by Kelly Rimmer
one?”
The question catches me off guard, and I stare at him, mo-
mentarily unsure how to answer. My problem is my circum-
stances, not my thought processes. And maybe I’d love to talk
through the tangled mess of worries I’m drowning in lately, but
I just don’t have the energy, and even if I did, I can’t bear the
thought of admitting aloud to another human being some of the
stupid things that have been going through my head.
“No,” I say stiffly. “You’re wrong about this. I don’t need
therapy. I just need time.”
There’s a terse, awkward pause, then I relax as Hunter softens
his tone and changes the subject again.
“So you’re going to pack your father’s house up this week?
And next, I guess. It’ll take a while.”
“Yes, I think that’s for the best.”
“And are you taking Noah with you, or were you planning
on asking my mom to babysit him for days on end?”
I turn to stare out the window, embarrassed that he’s seen
right through the reason I was so quick to volunteer for this ar-
duous and painful job. I like it when Chiara takes Noah for a
few hours. She’s an amazing mother and she’s incredibly com-
fortable with him—so much more capable than I am. I feel like
he’s safer with her, but there’s no way I’m going to admit that
to Hunter. Now it’s my turn to fall silent, and I stare sullenly
out the window, planning a hasty retreat into the bathroom as
soon as we get home. I’m not much of a crier, but I feel pres-
sure and heat behind my eyes, and maybe I do need to leak a
few tears tonight.
When we pull into our driveway a few minutes later, Hunter
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Kelly Rimmer
reaches across and rests his hand on my forearm. I’m not sure the
expression on my face won’t entirely give me away, so I don’t
turn to face him.
“Just think about talking to someone, babe. It seems like you
really don’t feel like you can talk to me,” he murmurs. I open
my mouth to deny this, but then I close it again. Once upon
a time, I had no filter when it came to Hunter. I’d share any
thought that crossed my mind, and I’m pretty sure he felt the
same way. There’s no denying that’s changed since Noah was
born. Hunter’s hand contracts around my arm, gently squeezing.
“If you’re worried about your clinic finding out, I’ll help you
find somewhere you can be anonymous. Whatever you need,
we’ll make it happen.”
“I don’t need therapy,” I whisper insistently. “I know exactly
what a therapist would say, and I can say those things to my-
self for free.”
We sit in silence for a moment, and then Hunter asks,
“Well…what would you say to yourself, then?”
“Time,” I croak automatically, as, at last, I turn to face him.
“I’d tell myself to just give it more time.”
Hunter nods, kisses me on the cheek and leaves the car. As I
swing open my door and step out, I force a brutal moment of
internal honesty for the first time in months. I don’t treat adult
patients anymore but I did early in my career, and I can easily
picture a client sitting in my office voicing my recent struggles.
I see myself as an impartial third party, listening and mentally
planning my response.
My gut drops when I finally admit what I’d actually say to
that client.
It sounds like you’re total y overwhelmed and out of your depth. It
sounds like you’re struggling with your dad’s situation, but that’s not the biggest issue you’re battling. It sounds like you’re actively looking for excuses to avoid your son, and you’re not coping at all when you
are alone with him. You’re terrified that having Noah was a mistake
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you can’t undo. Is avoidance real y the solution here, though? Let’s talk about other strategies you can employ.
On the porch Hunter and his mother embrace and then I see
them talking quietly. As I step out of the car, Chiara flashes me
a warm smile and a wave, and I wave back, fixing my brightest
smile in return. I’m certain it’s convincing, despite the fact that
I’ve just dropped a mental bombshell on myself and my gut is
churning. I’m so desperate to get behind that locked bathroom
door it’s all I can do to stop myself from sprinting for it. Luck-
ily, the one thing I am quite good at these days is putting on
my game face.
“Sweetheart,” Chiara greets me as she takes me into her em-
brace and kisses both of my cheeks. “Hunter was just telling me
you’re going to pack up Patrick’s house over the next few weeks.
Of course I’ll watch Noah for you.”
Hunter is watching me closely. Is this some kind of trap? Even
if it is, the offer is too enticing to refuse. So much for changing
strategies from avoidance.
“Chiara, that would be amazing. Thank you so much.”
Once Chiara is gone and Hunter and I are alone in our liv-
ing room, I turn my gaze to him.
“I got the impression when we were in the car that you didn’t
want me to ask your mom to watch the baby while I’m at Dad’s.”
“You said you need time,” Hunter says, cheeks coloring. “I
told you, Beth. Whatever you need, I’ll make it happen.”
