by Emily Belden
get to the point. It’s not like I have any allegiance to Gemma, but I agree with her on one thing: no more lies.
She turns to face me, finally. The touch of rosiness normally
seen in her cheeks is void. She’s gone pale and her lips are separated as we both wait for words to fill them. For the first time since I’ve met her, Debbie is speechless—lost and confused. I
know those emotions well and we won’t get anywhere if she
stays stuck like that. I decide to tone down my incorrigibility.
“Let me back up,” I prep for an explanation. “I talked with
Gemma. For quite a while, actually. Was no one going to tell
me that Decker had a son?”
Debbie lets out a defeated sigh, positioning her hands on
the kitchen island for stability.
“It’s not what you think, Charlotte,” she says softly, refus-
ing legitimate eye contact while leaning over her gigantic
marble kitchen island.
“What’s it, then? Because I’ve really been trying to figure
this out.”
“Well, no one told you go play detective. And now look.
This is not how we wanted you to find out,” Debbie says,
standing up tall in an attempt to reclaim her signature status.
“Please don’t do that,” I say. “The urn coming back to me
has nothing to do with you being exposed as a liar. And a
thief, too.”
“A thief?” She goes back to slumping over the counter. “In
what regard am I a thief, might I ask?”
“The time you brought sunflowers to my new apartment
after Decker died.”
“Yeah, and? I remember that bouquet well. Arranged it
with pops of white ranunculus.”
Is she really making me spell this out for her right now?
“You stole transfer paperwork Decker’s policy box and
9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 249
1/14/19 1:44 PM
250
Emily Belden
forged my signature on a ten-thousand-dollar withdrawal.
Ring a bell?”
“You’ve damn near lost your mind, Charlotte. Do you
think Kurt and I would ever need a loan from our son’s life
insurance policy? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
Look around this place, will you? We’re doing quite alright
for ourselves.”
“You gave it to Gemma.”
“Gave what to Gemma?”
“Hush money you didn’t want traced back to your own
bank account. She mentioned it.”
“Well if she mentioned it, I guess that hush money isn’t
working so well, huh? I don’t mean to be rude, but if Gemma
needed fifty thousand dollars, we could—and would—give it to her. But there was no hush money. Gemma is not like that.
She has never been about money.”
The way Debbie talks about Gemma, it’s like she must
know her—well. Better than me, I wonder? Are the two of
them closer than I ever was to my own mother-in-law? I can
feel my facial expressions lose elasticity and she must be able to tell that I am sinking, too.
She puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Why don’t we
continue this chat in the living room. Okay?”
Continue this chat? I want to leave. I want to surrender to
a massive panic attack. I want to give up on everything. But
alas, I can’t go just yet because if Debbie is inviting me to take a seat in the living room, there’s more to this story.
Debbie flips her blond hair over her shoulder and sits down
next to me on the sofa in the living room. Normally she opts
to put some distance between us and takes the seat across from
me. I wonder what this closeness is all about.
“Now, I have no idea what happened to your money, but
I can call Kurt’s personal finance attorney right now if you
9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 250
1/14/19 1:44 PM
Husband Material
251
think that’ll help,” she says, what I determine to be one of the first and only times she’s actually been genuine to me. “Would
that help you, Charlotte?”
“What would really help me right now…is if you just say
it. I want to hear someone just say it out loud. Say it loud and clear. ‘Decker has a son.’ I mean, doesn’t he?”
I look to Debbie and she nods.
“So then just say it, please.”
She lets out another big breath. “Decker has a son. Aiden
Michael Sutherland is his biological child,” she says, finally
corroborating the story like I requested. “That’s him on the
diving board with the long hair.”
Debbie is a cold woman, but after she points him out, she
puts her arm around me. I’m not sure if it’s a sign of affection or an attempt to stabilize me after she drops the truth bomb.
But like a rock hitting a windshield, I begin to crack and split.
I begin to cry.
“Sandra!” she shouts. “Can you bring the picture album
from my bedroom down here, please? And a box of Kleenex,
too.”
Debbie looks to the ground as she rubs my back softly. This
close to her, I can see she’s not wearing any makeup. This is
essentially an unheard-of state for Mrs. Austin. Even when
we were in the hospital with Decker on life support, I caught
glimpses of her touching up her lip liner with the mirror of
a pressed powder compact. Of course she is vain, but in that
moment, I want to believe it was just a nervous habit of hers—
like she didn’t actually care if her lips weren’t the perfect shade of red when her son lay dying just a few feet away. But today,
she’s gone au naturel.
“Here you go, Mrs. Austin,” Sandra says, plopping down a
large photobook not unlike a wedding album.
