Shannon's Hope

by Josi S. Kilpack

She didn’t answer, and I looked at her, assuming her silence meant that she did have a photo of this mystery man who had her so uncharacteristically flustered. “Can I see the pictures?”

  She paused but then reached for the phone and started scrolling while explaining that her friend had taken most of the pictures and she didn’t have copies yet. She settled on a picture and then handed the phone to me, explaining where I could find Gabriel in the group.

  “Oh, wow. He’s good looking. And look at that smile.”

  She said nothing as I enlarged the photo to see his face better. He wasn’t looking into the camera like everyone else in the photo. He was looking at Ruby, who stood on the opposite side of the group. I wondered what other photos might be on this phone that Ruby didn’t want me to see. She was obviously uncomfortable with something, but I didn’t want to make her any more uncomfortable. I couldn’t resist teasing her a little, though, so I shared my observation about Gabriel’s focus with her, and she flipped out, reaching for the phone and acting shocked. I pulled the phone away so she couldn’t take it from me while she insisted he was looking into the camera.

  “I don’t think so . . . He’s definitely smiling at you.”

  She came around the counter and looked over my shoulder at the enlarged image on her phone. Then she snatched it away and slipped the phone into the pocket of her housedress. She attempted to pacify me by talking about putting together a photo album of her trip that she’d bring to book group.

  I looked at the book again—the one Gabriel had given to her—and picked it up while Ruby returned to her muffins. I flipped through the pages, then back to the inside front cover where handwriting in blue ink on the title page caught my eye. I lifted my eyebrows and read it out loud.

  “‘To Ruby. All my love, G.’”

  Aunt Ruby whipped around so fast that I pulled back slightly. “What did you say?” she asked quickly.

  I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “All his love,” I said, wagging my eyebrows and showing her the book. “Tell me more about Gabriel.”

  Aunt Ruby’s cheeks turned pink . . . again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “There’s an inscription.” I held up the book, opened to the front page. “Didn’t you see it?”

  She didn’t answer me but watched closely as I showed her the note. Her cheeks got even redder. “Like I said, he was very thoughtful—to everyone.”

  I wasn’t buying it. This Gabriel guy was important to her somehow, which made me think of Uncle Phillip—the only man I knew of that she’d ever loved. She deserved better than Uncle Phillip—was Gabriel better? It made my heart ache a little to know the truth of what she hadn’t had with her husband, and I decided to see where this conversation might lead us. Since her reaction at book group a few weeks ago, I’d wondered about how much she knew and had considered talking to her about it. Maybe now was a good time.

  She opened a cupboard, removed some muffin liners from a basket and started putting them in the muffin tin she’d already set out.

  “Have you ever thought about dating again, Aunt Ruby?”

  She didn’t say anything, but I waited her out in hopes of forcing her to answer me—due to good manners, if nothing else. It took her a bit of time to construct an answer she was happy with, and by then the muffins were in the oven. “I was married for thirty years, dear. I consider myself retired.”

  “Why is that?” I asked, resting my arms on the counter and giving her a strong look. “You’ve taken excellent care of yourself, you’ve got more energy than some women half your age, and you’ve got a lot of years left. Why not see if there’s someone you could share those years with?”

  She glanced at me, then wiped down the counters. My attention was making her nervous. “Thank you for your kind comments, but I guess I just had my fill of it.”

  I could almost hear her sorting through topics she could turn the conversation toward, and I felt now was as good a time as any to get to the heart of it. “Is this about Uncle Phillip’s . . . ?” I was at the crossroads, and I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t spit it out. What if she didn’t know? What if I inflicted a wound I could not heal? In the next instant I realized I had already started. I couldn’t back out now.

  She held my eyes for the count of three, and I saw within her the same battle I’d been waging—to speak or not to speak of hard things, painful things, things we wished weren’t true. “Phillip’s what?” she asked, the hint of a challenge in her voice. We both knew she could have ignored me, let me look at the pictures again, or told me something else about her cruise. But she didn’t. Then again, she wasn’t really asking either. It was an odd kind of stand off. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know . . .” Again I couldn’t say it out loud. Apparently, after two years of protecting her, I couldn’t stop protecting her so quickly.

