The Things We Wish Were True

by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

  She shook her head to dislodge the memory and put the car into reverse, easing out of the parking space and pointing herself in the direction of home. She couldn’t get there fast enough. Once she got home, she could stop thinking of all this nonsense, immerse herself in her husband and child, in dinner and bath and story and bed, in the familiarity of a home she didn’t deserve but was desperate to hang on to. Her mistake was in the past, and with any luck, she would keep it there forever.

  The noise of the television playing cartoons was the first thing she heard when she stepped inside the house. Bryte let the sound of normality wash over her as she stepped into the kitchen, already looking toward opening the refrigerator and what she would pull out to cook, just to keep busy.

  But when she turned and saw Everett sitting at the kitchen table, she knew instinctively it wasn’t going to be that simple. His eyes, as they met hers, told her that something had happened while she was away. Something terrible. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her insides turning to jelly. She stepped toward him, but he put up his hand like a traffic cop. Don’t come any closer, he was saying. She stopped moving, her hand resting on the kitchen island.

  “I saw Dr. Ferguson today,” he said.

  No, no, no, no, no! her mind screamed. This can’t be happening. Not now. She blinked at him and said nothing.

  “I’d intended it to be a surprise for you. Instead I got the surprise,” Everett added. He gave a little bitter laugh.

  She nodded once and closed her eyes to block the vision of his mournful face. Her stomach twisted in on itself, and she gripped the island harder.

  “He’s not—” His voice gave out, and he swallowed, cleared his throat, a choking sound. He tried his voice again. “He’s not mine.”

  She understood that he wasn’t asking a question, that he’d drawn his own conclusion with no help or explanation. She nodded again and looked down, studying her white knuckles. She was hanging on to this island, and suddenly the name of this kitchen fixture had taken on a whole new meaning.

  “Who?” he asked. The word felt like a slap, and she felt the impact of it reverberate through her. She’d been waiting for this moment—dreading that one word—for a long time.

  She took a deep breath before answering. “Someone from work.” She paused. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her, leaned forward as if he was trying to get a good look at her. “Doesn’t matter?” His voice was incredulous. “Of course it does.”

  She looked toward the den, where Christopher was watching TV. She shushed him, turning to him with fire in her eyes. He leaned back, chastised. “You’re his father,” she said, keeping her voice even and calm with something inside her she didn’t know she possessed.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought until this afternoon. And you let me think that. Like an idiot.”

  “You are his father,” she said again. “In every way that counts.” She thought of Christopher’s biological father tossing back gin and tonics like water, loving the sound of his own voice, reeking of a confidence that—in a weak moment years ago—had seemed like a good quality. She wanted no part of Trent except the part that had been invisible to the naked eye, the part that had enabled her to become a mother. She’d absconded with that part, and he’d never missed it, sleeping oblivious, his arms thrown over his head while she crept out of his hotel room as light dawned in the window over the bed.

  Everett sighed, a long exhalation that sounded like it was coming from the huge crack in his chest, a crack she’d created just the same as if she’d swung a hatchet and lodged it there. She crossed over to him and knelt in front of him, her words tumbling out. “The words ‘I’m sorry’ fall so short, but . . . I was crazed over what I’d learned about you—about us—and I thought, I thought it would be a way that we could still have the family we wanted and—” She stopped, knowing how stupid this would sound but also knowing she had to admit to it. “I thought no one ever had to know and no one would get hurt. I was so, so stupid.” She tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look back at her. He kept his gaze just over the top of her head, looking instead at the refrigerator just behind her, papered with photos and reminders of the life they had together, their little family of three. He’d wanted nothing but that, and she’d been determined to give it to him.

  A long silence passed. Her knees ached from stooping in front of him, but she didn’t dare move. She kept her posture penitent, staying as close as he would allow. “Is that who you met today? The ‘guy from work.’” He gave a little ironic laugh. “I thought it was weird that you suddenly wanted to go back to work.” He shook his finger at her. “But I believed you.” He put his hand back in his lap and kept his gaze there. “I always believed you.”

  Her knees throbbing, she eased out of the position she was in and slumped into the chair next to his. She let the silence stretch between them for a few minutes as she gathered her words. She kept her gaze on the top of his head, willing him to look up even though she knew it was futile. She began to speak.

  “You got called into that big meeting that day, and you couldn’t go to the doctor with me. You told me to tell you what I found out, and you said it so flippantly as you walked out the door. You said, ‘You tell the doc we’re up for the challenge.’ You kissed my forehead and sauntered out the door, and I so envied you, your ability to always expect the best. I’d lost that more and more with each passing month we didn’t get pregnant.”

  She paused for him to speak, but he didn’t, so she continued. “So after the doctor told me what he found, I walked around numb for a while, just trying to figure out how to tell you. And what it meant. And I decided exactly what to say, had this whole rousing speech ready to give you. But when you walked in and asked how it went, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that it was you. That no amount of trying was going to fix what was wrong.”

  “So you lied to me,” he said.

