EPILOGUE
CLARA
Morning rises. A new day.
The knock comes at the door early, and all I can think of are flowers. More flowers. But today it is not flowers, and as I dodder through the foyer and to the front door, I see her standing there through the beveled glass. Kat. I set my hand on the door’s knob, but before I can bring myself to open it, I gather my bearings. What in the world does she want?
I open the door, welcoming in the morning’s sun and, with it, Kat. She comes alone this time, with no Gus in tow. Outside, down the street and across, Emily stands in her drive, clothed in a thin robe, waving goodbye to Theo as he takes his latest plaything for a spin, a nimble red two-seater sports car, the aerodynamics of the car making it zoom down the road. My eyes revert from the car to Emily, and still she stands, on the drive, this time with eyes on me. Her hand rises in a timid wave. I wonder if ever again we can be friends.
“When we met,” says Kat, “I wasn’t completely honest with you. I wasn’t being frank.”
I don’t remember inviting her inside, and yet there she is, feet in my foyer, closing the front door to partition us from the hot summer air and the vociferous calls of birds and bugs. It’s August now; fall will be here soon. But first we must survive the hottest month of the year, the dog days of summer, the time when cicadas come out to play, their drumlike tymbals already clamoring at eight in the morning like a rooster, waking those who sleep. Maisie. Felix. I hear them both, upstairs, in their own bedrooms, having conversations with themselves, being resourceful, keeping themselves entertained.
Kat looks nervous. Her hands fidget as she stands before me, unsure what to do. I come to her aid, not having it in me to put her through this agony. It’s hard enough to have her stand before me, much less utter the words out loud. I slept with your husband. He loved me, not you. “I already know about you and Nick,” I say before she can say it. There was more she wanted to say to me that day at the park, but I couldn’t bear to hear it. This is what she wanted to say. She wanted to confess to adultery, to tell me she was sleeping with Nick.
“What do you know?” she begs, the lines of her face becoming creased, her eyes wide. She sets her hands inside her pockets; she pulls them out. She crosses her feet at the ankles, her arms across her chest.
“He was going to leave me,” I say, though no one has told me as much, but still, I know it to be true, “for you.”
And I try to be casual about it. I try not to let my emotions get the best of me. There is much I need to come to terms with, from Nick’s death to his betrayal and more. I’ve spoken to Jan at Nick’s office, who told me the truth about Connor, how he had long since been let go, and it was then that I knew there was only one thing left to do: sell the practice. It was Nick’s practice, not mine. Without him here, it’s time to be through.
Jan also told me about Melinda Grey. “She’s just a patient,” she said when I asked.
Nick was in love with Kat, and it was only later, when sorting through his files, trying to put his past behind me, that I discovered a complaint from Melinda Grey, a complaint for medical malpractice. Then I knew.
“Oh, Clara,” Kat says now, her blue eyes filling with tears. It’s a confession, her entry of a guilty plea. I did it; I’m guilty, say the eyes. She steps toward me; she sets her hands on mine. “I loved him,” she says, and it strikes me that I’m supposed to embrace her, that I’m meant to hold her, to tell her I’m oh so very sorry for her loss. That I’m supposed to gather the dead flowers from my front foyer and give them to her. Kat is the bereaved, not me.
“I loved him,” she says again, just in case I didn’t hear it the first time. She wants to be sure I know. The silence that follows is endless. I’m certain it will go on forever, that Kat and I will remain in the foyer for all of eternity, this awkward confession frozen in time. “I loved him,” she says then for a third time, choking on the words. The tears fall freely from her eyes, a Victoria Falls of tears. “I loved him, but he didn’t love me. He loved you. He loved you, Clara. Not me.”
And then she explains.
We’re about to leave the house when the home phone rings. “Hello?” I ask, as I watch Maisie hunched over Felix’s baby carrier, playing peekaboo. She covers her eyes with her pudgy little hands, asking singsongingly, “Where’d Maisie go? Where’s Maisie?” before pulling her hands away and hollering, Boo! He starts every time, eyes growing wide, tiny baby feet kicking in their navy socks. He can’t laugh yet—though he would if he could—and so his lips part into a toothless grin, his own hand latching on to Maisie’s pinkie finger by chance.
“Look, Mommy,” Maisie says, smiling wide. “Felix is holding my hand.”
I mouth the words as the man on the other end of the line begins to speak: He is.
“Is Mr. Solberg there?” he asks, and I feel the sting, wondering if ever a time will come that my heart won’t break when someone calls, asking for Nick.
“No,” I say, stepping into the adjacent room so I can explain just exactly where Nick is without Maisie overhearing. Later I will tell her. Soon.
