Diane Chamberlain - Secrets She Left Behind

“Soon?” she asked. “Can I have your cell number?”

She pulled a scrap of paper from a tiny purse and wrote down my number. She wrote hers down, too, then tore the sheet in two pieces and gave me the half with her number on it.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Keith.”

“Well, hey, Keith,” she said, sticking her hand out toward me. “I’m Jen.”

Sara

Angel’s Wings

1990

SOMETIME DURING THE FIRST YEAR THAT I BABYSAT MAGGIE, I began leading my double life. It crept up on me gradually until, before I knew it, it had me by the throat. By then it was too late for me to change a thing.

I hadn’t given up trying to help Laurel, despite being so rudely kicked out of the house the first time I visited. Or, I supposed, it was really Jamie I was trying to help. I’d pick up groceries for the Lockwoods when I went to the commissary and I brought over the occasional meal. Laurel tolerated me. She was nearly always on the couch when I arrived, her expression flat as she watched TV. If Maggie was with me, Laurel barely seemed to notice her. I sometimes felt as though I was Maggie’s mother instead of Laurel.

In early January, Jamie’s father was hospitalized with pneumonia. Since Steve was in Monterey studying Arabic, I kept Maggie at our small rental house outside Camp Lejeune while Jamie spent most of his time at the hospital in Wilmington. Jamie called often, ostensibly to check on Maggie, but the conversations quickly began to shift to something deeper. He told me how afraid he was that his father might die. I had lost my father when I was sixteen and it was easy for me to sympathize with him.

“I can’t talk to Laurel about any of this,” he said at the end of one of our phone conversations. “I…It’s not her fault. She loves my father, and I know she’s worried about him, but it’s as though she can’t really see outside herself right now. It’s like she has nothing to give me anymore.” He hesitated. “Or Maggie. Or anyone.”

“I know.” I was sitting in a rattan rocker in the third tiny bedroom of my house—the room that had become Maggie’s nursery away from home. Jamie’d furnished it with a crib, the rocker and a changing table. “It must be so hard for you,” I said.

“I keep reminding myself that she’s sick,” Jamie said. “If she had a physical illness, I’d take care of her, so this shouldn’t be any different. But you’re right. It is hard. I sometimes feel like I’m losing my ability to empathize with people.”

“Oh, no, Jamie,” I said. “I watch what happens when you’re in the chapel on Sundays.” People would file into the small five-sided building, talking quietly among themselves as though the morning was nothing special. Then Jamie would walk into the chapel, and the atmosphere would shift to a higher plane. I could see the change in the faces of the people. I could feel it happening inside my own skin. “Think of how many lives you touch there.”

“Yeah. The lives of strangers.” He sounded annoyed with himself. “Yet Marcus pisses me off, and now I’m scared I’m losing it with Laurel. She doesn’t take care of herself. We have…no physical life anymore. I look at her sometimes and don’t even know who she is.”

I decided to take him into my confidence, the way he was taking me into his.

“It’s not great with Steve and me either,” I admitted.

Jamie hesitated. “I haven’t gotten to know Steve,” he said finally, “but you two do seem like a mismatch. You’re friendly and warm and positive and he’s very…reserved.”

That was putting it mildly. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love with him,” I said.

“But you married him,” Jamie said. “There must have been something there.”

I looked over at the crib where Maggie was sleeping. “There was a baby there,” I said finally.

“A baby…?”

“It was so stupid,” I said. “I got pregnant on our second date. We barely knew each other. I was so naive.” And a virgin, I thought, but I was already saying more than I should. “I let things go too far and then it was too late for him to stop.”

“It’s never too late to stop,” Jamie said.

“I let it go too far,” I repeated, remembering the sudden pressure of Steve’s penis pushing against me. Into me. “I asked him to stop, but he was…you know. He was so far gone he couldn’t hear me.”

“He heard you,” Jamie said. “Don’t make excuses for him.”

“He said he didn’t. I believe him. He was—”

“You were date-raped.”

“No.” That was too extreme a description of what had happened. “It was my fault.”

Jamie hesitated again. “But…what happened to the baby?” he asked.

Gripping the phone hard, I started to cry the tears I’d learned to hide from Steve. “He died,” I said. “He was born at thirty weeks. He only lived a few hours.” I could remember the shape of his fingernails and the narrow bridge of his tiny nose as clearly as if I’d given birth to him only a moment before.

“Sara,” Jamie said quietly. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me? And here you’ve been taking care of Maggie. I never would have asked you to if I’d known.”

“Taking care of her has helped.” I wiped my tears away, thinking, so this is what it feels like to unburden yourself to a man. I hadn’t even known it was possible.

“Well,” Jamie said after a moment. “At least Steve married you. He took responsibility. A lot of men wouldn’t, especially after dating for such a short time. You two barely knew each other.”

“You’re right. But I had to marry him.”

Jamie was quiet. “You don’t have to stay married to him,” he said finally.

I bit my lip. “And you don’t have to stay married to Laurel.”

“I do,” he answered. “It’s like I said, Sara. She’s sick. That’s different.”

My phone conversations with Steve during that same period were very different from those I had with Jamie. Steve called nearly every day from Monterey. He told me about the other guys in his classes and how hard the work was, but he was always talking about nuts and bolts. Never about his feelings.

“Will that baby be gone by the time I get back?” he asked one time when he heard Maggie crying in the background.

“Would it bother you, having her here?” Maybe having a baby around would remind him of Sam, even though I was quite sure Steve had put Sam completely out of his mind. I imagined the sort of father he would have made. He wouldn’t be like Jamie, that was certain. Where Jamie was open, expansive and uninhibited with his daughter, Steve would have been wooden and mechanical. Jamie cuddled Maggie, cooing to her, telling her flat-out that he loved her, while Steve had never even spoken those words to me.

“It’s just…weird,” Steve said. “It’s like he’s turned that kid over to you to raise. I don’t like it.”

“Well, it’s just while Jamie’s father’s in the hospital,” I said.

“What’s with that whole situation?” Steve asked. “What’s with his wife?”

“They…the baby put a lot of strain on their marriage,” I said. “Especially on Laurel. She’s depressed and not managing things well.”

“Hey!” Steve said abruptly. “If they split up, one of them could rent our spare room. For some extra money, they could even bring the baby. She’s practically living with us for free as it is.” He was always talking about renting out the extra room to one of the guys in his unit. We could use the cash. But Jamie and Laurel split up? I couldn’t imagine it.

The day after that conversation with Steve, Jamie showed up at my house while Maggie was napping. His eyes were red, and I knew before he said a word that his father had died. Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around him while he wept. He clung to me, and I felt the comfortable bulk of him against my body. I wanted to take the hurt away, even though I knew it was one of those hurts that would never disappear completely. I was glad he’d come to me. Laurel didn’t have the capacity to comfort him the way he needed comforting.