In the Unlikely Event

I laugh harder. I can’t help it, because now that the truth is coming out—why not let it all out? She deserves to know what her mother did, even if it makes both her parents intolerable arseholes.

I turn around and stomp back toward my cottage (feck the car), and she follows me, because I hold the one thing she wants—the truth.

“Try again, Rory. Why do you think I hated you so much? Why do you think I married Kiki? Why do you think all the bad shit happened? I chased you around, and your mother told me you wanted nothing to do with me. She said I should move on. That you’d found another lad to keep you warm at night. She sent me the pictures you took of me, with the god-awful things you wrote about me on the back of them.”

I turn around to see her face morphing from angry to horrified.

Her features twist in pain. “Oh, God.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said when I screwed you six ways from Sunday and gave you enough orgasms for a decade of PornHub material. Yet apparently, I tried too hard. And you know what? I did. I did try far too hard, because I wanted no one else to compare.”

“No one did compare!” she screams in my face. “Happy? No one compared, which is why I didn’t date until Callum came along. There was no other guy. I wrote those things on the back of your pictures because I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and Summer gave me an exercise in trying to find the bad things in you, and those were the only things I could come up with. You were damn near perfect. When I came back from college, I turned my room upside down so many times, desperate to find your photos, because they were the only thing I had left of you. And I didn’t want to look you up on social media, because I still honored the stupid contract. I cried days and nights about those pictures, Mal.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, taking a deep, cleansing breath. “I sent you dozens of letters. They were redirected to your New Jersey address, and you never saw them.”

“Jesus.”

“The cherry on the shit cake? Your mother told me I got you pregnant and you had an abortion.”

There’s radio silence from her side of the bare shoulder of the road, so I open my eyes to look at her. She is staring back at me, stunned.

“Is it true?” I ask quietly.

She shakes her head slowly.

Thank God.

“I’m speechless right now,” she admits.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But also, sort of relieved, because now you’re angry at someone else.”

“Is that why you and Kathleen got married? Had a child?”

“Yes. I mean, no…I don’t know.” I shake my head, pacing back and forth.

The cabbie dumps her suitcase and backpack onto the side of the road and drives away, leaving us in this field, and it’s getting dark, and cold, but neither of us seems to care.

“This is how it happened: I got so furious with you, I pulled a Glen and went to get myself two bottles of something terribly strong to knock myself unconscious. Kathleen was there, at the newsagents, and she sort of jumped into my car without my consent, but I was so lethargic, I didn’t even have the strength to kick her out. We got piss-drunk. Well, I did, anyway, and that’s how it happened.”

There are tears clinging to Rory’s lower lashes, and I wish I could kiss them away, but I don’t think we’re there yet. I don’t know if we ever will be. I try to ignore the possibility of never kissing my wife again.

“You slept with my sister, Mal.”

“She…”

I know this will be the first and last time I say this. Not just because Kathleen is dead and I honor her memory, but mainly because I never, ever want Tasmin to know how she was conceived. She doesn’t deserve this horror of a story. I refuse to saddle her with a truth that has nothing to do with her.

“I wasn’t conscious, Rory. I mean, well, not fully. I said no. Several times, I think. But I wasn’t completely there when Tamsin was conceived. This marriage I dangled in your face…it was a sham. A lie. Kiki knew it, too.”

The tears fall from Rory’s cheeks to her feet, and she is quivering like a leaf dancing on the ground in fall.

I continue, undeterred, “I’m not going to lie, though. Kathleen reminded me of you, and at that time, I was under the impression you were something I would never be able to have. So I settled for the closest thing. Her. I’m not proud of what I did or how I did it.”

”Rory, Rory, Rory,” I remember chanting every time I was inside Kiki. Like an unanswered prayer. A requiem for a broken heart.

“When we found out she was pregnant, I was pressured by everyone we knew to tie the knot. She’d been a virgin before, and our families would have killed us. And, frankly, I stopped trying. I thought maybe becoming a father would distract me from you.”

“Did it?” She’s sobbing openly now.

I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her to let it all out. Yet, I’m rooted to the road’s shoulder, waiting for her to come to me just once in this lifetime.

I’m tired of doing the chasing. I’m tired of losing just so she can win. I’m exhausted from plotting how to court her, how to have her, how to ruin her, how to keep her, while she keeps fighting it.

Sure, initially, I didn’t tell her about Tamsin because I thought she wasn’t going to stick around long enough to need to know, and I wanted to protect my daughter. But the minute Rory said “I do,” things became real.

And that was the moment I shoved my reality under the carpet for a woman.

I hid my daughter for a lover.

Never again.

“Nothing made me forget you. The night Tamsin was born was also the night Kiki died. Consequently, it was also our wedding day.” I let all the events sink in. “I know I was more than a bit short with you the day Tam celebrated her birthday. Actually, I was a full-blown arsehole. But I was hurting, the pain coming from so many directions. I didn’t want to be touched, not to mention prodded.”

Her eyes meet mine with understanding.

“After the wedding, we came back home, and Kiki found the napkin. Our contract. She told me to throw it away.” I wait a beat, watching her face.

She stops breathing altogether and waits for me to continue.

“I couldn’t do it.”

She lets out a ragged breath and starts crying harder.

“She ran. And I chased her, like I chased you just now. But with you…”

I suck in a breath. The truth hurts. It cuts you open. That’s why we hide it from the ones we love. From the people whose opinion we care about.

“With you, I chased harder.”

Rory

 

She died because of us.

She didn’t stop at a stop sign, because the only thing she cared about was running away. After the accident, Kathleen had been rushed to the hospital. Tamsin’s heartbeat was faint, but the doctors were also concerned for the life of her mother. The baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen and was in distress.

My sister’s last words were, “Save him. I know I can’t make it. He can.”

She thought Tamsin was a boy, and that he would live.

She got one thing right. The important part.

Kathleen was pronounced dead shortly after Tamsin was delivered—close enough that she didn’t get the chance to hold her daughter in her arms. Because of the impact caused by the collision with the truck, Tamsin was born with spinal damage and had to undergo a complicated operation when she was barely old enough to see shapes. Mal shelled out some serious cash to make sure his daughter was given the best medical treatment. Experts were flown from all over the world. He’s been writing and selling songs ever since, never looking back or stopping to consider what he wanted for himself.