Solemnly Swear

by Nancy Moser

  She should have been upset.

  But she wasn’t.

  She’d slept soundly. When she awakened she found Sig standing by the window, his eyes puffy and red, his face sagging. It was clear he hadn’t slept well, if at all.

  What did that say about her?

  “I’m waiting for the paper,” he said on that morning after. “I’m waiting to turn on the news. But I’m afraid.”

  She ran a hand through her hair and tried to blink the sleep from her eyes. “I’m up now. I’ll be with you.”

  Sig nodded weakly and sat on the foot of the bed. He took the remote, then handed it to Deidre. “You do it.”

  Deidre had turned to the regional stations, flipping until she found one in the middle of news. A fire at the mall. An accident on the interstate. Then finally ...

  “A man was found dead last night in Branson, drowned in a hot tub”

  “Drowned?” Sig asked.

  “The man’s identity has not been released pending notification of relatives. Foul play is suspected and a woman has been taken in for questioning. We will bring you more information as it comes in.”

  It was Deidre’s turn. “Woman?”

  “What woman?” Sig said. He pointed at the newscaster, who had moved to another story. He yelled at the screen, “What woman?”

  Deidre was just as shocked as he was. But thrilled.

  They would be all right. There was someone else to take the blame.

  For months they’d lived on the nervous hope of Patti’s guilt, always afraid that someone had seen Sig at the scene, that he’d left behind some minute piece of evidence. They’d both been thankful it had been cold that night. Sig had worn gloves. His fingerprints were not on the bottle. The news said nothing about a man at the scene. Patti was their suspect. Patti was going to trial.

  When Deidre was called to jury duty and she’d had a chance to sit on Patti’s jury, it was Perfect.

  And complicated, and confusing, and convicting.

  Her thoughts finally back in the present, Deidre whispered the words, “She’s innocent” and let them settle around the swing. The words didn’t need volume. Although they’d barely had any time to live with the reality of Patti’s conviction, it weighed heavily upon her.

  As did the reality of this day: Sig was turning himself in.

  I started all this. I’m the one who knew Brett. I’m the reason he came into our lives. I’m to blame for what happened.

  Deidre suddenly stood, sending the porch swing ricocheting against her legs. She had to talk to Sig.

  ***

  “Meet me, Sig. You have to meet me now.”

  “But I’m just finishing up at the foundation offices. Then I was…you know.”

  “I know. But I have to talk to you now. Before. You owe me that much.” Deidre knew this wasn’t true. He didn’t owe her anything. He’d already given her everything.

  “Fine. Meet me in the parking lot of the foundation.”

  ***

  It was an inauspicious place to play out a life-changing moment. But how much better seated in a BMW.

  Sig’s face was drawn and haggard, the stress of the day evident. “So,” he said once they were settled in the front seat. “I don’t want a tearful good-bye, Deidre. This is hard enough.”

  “It’s my fault. If anyone should go it should be me.”

  “Go where?”

  “To prison.”

  He stared at her a moment, then laughed. “And why should you do that?”

  She realized she had to go back in time, to the source of the lie that had dogged her for over twelve years. “I used to date Brett Lerner. Way back, before I was married to Don.”

  He was silent, but just for a moment. “That’s an odd coincidence, but I don’t see why that matters. We both had lives before we met.”

  “It matters because it ended badly. Very badly, and Brett...the day before he called you, I ran into him down at the resort where he worked. He showed interest in my life. I knew he was bad news. He asked about our lives—though he already knew too much. It was like he’d been studying us.”

  “Studying?”

  “He knew who you were, knew I was married to you. Knew we had money. Knew about the foundation and the work you do and how important fund-raising was to your work. And he’d seen you with Audrey and thought you were unfaithful.”

  “That’s why he was blackmailing me. He was going to tell everyone, and truth or not, it would have hurt the foundation. That’s why I hit him.” He looked straight ahead and gripped the steering wheel. “One lie. One bit of dishonesty. If I had been open about my botched operation on Audrey from the beginning, none of this would have happened.”

  “It’s not your fault!” Deidre’s words rang through the car.

  Sig looked at her. Waiting.

  It was time for everything to come out of hiding. The truth, her past, and Deidre herself.

  She angled her body toward his. Her hands moved to her cheeks, and with a start, she realized how much she wanted to use them to cover her face completely.

  To hide behind them.

  Daddy, you can’t see me.

  She forced her hands into her lap, where they clung to each other as though they were bracing themselves for the words she was about to say. She began, “I hated Brett Lerner. Despised him.”

  “I wasn’t thrilled with the man myself.”

  “But you didn’t hate. I hated.” She shuddered. “It’s a horrible feeling, it’s evil. It feels like a crime against the soul. And it’s been eating at me a long, long time. And now it’s time to finally hold myself accountable for all that I’ve done.”

  “You are not the one who caused his death. I am. What kind of man would I be if I let you take the blame for any part of this?”

  He wasn’t letting her say what needed to be said. “You’d be a free man.”

  “A guilty man. That doesn’t change no matter how much you hated Brett, no matter what secret you’ve kept hidden. I need to let myself be set free.”