  “Know what?” she said, then almost imperceptibly straightened and pulled her shoulders down. Her tone changed to light and casual—an attempt to pretend this conversation was light and casual too, perhaps? “What are you talking about, Shannon? This has nothing to do with my husband. A lot of widows remarry. It’s just not for me.”

  I leaned back, folded my arms over my chest, and stared at her, trying to work out the equation of her words and her movements in my head because they didn’t match the answer she was trying to convince me of. She scrubbed at something on the counter, but despite her pretended indifference there was fear and sorrow radiating from her. I bet she was regretting having invited me to stay for muffins.

  “Ruby,” I said softly, hoping she could hear the love in my voice, the understanding and compassion of it. She must know about the affair; why else would she be acting like this? I came around the counter; she pretended not to notice. I finally stopped next to her and took a breath before I spoke.

  “Did you know Uncle Phillip had an affair?” I couldn’t believe I actually said the words out loud, and I felt a little dizzy with the word “affair” echoing through the kitchen.

  Aunt Ruby froze. I watched her stare at the stovetop she’d been wiping down, not moving at all—not even breathing. I reached out and touched her arm after a few seconds. She opened her mouth as though to say something, ward off my pronouncement, convince me I was wrong.

  “No . . .” she said, but it was a broken attempt to deflect the conversation, not necessarily an answer to the question. I wasn’t sure how I could tell, but I could. She knew. I was overcome with sadness for her. She swallowed, took a breath and looked up at me, giving up the pretense. “How did you know?”

  I told her about my father catching Uncle Phillip out with another woman and watched Aunt Ruby crumble at the realization that her secret wasn’t really a “secret” at all. I pulled her into a hug. She allowed it for several seconds; I could feel tears on my shoulder and glanced at the clock on the microwave, hoping the rest of the staff would forgive me if I was late to work—this wasn’t the kind of conversation you cut off.

  After some time, she pulled away and walked out of the room without a word. I followed her into the living room, where she sat down on the couch with enough room for me to sit beside her. She wanted to know details, so I told her about how my dad—her brother—had seen Phillip with a woman in San Diego and how I’d overheard my parents talking about it after Uncle Phillip died. I wanted to cushion each word so the impact wouldn’t be too bruising, but there really were no words soft enough, and searching for them threatened my already-weakened resolve.

  “When did your dad see my husband in San Diego?” she asked when I finished explaining how Uncle Phillip had begged Dad not to tear the family apart. It was a selfish request—a cruel thing to force between a brother and a sister—but my dad would never hurt Ruby. And so he kept Uncle Phillip’s secret.

  “It was about three years before he died,” I said.

  “Then that was Evelyn.”

  I felt my eyes go wide. “You know her name?”

  She took a
deep breath and looked up at me with a sad yet relieved expression on her face. “I knew all of their names, honey.”

  Chapter 19

  I was going to be late for work—almost an hour late—and the muffins were inedible by the time we returned to the kitchen and realized they’d been severely overcooked. I drove down the 405 still stunned at what I’d learned. Not only did Aunt Ruby know about the affairs—plural—she knew about the women: their names, where they lived, what they did for a living. It kind of creeped me out that she’d also kept mementos of each woman her husband had cheated with. I couldn’t imagine why she would want to do that, but maybe she just had to remember who her husband really was. He’d certainly put on a good show for the rest of us.

  All the memories I had of her and Uncle Phillip raced through my mind as I tried to fit them into a new paradigm. I thought they were happy up until my dad stumbled across the affair. I thought they were in love to that point at least. Aunt Ruby, my domestic goddess of an aunt who’d doted on me, who always decorated for the holidays—my mom hated the clutter—who paid for the first year of my college education, and who gave me a high-end camera as a wedding gift so I could “treasure every memory” had been hiding a broken heart all those years.