I guess if ten years with Hunter should have taught me any-
thing, it would be that he has my back at all times.
I just can’t help but wonder if he’d still be Mr Supportive if
I told him the truth: that we spent half a decade trying to be-
come parents, and after just five months, I’m convinced it was
the biggest mistake of our lives.
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Grace
November 2, 1957
I don’t know what I intend to achieve with these little notes. The first time, I actually sat down to write a letter to Maryanne, just as I’d done so many times before. This time I was going to do something new: I was going to tell her the truth. I’ve painted such rosy pictures of our life here over the years, but in this new slump, I was determined to reach across the divide with something real…something raw.
The problem was that when my pen hit paper, I couldn’t bear the
thought of my sister knowing . Even after all of this time and even after all of my failures, I’m still proud enough to want her to think I made the right choice in Patrick. I suppose that’s why what came out of my pen that day was more like a letter to myself. I’ve decided it’s for the best.
I don’t doubt that if Maryanne knew how bad things are for me, she’d
blame him and him alone—she does so love to blame men for everything.
In this case, she’d feel he’s proven her right, because she tried so hard to warn me against this life.
I chose Patrick anyway, and that decision has forced a distance between Maryanne and me that I’ve never figured out how to close. In some ways over the past few years, that distance has been a necessary evil.
If she knew, she’d probably try to intervene, and I might not have much these days, but at least I have my pride. Plus, I love that Maryanne thinks I’m a good mother. I can’t bear for her to know the truth.
Even so, I had the urge to write to her because although there have
been so many things about the past few years that have been difficult, the isolation has been the hardest. The irony of course is that I haven’t been truly alone in well over two years now, given I haven’t had so much as an hour without some company since the twins were born. It’s not
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even silence I crave. I’m starving simply to be present with someone who doesn’t want something from me. I have reached the point where I don’t fantasize about making love or relaxing or even sleeping anymore. Now I daydream about sitting down with someone who will listen to me—who
will understand me. And, these notes have somehow tricked my brain into thinking I’d been heard by someone , at least for a little while, and I have been doing so much better. Ordinarily, it takes me a few months to rise out of the funk, but after I wrote those notes, something immediately felt a little lighter inside.
Until today, that is. This relapse hit without warning, and it took
me back to my very darkest months. Ruth has a bit of a cold and kept
waking up because her nose is blocked. I got even less sleep than usual, and maybe that’s what triggered it. All I know is that I was buttering the toast for breakfast and Jeremy and Ruth were fighting and the noise rose all around me like a tidal wave until it took up too much air and suffocated me.
I asked the children to be quiet. I told them to be quiet. I shouted at them to be quiet. I shouted at them to stop . And then I screamed at them to shut up.
That’s when the thoughts came back.
I looked at the knife in my hand and I pictured myself dragging it
across the smooth white skin of my wrist. I imagined the dark red blood bubbling up and the silence rushing in. I don’t know how long I stood
there, but when those god-awful thoughts finally cleared from my mind, I was standing beside the table in front of my four babies, who were all sitting in terrible silence, staring at their breakfasts with the kind of desperate intensity that only comes from being completely petrified.
I didn’t actually hurt myself this time. I’ve never done something as drastic as cutting my wrists, except for that one night when I—no. I don’t think about that night; it’s too dreadful and too hard. Instead, these Truths I N_9781525804601_ITP_txt_275977.indd 37
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Kelly Rimmer
days when I feel this stretched, I have developed a coping mechanism, as awful as it may be. I sneak away to the bathroom and I scratch myself, as if breaking the surface of my skin will let all of the frustration bleed out. I always scratch beneath my clothing because I have no idea how
I’d explain such a thing. It was bad enough when Patrick saw a mark
on my breast and I had to lie and say that Beth had done it when I was feeding her. I was lucky that time, because it was just the smallest little thing. Other times I’ve scratched so hard and so long that my breasts and my belly have been speckled with blood and black-and-blue with bruises.
Anything to let the frustration out. Anything to let the sadness out. Because if I bottle it up inside, it finds other ways to burst out of me…like that moment today in the kitchen.
I hurt my children today—not with the knife, but with the threat of
it. My frustration and irritability and this pervasive misery drowned me in that moment and I was hopelessly out of control. Even after all these years, I don’t actually know what those moments are…the moments when I can’t outrun the bad thoughts. I don’t see images with my eyes, more with my mind, but they swamp me anyway. Are they hallucinations? Visions? Prophecies? Whatever those thoughts are, they are vivid and real and worst of all, they are stronger than I am.
