That day, however, a restless Phoebe had kept her up all night, and Diana’s exhaustion superseded her instinct to compromise. “They’re four and seven, for God’s sake,” she pressed. “The hike is too strenuous for little kids. They can stay with my parents, and we’ll go.”
“They are coming with us,” he said. “I will get water bottles and snacks. You find the sunblock and hats.”
“But Tom—”
He didn’t give Diana the courtesy of listening to the rest of her sentence. Instead, he stalked out of the room and into the hallway, where he greeted her father with artificial cheerfulness and made small talk about the weather. She waited for him to come back and finish their conversation, but he never did.
Diana’s assessment of the kids’ perseverance was, in the end, accurate. The hike included bouldering up a steep incline, crossing a rickety bridge, and passing through a swarm of gnats that flew into their noses and ears. Phoebe, usually the most optimistic of children, fell apart after the bugs, refusing to walk a step farther until Tom put her on his shoulders. Duncan trailed behind, dragging his feet, his shirt drenched in sweat.
Diana kept her emotions in check for the kids’ sake, smothering her anger like she would extinguish the last flames of a campfire, ensuring nothing remained, not even one small cinder. She fed Duncan gummy fruit snacks and promised him a new Lego set if he’d take a few more steps. They finished the hike, but it took twice as long as Tom expected, and Duncan threw up in the parking lot when they finally made it to the car.
The photo had been taken during one of their many pauses to let the kids rest. A young couple passing by, looking like an ad for an outdoor living magazine, not a bead of sweat anywhere, offered to snap a photo for them to “remember this awesome day.” Diana forceda smile and thanked them for their thoughtfulness while avoiding eye contact with Tom.
That evening, while the kids slept in front of a window fan and Diana drank half a bottle of rosé on the dock, her feet submerged in the brisk, mountain-fed water, Tom made excuses. He did not apologize or acknowledge her feelings, assuming, perhaps, they’d subsided like they had after every other disagreement. Instead, he talked about a trial that had ended badly, with a judgment against his clients, a retired couple facing foreclosure. When he said they were going to lose their house, she thought he was going to cry, and she forgave his rigidity and remoteness, wrapping her arms around him. She let herself forget the kids’ discomfort, her anger, and his unwillingness to listen to her, and instead embraced a positive memory of that hike, one that was good enough for her to select a photo from that day as her screen saver.
Lakshmi sits back down at the table and opens the wine bottle. “Where shall we start? Have you tried googling Tom?”
Diana clears her throat. “Yes, and it wasn’t helpful. I couldn’t find a way to begin an organized search. I thought you could help me do this with some amount of logic.”
“Let’s focus on what he’s saying. What’s a fact, not an emotion?” Lakshmi pours the wine and hands a glass to Diana. “Where did he live when he was eighteen?”
“Tom turned eighteen in 1982, the summer he relocated from Vermont to college in North Carolina.”
“Where in Vermont? I never heard him talk about his hometown.”
“Hamilton, a small ski town about four hours from here,” Diana says. “Whatever this is, it must have happened there or at college.”
Lakshmi takes a pad and pen from the basket in the center of the table and, on a clean sheet of paper, writesNorth Carolina or Vermont?She draws a line down the center, making two columns. “Write down what you know and who you could talk to from that time.”
Diana takes the pen and pad from Lakshmi. Under “North Carolina,” she writes the name of Tom’s law partner and roommate during college and law school, Jonathan Hobart.
Under theVin “Vermont,” Diana lists Tom’s family: his cousin, Chris, and Tom’s aunt and uncle, Teresa and Brian.
“Remind me where they live?” Lakshmi asks, reading over Diana’s shoulder.
“They also live in Hamilton,” Diana says. “You’ve met them, right? Chris used to visit every year, while Teresa and Brian came down a few times. Tom brought me to visit them in Hamilton once, before the kids were born.”
“Only once in all these years?” Lakshmi again tugs at her braid.
They only went that one time because Tom said going home was too painful. To him, Hamilton was all about grief. His father, Gary, passed away when Tom was nine, the same age Phoebe is now. Tom’s mother, Martha, died when he was in law school. Diana is no longer sure whether his reluctance to return home was because of the loss of his parents—or this secret from his past. Had he lied to her about that, too?
What Do I Know?Diana taps her pen against the table, as a list begins. She tries to break down the letter as if it’s a problem at work, a project she is paid to fix. She scribbles across the bottom of the page:
He committed a crime.
People died.
“Does murder have a statute of limitations?”
Lakshmi puts down her wineglass. “While it’s wise to explore all of the options, Tom didn’t kill anyone.”
“You can’t be sure he didn’t. It’s possible. He could have done it, Lax. He could have hurt someone, accidentally or deliberately. Or—”
“Diana.”
All it takes is for Lakshmi to say her name, each syllable filled with compassion, and Diana bursts into tears. She is exhausted by her emotions, by everything, really, but the crying brings release, too, as ifa rainstorm has arrived to wash away the humidity of a stifling summer afternoon.
Slowly, Diana’s weeping is replaced by a rattling wheeze and then hiccups. “Sorry,” she says, wiping her face with the tissue Lakshmi hands her.