  Here we thought we were protecting her by not telling her what we knew, and perhaps in a way we were—knowing we knew was obviously painful for her—but she was much stronger than I had thought she was. She’d cared for a man she didn’t love because it was the right thing for her to do, and despite my modern feministic ways, I couldn’t disagree with her choice after hearing her defend it. She was raising her son at a different time. Who was I to say she’d made the wrong choice? My anger rose, however, when I thought of how Uncle Phillip was now standing in her way for something that could be beautiful.

  “With all my love, G.”

  She hadn’t had all of Uncle Phillip’s love. What if she could have all of Gabriel’s? What if Gabriel were the person she had expected Uncle Phillip to be? And yet seeing her pain laid out before me made it hard to imagine how she’d be able to overcome the betrayal of thirty years of marriage. I called Uncle Phillip some really ugly names during the last few minutes of my drive to work, then tried to think of how I could help Aunt Ruby see something more in Gabriel than she wanted to see—than she dared to trust. Then again, maybe this was something Aunt Ruby needed to do all on her own.

  It was rotten how life played with us sometimes, giving us trials we couldn’t just overcome and make better. Ruby was facing that. Keisha was too. So was I. Would any of us find the right resolution? I hoped so.

  Chapter 20

  I was halfway through my shift when a script came through for Edna McDonald. I hadn’t seen her in several weeks, not since that day when she’d broken down and I’d told her to call her son. I had promised to check up on her, but I hadn’t done it and felt terrible for not doing better by her. I filled the prescription, more oxycodone and something that would help her sleep, then came around to the front, looking for her Jazzy chair and her dog even though it was a frail hope. She wasn’t there, so I walked back to the pick-up counter and announced her name. A man in his sixties stood up from the bench and approached the counter.

  “You must be Edna’s son,” I said, taking in his blue eyes and slightly pointed nose, both features his mother had. I reflected on the fact that I had no idea how long ago Edna had been widowed.

  He nodded his confirmation of the relationship, and I explained the medications while I was ringing up the prescription. “How is she doing?”

  “Not well,” he said softly. “She’s in a lot of pain.”

  “But she can still swallow pills? You can run your card through that machine.”

  “Yes,” he said, following my instructions for making the copay. “For now, but hospice told me to prepare for IV’s within a few weeks. Mom’s a fighter though.” He smiled as he said it, but there was sorrow there. Real sorrow that bespoke of a relationship not as distant as Edna had seemed to think it was when she hadn’t wanted to call him.

  “I’m really glad you came,” I said softly as I handed over the paper bag. “I was so worried about her being alone.”

  He looked up at me. “I wish I’d come sooner.”

  “But you’re here now,” I told him.

  A woman standing behind him interrupted us to ask me where the Nyquil was. It broke the tenderness of the moment Edna’s son and I were sharing. I ignored her. “Will you tell Edna that we miss her?”

  He promised that he would and then stepped away from the counter, leaving me with the Nyquil woman, who looked annoyed that I had spent so much time with this man who was of no consequence to her. I held her eyes for a moment, then called over a tech to deal with her so I could get back behind the counter where I belonged. Knowing I would never see Edna again made my chest tighten off and on throughout the day. Knowing that her son had come to help her made me reflect on my own relationships, and my morning with Aunt Ruby kept playing over and over in my mind.

  When I got home at four o’clock I set about making dinner. Landon and John had gone to John’s parents’ house to do some yard work, and Keisha had left a note saying she was working until eight o’clock. It had been a couple of days since I’d really seen her.

  As I pulled open the fridge, the note with Ruby’s alarm code caught my eye. I shut the door and stared at the numbers I’d left out in plain sight. I didn’t need them now, so I pulled the paper off the fridge and crumpled it in my hand. Then I went to the hooks where we hung our keys and took Ruby’s single key with the pewter butterfly keychain from one of them. I tightened my hand around it, then went to my room and put it in the bottom of my jewelry box. If I’d been more careful when she first gave me these things, I wouldn’t be doubting anyone right now.

