“I know her secret.”
“Friends don’t call each other in the middle of the night.”
“They do when one of them thinks she’s losing her mind.”
That stopped me. “What does that mean?”
Ethan glanced toward the open studio door, then pulled it shut. “It means you’re asking the wrong person.”
“Then tell me the right one.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Why would she go there?”
“I know her secret,” he finally said. “But you need to hear it from her. Not from me.”
My jaw locked. “Where did she go?”
He hesitated.
“Ethan.”
“Her parents’ house.”
I almost laughed. “She doesn’t talk to her parents. She barely said their names our entire marriage.”
“Claire was scared to tell you.”
“I know.”
“So why would she go there?”
Ethan held my gaze. “Because whatever she’s trying to remember started there.”
“How the hell do you know so much about my wife?”
“Claire was scared to tell you.”
“But she told you?”
“Your wife thought she was losing her mind, Sam. She didn’t want you looking at her like she was crazy.”
I didn’t know my wife’s past at all.
“And you were different?”
“I wasn’t the father of the baby who triggered it.”
That hit harder than I wanted it to.
I still didn’t trust him. But he was the only person giving me answers, so I drove to her parents’ house. I’d driven there ready for a betrayal I understood.
Instead, Ethan had given me something worse: a reason to believe I didn’t know my wife’s past at all.
“Where is Claire?”
***
Margaret and Robert lived forty minutes away, in a town I had visited exactly once, for a wedding where they had looked at their own daughter like a stranger.
As I turned onto their street, I saw Claire’s car parked across from their house.
In the neighbors’ driveway.
I slowed down, staring at it. Then I pulled up outside Margaret and Robert’s house and went straight inside without knocking. Lily slept in a bassinet by the couch.
“This is our fault.”
Margaret and Robert sat on the edge of the sofa.
“Where is Claire?”
Margaret looked at Robert. “She’s not here.”
“I saw her car across the street.”
Neither of them answered.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Whose stuff is that?”
Margaret’s eyes filled with tears. “This is our fault.”
“What is?”
Robert looked down at his hands.
I waited. Nothing.
Then I noticed a teenage backpack beside the stairs.
A denim jacket hung over a chair.
A pair of sneakers sat near the door.
“Does Claire have a sister?”
“Whose stuff is that?”
Margaret wiped at her face.
“Margaret.”
Still nothing.
I looked toward the stairs. “Does Claire have a sister? Someone she never told me about?”
Robert shook his head.
“Then who lives across the street?”
“You told her, didn’t you?”
Before either of them could answer, the front door flew open behind me.
Claire rushed inside, breathless, her face white.
“WHERE IS SHE?”
Margaret stood. “Claire…”
“Where is she?” Claire screamed. “You told her, didn’t you? You told her before I could…”
She stopped when she saw me. The room went silent.
“Who?” I asked.
“There was an accident.”
Claire stared at her parents.
“Her name is Emma,” Margaret whispered.
“Who is Emma?”
My wife closed her eyes.
Margaret’s voice broke. “Claire’s daughter.”
The words didn’t make sense.
“What?”
Claire didn’t remember anything.
“She was nineteen,” Margaret said. “There was a boy. Daniel. They were going to get married…”
“Margaret.”
“There was an accident. Daniel died at the scene. Claire was eight months pregnant. The doctors delivered Emma early.”
I looked at Claire. “You had a daughter?”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
Margaret shook her head. “Claire didn’t wake up for eleven days.”
“Claire was better off not knowing.”
I could hear my own pulse.
“When she woke up, she didn’t remember Daniel or pregnancy. Claire didn’t remember anything from the last three years.”