  “By going to jail?”

  “By taking the punishment for my actions. I will go to prison, but I also will be free, Deidre. I’ve confessed; I’ve asked God to forgive me. And he has.”

  Nothing he could have said would have shocked her more. Sig and God? Sig confessing to God?

  “I know I’m forgiven because he told me so.” Sig put a hand to his chest. “I’ve felt such peace since I did that. And somehow I know the peace is his way of telling me everything will be all right.”

  Who was this man seated before her? Where was her pragmatic husband? “But what about your work? The foundation?”

  “Although I started the foundation, it’s larger than I am, larger than one man. I’m hoping people will forgive me, realize what I did was a crime of passion. But the truth is, it’s still a crime. And unfortunately, the truth about Audrey will come out too. I have a lot to atone for.”

  “No one needs to know about Audrey and her operation.”

  “Everyone needs to know. It’s the only way.”

  Deidre didn’t know what else to say. “I still don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

  He pointed up. “I’m doing it for God, but he’s not making me do it. That’s the point, I guess. He’s given us free will to do the right thing. Or not.”

  The right thing is for me to tell you all about Brett and me, about Nelly, about how I married you for the wrong reasons and have only pretended to love you when you deserved so much more.

  But Deidre couldn’t do it. The man sitting before her exuded peace. If she laid her sins upon him now, that peace would be destroyed. Sig was clinging to his newfound faith and the elements of their life he believed to be true. If she told him she was a victim of rape, that Nelly was the daughter of the man he had killed, that Deidre had married Don and Sig for the wrong reasons… Her confession may have assuaged her own guilt, but it would also inflict a deep crack in the foundation that was holding Sig together. />
  To confess now would be the epitome of selfishness. And though she’d previously lived a life focused on self, at this moment she had to do the selfless thing.

  By remaining silent.

  By keeping her secrets awhile longer.

  “I need to go,” Sig said.

  Her time for confession had come. And gone. The final decision was taken away from her. All she could say was, “I’m so sorry, Sig. So sorry for everything.”

  “As am I.” Sig ran a hand up and down her back. “I guess God finally has me where he wants me, broken and contrite. But hopefully of use to him. Somehow.” He took her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “I really love you, Deidre. You know that, don’t you?”

  Deidre didn’t know. Hadn’t allowed herself to know. But for his sake, she nodded. “I’ll go with you to the police station if you’d like.”

  “I’d rather do this alone.”

  They held each other one more time.

  ***

  As Deidre drove home after her meeting with Sig—her last meeting with Sig as a free man—she felt cheated. It was ridiculous, of course. Sig was the one who would have the most to endure. In public she could play the innocent wife who had been kept in the dark. No one had to know her connection to Brett. To the public it would be a simple case of blackmail gone bad. If the truth about Audrey came out, that too was something they could deal with. Since Sig’s surgical mistake, he’d performed hundreds of successful surgeries all over the world. It would not take much effort to elicit testimonials from happy parents of healthy children singing his praises and overriding one mistake in the far-distant past.

  Everything would be all right. Sig would take his punishment and might even emerge a hero of sorts. Society was weird that way. As long as anyone with any modicum of celebrity admitted their sins, they were forgiven and given another chance to be in the limelight, where they could be adored anew.

  Whether the medical community would be so tolerant was another matter.

  Deidre stopped at a traffic light and let her mind wander. Sig would come through this. And the peace he’d embraced would help him tackle the snags along the way.

  “But what about me?”

  Her words, said alone in the car, sounded pitiful. And yet, what about her? She was rid of Brett Lerner. She never had to worry about him stepping back into her life, finding out Nelly was his, or any other mischief he might have caused.

  But where is my peace?

  Not anywhere close. She hadn’t received a chance to bare her soul, to come clean, to open the baggage of over a decade. She’d kept it all safely tucked away for Sig’s sake, a mighty sacrifice that should earn her something. But in doing so, she remained burdened, more so now than before. For during her last meeting with Sig, when she’d wanted to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, she’d experienced a hint of the peace that release would have given her.

  Only to have it yanked away so Sig could hold on to his peace.

  The traffic light turned green and she continued toward home.

  Alone.

  ***

  Deidre dropped a frying pan to the floor and moments later mishandled its lid. Karla looked up from the eggs she was whisking. “Bumbly fingers?”

  Unexpectedly, her words were the last straw.

  Deidre slumped to the kitchen floor, letting the pot and lid fall with her. Karla was immediately at her side.

  “I can’t do it,” she said.

  “I know it’s going to be hard, honey. But Sig is determined.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Deidre didn’t want her to offer that dreadful truism: life isn’t fair. If Deidre heard those words, she would die right there on the kitchen floor. “Sig found peace and is off cleansing himself of his guilt, while I sit here with all my secrets still secrets from him.”

  With a glance toward the rest of the house, Karla sat on the floor beside her. “You mean the secret about Nelly?”

  Deidre nodded. “That and more subtle things. Although I never thought I’d tell him any of it, since all of this happened,” she looked directly at her mother-in-law, ”I want to feel what he feels. I want to feel that release, that peace, that feeling of it’s-finally-over-and-I’m-free.”

