chapter thirty-two

MEREDITH

After an emotional phone session with Amy on Sunday afternoon, we agree that I should spend a final night or two in New York—that it might be the last chance to really reflect on everything in solitude. So I spend the next forty-eight hours thinking, praying, crying, and replaying the events of the last few days, as well as the last fifteen years.

When I arrive home, late Tuesday afternoon, I find Nolan and Harper in our disastrously messy kitchen, making cookies and listening to “The Little Drummer Boy.” Their backs are to me, and for a moment I watch the two of them, undetected. As he lifts her up to preheat the oven, I am mesmerized by the cozy scene set to the rhythm of pa rum pa pum pums—so much so that I nearly forget how much I dislike Christmas carols before Thanksgiving. I nearly forget everything, in fact, other than the love I feel for my daughter. Then, as Nolan puts her back down, they both turn and see me and my trance is broken. To my enormous relief, Harper’s eyes immediately light up, pure joy on her face.

“Mommy!” she shouts, running toward me, falling into my arms, melting me.

“Harper,” I say, holding on to her for as long as she’ll let me.

Finally, she squirms away, returning to her step stool at the counter, talking a mile a minute, telling me that they’re making sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles, as a “practice run” (one of Nolan’s expressions) for the batch they’ll make for Santa next month. I listen and nod, hanging on her every word, wondering how she could look older after only a week and a half, vowing to never be gone from her this long again. Determined to be more present, patient, grateful. All the while, I avoid eye contact with Nolan, and can feel that he’s doing the same with me.

“Oh, Mommy. Guess what?” Harper asks, her trademark preamble.

“What?” I say, walking over to the counter and watching her awkwardly wield a wooden spoon, her tiny arm not strong enough to cut through the still-floury mixture.

“Daddy says we are allowed to eat raw cookie dough.” Her eyes sparkle with victory.

I start to protest, pointing out the risks of salmonella in raw eggs and batter, the way I always do. But instead I nod and say, “Okay. This once.”

“Living on the edge,” I hear Nolan mumble.

I finally glance his way, flashing him a tight-lipped smile, my heart twisting with so many competing emotions. “Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” he says back, smiling back at me just as tensely. “How was your trip? Fun?”

I try to interpret his tone, wondering if it’s more flippant or furtive, but can’t tell for sure. “The trip was fine…but I wouldn’t call it fun….I missed Harper too much to have fun,” I say.

“And you missed Daddy, too?” Harper asks.

I look into her eyes, wondering if she is really this intuitive and insightful—or if the question is simply part of her constant stream of babble.

“Yes. I missed Daddy,” I lie, although a very small part of me actually did miss him. At least the part of him that is inextricably tied to our daughter.

“Will you help us make cookies?” Harper asks.

“I’d love to,” I say, rolling up my sleeves, preparing to wash my hands.

Harper beats me to the punch, pointing at me with her spoon, her face stern. “Wash your hands first, Mommy,” she says. “Airplanes are filthy.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Nolan smile. “That’s your daughter, all right.”

“Yes,” I reply on my way to the sink. “She most certainly is.”

THREE DOZEN BAKED and decorated cookies later, Nolan and I have barely exchanged as many words, at least not directly with each other. We stick to breezy statements, using Harper as our conduit, such as “Tell Mommy about your visit to the dentist” and “Can you and Daddy guess who came to visit me in New York?”

With the latter question, I stare at Nolan, feeling certain that Josie has already tipped him off and that he knows that I now know the truth about the night Daniel died. When he shoots me a remorseful glance, my hunch feels confirmed.

“Aunt Josie,” Harper either states or guesses.

I tell her yes, watching Nolan prod at an oversize cookie with a spatula. It has clearly not cooled long enough, but he continues anyway, breaking it. He throws one half in his mouth and finally addresses me directly. “So how did the visit go?” he asks.

“Don’t you already know how it went?” I say, my anger bubbling to the surface.

Nolan opens his mouth to reply, then closes it. He might as well have just pleaded the Fifth, and I tell him as much.

“We’ll talk in a minute,” he says, gesturing toward Harper, now making her way to the family room with cookies in both of her hands.

