The Night Before(67)

Gabe sees me and stops looking for my things. He stands in front of me and blocks my view.

“Laura,” he says firmly. He waits until my eyes move, slowly, from the man on the floor, to find his eyes. “We have to get out of here. Right now!”

I have no words. I am back on that gravel road at the edge of the woods. A bat in my hand and a boy at my feet.

“Laura!” Gabe commands me now. He grabs my arm and starts to pull me toward the door.

My bare feet begin to move and I stumble behind him. Gabe blocks my line of sight until we are clear of the body. He pulls the door closed behind us.

And then we are gone.





THIRTY-NINE


Rosie. Present Day. Saturday, 1:30 p.m. Branston, CT.

Rosie listened to Joe’s story, each and every sentence ushering forth memories that now had a new context.

I found out just before the summer, when my father died.…

Joe’s parents had lived in Maine for over a decade. She and Joe had started to see them twice a year after Mason was born. He liked the beach. Rosie liked having free babysitters. She had never cared for his parents. His mother was flighty and his father distant. Then, and now, right up until his father died last summer.

My mother found out when we were in ninth grade.… That’s why we moved.

Before they moved from the neighborhood, Mrs. Ferro was a frequent visitor to their kitchen, along with Mrs. Wallace. Rosie’s mother would serve the ladies coffee and they would speak about their husbands and their children. Their voices were at times exuberant and filled with laughter. At other times, hushed and tearful. Rosie had never wondered why Joe’s father rarely joined her father for beers on Sunday afternoons, or why the Ferros never came to their annual holiday party.

She didn’t want us to know—not ever. But my father left a note.…

All those years, the Ferros kept the secret.

And all those years, so did Rosie’s parents.

“Well,” Rosie said when Joe paused, “it explains why your mother always hated me. Why she didn’t want us to date and nearly had a stroke when we got married.”

Joe didn’t respond. He sat across from Rosie and stared at his hands, which were folded in a prayer at the table.

“Why did you tell Laura and not me?” That was the question of the hour.

Joe’s chest puffed up with air as he leaned back in his seat. He was stalling for time.

Rosie didn’t ask again. She stared at her husband and waited for the answer.

“I promised my mother not to tell anyone. Not you. Not Laura,” he said, finally. “Do you remember when my mother wanted to see me alone, when we went for the funeral?”

She remembered. She’d felt guilty because it had annoyed her—they were about to go to bed after a long, emotional day.

“It was late at night. After we’d gone to sleep…” Rosie began. But Joe interrupted her.

“She came to our room and asked me to join her in my father’s study. I had already received the note from his lawyer, and she knew it. She was hysterical. Begged me not to tell anyone—not my siblings, and not you or Laura. She said she’d suffered a lifetime of humiliation and she wanted to bury it along with my father. She begged me, Rosie,” Joe said, pleading now for her to understand. “I felt I owed it to her after what my father had done.”

Rosie wanted to scream. She wanted to whale her fists into people who were not in the room—her mother, her father. Joe’s father. And even Joe’s mother. Yes, she had been a victim of her husband’s infidelity and lies. But she had chosen to suffer the humiliation that she described. That was her choice. She had no right to poison her son’s marriage.

“How long did he know?” Rosie asked. She could see them all—the “grown-ups” on their street. She used to think they were wise. She used to watch the women and imagine herself in their shoes one day, married with a house full of children. She had looked to them to show her how to be a woman, even when she pretended not to. This thought now disgusted her.

“He knew when your mother got pregnant. Their affair began six months before. Your mother told him she had stopped sleeping with your father.”

“Jesus Christ!” Rosie exploded. “He put that in a note? A note he left with his lawyer?”

Joe shook his head. “My mother told me that part. That was also how your father knew—they had grown distant after you were born. Tired and busy. He probably thought nothing of it—until your mother was suddenly pregnant. I can see how that happens. Can’t you? After Mason, things changed between us.”

“Not like that! What are you saying, Joe?”

“Nothing, Rosie. I’m just trying to make sense of it. I’m trying to understand how these people we looked up to, people who raised us, who toasted us at our wedding and were there when Mason was born—those people. I’m trying to make sense of what they did.”

Rosie let her thoughts settle before she said things she couldn’t take back. This would have been a hard secret for Joe to carry. She knew that. Still, if Laura hadn’t gone missing, she may never have known. She’d seen no signs of the distress Joe was now saying he’d felt. No signs that he was holding on to such a monumental secret.

And that was exactly how those people had held on to theirs.