by Kelly Rimmer
I laughed quietly, then motioned toward the bedrooms.
“I’m sure I already have plenty of kids, actually.”
“I mean it, Maryanne. I couldn’t bear to see you suffer the way that she... I just mean, if we...when we... I’m not being presumptuous, but—”
“When we move into the same bedroom,” I finish for him, laughing softly, “I’ll get a diaphragm. Will that be okay with you?”
“I’d be fine with that.”
“I truly don’t want children of my own, especially now.”
“But you love those kids. I can see it.”
“I do. I feel lucky that I get to experience a taste of motherhood with your children. I just wouldn’t want to start all over again with a newborn. Tim and the twins are at school now, and Beth will start next year—I’ll be able to go back to studying after that. If we were to have another child together, that would mean still more years when I couldn’t study.”
“Good.” Patrick nodded, satisfied.
“When are we going to...” I trailed off as the flush crept up Patrick’s cheeks.
“...move into the same bedroom?” He finished the sentence for me. We flashed one another a slightly awkward grin. “I know you aren’t one for tradition, but it still matters to me that we do this right.”
“We’ve been married for over two years now, Patrick,” I said, then I teased him. “What is your plan, then? Do you divorce me so we can remarry?”
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he said, and he ran his hand through his hair and looked away. “And I do mean a lot.”
I laughed, delighted at his bashfulness, then turned him back to face me so I could kiss him. But all too soon, he pulled away, and said quite seriously, “I think I rushed your sister into life with me. I won’t do that to you. When you’re ready to marry me—properly this time—just let me know, and I’ll figure out how we can do that.”
“What does properly entail here, exactly?”
“The church. With Father Willis, not a registrant at the court house.”
“Christ Almighty, that sounds dull.”
“Maryanne.”
“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “But I’m already committed here, Patrick. Why do we need to wait?”
“It’s not the arrangement I want you to commit to,” he murmured. “It’s me. This isn’t you promising to help me out with the kids for the foreseeable future. I want to promise that you’re mine, and I’m yours. That really means something to me, and despite your determination to blow up all traditions, everywhere, I have a feeling that this kind of promise will mean something to you, too.”
“So now you’re blowing up traditions.”
“I am?”
“Well, now you’re going to wait for me to propose?”
“I’d propose to you right now if I thought it was what you wanted.”
I tilted my head at him.
“Patrick, I love you. I’m ready for this to be our life together.”
* * *
Everything seemed to fall into place. Patrick and I were happy—happier than I’d ever expected to be. We were talking about “our” future, and the truth was, it had been a long while since I’d been able to imagine my life without him and the children in it. But at the end of the day, the man I loved also loved his traditions. If we were to be together as man and wife in every sense of the word, he wanted us to be married in the church.
This was what I failed to understand about love before I experienced it myself. Love doesn’t just need compromise to survive—love, to its very essence, is compromise. It’s genuinely wanting what’s best for the other person, even when it trumps your own preferences. The idea of donning a white dress and walking down some aisle for a celibate man in robes to formalize our union in the eyes of his religion did not appeal to me at all. But it meant something to Patrick, and Patrick meant something to me.
So we set a date, and we planned a second wedding. Father Willis agreed to perform the service, and he made room for us in the church timetable just a few weeks later.
“There’s no time to waste,” he said, looking between Patrick and me with his lips pursed. “You two are already cohabiting, unmarried in the eyes of God. We’re busy, but I’ll fit you in.”
I found an ivory lace shift dress in a store near the city, and we scraped together enough money for a new pair of shoes, too. Mrs. Hills insisted on baking us a cake. That was about the extent of what we’d planned for the celebration, but Patrick was counting down the days with obvious glee. I still thought his insistence that we marry again before we shared a bed was nonsense, but this did at least give me time to purchase a diaphragm and to pay attention to my cycle so we could avoid intimacy midmonth.
And in the meantime, we sat the children down and explained to them what was happening.
“But you’re already married,” Jeremy said.
“Can I wear a pretty dress?” Ruth asked.
“I want to wear a dress!” Beth protested.
“Why do you need to get married again?” Tim asked, bewildered.
“It’s so Maryanne can be your mom now,” Patrick said, scratching his head and giving me a pleading look.
“She’s already our mom.” Ruth blinked at him.
Patrick sighed.
“But... I mean, she is, it’s just that...”
“Sweeties,” I said quietly. “This wedding means I’m never leaving. It means I’m here forever. And I always was, but sometimes grown-ups need to do these things just to make an arrangement official. So that’s what it’s about. And we get to have cake—everyone likes cake, don’t they?”
The kids all nodded, and apparently that was just enough to satisfy them and they were ready to go back outside and play. Patrick puffed out a frustrated breath.
“I love how they’ve taken to you,” he said. “But...”
“I hate it, too. I still want to remind them that Grace was their real mom and I hate that they’ve forgotten her. But if I do, they have to grieve her all over again,” I sighed and met his gaze. “They are still so young, my love. It’s too hard for them to understand that she was here, and then she was gone, and now I’m here instead.”