I shake my head. “Not with Harper awake,” I say, thinking that there is no way we can have this conversation without raising our voices. At least I can’t.

“My parents are coming to get her,” he says, glancing at the clock on the microwave. “In about an hour.”

“What?” I say. “Why? I just got home. I want to spend time with her.”

“Yeah. Well, you didn’t inform us of your itinerary. And I already asked if they would babysit for me.”

“So you could do what, exactly?” I blurt out, not meaning to sound quite as accusatorial as I do. At least not on this particular topic.

Nolan squints at me. “Um. So I could get a little break, maybe?” His voice is calm, but laced with bitterness. “You know, Meredith…I’ve been a single parent for two weeks here….”

“First of all,” I say, crossing my arms, the animosity building. “It’s been eleven days—not two weeks. Second of all, I’d be more than happy to take her for the next eleven days. Starting now. Tell your parents we won’t be needing them.”

“Yeah, we do need them, actually. We need to talk. And my parents are going to take Harper while we do,” he says with rare and absolute authority.

I stare at him a beat, then shrug. “Fine,” I say, letting him win this one, thinking that we might as well go ahead and rip the Band-Aid off our sham marriage. “But I’m putting her to bed tonight.”

A short time later, I get in the shower to avoid seeing Nolan’s parents, taking my time drying my hair, dressing, putting on makeup. Part of me is stalling, but part of me is going through my usual confidence-building ritual before I walk into any adversarial scenario. One thing’s for sure—I am not primping for my husband, and I certainly don’t anticipate Nolan’s reaction, which is to give me a conspicuous once-over when I walk into the family room.

“You look pretty,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say, involuntarily softened by the compliment, though the effect lasts only a few seconds. “So Harper’s gone?” I confirm.

“Yeah. They just left,” he says. “So did you want to go out? Get something to eat, maybe?”

I narrow my eyes, shake my head, and tell him no, I’m not hungry. I hope my implication is clear—how could you think about food right now?

“Okay. Just asking,” he says. “You typically don’t dress like that around the house….”

I wonder if this is a veiled criticism, but I focus on the bigger picture. “We can talk right here,” I say, feeling queasy as I sit on the far end of the sofa.

“Okay,” he says, staring at me expectantly.

“You wanted to talk. So you go first,” I say, ready to hear him out, listen to any and all of his convoluted explanations or attempts to justify a fifteen-year secret.

He nods and takes a deep breath, surprising me with his first words. “I know Josie told you everything…and I just want to say that I was wrong.”

He stops, waits for me to respond. When I say nothing, he continues, “I was one hundred percent wrong. I should never have kept this from you and your parents. It was as close as you can get to an actual lie without lying.”

“It was a lie,” I say, then literally bite my tongue to keep from unleashing so much more.

“Okay. You’re right,” he says, nodding, further disarming me. “It was a lie. And it was wrong. And I’m so sorry.”

I anticipate the but before his lips form the word. “But I swear, Meredith. I didn’t cover that up for my sake.” His eyes are big, round, and filled with grief.

“Who did you lie for, then?” I ask him.

“In the beginning?” he says, dropping his voice. “Mostly Josie…”

The answer is a surprising slash to my heart. “You’re not married to Josie,” I say, thinking that I could probably get past the cover-up for the first few years, but not once he and I started dating. After that, his loyalty to me should have trumped all else.

“I know that,” he says.

I hesitate, then ask him something I’ve always, deep down, wondered. “Do you wish you were? Married to Josie?”

“What?” he says, looking genuinely horrified. “Don’t be ridiculous, Meredith. Of course I don’t want to be married to your sister. Jesus.”

“Are you sure?” I say, unable to halt my tangent. “You never liked her? Not even in the beginning? You always seemed to have a crush on her…or at least she did on you….”

He hesitates just long enough for my stomach to turn. “Okay. Look,” he begins. “A long time ago…I thought she was hot….”

“When?” I demand.

“When we were in high school and college…early on.”

“What about on that night?” I ask, although I’m not sure why this matters.

“Yeah. On that night, too,” he says. “Josie’s a pretty girl. Very pretty. But so what? There are lots of pretty girls.”

“But you never liked her romantically?” I say.

