Chapter 10 - The Severing and the Ledger
The gravel in Gloria’s driveway did not crunch under my tires.
I hadn't gone back to her house.
We were sitting in the parking lot of the town library, three miles away from the church green, under the bare, skeletal branches of the great sugar maples that lined the common.
The engine of my Honda was idling, the heater blowing warm, dry air against my ankles. Sophie was in the back seat, her head leaned against the cold passenger glass, fast asleep. In her lap, tucked under her chin like a shield, was the patchwork quilt.
Aaron had taken Natalie to the urgent care clinic in Keene to check her blood pressure. He had left Gloria standing on the granite steps of the First Congregational Church, her fox-fur collar crooked, her clipboard nowhere to be seen, surrounded by thirty-five neighbors who suddenly remembered they had roasts in the oven and cousins waiting at home.
Caleb was standing outside my driver’s side door.
He had followed us from the church in the Subaru. He hadn't used his horn. He hadn't flashed his lights. He had simply trailed behind my rear bumper like a dog that had been kicked out of the kitchen and didn't know which ditch to die in.
I rolled the window down two inches.
The November wind cut through the opening, smelling of dried leaves, woodsmoke, and the damp, metallic iron of the coming winter.
"Emma," he said.
He was leaning down, his hands braced on the sill of the window. His church tie was pulled loose, his collar button undone, his coat stained with water from the light mist that had begun to fall while we drove.
"Sophie’s asleep," I said.
He looked through the glass at her for a long time. His jaw worked, that familiar, helpless tic near his ear, but there was no defense left in his face. The smooth, architectural logic he had used for twelve years to justify his mother’s cruelty had collapsed like a rotten sill under a spring thaw.
"She’s never going to forgive me, is she?" he whispered.
"Children forgive everything, Caleb," I said, looking straight ahead through the windshield at the red brick facade of the library where I had worked since she was a baby. "That’s the tragedy of them. She’ll forgive you by Tuesday. The question is whether I will."
"I didn't know about the five thousand," he lied, then immediately choked on it, his head dropping against his forearms on the cold glass. "No. That’s not true. I knew. I knew she was using it to control Natalie. I told myself it was for the babies. I told myself if Natalie had the kids, Mom would finally leave us alone. She’d have what she wanted. She’d have the next generation to fuss over, and she’d let go of my throat."
"Your mother will never let go of your throat, Caleb," I told him, each word cold, distinct, and final. "Because you're the one who keeps handing her the leash."
"I left her there," he said, his voice muffled by the wool of his sleeve. "On the steps. She wanted me to drive her home. She told me to get in the car and leave Aaron to deal with the scene. I told her no."
"Do you want a medal for that?"
He flinched. The sharpness of the truth was something he had spent thirty-eight years avoiding with soft answers and polite checks.
"I took my name off the joint account this morning," he said, lifting his head. His eyes were red, the skin around them swollen and dark. "From my phone while I was sitting in the church parking lot before you arrived. I transferred my entire drafting check from Friday into your personal checking account. The one your father helped you set up before we got married."
I looked at him then.
The three hundred and eighty dollars was back. The five thousand was not—that was gone, buried in the sterile labs of a clinic in Vermont and the bottomless pit of Gloria’s vanity. But the draft check—two thousand four hundred dollars—was sitting in the account he couldn't touch.
"It’s not enough, Caleb."
"I know," he said. "I’m staying at the motel by the interstate. The Pine Valley. Room fourteen."
"Stay there," I said.
"Emma, please. Just tell me what I have to do. Tell me what the list is. I’ll do whatever you want."
I looked at him—really looked at him—the man I had stood beside in a white dress twelve years ago in a meadow in Maine, promising to cherish through sickness and health, before I understood that some sicknesses don't have fevers and some poverty isn't about money.
"There is no list, Caleb," I said. "Lists are for your mother. I don't trade in them."
I put the Honda into reverse.
"Where are you going?" he asked, his hands sliding off the wet glass as the car began to back out of the space.
"Home," I said. "To light the stove. Sophie has school tomorrow."
I backed the car around, shifted into drive, and drove out of the library lot without looking in the rearview mirror.
The road to our house followed the river—a black, rushing ribbon of water between gray banks of granite and dying ferns. The mist was turning into sleet now, clicking against the glass like small, sharp grains of rice.
In the back seat, Sophie stirred.
"Mom?"
"I'm here, baby."
"Is Dad coming home?"
"Not tonight, goose."
She didn't cry. She reached down, took the hem of the patchwork quilt, and pulled it up over her shoulders, burying her chin in the soft yellow flannel Mrs. Patterson had helped her measure.
"I like the green squares best," she whispered.
"Me too," I said.
We turned into our gravel driveway just as the streetlights in the village flickered on against the gathering dark. The house was cold and dark, the cedar shingles almost black with the wet sleet, but the chimney was straight and the foundation was our own.
I pulled into the garage, shut off the engine, and helped Sophie out of the back seat. She carried the blanket herself, refusing to let the hem touch the concrete floor.
We went inside through the mudroom. I turned on the yellow light over the kitchen sink, set the kettle on the stove, and went into the living room to lay the kindling in the cast-iron stove.
My phone, sitting on the hall table where I had left it that morning, began to ring.
It wasn't Gloria.
It wasn't Caleb.
It was an unknown number from a 603 area code—Keene.
I picked it up, my thumb trembling slightly against the plastic casing.
"Hello?"
"Emma?"
It was Aaron. But it wasn't the broken, exhausted Aaron who had sat at my kitchen table five hours ago. His voice was jagged, high, vibrating with a panic so intense it sounded like wire pulled to the snapping point.
"Aaron? What is it? Is Natalie okay?"
"Emma, they took her into surgery twenty minutes ago," he gasped, the sound of hospital monitors and rubber soles squealing on linoleum echoing behind his voice. "The placenta started to detach in the car on the way over. She’s bleeding, Emma. She’s bleeding bad. They’re taking the babies now."
May you like
I gripped the edge of the hallway table, the wood biting into my palm.
"Where is Caleb?" Aaron choked out, the tears finally breaking through his voice in a violent, ragged sob. "Emma, my God, you have to find him. The doctor just came out. He said... he said I have to choose."
