A Family Affair(18)

Tears began to gather in Mike’s eyes.

“Have you lost weight?” he asked.

“Let’s sit and eat,” she said. “Tell me about school. Tell me about Jenn.”

He piled spaghetti on his plate. “Your weight?” he asked again.

“I think I have, but it’s just the confusion and having no appetite and for some reason without your dad around I don’t know what will taste good. So I have a bite of this, a bite of that, and then I lose interest.” In the eight weeks since Chad had died she’d lost twenty-two pounds. “You know what Grandma said? She said I could spare it.”

“How is Grandma?” he asked.

“The same. Cranky and more forgetful by the day. But they know at the senior center and she’ll be moving over to the full-care facility soon. And to memory care as soon as there is room. Mike, tell me about you. How are you getting along?”

“I’m doing fine,” he said, scooping food into his mouth. “I have trouble with the idea that he’ll never be around again.”

“I forget that sometimes and start to text him...” she said.

“I know!” he said. “It makes me feel a little crazy!”

“It’s perfectly normal,” she said. “I’ve heard people talk about it going on for years. I’ve even shouted down the hall for him, getting his name half out before I realize... It’s strange.”

“Are you okay with this will business? The ten percent to the unknown person or thing?”

“I’m not sure okay would be the best word,” she said. “I want to know who, what and why, but then I always have those questions about everything. When you get down to it, it was part of my job to want to know, as a defense attorney and as a mother.” She added a laugh so he would know she was taking the light side on this subject. “How about you? Are you okay with it?”

He chewed, swallowed and took a drink of beer. “I’m okay with it.”

It gave her pause. “You really are?”

He shrugged. “It’s his decision. His business. His money. If he didn’t want it questioned... Yeah, I don’t care.”

“You truly don’t care or you can decide you don’t care because you think that’s what your father wanted?”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“There’s a huge difference,” she said, believing it to be accurate with every word. “You can have absolutely no interest to the point that if you found out the details, you might actually forget them because they’re that unimportant. Or you can make an emotional decision not to pursue the answers out of respect for someone else’s request. In this case, your father’s.”

He put down his fork. “God, you sound exactly like Jenn.”

“In what way?” Anna asked.

“In the way that she thinks it’s very weird that I can not care about something she finds so care-worthy and she doesn’t get it. Maybe that’s a girl thing. Ya think?”

Anna recalled there was a party once, a backyard thing. Just four or five couples. Three of the women had read a book in their book club about a woman who found a sealed envelope in her attic. It was in a box full of records—taxes, receipts, house records, legal correspondence. On the outside of the envelope it said, To be read by my wife in the event of my death. But he wasn’t dead.

Everyone at the party weighed in on whether they would read what was in the envelope. What if it was written by a woman for her husband, would the men read it? To the last one the women said they would tear open that envelope and read the contents immediately. Likewise, none of the men wanted to know what was inside, not even Chad.

Chad said, “There’s nothing in there I need to see.”

One of their best friends said, “That couldn’t be good news.”

She told Mike the story. “Would you open the envelope?” she asked him.

“No way,” Mike said. “It was sealed for a reason. Would you?”

“In less than a second,” Anna said.

“Then it is a girl thing,” he pronounced.

She laughed. “How is Jenn?” she asked. They’d been dating about six months and she was certain Jenn was very fond of Mike. She thought maybe this was the one.

“She’s fine,” he said, filling his mouth again. After a couple of moments he said, “I don’t think things will go long-term with us.”

“Really?” she said, shocked. “I guess I thought it was getting serious.”

“Jenn is great. And I care about her, I do. But...I’m just not there yet. Something is missing. I don’t see myself and Jenn being anything like you and Dad were.”

Probably a good thing, she thought dismally.

“I’ll know I’m with the right woman when I can see us being as good a married couple, as good as parents, as you and Dad.”

She twisted spaghetti around her fork but didn’t bring it to her mouth. “I’m not sure we were that great at either,” she said. “You might be idealizing us a little. Maybe because of missing your dad so much.”

“I know you had your issues sometimes, but you were a great couple and great parents.”

Of course neither of them had ever mentioned the affair to the kids. Anna had told herself that if they had divorced and she had to explain one day when the kids were old enough to understand, she probably would have told them. But they put things back together and explaining was moot. If it didn’t do anything positive, there was no point. She wondered how Mike would react if she told him now about their latest struggles and the fact that she was planning to suggest they separate and were perhaps heading for divorce. Would it break his heart even more? Or would it help him understand that relationships are never easy?