“No. Absolutely not. I never liked her like that. C’mon, Mere. Where is all this coming from?”

“You lied to me for fifteen years, Nolan. And now you tell me you did it for Josie’s sake. What am I supposed to think? How do you think that makes me feel?”

He runs his hands through his hair and says, “Shitty. I get that. But it wasn’t just for her sake. It was for your mom and dad, too…for your whole family. For you, Meredith.”

I make a scoffing sound. “How was it for me?”

Nolan takes a few deep breaths, then says, “Well, let’s see….Just imagine if on the morning after the accident…after we talked in my car…if I had walked into your house and told your family that Josie was out-of-her-mind wasted the night before—”

“And that you called Daniel to come get her,” I cut him off, raising my voice, pointing at him. “Don’t forget that part.”

“I never do. Not for one day,” he says, before taking a few deep breaths, collecting himself. “So, I sit you all down and tell you that story—”

“That story?” I interrupt again. “It’s not a story, Nolan. It’s what actually happened.”

“Okay, Meredith,” he says, sounding weary. “Quit being a lawyer and let me finish. Please.”

“Fine. Go ahead.” I clamp my mouth shut and cross my arms.

“So I tell you all what happened….I tell you that Josie was wasted and I called Daniel to come get her….”

“Okay,” I say, thinking that’s exactly what he should have told us. “And?”

“And what would that have done to your family? How would that have helped anyone?”

I stare at him.

“How would your mom have felt about Josie? Would she have ever been able to truly forgive her? And what about your dad? He just lost his only son and…” His voice trails off.

“And what?” I say. “Finish your sentence….”

“He just lost his only son,” Nolan repeats, “and would inevitably wonder if his alcoholism didn’t somehow contribute to Josie’s drinking….He’d live with a lifetime of guilt in addition to pain….And then there’s you and Josie…What would the truth have done to your relationship?”

“The same thing it’s doing now,” I say, staring down at my lap.

“Exactly,” he says, as if I’ve just made his case.

“But what about us, Nolan?” I ask. “You and me?”

He stares back at me, seemingly speechless.

“Why did you really marry me, Nolan?” I ask, my heart pounding.

“I already answered that. I told you at Blackberry Farm….”

“Tell me again,” I say.

“Because I fell in love with you,” he says, too automatically.

I shake my head and say, “I don’t believe that, Nolan. I think you liked the idea of marrying Daniel’s sister. And I think it made you feel less guilty about what happened that night….It helped you make sense of something senseless and horrible—”

He shakes his head and says no, but without any conviction.

“Daniel was like a brother to you,” I say. “So you wanted to try to fix things for my family.”

“Our family,” Nolan says. “It’s our family now.”

I tell him that is beside the point.

“No,” he says, his voice rising with frustration. “It is the point. You’re my family, Meredith. You and Harper and your parents and your nutty sister and the baby she’s about to bring into this world. You’re all my family. And I love you—”

I cut him off and shout, “Okay. But are you in love with me?”

He groans in frustration, then says, “I don’t know, Mere. You make it pretty hard to be sometimes.”

I take this as a no, and press onward. “Were you ever?”

“Yes,” he says, then quickly downgrades his answer. “At least I think so….”

“You think so?” I demand.

“Yes. I think so…but…maybe not,” he says, wavering, clearly in anguish. “Maybe you’re right….”

I nod, his admission filling me with both intense relief and profound sadness. “That’s what I thought,” I say.

“But I do love you, Meredith,” he says, reaching for my hand. I give it to him, then meet his gaze. “And I would do absolutely anything for you and Harper. Anything. Isn’t that enough?”

I stare at him for a long time, thinking that this is really the crux of our crisis and the question I’ve been asking myself for years. Is it enough to be partners and parents together? To share the same history and values—and most important, a deep and abiding love for our daughter and family? Can all of that sustain us and overcome the elusive missing piece that I’ve never been able to quite put my finger on, other than to know it’s just not there?

I desperately want the answer to be yes, and for a second nearly convince myself that I can will it to be so. But deep down, I know it doesn’t work that way, at least not for me. I feel my answer crystallizing in a way it never has before.

“No, Nolan,” I finally say, shaking my head. “I’m sorry…but I just don’t think it is.”