I turned.
“She also asked for the photograph Carolyn kept.”
“The one from 2004?”
“No.”
Beth’s expression tightened.
“A different photograph.”
She reached into her bag and took out a small frame.
I looked at the picture inside.
Jeremy stood in front of our house, younger than he looked now.
Beside him was our son at about eight years old, holding a baseball glove.
I recognized the day.
It was his first game.
I had taken that photograph.
But I had never given a copy to Lacey.
I looked at Beth.
“Where did she get this?”
“I found it in her drawer.”
There was writing on the back of the frame.
I turned it over.
In Jeremy’s handwriting were six words.
The family I go home to.
I stared at them.
For years, he had brought pieces of our lives to Lacey.
She had kept this one beside her hospital bed.
And now she wanted to meet the boy in the photograph before it was too late.
Part 8 — The Boy in the Photograph
I held the picture so tightly that the edge of the frame pressed into my palm.
Our son was eight in it.
His front teeth were missing.
He had insisted on wearing his baseball glove all the way home, though he had spent most of the game hoping nobody would hit the ball toward him.
I remembered taking the photograph because Jeremy had laughed at something he said.
It was a small, happy moment.
I had never known Jeremy carried it into another woman’s room.
“Does she know his name?” I asked Beth.
“Yes.”
“Has she asked about him before?”
“Sometimes.”
I looked down at the handwriting on the back of the frame.
The family I go home to.
Had Jeremy written that to comfort Lacey?
Had he written it to remind himself?
I could no longer guess at what he meant from six words.
“I need to talk to my son,” I said.
Beth nodded.
I took the elevator down.
Dana and my son sat at a small table near the coffee shop.
He was picking the paper sleeve off a cup.
Dana looked at my face as I approached.
“Is she all right?” she asked.
“She’s resting.”
My son put down the cup.
“Did you read the envelope?”
“Yes.”
“Was it about me?”
“Most of it was about the adults.”
“Most?”
I sat across from him.
“Lacey has seen a photograph of you.”
He frowned.
“Why?”
“Your dad gave it to her years ago.”
“Does she know me?”
“She knows about you.”
He looked toward the elevators.
“She wants to meet me, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Did Dad ask her to?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to go?”
I thought about how easily I could answer that question for him.
“I want you to know you have a choice,” I said.
“You can meet her today.”
“You can wait.”
“You can decide you never want to meet her.”
“What does she want to tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
He rubbed his thumb along the paper cup.
“Would you be there?”
“The whole time.”
“Would Dad?”
“If you want him there.”
He considered that.
“I want to see Dad first.”
I called Jeremy.
He came down a few minutes later.
He stopped when he saw our son and waited for him to speak.
“How long has she had my picture?” our son asked.
Jeremy looked at me, then at the frame in my hand.
“I gave it to her after your first baseball game.”
“That was eight years ago.”
“Yes.”
“You were seeing her eight years ago?”
“No.”
“I ran into her in Nashville.”
Our son’s face hardened.
“Was that another side job?”
“I was there for a roofing job,” Jeremy said.
“I saw her outside a restaurant.”
“She asked how you were.”
“I showed her the picture.”
“Then I gave it to her.”
I watched him.
“Why didn’t you tell me you saw her?” I asked.
“I didn’t think it mattered then.”
I almost said something sharp.
My son spoke first.
“You keep saying that about things that mattered.”
Jeremy looked at him.
“You’re right.”
Our son pushed his chair back.
“I’ll meet her.”
Jeremy’s eyes widened.
“You don’t have to do that for me.”
“I’m not.”
He turned to me.
“I want Aunt Dana to stay too.”
Dana put her hand on his shoulder.
“Of course.”
We went upstairs together.
Before we entered, I asked the nurse whether Lacey was strong enough for visitors.
“She can have a short visit,” the nurse said.
“Let her tell you when she needs a break.”
My son stood outside the door for a moment.
I could see he was frightened.
He had inherited Jeremy’s dark hair and my habit of holding on to a decision once he made it.
I touched his shoulder.
“We can leave.”
“I know.”
Then he knocked.
Lacey turned her head.
Her eyes went straight to him.
For a few seconds, she said nothing.
I wondered whether seeing him in person had brought back the photograph, or the baby she had lost, or both.
“This is our son,” I said.
He gave his name.
Lacey smiled.
“I’m glad to meet you.”
He stood near the foot of the bed.
“You have a picture of me.”
“I do.”
“Dad gave it to you.”
“Yes.”
He glanced at Jeremy.
“Why did you keep it?”
Lacey took her time answering.
“Your father talked about you when he visited,” she said.
“He was proud of you.”
“That doesn’t explain why you kept it.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
She looked at me.
“I should answer him plainly.”
I nodded.
Lacey turned back to him.
“I kept it because I wanted to remember that your father had a family waiting for him at home.”
My son looked confused.
“Why would you need to remember that?”
“Because I wanted him with me.”
The honesty of it made the room still.
“I knew what I wanted could hurt people,” she continued.
“The photograph reminded me that you and your mother were real people.”