“What do you think Grace would have wanted?”
“I think she’d have hated to miss any of this...any of their happiness, any of these years. But I also know she’d have wanted them to be happy,” I admitted.
“That’s what I think, too. We will tell them one day...”
“But just not yet.”
We smiled at one another, as if that settled it, neatly stepping around the guilt that we both knew could not be avoided forever.
Whether we liked it or not, in the children’s minds, I had replaced Grace, and we would just have to learn to live with it until they were old enough to understand.
* * *
Patrick worked a half-day on Saturdays, and that weekend when he finished for the week, we took the children for an outing to Alki Beach. I had packed a picnic, and Patrick and I sat on the sand while the older kids frolicked at the edge of the waves, and Beth built sandcastles nearby. It was a delicious, sun-drenched day, but when the children’s cheeks were pink, and the sun was in the sky behind us, we packed up to go back to the car.
“There’s a store we need to have a look at on the way home,” Patrick said. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going—instead, we drove in silence for a while, and then he parked the car and winked at me. We each took two children’s hands in ours, and the six of us crossed the busy road toward the stores.
“Which do you like?” he asked me quietly, finally coming to a stop by the display window at a jewelry store. I peered through the glass at so many sparkling rings and then I laughed.
“The cheapest. Come on—”
“Seriously, Maryanne. We need to get you a set of r
ings, and we’re never at the same place at the same time when stores are open. At least give me a clue what style you prefer.”
I sighed, but looked through the window to scan the rows of rings.
“I like simplicity. I don’t want something huge that will bankrupt us. Just get me a plain gold band—” But my gaze snagged on an engagement ring. It was a small oval aquamarine in a simple silver setting. It was hardly the most elaborate ring in the window, but I loved it on sight, even as I suspected it would be beyond our budget. I forced myself to look back at Patrick. “Just a plain silver band, okay? Whatever we can afford. Nothing more.”
Patrick looked back into the window, then nodded, then offered me a smile and a peck on the cheek.
“Two more weeks, my love,” he murmured softly near my ear, sending shivers down my spine.
“Two more weeks,” I murmured back, and we shared a knowing smile before we turned the children back to the car and headed home.
* * *
Mrs. Hills and Aunt Nina insisted on taking me out for a bachelorette party the weekend before the wedding. I protested furiously at this, mostly because I wasn’t exactly excited by the idea of suffering through two octogenarians offering me sex advice. But in the end, Patrick convinced me to go.
“You never go anywhere,” he pointed out.
“I go to the park. And the library. And the grocery store.”
“Okay. Correction. You never go anywhere fun.”
“The library is fun.”
“Christ, woman! Take the night off, get dressed up and go out for a nice dinner somewhere.”
It was actually an uneventful meal in the end. I think my elderly friends probably figured out for themselves that I wasn’t actually as innocent as they might have been just before their own weddings, and so instead of bombarding me with advice about marriage and sex, we talked about knitting and the weather and later, the way the world had changed over the decades since they were girls.
I went home, a little tipsy from the wine at dinner, and as happy as I’d ever been. It was a beautiful place to be. It was a miserable height to fall from.
As I stepped into the house, I skipped my gaze around the living room, looking for Patrick. I expected him to be waiting for me in front of the television, but the set was off. He wasn’t in the dining room, either, so I peeked in on the children. I kissed Timothy’s forehead, and put away the metal trucks that littered Jeremy’s bed even though I’d told him a thousand times not to play with them when he was supposed to be asleep. I tucked Ruth in—she was forever kicking her blankets off. And Beth was missing from her bed, but I knew I would find her in my own bed instead. I was right—there she was, resting against my pillow, those beautiful dark eyelashes against the pale curve of her cheeks. I bent and breathed her in, soaking up the scent of soap and toothpaste and Beth.
And then I put the blanket up to her chin, and I left my room to find my love. There was only one place he could be: his bedroom...our bedroom, in just a few nights.
I was smiling as I walked to his room. I thought he’d be asleep, too; maybe he’d be under the blankets and I could pull them up to his chin, then kiss his forehead as I’d done for his children. But the light was on. Patrick was sitting on the bed.
His face was beet-red, his cheeks wet with tears, his eyes wild. I knew then. Even before I saw the wedding album on the bed, even before I registered the letters all over the bed cover, even before I saw my sister’s handwriting on the piece of paper he clutched in his fist, I knew he’d found Grace’s notes.
In the silence, I took the scene in, and my heart nearly broke when I realized that the “last place on earth” Grace expected her husband to look was in their wedding album. She was almost right—it took Patrick over two years to look at those photos.
“Where was that?” I asked him stiffly.