“Thank you. Here, Charlotte. Why don’t you have a look
9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 251
1/14/19 1:44 PM
252
Emily Belden
at some of these photos and help yourself to a tissue or two?
I’m going to get some tea started.”
Somehow my trembling fingers are able to open the book.
I see photos of Aiden over the years. As I turn the pages, some include Debbie and Kurt pictured with him. A few pages later,
even Gemma makes an appearance, back before her hair was as
bleached as it is now. I eventually get to another angle of the Superman/Clark Kent photo with Brian that actually appears
to have been taken in the front foyer of this very house. I’ve
been here a hundred times. How the hell did I miss that detail?
As I go through more photos, I finally land on one with an
uncanny, indisputable resemblance to Decker.
“Hi,” I catch myself whispering as I brush my fingertips
over the protective plastic.
The photo is of Aiden hanging upside down from a set of
monkey bars. The same one on Gemma’s Instagram, but this
version is taken from the front. His sandy blond hair looks
like a lion’s mane and he’s smiling with the brightest, biggest blue eyes. Suddenly, I feel myself smiling, too. Decker still
exists in this world, just in a different form, a different body.
This is…crazy.
“He’s a cutie, right?” Debbie says with a smile as she brings
two cups of tea into frame. “Do you want me to call him in<
br />
here?”
I know she’s not trying to spring a full-on meet-and-greet
right here, right now. Instead, she’s offering me a plain view, something greater than any of the photos in this book. From
where I sit, I can see him. Frolicking, laughing, splashing.
From where I sit, I get it. This is Decker’s son. He’s every bit as beautiful as I thought he would be. But right now, I don’t
need more of Aiden. I thought maybe I wanted that when I
got here, but I don’t. I know he’s not going anywhere. This
9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 252
1/14/19 1:44 PM
Husband Material
253
family won’t let that happen. So when the time is right—if
the time is ever right—I’ll know what to do.
“Can I just ask a question?” I say, not allowing Debbie to
answer. “Why did Gemma wait until after he died to tell anyone about Decker having a son? Doesn’t that seem a little too
convenient? Like, how easy to poach a grieving family that
also happens to be super well off? I’m just struggling with the authenticity and the timing of all of this.”
She waits for me to finish blowing my nose, then responds.
“I mean, don’t think for one minute that we didn’t consider
that. But like I said, we’ve never given her a penny and she’s
never asked. The girl keeps to herself. She hardly accepts the
gifts we give Aiden and even scheduling these weekly sum-
mer pool dates is like pulling teeth. She feels like she is in-
conveniencing us. She never sticks around. She feels like she’s intruding. I have to remind her constantly, ‘That’s my blood.
That’s my grandbaby. It’s fine!’ But then Kurt reassures me.
Gemma’s not our daughter-in-law and she knows that. She
doesn’t have to invite us over. She doesn’t have to stay for dinner. She doesn’t have to tell us what she’s up to these days,
where she’s working, things like that. She’s sweet enough to
us, but there’s no intimacy. It’s probably pretty confusing for A, don’t you think?”
I listen to her put it like that and feel for the moment she
realized she had been a grandmother for years and never even
knew it. Her son was alive, in a way, this whole time and she
never knew it. Then when she finally found out, she didn’t
automatically just get Super-Grandma powers. After all that,
Debbie doesn’t even get to be a normal grandmother. The situation is laced with muddiness and complexity and, honestly,
I don’t envy the fact she has to navigate this.
“Are you not angry about any of this?” I question.
“At whom should I be angry? Decker for having a child
9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 253
1/14/19 1:44 PM
254
Emily Belden
out of wedlock and never telling us? He was an adult at the
time. He made a mistake that he thought he had corrected.
How can I fault him? Or should I be mad at Gemma for not
going through with the adoption? I can’t change that. I never
knew about it to intervene in the first place. So that leaves
being upset at her for not telling us sooner? Gemma thought
she could handle being a mother on her own. And maybe she
could have gotten through her hard times without any help if
she just grinned and bore it, but the fact is…for whatever rea-
son…she spoke up and now we know. Now it’s real. Think of
the alternative. I could have gone my whole life never know-
ing that a part of Decker was still out there. So, no, I’m not
mad. I’m grateful and I have been since these results came in.”
She flips to the back of the photo album. Tucked into one
of the plastic page protectors, there’s a piece of paper that
she slides out and hands to me. It’s doesn’t take more than a
three-second look to see that it’s a positive paternity test. It’s the kind of information that makes things final, but it doesn’t make them any simpler. I fold it back up and hand it to her.
“How did you get this?”
