“I saw you. You were getting a shovel out of the shed and you had that striped suitcase.”
He turned off the faucet and grabbed a dish towel. “It’s dark. You can’t be sure of what you saw. And sometimes, Addie, what happens in the dark should stay there.” He pressed the towel to his face for a moment. When he pulled it away, I saw that his hands were shaking. “Addie—I’m so, so sorry. All I wanted...” He looked at me. Tears rolled down his face, and for a moment, he looked like the little boy who’d been my friend in grade school. “All I ever wanted was for you to love me just a smidgeon as much as I love you.”
He sank into a chair, put his head in his hands, and sobbed. I’ve never heard anything so sad—it was a heart-wrenching, from-the-soul sob, so loud I feared he’d wake the children. He seemed like a child himself—lost and lonely and heartbroken and scared. And... I felt the exact same way.
I thought,What will happen if I learn that he did the horrible thing I fear he did?And I could come up with no good outcome. If I knew for sure, wouldn’t I have to do something? What would that be? What would it do to our children? To his parents? To my parents? To our grandmothers? The shame would destroy us all.
He was right; I didn’t want to know. So I decided to let the things of the dark stay in the dark.
•••
I opened my eyes and looked at Hope. “Whatever Charlie did, he’d done because he loved me, and I’d driven him plumb out of his mind. It was as much my fault as Charlie’s. I was as guilty as he was. And I’ve lived with the shame and guilt of that all my life. But now... well, now I’ve got to clear it up before I meet my maker.”
Hope’s arms wound tight around me as she knelt beside mychair. “Oh, Gran—you had so many people’s lives to think about! You just did what you thought was best.”
“Best isn’t the same as right. I let lie pile upon lie.”
“You tried to protect your children! And anyway, it doesn’t make sense that Granddad would have deliberately killed the baby. Why on earth would he have done that, after you’d gone through the pregnancy ruse and were willing—eager, even—to raise it?”
I drew a deep breath. “I’ve thought and thought about that, all these years. And all these years, I’ve wondered...” I stopped.
“What, Gran?”
“Well, a man can never be sure that a child is really his.” I drew a deep breath and voiced my most secret thought. “All these years, I’ve wondered if that baby was black.”
37
hope
Iwaited until eight thirty that night—after Gran went to bed and I knew it was past the girls’ bedtime—and I called Matt.
“My grandmother told me something I need to talk about,” I whispered into the phone.
“Come on over.”
He let me in the kitchen door, poured me a glass of wine, then sat with me at the breakfast room table and listened somberly as I poured out the whole sordid tale.
“Do you think your grandmother’s fears are justified?”
“I don’t know. Maybe her memory is playing tricks on her—or maybe she misunderstood what was going on. One thing is certain, though: she won’t rest until I find that suitcase.”
Matt’s eyes were somber. “If you find it, and it contains what she thinks, you’ll have to call the police.”
Oh, dear Lord. The possibility of a murder investigation hadn’t even occurred to me.
“Are you prepared to do that? And what about your uncle?”
Eddie. Poor, sweet, tenderhearted Eddie. We texted every day and he called several times a week. I’d kept him up to date on Gran’s story, and so far he’d been entirely sympathetic.
“Will he be torn up to find out his father was a murderer?” Matt asked.
I considered the question. “He’ll be upset, but I don’t think it’ll devastate him. They were never that close. My grandfather wanted him to be a man’s man, and Eddie... well, he’s into flower arranging.”
Matt smiled.
“Granddad used to say things like ‘don’t be a sissy’ and ‘you’re acting like a Nancy boy,’ things that were really hurtful.”
“It’s a big leap to go from knowing your dad was antigay to learning he might be a murderer.”