I set the knife down on the cracked white vinyl of the table and I
stepped away from it. I spoke to my children in a voice that had become artificially high with panic, and I called them “my darlings” because
I always call them that when I’m well, and I gently ushered them out
to play. Once they were all in the yard, I locked the back door and sank to the linoleum and curled up in a little ball—my back pressed heavily against the door as if the kids could push hard enough to break the lock.
They were fine out there at first, climbing the pear tree and riding their tricycles, but the hours went on and I just kept thinking about the knife and the frustration and their scared little faces, and I couldn’t convince Truths I N_9781525804601_ITP_txt_275977.indd 38
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myself to get up. Soon, Beth was crying at the door because she was
hungry again. My fear and my rage had faded, but a paralyzing guilt
and numbness had taken their place. I stayed on the floor, and when I
didn’t answer their increasingly insistent knocks and calls, Tim climbed through a window, fetched some bread from the kitchen and ferried it out to his siblings. He’s such a good boy. He deserves so much better than the life I give him.
What scared me wasn’t the vision or my rage or the mood I was in.
It was how unexpected the resurgence of the madness was. I’ve walked
this journey before—twice before, and the end doesn’t go like this. With my first two births, as soon as I felt better, I really was better—there was no sinking in and out of funks once the babies were toddlers and the darkness had cleared. So was this just a one-off bad day, or is it a sign that I’ll never truly be able to trust in my stability, not ever again? How exactly is a person supposed to live if she can never trust in her sanity?
That’s why I’m sitting down with this notepad tonight. I’m hop-
ing and praying that once these thoughts are on paper, they will break the endless echo chamber of my own mind. Left to my own devices my
thoughts get louder and louder and louder, until I can’t eat or sleep or do anything except think .
I need to prevent the spiral that leads to the quicksand thoughts, be-
cause once I’m submerged, I don’t know how to climb out.
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3
Beth
1996
The next morning I park my car in Chiara and Wallace’s drive-
way on Yarrow Point. A few years ago they sold the family home
in Bellevue where Hunter and his brother Rowan grew up, and
we all thought the plan was to downsize. Instead, they bought
this place—two magnificent, opulent stories on the shores of
Lake Washington.
I have no idea how long they’ll live here—it’s hardly the most
practical house for an aging couple. The house is beautiful and
glamorous, but it’s certainly not child friendly. Rowan’s girls
are old enough to navigate the various hazards, old enough to
stay away from the unfenced waterfront when they play in the
backyard. It’ll be years before Noah reaches that level of matu-
rity—how will we keep him safe?
This is one of the many things I’ve been worrying that I didn’t
yet need to worry about, and also, one of the many things I’ve
been worrying about over the past few months that might just
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be worked out in a two-minute conversation—if I could only
motivate myself to start it.
“Good morning, you two!” Chiara calls as I let myself in with
my key. Chiara’s house always smells amazing—there’s a lin-
gering scent of vanilla and coffee in the air. She rises from her
overstuffed leather chair to greet us, and my gaze skims over
the roaring fire on the open hearth, and the steaming cup that
sits on the edge of her coffee table.
Yep. Babyproofing this house is definitely going to be im-
possible.
“Hi, Chiara,” I say as I sit the diaper bag down by the hall
table. “Thanks again for doing this.”
“It’s nothing,” she says, waving a hand toward me. Chiara re-
tired a few years back and sold her restaurant, but Wallace will
have left for work hours ago. He’s a lawyer who works in Seattle
just like Hunter, except Hunter works in family law at a very
small firm, and Wallace is a partner at one of the big commer-
cial firms…hence the multimillion-dollar home. “I love spend-
ing time with our little man. Did you bring milk?”
“There’s enough for the whole day,” I say, motioning toward
the baby bag. Chiara looks from the bag to Noah in my arms,
then offers a cautious smile.
“Beth, I just have to ask you. How on earth will you keep up
with pumping milk if you’re busy at your father’s place all day?”
“I’ve managed fine so far when you’ve babysat in the past.”
I shrug.
“Yes, but that was only here and there… Hunter said you’re
planning on spending a lot of time at your dad’s over the next
few weeks. I’m just worried about you, sweetheart. You’re mak-
ing all of this so much harder than it has to be.”
“It’s just better this way. I’ve got the pump in the car. I’ll just
stop to express the milk while I’m at Dad’s, then bring it here
for you for the next day. It’ll be easy.”
“Not nearly as easy as just weaning him. He’s five months old
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Kelly Rimmer
now. That’s plenty long enough. No one breastfed back in my
day, and look, your generation turned out just fine.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, even though I’ve already made