She inhales and looks out onto her glistening pool deck,
slowly exhaling. She yanks a tissue from the Kleenex box and
blots her eyes.
“A shaving razor of his. Or maybe it was an old toothbrush.
I don’t know, Kurt handled all the stuff with the lab people.”
“I would have loved to have seen this sooner,” I say.
“If I turned around and gave you this, if I told you that
your late husband has a child with another woman and I have
proof, then what? How do you move on from that, Char-
lotte? I know the connection you and Decker had. He was
infatuated with you. He put you first. I never thought a son
could love a woman more than his own mother. He proved
me wrong. You had a beautiful connection, you two, truly
9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 254
1/14/19 1:44 PM
Husband Material
255
meant for one another.” She grabs my hands, wrapping both
of her palms around them. “I want that again for you, Char-
lotte, but I’m not ignorant of how hard that will be. Decker
was so special and I’m not just saying that because I’m his
mother, I promise. Aiden would only ground you to a mem-
ory of something that is over and not ever coming back. And
what if you couldn’t see Decker the same way after knowing
about this? I’m forever bound to him. Let these messy imper-fections, let the heaviness, the sadness, the grief be my cross to carry. That’s the whole reason we agreed to keep this between us, put distance between you, and protect you so that
you could just…move on.”
I believe Debbie. I believe the tears falling down her no-
makeup face. I believe that the hardened exterior, the choice
to put him in a mausoleum one hundred miles away, the visits
that stopped, the communication that was curt, that all of it
was just a cover-up for a master plan—not concealing a secret
for the sake of withholding information from the girl who
was no longer part of the family, but rather a combined effort
to campaign for Charlotte to be okay—for once and finally,
all at the same time.
My eyes connect with a framed photo sitting on an end
table. It’s of Debbie, Kurt, and Decker from Christmas nearly
twenty years ago. From their matching sweaters, to their bright white smiles, to the kitschy North-Pole-themed backdrop
that’s hanging behind them, it all screams “perfection.” But I
notice something else. Evidence that secrets—especially the
ones not meant to hurt anyone—are everywhere we look, even
when we don’t see them. This isn’t a signature of the Austin
family, this is real life, and not acknowledging that means I’m living in a dream world of sorts.
That is when I feel him.
I feel Decker around me in the most undeniable way.
9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 255
1/14/19 1:44 PM
256
Emily Belden
My life flashes before me like pages in a flipbook.
A job that I’m good at and that I love, whether it loves me
back right now or not.
A decent apartment with a roommate who splits the rent,
even if she’s a little pissed at me right
now.
A dog that loves life and loves me, even when I rush him
around the block.
A husband who wasn’t a monster.
A life after a death that isn’t so bad.
I’m doing okay, all things considered. No dream world
needed.
The warm energy courses through my veins for a few sec-
onds longer. I think he’s proud of me for pushing through
everything I’ve endured, everything I’ve learned, and the un-
fathomable decisions I’ve had to make because he had to die.
And I feel he’s pushing me to make one more.
I’ve brought the urn with me on a variety of occasions since
its return—sometimes planned, sometimes not. I have it with
me now. The intentions behind putting it in my bag today
were unknown when I left for Debbie’s. It was a reflex. But
I can say with confidence that whatever gut feeling I started
with has morphed into decided action.
“Here,” I say, taking the urn out and putting it in front of
her. “You should have this.”
“Really? You’re leaving it with me? Are you sure, Char-
lotte? Because I feel like I can finally be at a place where I am okay with you having it.”
Under ordinary circumstances, I would take a pause to in-
sert something snarky. Gee, Debbie, I’m glad YOU are finally okay with HIS WIFE having it, but I know how she feels. Because I have arrived at the same place.
“Yeah, but I’m okay with you having it,” I volley back.
“Like, really, really okay. Like the most okay I’ve felt about 9781525805981_TS_BG_txt.indd 256
1/14/19 1:44 PM
Husband Material
257
anything with the urn since it came back to me. And I feel
like I should just run with that. So please, Debbie. Take it.
Put it where you want, just let me know where he ends up so
that I can try to visit whenever I can.”
Debbie tilts her head and offers me a warm, sincere smile.
I bathe in that peace for just a moment and she does, too. The
thing that binds us may be gone, but we’ve actually never been
closer. And while I don’t expect this to be the beginning of
any sort of newfound relationship, it’s a box we can check off.
A moment we can both be proud of.
Debbie picks the urn up and carries it ten feet over to her
fireplace mantel. There are large candles and some picture
frames adorning it already, but she shoves those to the side
and makes room for the ceramic pot. I’m sure she’ll need to
