If You Only Knew(109)

I wonder if she really needed to go out, or if she was just climbing the walls.

“She must be lonely,” I say, based on nothing but that grocery bag.

“She’s earned it,” Kathleen says. She stands up and looks at me. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for her.”

“I kind of do,” I murmur.

She rolls her eyes. “Let’s go get dinner,” she says. “I’ll drive this bad-boy home so you can drink. You need it.”

It’s funny. As we drive down the West Side Highway toward the Village, I feel more like myself than I have in ages.

Jenny

When I get home from the cemetery, I go straight to Leo’s door. “Hey, Jenny,” he says as he answers. His eyes rest on my face a second, and something comes over his expression. “Okay,” he says, as if he already knows what I’ve seen. He probably does. He’s always been a mind reader where I’m concerned. “Come in, then. Get into some dry clothes first.”

Though I could just run upstairs and change into my own clothes, I don’t. Instead, I accept the bathrobe he hands me and go into the bathroom, strip off my wet clothes and towel off my hair. My reflection in the mirror shows a white face, made even paler by the contrast of my wet hair.

Leo’s bathrobe smells like him. I wrap it tight around me—it’s warm and flannel and his, and I’m cold, no matter that it’s summer.

He’s waiting for me in the living room, in the chair across from the couch. There’s already a box of tissues there, as if he knows I’ll cry. My eyes are already full.

“So you went to the cemetery,” he guesses.

I nod.

“And you saw my wife’s grave.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

He sits forward, his long-fingered hands clasped loosely, and looks at the coffee table. “Right. Well. I was married for three years. We were in a car accident. Amanda was seven months pregnant with our son. They...they tried to deliver him, but he was already gone.” His voice breaks a little, but that’s all.

I take a tissue and blot my eyes, then another and another, and try to speak. “Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry.” The words have to be forced from my locked throat.

Leo’s words seem to press him downward with their horrible weight. His elbows rest on his knees, and he stares at nothing.

As the rain murmurs in the gutters and hisses on the flagstones, Leo tells me the story he wanted to keep from me, a story I don’t want to hear—a woman, an ambulance, the shocked sobs of onlookers, the panicked shouts of the paramedics during their heroic—and futile—efforts to save a mother and her an unborn baby.

As he tells the story, Leo isn’t exactly calm. He’s simply...gone.

Finally, he clears his throat. “Loki was her dog,” he says. “She had him long before she had me.” He gives a half smile, but it doesn’t quite make it.

“Leo...why didn’t you tell me?”

He sighs, sounding so tired that I wish I could wrap myself around his heart and protect him.

“I liked being something other than the tragic widower,” he says. “After they died, all our friends... You remember that woman in the Hungarian restaurant? She was Amanda’s best friend.” He runs a hand through his hair. “All anyone could see or think about was that day. I was a walking reminder of a horror story. I was the horror story.”

God, what a burden to carry—not just the grief of his unspeakable loss, but the...the brutality of that ending.

“That’s why I moved here,” he says quietly. “I was kind of...absent that first year. I don’t remember a lot of it. And then her mom got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and started going downhill fast, so I moved here to be closer. I didn’t have to run into people who knew me.” He looks at his hands. “Amanda didn’t grow up here, but her mom lived here for years. She wanted Amanda buried close to her.”

I nod.

“The, uh...the worst part,” he says, looking out the window, “is that we were late. We were going to her baby shower, ironically. I was driving. She said the highway would be faster. But I knew better. Half a mile from the restaurant, we got T-boned in an intersection. Not a scratch on me, but she died.” He hesitates, then adds, “Almost right away.”

Almost. The image is too horrible.

How do people live through so much? I have to fight to keep from sobbing, but a little squeak escapes my throat just the same. “Leo,” I whisper, but that’s all I can get out.

“I know,” he says. “It’s a f*cking nightmare. Just one that you don’t wake up from. So once her mom moved into Silver Elms, I bought this place, gave a concert at the elementary school, started getting students so I could do something other than drink, though the truth is, I’m hugely f*cking wealthy, thanks to the lawsuit against the driver.”

“And Amanda’s mom? Mrs. Walker? How is... Is she aware?”

“No. Losing Amanda and the baby...it pretty much felled her. She’s lucky, though. She’s forgotten all this. She doesn’t even remember Amanda anymore.” His voice breaks a little, but he clears his throat. “She thinks I’m her son, and I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m not. Amanda was her only child.”

“That’s very kind of you.”