“In the bottom of the chest in the living room. I built it... I built a cavity so we could hide money. I went to hide your ring there last week and found the wedding album, but I didn’t look at it until tonight,” Patrick said. His voice was hoarse, but the words were wound so tight with fury that I winced and turned away. I’d watched him fight an attempt to take his children, but I’d never heard him so angry. I’d seen him lose his wife, but I’d never seen him so hurt. “I promised myself I’d say goodbye to her tonight. I wanted to look at those photos one last time and say goodbye.” I’d checked the chest, but I didn’t know to check the base. How could I? He raised his eyes to me. “Did you know she wrote these?”
Patrick barely looked like the man I loved. He didn’t even look like someone I knew. But I wasn’t about to lie to him, and although I knew he held my future in his hands, I didn’t think he would hurt me. I still trusted his love for me. I still thought that after everything we’d been through, we’d get through this, too.
“Yes. I knew.”
“Did you look for them?”
“Yes.”
His brows shifted down, then up and then he closed his eyes.
“Is this why you stayed?”
“I stayed for the children,” I said, but that was half a lie, and I was determined to tell him the truth. It seemed the only way we’d survive. “Wait. Yes—I did hope to find the letters, and that’s why I stayed at first. I mean...” I was flustered and confused, bitterly regretting that last glass of wine as I tried to clarify. “Patrick, all that I knew was that she had written a note about the abortion. I knew you’d be angry and I was scared of what you’d do if you found it, but I also didn’t think it would do you any good to see whatever else she—” I scanned the notes on the bed and my heart sank. “How many are there?”
God only knew what else was in those notes. If that last conversation I’d had with Grace had been any indication, her mental state over the years had been dire. I looked at Patrick again, and there were fresh tears in his eyes.
“So what really happened that day? I deserve to know that much.”
I didn’t want to tell him, but I knew that I had to. The time had come for honesty, and there was no avoiding the truth—no matter how ugly.
“It was exactly like I told you, only I lied about... I swapped our roles. Grace was pregnant, not me. I found her someone who could help, and I lied so I could borrow some money from Father, but it wasn’t enough. That’s why...that’s why she asked you to get an advance from Ewan.”
“She didn’t ask me, Maryanne,” Patrick spat out. “She insisted upon it. She manipulated me. It was so unlike her—I should have known it was all your idea.” I winced, and he scrubbed a shaking hand over his face, then demanded, “And then?”
“I waited for her—”
“Where? Where was this?”
“On the alleyway. Downtown.”
“And who did it?”
“An unregistered doctor. A man picked her up and she went with him.”
“You didn’t even go with her?”
“I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed—”
“So you sent her off with a stranger who may or may not have had any idea what he was doing.”
“He said he was a doctor, Patrick.”
“Do you honestly believe a doctor would have met you in an alleyway?” He caught himself and dropped his voice, nostrils flaring. “Go on. What next?”
“Well... I mean, she just never came back. I looked for her everywhere. I tried to contact the man she went with, but the call didn’t connect the first day and by the next morning the number had been disconnected. I assume something went wrong with the procedure and—”
“Procedure? You’re calling the murder you ordered a procedure?” Patrick was bawling now, swiping hopelessly at his eyes.
“Patrick...” I started to cry, too, and I took a step toward the bed. “She couldn’t handle another child. She just couldn’t. She begged me.”
“You knew I would never hav
e allowed this—”
“It was her life!” I exclaimed. “Her body. Her sanity. I’m telling you now, she wouldn’t have survived another pregnancy—”
“Well, Maryanne, nor did she survive the abortion that you arranged for her,” Patrick interrupted me. The room fell heavily silent after that.
“I’m so sorry.” What else could I say to that? He was absolutely right.
Patrick’s emotions were now completely out of control. I hadn’t seen him like this since the immediate aftermath of the discovery of her body. His grief and guilt were fresh and raw and all of the healing and progress we’d made over the years seemed to have disappeared in an instant. I had no idea what was in those letters, only that the last of them was something of a confession, and that Grace had found the experience of writing her thoughts down to be cathartic. I took a step toward him—wanting only to offer him comfort, but he raised a hand at me in warning.
“You need to go,” he choked out.
“What? Go where?”
“I don’t know. But I need to think...” He waved his hand around the bed, then wiped at his eyes hopelessly. “I just need to think this all through. I can’t think with you here.” He glanced up at me, then looked away and squeezed his eyes closed as a fresh burst of anger resurged. “Jesus, Maryanne! I can’t even look at you knowing that you took her from us! You sent her with that man. You all but murdered her yourself!”
I’d been wary and remorseful since I stepped across that doorway, but as Patrick’s distress turned to anger, I felt the first hot flash of my own temper. I was far too angry to shout; instead, I spoke with deathly, furious intent.
“What else is in those notes, Patrick? Does she talk about how she thought about ending her own life because you let her down? Does she talk about how your marriage was such a burden she could barely stand it? Does she talk about how she almost killed herself one night, while you slept in your bed, oblivious to her pain?” I crossed my arms over my chest and my temper ran free. “If anyone murdered my sister, it was you.”
