After we got back from Sam’s house, I waited in the living room for Victor to come home. The kids were in their bedrooms—Max was playing with the Wii system Victor had brought from Kelli’s house and Ava was talking on the phone, to Bree, I assumed. I sat in the relative quiet, flipping the pages of the book I’d picked up on how children process their grief. It talked about how some would shut down completely, coping only by pretending that nothing had changed. They might go about their daily lives as they always had—going to school, spending time with their friends, trying to have fun. They wouldn’t want to talk about their parent’s death; they wouldn’t cry or get angry with the surviving parent. At least Max and Ava weren’t shutting me out. I felt buoyed by the moment Ava and I had shared in the bathroom earlier. Hopefully, she’d remember that I tried to comfort her. Maybe after some time, we’d find a way to be friends.
I really wasn’t trying to replace Kelli, but I was happy I could be there for Ava. I wondered if Kelli really would have chosen to end her life, knowing she would miss such important milestones with her daughter. If she would have believed her circumstances were so dark that the only solution to them was death.
I thought about the letter from the doctor I’d kept in my purse, after finding it at her house with Ava. I still hadn’t told Victor we’d gone to get the recipe there—with his work hours and having the kids around us, the timing just hadn’t been right. I felt a little guilty, and afraid, now, too, I supposed, that he’d be even more angry that I’d waited to tell him. We’d never kept secrets from each other before—at least, not as far as I knew. There were things he didn’t know, but they were little things, like how much I spent to get my hair colored and cut each month, or about the entire bag of chocolate I finished off each week, the one I kept hidden in my desk at work. But he still hadn’t talked with me about the weird fact that Kelli’s freshman yearbook was absent any signatures. He hadn’t “looked into it” like he said he would. Not that it was a huge deal, but if it might help explain whether or not Kelli purposely ended her own life—if there was something so devastating in her past that might have led her to that leaping-off place—I didn’t see why he wouldn’t be anxious to find out for sure. Maybe I could do a little digging, but I wondered if Victor’s avoidance of it meant that he knew more about Kelli’s past than he wanted to admit. I wondered if he was keeping secrets from me, too.
My curiosity overwhelmed me and I got up, walked over to my purse, and pulled out the letter. Dr. Brian Stiles. It was a handwritten note on a blank sheet of paper. I found it a little strange that he hadn’t typed it on letterhead, but the script was slanted and slightly shaky; maybe he was retired. I could Google him, I decided, find out what kind of doctor he was. Maybe that would tell me why Kelli had contacted him.
A moment later, I was at the dining room table, drumming my fingers on the top of my thighs, waiting for my laptop to fire up. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this without telling Victor first. But I knew if I did tell him, he’d brush me off. I couldn’t help but feel if I figured out what happened to Kelli as a teenager, it might give us some clue about how she died.
Straightening in my seat, I opened up the browser and typed in the doctor’s name and address. His website was at the top of the results list and showed his credentials as an ob-gyn. Oh my god. Maybe that’s why her parents disowned her, why her yearbook is blank, and why the pictures in her albums stop when she was fourteen. Maybe she got pregnant.
I sat back against my chair and released a heavy sigh. If she had a baby, what had happened to it? Did she give it up for adoption? And if that were true, why wouldn’t she have told Victor about it? Had her parents made her so ashamed that she held on to that secret for all those years? I did a quick calculation in my head, figuring that if Kelli had the baby when she was fifteen, and Kelli was thirty-three when she died, the child would be eighteen now. I wondered if Kelli had contacted this doctor, trying to find her baby. Maybe she did find her child and he or she didn’t want anything to do with Kelli, and that’s what led her to take too many pills. If, in fact, that was what she’d done. Maybe she was devastated by an entirely different sense of loss.
My spinning thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, huge crash down the hall, followed by the sound of Max’s bloodcurdling screams. Forgetting about Kelli entirely, I raced to his bedroom, passing Ava on the way, and threw open his door to find him jumping up and down on the Wii remote. The white box that had been next to the small television on his desk was on the floor, too, cracked wide open, wires and circuit board exposed.
“Damn it!” Max screamed. Spittle flew from his lips with the words. His brown hair stood out in uneven tufts across his head, and he stared at me with wide, angry blue eyes, breathing hard. “Crap!”
“Stop it, Max!” I said loudly, rushing over to pull him off the remote. “What happened?”
He tried to yank away from my grasp, but I held tight. “It’s a stupid game. I hate it!” He began crying, his small shoulders quaking. Fat tears rolled down his flushed cheeks and he pulled away from me. This time I let him go, following him over to his bed, where he threw himself face-first into his pillow and pounded the mattress with his fists.
I sat on the edge of the bed and put my palm flat on his back. Not rubbing, not trying to comfort. Just letting him know I was there, the way I used to with Sam. “Why is the game stupid?” I asked quietly. Adrenaline shot through my veins and I tried to take a few unobtrusive deep breaths.
