
That was all the confirmation I needed.
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