I’m not sure which of my questions that’s supposed to be an answer to. Maybe both. Rage fills my stomach. “You can’t have a baby with Nancy Mulligan. You’re married to me. Her husband just died last year. She…she already has those two boys.”
She already has two, and I can only have one.
He nods but doesn’t respond. Eventually, he slips out of the truck. Just before shutting the door, he meets my eyes again. He looks tired, empty. I hardly recognize him. “Probably best not to say anything to anyone for now.”
I swallow, batting back tears. By some miracle, I manage to hold them in until he disappears inside the house and have them dried long before I follow him.
The baby comes in the fall. I receive the news over dinner, just after Charles asks me to pass a slice of bread and before he asks for the butter.
A little girl.
A sister for our Billie, and yet, not a single part of me exists within her. She’s not mine.
Charles hasn’t brought Nancy around to Foxglove. I’ve been avoiding her in town, ever since I noticed her stomach showing in church. That bump is gone now, but the pain of it will never leave. Even in the happiest moments.
She hasn’t spoken to me. Honestly, I’m not sure what Charles has told her about us, and I don’t think I want to know. He hasn’t said if they’re still seeing each other, and I’m afraid to ask.
Charles always wanted a big family, and I’m afraid if I push, he might leave me for the woman who can give him that—even if that’s not why the affair started.
I can hazard a guess as to why it started, too.
I’m not blind. Nancy’s been pretty for as long as I can remember. Prettier than me. Prettier than most of the women in town. Bright blonde hair that turns strawberry blonde in the summer. Green eyes.
I expect her daughter to look just like her, but when I see the baby—Violet—all I see is Charles. She has blonde hair like both her parents, but the rest is all him. She’s the spitting image of the man I love.
For several months, little Violet comes back and forth between Foxglove and her mother’s. He takes her home at night but leaves her with me during the day.
I never planned to take care of the girl, but I can’t help falling in love with her. And Billie,oh, my girl finally has a playmate, and how could I take that away from her?
I can’t. Won’t.
Violet shouldn’t be punished for her mother’s sins.
I feed her and play with her. I teach her things—how to count her fingers and toes, how to clap her hands. It’s me she’s with the first time she laughs. I hear her sweet giggle before Charles ever has the chance to, and at the end of the day, I decide not to tell him. Maybe I deserve to have some secrets, too.
Even though she’s not my blood, I love that little girl. I may not be her mother, but I know I’d do anything for her.
That’s why, when she’s just over a year old and Charles says she’s going to live with us from now on, I don’t put up a fuss.
Nancy has her hands full with the boys, after all. And I still don’t think anyone knows she’s had a baby out of wedlock. Charles hasn’t said as much, but I suspect he started bringing her groceries around the time Violet’s presence in her womb became undeniable. I suppose it never stopped. We couldn’t exactly have her roaming around town with a new baby and no explanation, now could we?
It’s better for me, selfish as it is, that no one knows. No one suspects.
The news that little Violet will live with us feels like a reward for all I’ve been through.
She’s better off with me.
Happy with me.
Somehow, we’ve managed to turn this terrible situation into something good.
It doesn’t mean I don’t feel dread in my stomach now and again, or that I don’t sense I’m being lied to. Deep down, I know having Violet here without consequence is too good to be true.
Still, I guess I thought maybe if I don’t ask, I won’t have to know.
Because I don’twantto know.
Not the worst of it. Not the truth of it.