Our son looked at the picture in my hand.
“Did it work?”
“Sometimes,” Lacey said.
“Sometimes it didn’t.”
He folded his arms.
“Dad lied to us.”
“Yes.”
“You did too.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t get to use me in a photograph and then act like knowing I existed makes it okay.”
Lacey’s eyes filled.
“You’re right.”
I put a hand on his back.
He was trembling.
“We can go,” I whispered.
He shook his head.
“There was something you wanted to tell me.”
Lacey looked toward the window.
When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“When your father and I were young, I was expecting a baby.”
“I know,” my son said.
“Mom told me.”
“I lost the pregnancy before I left town.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
She swallowed.
“For many years, I imagined the child that baby might have become.”
She looked at him carefully.
“That does not make you a replacement.”
“I didn’t think it did.”
“I want to be sure you hear me say it.”
He nodded.
“I never wanted to take your place in your father’s life,” Lacey said.
“I should have cared more about how my choices affected yours.”
Our son looked down.
“I don’t know you.”
“No.”
“I don’t know if I’ll remember you after today.”
“That’s all right.”
“Then why did you ask to meet me?”
“Because I wanted to apologize to you while I could.”
He stood very still.
Lacey took a breath.
“I’m sorry I helped keep a secret that hurt your family.”
“I can’t say it’s okay,” he said.
“I don’t expect you to.”
The nurse stepped into the room and caught my eye.
Lacey needed rest.
My son noticed too.
“I’m going downstairs,” he said.
Lacey nodded.
“Thank you for coming.”
He walked to the door, then stopped.
“I don’t hate you,” he said without turning around.
“But I’m angry.”
“You’re allowed to be.”
He went out with Dana.
I waited until their footsteps faded.
Then I turned to Jeremy.
“Can you give Lacey and me a minute?”
He looked at her.
She nodded.
He left.
Lacey closed her eyes for a moment.
“I asked too much of him.”
“He chose to come.”
“He’s a good boy.”
“He is.”
I sat beside her bed.
The photograph rested in my lap.
“I was angry when I saw this,” I said.
“I understand.”
“Part of me still is.”
“You can take it.”
“I’m going to.”
She gave a small nod.
I turned the frame over again.
“Did Jeremy give you other pictures?”
“A few.”
“Of our house?”
“One from your son’s birthday.”
“Of me?”
She hesitated.
“Yes.”
I looked at her.
“Do you still have it?”
“In the drawer.”
I opened the drawer.
Beneath a box of tissues was a photograph taken on our front porch.
I was holding a cake.
Our son leaned toward it, trying to blow out the candles before we had finished singing.
Jeremy must have taken it.
On the back, he had written:
Jill made the cake after a ten-hour shift.
I had forgotten that birthday.
The cake was crooked.
My hair was coming loose.
I looked tired.
I also looked happy.
“He talked about you all the time,” Lacey said.
I kept looking at the photograph.
“I don’t know how that makes me feel.”
“I’m not asking it to make you feel better.”
“Did he tell you I thought about apologizing?”
“No.”
“He told me you were kind.”
I laughed softly.
“I wasn’t kind to you when we were twenty.”
“You tried to be afterward.”
“Carolyn kept my note.”
“I know that now.”
“I thought you had read it.”
Lacey looked at me.
“What did it say?”
I could have told her from memory.
Instead, I took the old page from my purse.
I had brought it without deciding why.
I unfolded it and read my twenty-year-old words aloud.
They sounded awkward.
They were too short.
They said nothing about how often I had replayed that summer.
When I finished, Lacey wiped her cheek.
“I wish I’d gotten it,” she said.
“So do I.”
“We might still have stayed apart.”
“Probably.”
“But I wouldn’t have spent so many years believing you never looked back.”
I folded the page.
“I did look back.”
“I know.”
There was a knock at the door.
Beth stepped in with the nurse.
“Lace, you need a break,” Beth said.
“I know.”
I stood.
Lacey caught my wrist gently.
“There’s another photograph,” she said.
“Lacey,” Beth warned.
“It’s all right.”
She pointed to the drawer again.
“Under the book.”
I lifted the paperback.
A photograph slipped from between its pages.
It showed Lacey and Jeremy at a park.
The picture was recent.
Lacey had hair in it, cut short around her face.
Jeremy sat beside her on a bench, holding two paper cups.
On the back was a date from the previous autumn.
There was no writing.
“I kept that one in the book,” Lacey said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s the day I told him to go home and tell you.”
I looked at Jeremy through the window in the door.
He was in the hallway, speaking with our son.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He promised he would.”
I felt that old, sharp pain.
“I had suspected something by then.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“He told me you’d asked about the hospital parking stub.”
I remembered finding it in his truck last winter.
He had said a coworker’s wife was sick.
I had chosen to believe him.
“He came back the next Tuesday,” Lacey said.
“I asked if he’d told you.”
“He said he needed a little more time.”
“And you let him have it.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled again.
“I’m sorry.”
I put the photographs together.
I did not know whether I wanted to keep the picture from the park.
