“That’s what he told Aunt Caroline. I just overheard him.”
“I did not cheat on your father,” she declared again.
“You left him for another man,” I said, like,Case closed.
“Yes. But I didn’t cheat.”
I couldn’t help it. I crossed my arms.
“The semester I came up here as a visiting professor, I was desperately lonely,” she said then. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with Wallace. But I sat by myself every day at lunch—the art teachers were a strangely snobby crew—and he started sitting with me every day. He was terriblyfunny. And charming. He wore these gray cable-knit sweaters, and he had the most wonderful gravelly voice. He always smelled like gingerbread. I don’t know how to describe it. We just had a spark. The more I saw him, the more I wanted to see him. His wife had left him not too long before we met, and we were both just so… alone. He very quickly became the best thing in my life up here. And I’m sorry to say it, because your dad is a really good person, but as much as I did love him, I was never reallyin lovewith him. I married him because he was practical and helpful and good—but not because he ever swept me off my feet. I’d never felt that feeling in my life before I met Wallace. I didn’t even know it existed. It was like being caught up in a windstorm. But I never slept with him or even kissed him in all that time. We held hands a few times—passionately—but that was it.”
Diana rearranged herself on the sofa and kept going.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been in love—”
I shook my head.
“But it’s a hell of a thing. It’s all-consuming. You can’t think about anything else. There I was, middle-aged but consumed with fire like a teenager. I didn’t just want to be with Wallace, I needed to. I came up with a plan that I would wait until after you left for college. It was only two more years. I figured I could hold out that long. But then, on the night I confessed my feelings to Wallace—and the plan—he told me that he was sick.”
Diana closed her eyes for a second. Then she went on. “He had a disease I’d never heard of called pulmonary fibrosis, and there was no cure. His lungs were basically shutting down. They thought he had maybe two years left. Suddenly, it turned out, we were running out of time.”
This was new information to me. I knew she’d left us to be with a man named Wallace. And two years later, I heard that he had died. But I never knew until this moment that she’d known he was dying when she left.
“I had an impossible choice to make then,” she said, rubbing at some dried glaze on her finger.
He’d been dying when she left.
It tinted the story a slightly different hue, I’ll give it that.
“Butyou had to leave on my birthday?” I said, my throat feeling thick. “My sixteenth birthday.”
She nodded. “He had a surgery scheduled that Monday morning. He was healthy enough to try a lung transplant at the time, though it didn’t ever take the way they’d hoped. I waited until the very last minute, but then, by the afternoon of your birthday, I had to go to make it in time. He was scared and alone.”
“Iwas scared and alone.” It came out like a whisper.
But she heard it.
She nodded. “I thought if I stayed until your birthday, it would be like splitting the difference. I could be with you in the morning, and see you, but then get to him in time to take him to the hospital.”
My chest felt heavy, like it was sagging.
“That’s become a defining fact about our lives,” she said then, “that I left on your sixteenth birthday—and it was horrible timing, I admit. But I was trying to stay as long as I possibly could. I wanted to take you with me, if you remember.”
I did remember. She’d asked me to come, too. But I couldn’t leave my dad—and I was so indescribably angry at her for tearing our family apart that I didn’t even want to talk to her, much less move across the country.
But that didn’t mean I wanted her to go.
I wanted her to come to her senses and stay with us.
“Why didn’t you just tell me about Wallace being sick?” I asked.
“I hadn’t even told your father yet. I didn’t know how much he could handle. He cried so hard when I told him, I was afraid he might hurt himself. I thought maybe I could explain better after things settled down. I was making the best decisions I could. I honestly didn’t realize when I drove away that day that you’d never speak to me again.”
I gave her a look like,Come on. “I’m living in your house. Not sure it’s accurate to say I never spoke to you again.”
She gave a nod, like,Fair enough.“But I lost you.”
She wasn’t wrong. She had lost me.