“Because it is,” was his mumbled reply.
Ava appeared in the doorway and leaned against the doorjamb with her arms crossed. She still wore her mother’s red sweater but had changed out of the black skirt she’d worn to Sam’s house and into her plaid flannel pajama bottoms. “He’s mad because he sucks,” she said simply. “He always gets mad when he doesn’t win.”
Max rolled over, glanced wildly around his bed, then grabbed his hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone from his nightstand and chucked it across the room, missing his sister only by a couple of feet. “I do not!” he screamed. “Why don’t you just shut up?”
I grabbed his arm again. “Max! That was totally unacceptable. Do you understand me? You could have really hurt your sister.” Then I turned my gaze to Ava. “And you. Don’t say your brother sucks.”
“Whatever,” Ava said, and rolled her eyes, which looked a little swollen. Had she been crying? She looked more angry than sad—as if she’d walked into her brother’s room already primed for a fight. What the hell? Just a few moments before, I’d been thinking how our relationship might be turning a corner, and now this? I knew adolescents could be unpredictable—I remember throwing a few nightmare hissy fits when I was thirteen, too—but this seemed extreme.
“I don’t care if I hurt her!” Max shrieked, his face burning scarlet, the tears still falling.
“You’re such a little shit!” Ava yelled.
“Max! Ava!” I said, letting go of Max and standing up in the middle of the room. “Both of you knock it off right now! Do you hear me?” I was yelling, too, and breathing hard.
Ava looked at me, now the lift of her chin and defiance in her narrowed eyes making her seem much older than she was. I remember giving that same look to my father when he’d try to tell me what I should do. Screw you, it said.
“You’re not my mom,” she said. Her voice was low and full of spite. “I don’t have to do anything you say.”
“I’m the adult here, young lady, and you will do exactly what I say.” Even though I felt unsure, I lowered my tone to match hers, the same strategy I used to employ as an HR executive when mouthy employees tried to steamroll over me. I refused to allow this little girl to believe she intimidated me in any way.
At this point, I heard the front door open and shut. “Hey, guys,” Victor called out. “I’m home!” He appeared behind Ava a moment later, and she whipped around to bury her face against him. Her shoulders shook, and I couldn’t help but think she was faking her tears to look like a victim. Max pushed past me and threw his arms around his father’s waist, too. Victor gave me a confused, imploring look, his hands rubbing his children’s backs. “Hey now,” he said. “What’s all of this? What happened?”
“Max threw a tantrum and trashed the Wii,” I said tiredly, gesturing to the mess of cracked plastic and wiring on the floor. “Then he and Ava started fighting and he threw a book at her.”
“Grace yelled at us, Dad,” Ava said. Her tone had shifted from spiteful to sorrowful. “Max and I were trying to work it out.”
“That’s not what happened, Ava, and you know it,” I said. “Victor? Can we go talk about this in the other room?”
He moved his eyes to the shattered Wii box and then to me. I couldn’t read his expression. “I’ll come talk with you in a little bit,” he said. “Let me handle this, first.”
“But—” I began, but Victor cut me off.
“Grace. I’ve got it handled, okay?”
I stared at him, and a pain in my chest began radiating out through the rest of my body, a feeling I couldn’t immediately name. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t fear. I took slow, deliberate steps across the room, careful to edge my way around Victor and the kids without touching any of them. I waited for him to reach out, to put his hand on my arm or give me a reassuring look. But he didn’t make eye contact and made no move to touch me, either.
Back in our bedroom, I sat in the chair at the end of our bed and reached into my purse. I pulled out the engagement ring I still kept with me, and even wore when I wasn’t around the kids. Tears filled my eyes, and it was only then that it finally struck me what the prickly sensation in my body actually was.
In a moment where Victor and I should have stood united, a moment when I needed him to back me up, the feeling that coursed through my veins was something I never believed he would cause. The feeling I felt was betrayal.
* * *
I pretended to be asleep when Victor came to bed a while later. I listened to him undress in the dark, take a quick shower to wash off the scent of the restaurant from his skin, then felt the pressure of his weight on the other side of the mattress as he climbed beneath the covers. Again, he made no move to touch me; he only said my name once, quietly. I lay immobile, turned away from him, regulating my breath so it appeared I was asleep. I knew we needed to talk, but honestly, I was so hurt, I didn’t know what I’d say to him that wouldn’t cause more damage than it would heal.
“Grace?” he said again, louder this time. I released a heavy sigh. There was no way I could pretend I hadn’t heard him.
“What.” The word shot out of me like a bullet.
“I heard from the doctor tonight. Kelli’s toxicology report came back and he thought I’d want to know the results.”