It belonged to a part of Jeremy’s life I had never agreed to share.
But hiding it in the drawer would not make that life disappear.
“I’m taking these,” I said.
“You should.”
I left her with Beth and the nurse.
In the hallway, my son stood beside Jeremy.
They were speaking quietly.
My son looked up when I came out.
“Can we go home?”
“Yes.”
Jeremy stepped toward me.
“Beth said Lacey needs to rest.”
“She does.”
“I’ll stay here.”
My son looked at him.
“Will you come home later?”
“If you want me to.”
“I want to talk,” he said.
“That’s different.”
“I understand.”
I started toward the elevator with my son.
He held the photograph of himself.
I carried the picture of me with the birthday cake.
On the drive home, he stared at it.
“I remember that cake,” he said.
“You do?”
“It leaned over after we cut the first slice.”
“I was afraid it would fall before you blew out the candles.”
He smiled for a second.
Then the smile faded.
“Mom, do you still love Dad?”
I kept my eyes on the road.
“Yes.”
“Are you staying with him?”
“I don’t know.”
He was quiet.
“I’m scared you’ll stay because of me,” he said.
That hurt because it was exactly what I might have done.
“I’m going to make that decision for myself,” I told him.
“Your dad and I both love you, whatever happens.”
He looked out the window.
“I wish everything could go back to before Thursday.”
“I know.”
I wished it too.
Yet even as I said it, I thought of the photographs and the letters and the statements.
Thursday had changed what I knew.
It had not changed what had already happened.
At home, I put both photographs on the kitchen table.
My son went to his room.
I opened my laptop and looked again at the financial statements.
I made two lists.
One held payments from the business account.
The other held transfers from our joint savings.
I added each amount carefully.
Then I checked the total a second time.
The money from our joint account came to more than I had expected.
I sent Jeremy a message.
We need to talk about the savings account tonight.
He replied a minute later.
Yes.
I looked at the old picture of our family beside the screen.
After everything he had said about us to Lacey, I still needed to ask why he had taken money we had saved together and kept it from me.
At six, Dana called.
“How’s your boy?” she asked.
“Quiet.”
“And you?”
“Angry.”
“That sounds about right.”
“I lost my job today.”
Dana went silent.
“Jill, why didn’t you tell me?”
“There’s been a lot to tell.”
“Come stay with me.”
“I need to be here for him.”
“Then I’ll come to you.”
I looked down the hall toward my son’s room.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Don’t try to carry all of this alone,” she said.
“I’m not.”
After we hung up, I realized it was true.
Dana knew.
My son knew enough to ask questions.
Lacey had spoken to me herself.
For the first time in years, the secrets were losing their hold because people had begun to say them aloud.
That evening, Jeremy came to the house.
He did not bring his overnight bag inside.
Our son met him at the door.
“I’ll talk to you after Mom does,” he said.
Jeremy nodded.
“I’ll be here.”
We sat at the kitchen table.
The photographs lay between us.
Jeremy looked at the one from our son’s birthday.
“I remember that day.”
“So do I.”
I turned my laptop toward him.
“I went through the statements.”
He read the totals.
His face tightened.
“I’ll replace the money.”
“That’s one part of what needs to happen.”
“I know.”
“I need you to explain why you took it without asking.”
“Lacey had a bill due.”
“Which bill?”
He opened one of the files and found the payment.
“This one.”
“And you couldn’t tell me?”
“I was already hiding the marriage.”
He said it without trying to soften it.
I waited.
“If I’d asked you to use our savings, you would have asked why.”
“Yes.”
“I should have answered.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the picture of me holding the cake.
“I was afraid that once I told you one thing, I’d have to tell you all of it.”
“That’s usually how the truth works.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
I closed the laptop.
“We need outside help sorting out the finances.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“You’ll give me the records first.”
“I will.”
“And I need time to decide whether I want you in this house.”
His face changed, but he did not argue.
“Our son wants to speak to you,” I said.
“Listen to him.”
Jeremy stood.
At the hallway, he stopped.
“I loved that birthday,” he said.
I looked at the photograph.
“So did I.”
He went to our son’s room.
I could hear them speaking, though I could not make out the words.
The house felt different with both their voices in it.
I sat alone at the table.
A few minutes later, my phone rang.
Beth.
I answered immediately.
“Is Lacey okay?”
“She’s awake,” Beth said.
“But she asked me to call you.”
“What happened?”
“Her attorney is here.”
I glanced at the blue folder.
“Can it wait until tomorrow?”
“I asked him.”
Beth’s voice shook.
“He says there’s something in the trust papers that Lacey needs to correct while she can still sign her name.”
I looked toward the hallway.
“What does she want me to do?”
“She wants you to come back.”
I closed my eyes.
I had promised my son I would be home tonight.
I had promised myself I would stop letting other people’s secrets decide where I went.
“Tell her I’ll call her myself,” I said.
Beth was quiet.
Then she said, “All right.”
I ended the call and looked at the number on my screen.
For the first time since the courthouse, I was going to ask Lacey what she needed before I made another choice for my family…..
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