  She started to tell him it wasn’t a lie, but he was right. It was. “Yes,” she said. “I told you that we’d just have to try harder. And that night we did try. And all I could think while it was happening was, I’m probably ovulating and it doesn’t even matter.” She caught his eye, finally, and held his gaze. “It was never going to matter,” she said without flinching.

  “So you got back at me?” He gave her a challenging look. “Because I couldn’t get you pregnant? Found someone who could?”

  She shook her head, leaned toward him imploringly. “No,” she said, the word emphatic. “Getting back at you never entered my mind. Keeping you did.” She tried to catch his eye again, but he wouldn’t look at her. “You wanted a child, a family, so much. We were so close to having everything we talked about. I couldn’t face what might happen if we couldn’t.”

  “What might happen?” he asked.

  Her voice was very quiet, barely more than a whisper. “You might stop loving me.”

  She watched as the words sank in, hopeful that they might change the direction of the conversation. But when he spoke, it was clear he wanted to keep fighting—if only, she knew, to keep the pain at bay for a bit longer.

  “So you just took matters into your own hands.” He gestured toward the den and the cartoons and the little boy watching them in rapt attention. She was grateful Christopher loved TV the way he did at that moment.

  “The next day I left for a work trip, if you remember. It was a trade show, and while I was there I met this recruiter. He was there to scope out the industry’s talent, and he and I talked. We . . .” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. How could she describe what had happened between them? He had looked so much like Everett that it had drawn her to him. He’d been charming, disarming her as they talked and laughed and drank and drank some more. The hours ticked away, and suddenly she was drunk and he was offering,

  When she’d woken up the next morning with him beside her, it had been too late to take it back. And when she puked for the first time a month later, she’d kno
wn. She’d known that they were having a baby, and she let Everett believe it had happened that same night the doctor told them to just try harder. She’d let him believe it because she wanted to believe it, too. She wanted to pretend.

  “You were . . . with him,” Everett finished for her.

  “It was . . .” Again, she fumbled for the right words. How could she say it was a mistake when it had given her a beautiful child she loved with all her heart? She tried again. “It was wrong of me to do, and wrong of me to lie to you about it after. And I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.” She willed him to look at her with understanding and forgiveness, to look at her at all. But he did not. “I’ve been sorry every day.” Her voice, hoarse with emotion, was barely audible.

  He kept looking at his hands. “I’d like for you to leave,” he said. She leaned back heavily in her chair, thrown by his unexpected request. He looked up suddenly, his gaze angry and hurt. “I’m serious. I need for you to get out of here.” She blinked at him a few times but then complied, rising slowly to her feet. She started to walk into the den to collect Christopher, her mind already spinning as to where she could go.

  He stopped her. “You can leave Christopher. I’ll put him to bed. I just need for you to not be in this house for a few hours. You owe me at least that.” She started to go tell her son goodbye, but he stopped her. “Don’t stir things up with him. He hasn’t even realized you’re back, so better just to go.” He looked at her, his eyes pleading. “Please.”

  With the briefest of nods, she scooped up her purse and keys where she’d dropped them earlier. She paused at the door to look at him still sitting at their kitchen table. She started to speak, to apologize one more time, but he rose and walked into the den, turning his back on her as he joined the son he once thought was his own.

  EVERETT

  Everett listened for Bryte’s car to start up and back out of the driveway, but he never heard the sound of the engine. He got up and went to the window to see her walking toward Myrtle Honeycutt’s house, her shoulders hunched forward, her head down, her steps deliberate. She was still going to walk that damn dog even with everything else going on. He watched until she disappeared from sight, then went to put the boy to bed. Could he call him his son still? He didn’t know if he could stop. The thought of admitting that child wasn’t his nearly brought him to his knees. But he forced himself to keep moving.

  After Christopher was tucked in with his stuffed elephant and his five kisses (forehead, chin, cheek, other cheek, nose), Everett sat in the darkening house, not bothering to turn on the lights. He thought of his wife, gone for several hours now. In the distance, he heard sirens and wondered idly what might be happening. He wondered if he should worry, but he couldn’t consider another tragedy just then.

  He wanted to be angry at her. The baser parts of him wanted to divorce her, deny the child, and start over. Declare the Bryte years a false start. He’d get it right the next time. He cataloged in his mind what it would take to separate their lives. He was a math guy, but he could not estimate the cost. He’d always made sense of things, but nothing made sense anymore. He could not be angry at her because she was not the only one who’d kept a damaging secret.

  An image came to mind of him and Jencey as inexperienced teenagers, hunkered at a corner table of the town library in late winter of their junior year. He’d said they needed to research sex before they did it so they’d know how, and she’d gone along with his plan. They’d taken books off the shelf and sat side by side, elbows touching at the most remote table, her eyes taking in the words and pictures along with him, two bright spots of color on her cheeks in the too-warm library. Under the table, he’d reached for her hand. She’d taken his, and he’d known that it was as close to real love as he’d ever find.

  That one winter afternoon in the overheated recesses of the town library was what had driven him to find Jencey before he could propose to Bryte. He’d tracked her down, living in Connecticut with a husband and two—two!—children. He’d called her, told her he would be in New York and wasn’t that close to Connecticut, playing dumb. She’d said she could get away, that it would be nice to see him. He’d met her in a restaurant in the city, and they’d had a long dinner, catching up and drinking stiff drinks until they were both just shy of shit-faced.

