Be very careful, I reminded myself.
“We’re baking this morning, excuse the mess,” Diana explained, gesturing at the kitchen. And then she jabbed me hard in the gut, simply by saying, “My youngest is coming home today, should be here in an hour or so, in fact. He took some time off to help us strip out the floors in the ballroom. He’s a good boy, always tries to come when we need him.”
Breathe. Just keep breathing.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met him.” It cost me, but I spoke with a remarkably even tone. The ballroom was where our wedding reception had been held.
“He’s lived in the Cities since college.” Diana made disapproving clucking sounds. Then she brightened, gesturing at the corner hutch containing family photos. “That’s Matty and the twins, my granddaughters…”
Don’t look, oh God, don’t look.
But it was too late.
Drawn beyond my will, I lifted one of many framed pictures and beheld Mathias standing on the sandy bank of Flickertail with two little girls. Clad in matching bathing suits, the girls had been photographed in the midst of horsing around, pirouetting and posing; one held her own ankle, knee bent at an acute angle, as though about to begin a gymnastics routine. They resembled Mathias with their dark hair and blue eyes, smiley little girls who were so obviously his children. They could have been my children’s siblings; they were the female versions of Brantley and Henry.
Oh, dear, dear God…
Never in my most bizarre imaginings could I have conjured such a situation, witnessing my husband in an alternate life, a life without our love, without us. I studied him with faltering control, trying to determine what he’d been feeling when the picture was snapped that summer day. Shirtless and tanned, he held the fishing pole his grandpa had given him for his thirteenth birthday and which he’d always cherished; he was smiling, but not the smile to which I was accustomed, his wide, effortless grin that beamed like a ray of July sunshine. I knew this man better than I knew myself and I saw in that smile a lack of true happiness.
The scariest part is I actually thought I was fairly happy.
Mathias’s words, spoken in 2006 while we were on vacation in Montana, rang inside my skull. He’d been referring to the year before he moved home to Landon, a year during which he’d dated Suzy and intended to remain in Minneapolis, the year before we had met at Shore Leave one cold December night.
I saw you and I knew you were mine, in every sense of the word, he had said that gorgeous night in the foothills of eastern Montana, the night we’d conceived Brantley and Henry.
The man in the image I cradled in both hands was Mathias without me; he was Malcolm without Cora.
“I love that picture, even though Suzy isn’t in it,” Diana was saying.
Tina hooked an arm around her mother’s waist, with a crooked grin. “I think that may be why you love that picture.”
I tore my gaze from Mathias and his daughters, heartened to a tiny degree.
Diana released a small huff of laughter, swatting at Tina. “Don’t say that! I like Suzy well enough. It’s just that she isn’t much for the north woods. I don’t think she’s been up here with him in the last five years, at least. Matty brings Cora and Cammy every summer and stays a couple weeks. I count on that time. I miss them so much, but Suzy won’t stand for living outside the city.”
My composure withstood another blow.
Cora and Cammy?
Oh, Mathias…
You know, don’t you, sweetheart? Somewhere inside you remember.
Just as quickly, I recognized the danger of being here when he arrived. I replaced the picture, engaged in a sudden, intense battle with my own better judgment.
You have to leave.
No. I want to see him. God help me, I want to see him.
It will kill you.
But I miss him so fucking much.
Go. Go now.
What if we can’t get back to the life we knew?
What if today is the only time I’ll ever lay eyes on him again?!
Resolve turned my insides to iron. Cold, rigid, obstinate.
Whatever it takes, I will get us back to our real life.
Tina led me upstairs a few minutes later, maintaining an easy, steady flow of conversation as I followed her to a small set of creaky steps at the end of the hallway, which led to a narrow wooden trapdoor. Because I knew her so well, I heard in her tone numerous questions she wanted – but wasn’t quite ready – to ask; she’d very cagily offered to help me and I braced for what was coming. She climbed to the third step and reached for the metal handle, tugging at the trapdoor. Running the entire length of the upper floor, the Carters’ attic was a space in which their grandchildren loved to play; it boasted a ceiling with sharp peaks and enchanting, cobwebbed nooks, not to mention boxes of old clothes and hats and other assorted jumble. My kids loved the way they could crawl on hands and knees to peer out the dormer windows, spying on the yard far below.
“Here we go,” Tina said, grunting as she pulled harder on the door; it always stuck. Dust billowed and we both coughed.
I spoke without thinking. “Remember when Lydia –”
I hurtled to a halt, wanting to bite through my tongue.
Tina looked over her shoulder, the door frozen at half-mast, her eyebrows lofted. Lydia was her youngest daughter and as far as Tina knew there was no way in hell I would possess any remembrances of her. I’d been about to say, Remember when Lydia fell asleep up here and scared all