  I cooked and pondered and cooked some more, and by the time the boys came home from John’s parents’ house, I had an entire meal ready to go. Chicken stir-fry, rice, egg rolls—from frozen—and a cucumber salad with sesame dressing. I made the boys shower, in part because they smelled like wet dogs—it had started raining—but also because I wanted Keisha to get home as well so we could eat together as a family.

  It all came together when Keisha walked in not two minutes before John got out of the shower. Within a few minutes, the four of us were sitting around the table. Keisha hadn’t done her hair, and she looked exhausted, which made sense since she was working so much, but it still had me worried. Was she sick? Was there something else? What would she say if I told her about the missing laptop? I could pretend I was just telling John and watch her reaction, but what if her reaction told me something I didn’t really want to know? She started school on Monday, which was likely stressing her out as well.

  We passed around the plates of food and made small talk for the first few minutes; then I took a breath to gather my courage and told them about the missing laptop. Keisha was sitting across from me, which made it easy for me to watch her reaction without being overt about it. She didn’t react much at all. Was that suspect? Would she overreact or underreact if she were guilty?

  Landon hung on my every word, entranced by the drama. “She could have been killed!” he said when I finished.

  I smiled at him. “Good thing she was gone, huh?”

  Landon nodded.

  “They didn’t take anything else?” John asked. “Just the laptop?”

  “It seems that way,” I said, taking a bite of my egg roll. “Though they tried to break into her safe—pry it open, I guess. I feel horrible.” I didn’t tell him about the extra disabling of the security code. Keisha didn’t look up at me even once during the explanation.

  “It’s not your fault,” John said.

  “Can I go to Jessica’s?” Keisha said suddenly.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said automatically, returning to my meal. Now that I knew she’d used with Jessica, Jessica was the enemy.

  “Why not?”

  I lo
oked up from my plate, surprised at the question. She knew John had no idea what had happened the last time she went to Jessica’s house and she was calling me on it right in front of him. I couldn’t give a reason without revealing that I knew things that John did not—that I had kept the truth from him.

  “Jessica’s the girl from rehab?” John asked, oblivious to the standoff taking place. He sat between the two of us and dipped his egg roll in the sweet-and-sour sauce he’d spooned onto his plate. “The dental school girl?”

  “Yeah,” Keisha said, pushing her food around on the plate—she hadn’t eaten much. “I told her I’d help her color her roots.”

  “That’s nice of you,” John said. “Are you excited for school on Monday?”

  “Yeah,” Keisha said, turning toward her dad and seeming to notice that she had his attention. “I hope I’m ready for it.”

  “You’ll do great,” John said, smiling at his daughter. “You’ve always had such a great eye for detail.”

  “Thanks. Can I borrow your truck to go to Jessica’s?”

  His truck—not my car. I looked back at my plate, embarrassed by the jealousy I felt. Why did it matter to me what car she took?

  “Sure,” John said, nodding toward the row of hooks holding our keys. “But make sure you’re in by midnight, okay? I don’t want to be up late worrying about my little girl.”

  Keisha smiled for the first time since she’d come in, and I had to get up from the table and walk into the kitchen even though I wasn’t done with my dinner. Now she was his little girl? Where was he when his little girl was out until four in the morning? Where was he when his little girl was pawning her brother’s gift card? Rage and jealousy and a few other ugly emotions were ripping at me even though I knew that I wanted John and Keisha to have this kind of relationship. It was what I was fighting for, right? What I was lying and hiding for.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  I snapped out of my thoughts and looked at Landon, who was standing next to me in the kitchen, holding his dinner plate. I’d stopped in the middle of the floor with my own plate in my hands. “Sure, I’m okay,” I said with a smile, making my feet move toward the sink. He followed me with his plate, though his was empty. Except for his comments about the theft at Aunt Ruby’s, he’d been quiet at dinner. “Are you okay?” I felt more out of touch with him than I ever had before.