  “If it’s so important to you, why didn’t you tell him?”

  “Because he had enough to think about. You should have seen him, Karla. He was practically glowing, like a darkness had been lifted and he was a new person.”

  Karla nodded. “‘If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.’”

  Deidre pushed the pan away with a foot. It slid across the tile into some cabinets. “See? He confessed. God listened. And Sig’s all better.”

  “He’s forgiven.”

  Deidre blinked.

  “He is, you know.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Karla nodded and moved the lid out of the way. “You know all of this, Deidre. Remember it. Jesus took the punishment for our sins so we could be forgiven.”

  The knowledge came from a lifetime ago, when she’d been married to Don—another man she’d deceived. “But I didn’t get a chance to confess. Sig’s in jail and I don’t know when I’ll have the opportunity to come clean and feel free of it.”

  This time, Karla shook her head. “It’s not Sig you have to confess to—though that time may come. You can feel peace right now if you remember what Jesus said: ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’”

  A snicker escaped.

  “Dee-Dee.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the spice drawer. What Karla said was true. Deidre knew it was. But it wasn’t something she dared tap into. When one is living a lie, one can’t confess the lie.

  Deidre felt Karla take her hand. “Come on, honey. You don’t have to do it out loud, but do it. Now. I’ll stay here with you and pray my own prayers while you take care of business with the Almighty. As far as telling Sig? I know it’s hard, but leave the timing to God, who is never late and never early. Let him open the door for you to air the truth to Sig. Don’t push.”

  “Don’t run ahead.”

  Karla smiled. “You were listening.”

  “I do listen to you, Karla. Most of the time.”

  “Glad to hear it, but better than that, listen to God. Listen for him. He won’t steer you wrong.”

  “You promise?”

  She looked upward. “We both do.”

  Deidre realized how odd it was to empty her heart while sitting on a not-terribly-clean kitchen floor, but she did it anyway.

  Once she got going, the silent confession grew upon itself and Deidre found herself sobbing with shame, release, and relief.

  Sometime during the process, Karla wrapped an arm around her and when Deidre said aloud a final, “Thank you, Lord” and pronounced an amen to the moment, the comforting arms of her mother-in-law felt very divine.

  “The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you.”

  ***

  He could have gone to work. He was supposed to go to work. But work was the last thing on Ken Doolittle’s mind.

  Or maybe the only thing.

  Ever since kicking Ms. Aggressive from Albuquerque out of his apartment the night before, ever since waking up in his leather chair at 3 a.m. to find himself hugging his trophy to his chest, he’d been in bed, sheathed under the protective veil of the covers.

  It’s where he planned to stay until forever, or until his hunger pangs got too nasty.

  The phone rang and Ken held his breath to listen for the answering machine to pick up. “Ken. Roger here. Where are you? I know that stupid trial is done. We expected you in today. If you don’t call, I’ll be forced to give Dan your lessons. G et in here.”

  Ken turned over, pulling a pillow to his torso. What was the use of going into work? It wasn’t as
if he was important to them. Dan had taken over during the trial and was obviously willing to keep taking Ken’s clients.

  The schmuck.

  The phone rang again and Ken yelled at it, “Leave me alone! I’m not coming in. Don’t you get it?”

  But this time, even though he had no intention of answering it, he didn’t wait to listen to the message from the bed. He was fully awake now. And hungry. A dozen fried eggs and a pound of bacon sounded suitably decadent. He was walking past the phone, mumbling about what Roger could do with his job, when another voice came on the line.

  “Ken? It’s Ronnie. I know you’re not there—I know you’re back at work—but I was wondering if you wanted to get together tonight. We haven’t really talked since you found out the news about Philip and—”

  Ken picked up the phone. “Ronnie. Hi.”

  “You’re home?”

  “I took the day off. Recovering from the trial.”

  “Did you hear my message? Can you get together this evening?”

  “Sure. Yes. That would be great.” He was surprised at how great it was.

  “Want to meet somewhere?”

  The thought of leaving the apartment, even with Ronnie, was not appealing. “Come over here. Sevenish. I’ll make dinner.”

  “Spaghetti I assume?”

  “You know me too well.”

  A scary thought, all in all.

  ***

  As he buttered the garlic bread, Ken felt joy. The realization made him stop his work, cock his head, and laugh. When was the last time I felt joy?

  The answer to his question sapped a bit of the joy away—for it had been far too long—but he was in such a good mood he didn’t let that detail drag him down.

  Ronnie was coming over. Ronnie was coming to dinner. It was a good day and would be an even better evening.

  That she was his ex-wife was inconsequential. They’d had something good once. For a while. Until he’d blown it.

  Today was a new start. He was on speaking terms with his son again, and was seeing his ex.

  He got out the Lawry’s Garlic Salt and began to sprinkle the bread, then thought better of it. No garlic. Not tonight.

  ***

  Ronnie dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “That was wonderful, Ken. Although your repertoire is small, it’s mighty delicious.”