  At the end of the night, she’d looked at him and asked why he was really there. He’d never lied to her before, and he didn’t intend to start. So he said nothing. He signaled the waiter for the check, paid the bill, and reached for her hand. Surprisingly, she didn’t argue. She just took his hand and let him lead her to his car, a rental. He turned on the heat in the car, tuning the radio to a decent station.

  “Are you ever going to answer my question?” she asked.

  He looked at her, and that was all the answer she needed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For never coming back.”

  “I had to know it was really over.” He laughed at himself. “I mean, of course I know it’s over. But . . . seeing you makes it real.”

  She started to cry, tucking her head into her chest. “Yes,” she said. “I have a family now.”

  “I wanted a family,” he said. “With you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “I thought that was what you wanted, too.” He hated the way he sounded, whiny and clingy. But it was how he felt. And he would probably never see her again. He needed to say it before he moved on.

  “I did.” She gripped his arm, trying to catch his eye. “You have to believe I did. But then everything happened, and I just had to get away.”

  “You said you’d come back.” He felt anger building up inside of him—anger at her, anger at the stalker, anger at himself for not stopping her. He thought of the hazy days after the attack, the shame and pain all mixed together. He was weak. He had failed to protect her. And Jencey had left because of it.

  “I never meant for this to happen,” she said. “It all got away from me. I swear.”

  It had all gotten away from him, too. He kissed her then, because he believed her and because he thought that the kiss might make a difference. He forgot all about Bryte back at home. Bryte, who thought he was asleep in his hotel room. Bryte, whom he planned to propose to when he got home. Bryte, who didn’t deserve to come in second but knew she was.

  Jencey pulled away, her hand on the car door. “I should go,” she said. On the radio, Death Cab for Cutie sang about peeling freckles from summer skin. He wanted to stop her from leaving, but he sat motionless, listening to the song on the radio and the gentle hiss of the heat from the vents of the rented car. Neither of them said a word. He could feel her wanting him to stop her, to pull her toward him, away from the door. If he asked, she would go with him to his hotel, and he could have her just once more.

  “It was good to see you,” he made himself say instead.

  “You, too,” she said, her voice gone stiff.

  “I’m going to ask Bryte to marry me,” he told her. Because that was what he had come there to say.

  She nodded and blinked away tears. “Congratulations,” she said.

  “So I should?” he asked her. He wanted her permission. He wanted her to stop him.

  She turned to him and gave him a resigned, sad smile. “Yes,” she said.

  He could not recall how the night ended beyond that, beyond her yes that freed him to marry Bryte, to make this life he was living now. If Jencey had said anything different, he would not have come back to Bryte, he would never have proposed. It would’ve been the worst mistake he’d ever made, but he would’ve made it willingly if it meant he got another chance with the girl he loved first. In the end, it was Bryte who loved him best. It was Bryte he was meant for. It had taken him far too long to come to terms with that, and he’d made so many mistakes along the way. He saw how his mistakes had led to hers. She’d tried so hard to make their life perfect, to make him happy. And he’d taken it all for granted.

  He walked into Christopher’s room, th
inking of what she’d done, and what he’d done, and finding it hard to distinguish what was worse. He looked down at the boy he could not give her and thought of all the other things he had not given her. He had not loved her the way she deserved, but he could start to. He would not tell her what he’d done in New York; it would be too much for her. But he could forgive her, and maybe in doing so, it would be like she was also forgiving him. He wanted to take her in his arms and absolve all their secrets. He would do anything to make it right with his wife who was, it turned out, the only one for him.

  BRYTE

  Myrtle Honeycutt was confused when Bryte showed up so late asking for the dog, but thankfully the old woman turned over the leash without too many questions. Rigby gave her an excuse to walk, to move instead of sit, to feel the blood rush through her veins for a reason other than shame and fear. Rigby pranced along beside her, seeming to enjoy the fact that she didn’t have the leash so tight today. She didn’t care how far he wandered tonight.

  Her jaw continued to quiver no matter how much she tried to steel it. She refused to give in to tears and gave herself a good scolding instead, her feet beating out a rhythm in time with the steady stream of harsh words she had for herself. She’d made this mess. She deserved everything that was happening. She’d been a liar and a manipulator. She’d hurt the people she loved most. She had to face the music. She would lose everything, and that was what she deserved. She was a horrible person who’d done a terrible thing.

  She reached Zell’s house and stopped, looking in at the warm lights glowing in the gathering darkness, the house like a beacon. She moved up the driveway toward it, tugging Rigby along with her, thinking that perhaps Zell would open her door and welcome her in. She might even make her hot chocolate; that seemed like something Zell would do. Bryte could go to the door with the pretense that she was just passing by and wanted to tell her she was sorry she hadn’t seen her at the pool recently. When Cutter had nearly drowned, Zell had soothed Cailey when everyone else was too afraid to speak. She’d been the one who knew what to do.