“Ah,” says the man, explaining that he’s been leaving messages on Nick’s cell phone, messages I have yet to hear. After retrieving the information from it I needed, I let the battery die. I didn’t hear any incoming calls. “I’m calling from Mark Thames Jewelers,” he says, “about a pendant necklace your husband purchased,” and I feel this instant recoil, remembering the necklace, the one he supposedly bought for Kat. Except that by Kat’s own admission, Nick didn’t love her. He loved me. “It’s ready to be picked up,” the man tells me, and at this my next query—Why would Nick buy Kat a necklace if he didn’t love her?—disappears completely.
The necklace is there. In the store. He didn’t give it to Kat.
“I’ll be right there,” I say, loading the kids in the car posthaste and taking off for the jeweler. The cemetery is where we were meant to go, but for now the cemetery can wait. I phone my father and tell him we’re running late.
The jewelry store is located in an out-parcel just inside the grocery store’s parking lot. I park the car and carry Felix inside, Maisie rambling behind. “I’m Clara Solberg,” I say to a grayhaired man behind a glass counter, and he plucks a jewelry box from beneath the register, setting it in my hand. “How much do I owe?” I ask, but he tells me it’s already been paid for—which, of course it has; I’ve seen the receipt—and I hold it skeptically, not sure I’m ready to see what awaits me inside. I would like to tuck it in my purse to open at home alone with a glass of wine—just in case—except that the gray-haired man’s eyes are watching mine, smiling deliberately, more eager than I am to see.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” he asks as Maisie parrots, “Open it, Mommy. Open it,” and so I do, slowly gathering the courage to lift the lid from the box. Inside lies a silver chain and, attached to it, two heart-shaped charms, one for Maisie and one for Felix, their names engraved in a playful, cursive font.
All the oxygen leaves my lungs. My legs buckle at the knees, threatening to give.
I’ve seen this necklace before.
Tears rush to my eyes, and only then do I know with absolute certainty that it’s true.
Nick loved me the most.
The cemetery is near empty when we arrive. It’s quiet, the only sound the rustling of the breeze through the trees. My mother and father are out of the car, perched on a concrete bench beneath the shade of a maple tree. In my mother’s grasp rests Felix, my father’s arms around the both of them as an extra safeguard. Felix’s eyes are wide with wonder, staring quizzically up at a new face, one he’s yet to see. He smiles a toothless grin, and at seeing this, Maisie points and says, “Look, Mommy. Felix likes her,” and I say yes, yes he does, wondering if Felix can like Grandma, then maybe Maisie can, too.
“Maybe you want to sit by Grandma when we come back?” I ask, and Maisie shrugs her shoulders and says, “Maybe.”
“We’ll be right back,” I call to my father as I take Maisie by the hand, and he tells me to take my time.
“There’s no hurry, Clarabelle,” he says, though when we return, we’ve promised Maisie ice cream. But first, I’d told her, there’s something we have to do.
I haven’t been here in weeks. The land that was once bare is now a patchy green, Nick’s resting spot no longer looking so new. The headstone can’t be placed until after the ground has settled, and so for now it’s simply a depression in the earth littered with sprouts of grass. I lead Maisie over the sloping lawn to find her father. Where’s Daddy? Maisie has asked, a hundred times or more. Today I will sit her down beside his grave and tell her about Nick.
“What are we doing here, Mommy?” she asks as we come to the spot, and I tell Maisie to sit down beside me, and she happily obliges, dropping quickly to the ground. A red-winged blackbird perches in a nearby tree, black, button-like eyes watching Maisie and me. I turn to the bird, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the sunlight, and it calls to me, a lilting trill, its beautiful bold colors conspicuous in the green tree. Above us the sky is a brilliant blue that enhances the green of the trees, marred only by the contrails of a passing jetliner. There’s not a cloud in the sky as we watch the bird spring from the treetop and disappear into the afternoon, wings extended, soaring freely through the sky.
“You’ve been missing Daddy,” I say to her, and already my voice is quivering, and my eyes fill with tears. “You’ve been asking about Daddy,” I say, to which she nods her head and smiles, her eyes brightening with the belief that Daddy is here, as she peers over her shoulder, eyes scanning the horizon for signs of her father, sitting beside a tree or cresting a faraway hill.
He’s not there. Her smile fades, and her eyes grow sad.
“Where is he, Mommy?” she asks. “Where’s Daddy?” and this time I tell her.
She doesn’t cry. She stares quietly up at the bright blue sky, eyes set on that blackbird as it soars through the atmosphere, wings extended, merely drifting through the sky, disappearing until nothing remains of it but a speck of black amidst the blue.
“You know what I think, Mommy?” Maisie asks, and even before she speaks, I know she’s going to say something timely and brilliant, as only Maisie can do.
“What’s that, honey?” I ask, stroking her hair, and as the bird passes completely from sight, she smiles and says to me, finger pointing at the long-lost speck.
“I think Daddy’s flying.”
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