I rolled over to look at him, temporarily forgetting my anger. I could barely see him in the dark, just the shadowy outline of his long body, the sharp angles of his face. “He called you on Thanksgiving?” Victor nodded. “Okay, so?” I prodded, still furious with him, but letting my curiosity get the better of me.
“He said she died of a sudden ventricular tachycardia. A heart attack, basically.”
“We already knew that.” I couldn’t tell if he was being purposely evasive or just struggling to find a way to say what he needed to say. I was too irritated to care.
“Right, but now we know it was caused by the medication she was taking.”
“Victor,” I said, past the point of any patience with him. “Did she commit suicide or not?”
He sighed. “There’s no way to know for sure. The doctor said her electrolytes were completely out of whack, probably because she wasn’t eating. She was on the verge of anorexia, I guess, which completely screws up how your body processes things.” He swallowed once before continuing. “So the meds she was taking built up in her system to the point where they became toxic to her.”
I thought about this a moment. “Is there any way for him to tell how many pills she had taken that morning?”
Victor shook his head. “Not an exact dosage. But the levels in her blood were higher than they should have been, so she was probably taking more than the prescribed dose for a while. It’s more the combination of that and her system being too broken down to handle it, I guess. Her heart just gave up.” He sighed. “I don’t know what to tell the kids. Ava keeps asking.”
“You can’t tell them the truth?”
“That their mom was a pill-popping anorexic? That’s a great idea.”
I knew I needed to confess my trip to Kelli’s house with Ava and explain the possibility that she might have given up a baby for adoption, but his tone slammed a door shut inside me. My cheeks warmed and I gritted my teeth to keep from telling him to fuck off. “Jesus, Victor,” I said instead. “I wasn’t suggesting you should say it like that.” I rolled back over and pulled the covers up to my neck. This conversation was over. “I’m tired, okay? Good night.”
He didn’t respond, but soon, his breath fell into a slow, deep rhythm, and I knew he was asleep. Frustration crackled through my body, keeping me awake. I knew his first loyalty lay with his children, and rightly so. And yet. The way he’d spoken to me—dismissed me, really. Like anything I had to say was irrelevant. I gnawed on this thought, tossing and turning for most of the night, wondering how we would get through this situation, questioning whether or not I could.
Around four thirty, I finally gave up any pretense of being able to sleep, got up, and took a shower. Victor woke up at six to find me already dressed and sitting in my armchair in the corner of our bedroom, reviewing one of the client files I’d brought home from work. He propped himself up on his elbows and gave me a small smile. “Hey. You’re up early.”
“Yep. I figured I might as well get a jump-start on my day.”
He cocked his head to one side. “It’s a holiday weekend. You’re going into work?”
I bobbed my head once. “For a little while, before you need to get back to the restaurant. I need to get some things done now, since I’m assuming you’ll need me to take care of the kids in the afternoons, so you can be at work?” He hadn’t asked specifically, but I understood that with Spencer’s broken arm I would need to take over much of what Victor would normally do for the kids because of his longer hours on the job. I’d need to alter my work schedule so I could pick them up from school. I’d need to get Ava to dance squad practice and Max to basketball. At this point, I didn’t see any alternative but to do whatever had to be done. There was no reason the kids should suffer just because their dad was being a jerk.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “If that’s okay with you.”
“Of course. Ava got her period when we were at Sam’s house,” I told him. Despite how angry I was, I felt like this was something he should know. Everything else—everything about Kelli’s past—could wait.
“Really?” His eyebrows raised. “Is she okay?”
I nodded. “I think so. But don’t talk with her about it, okay? Unless she brings it up. You’ll just embarrass her.”
“I get it,” he said. “Thank you for being there for her.”
“You’re welcome.”
He was silent a moment, assessing the businesslike edge to my words. “Are you okay? I know last night was stressful. Finding out all of that stuff about Kelli. And the kids, arguing like that. That’s the way it goes with them sometimes.”
That’s the way it goes when you coddle them and don’t even bother hearing the adult’s side of the story. Of course, I didn’t say this. “I’m fine,” I said instead.
He sat up. “Oh yeah, you definitely sound fine. Not pissed at me or anything.” His words were lightly teasing, but I was in no mood.
“You can’t ask me to help you take care of them and then not trust me to make good decisions,” I said softly, planning for that to be all I had to say about what had happened last night in Max’s room. I stood up and shoved the file into my briefcase. “And I’m sorry about the news about Kelli. I’m sure you’ll figure out the right thing to tell the kids.” I kept my tone cool. He obviously wasn’t interested in my input, so I’d decided I wouldn’t give him any.
He waited a moment before answering, staring at me. When he finally did, his tone matched mine. “Okay. Thank you.”
I lifted my gaze to him briefly, and at the sight of the hurt in his eyes, my anger eased just the tiniest bit. “I love you,” I said. And then, for the first time since moving in with him, I left the house without kissing Victor good-bye.
