“No apologies. This is upsetting,” Lakshmi says gently. She pushes the pad to Diana. “Let’s come up with a plan. Who on this list can shed light on Tom at eighteen years old?”
From the tone of Tom’s letter, it’s clear someone has the information she needs—and they’re not the sort she should trust. But maybe there are other people who have part of the story, who can help her piece this together.
“Jonathan would have insight into their freshman year of college when they were both eighteen. Chris would be able to fill in the time before Tom left Hamilton. Maybe Uncle Brian and Aunt Teresa could help, too.”
“Anyone else?”
Diana covers the page with random squiggles and lines as she considers Lakshmi’s question. “There’s no one else. Except for me, and I have zilch.” She throws down the pen, and it rolls across the table. “This is all too much.”
“Tell me about finding the letter. Maybe there’s a clue there.”
Diana opens up about Phoebe finding the time capsule, her own concerns about the look back into the past, the joy at seeing glimpses of their life together, and Duncan’s grief. “I thought life was getting better and then this”—she points to the letter—“comes along.”
“Finding a letter like this would throw anyone.”
“Even Celine?”
Lakshmi laughs, a full-belly chuckle that makes Diana smile. “You still have your sense of humor. That’s a good sign. And, yes, even Celine.”
Diana picks up the letter, looking at the last paragraph: When you speak of me to Duncan and Phoebe, tell them their father was imperfect, but he loved them, and you, more than anything.
“The idea he had secrets ... It’s terrifying. How could I be with a person who hid something like this? What does this say about me that I was so unaware?”
“Don’t let yourself go there, Diana. None of this is your fault.”
“That’s debatable, though I appreciate your vote of confidence,” Diana says, sighing. “Lax, I’ve hit my limit. This is all I can handle tonight.”
Lakshmi squeezes Diana’s shoulder. “We’re not done. I’m with you all the way. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Diana packs up and walks across the darkened yard to her home. After flipping Duncan’s basketball gear from the washer to the dryer, she checks in on the kids. Both are fast asleep. She pauses on the landing between their bedrooms, in front of the wall of family photos. In the center is a photo she and Tom took during their visit to Hamilton; they pose with Chris, Aunt Teresa, and Uncle Brian in a hastily taken snapshot before departing. Their parents’ and grandparents’ wedding portraits are here, along with a photo from their own wedding. A dozen pictures of Phoebe and Duncan over the years cluster on either side. Diana walks by those photos every day; she even occasionally dusts them. Yet they exist in the background, like a curtain behind actors on a stage, hiding the ladders and paint cans from the audience, disguising what is real from the story the audience is being told. It’s as if her whole life with Tom is on this wall. A life she thought she understood.
But what is her marriage, her love for this man, if he kept such a secret from her?
Chapter Seven
The clock reads 1:02 a.m. “Goddammit,” Diana says, rubbing her eyes.
She’s been awake for hours, her mind churning. Somewhere, maybe around midnight, her sadness over Tom’s letter transformed into a new emotion: anger. Fury throbs inside her, beating in time with her grief, red and pulsating. Her skin is hot to the touch, as if a fire has been lit inside her.
A memory comes to her, one she hasn’t thought of in years. One that, after Tom’s letter, now appears much different.
When she and Tom first lived together, before they were engaged but when they were talking around the subject, their home was an apartment in Brookline, a few streets away from chewy bagels, delicious Thai food, and a bookstore where they spent Sunday afternoons. From every room in the apartment, they could hear the clanging of the subway cars rattling up and down Beacon Street. The train stopped at crowded intersections, picking up passengers making their way into Boston in one direction, or out to the suburbs in the other. The location, and the time, had been a crossroads in their lives.
What made their apartment extraordinary was the five-foot-tall Palladian window in the bathroom. The arched window of stained glass was perfectly preserved. Green ivy wove its way up and down the sides, and a delicate pink oval, lined by opalescent spheres, floated in the center. During the day, the sun fell through the window and danced across the floor.
Thinking about that room, years later, fills Diana with peace, as if remembering the way the light reflected through the glass could bring her back to a time when everything good was still ahead of her.
A claw-foot tub, the other element that convinced them to hand over first and last months’ rent, as well as a security deposit of an equal amount, occupied the space under the window. To its left was a dark-green velvet armchair Diana pilfered from her childhood bedroom. It was here she would perch to read the newspaper aloud to Tom, as he rested in the tub after a fourteen-hour day filing motions and doing the grunt work of a junior lawyer in a big firm. This was before he and Jonathan went into business together and back when he still smoked.
“Only occasionally, only one, and only when I really need it,” he explained, aware she hated the habit. He stopped when she became pregnant with Duncan, but back then, he needed a cigarette more often than not, the stress of work eating at him. In the bath, he would settle into the cooling water, his ashes falling onto a small saucer on the windowsill, as Diana’s voice filled the room, echoing off the solid surfaces.
One night, after Diana read Tom an article about autumn foliage, she asked about a trip north. The leaves were especially spectacular in Vermont; why didn’t they go up to Hamilton that weekend? Visit his family and check out the changing colors? He immediately said no, citing the need to work on Saturday.
Hoping to change his mind, she stood up to show him the photo accompanying the article—a vibrant sugar maple, its leaves red and stunning. As she bent over, Tom’s arms encircled her waist, pulling her into the tub. She shrieked in delight, as water sloshed over the sides, drenching the bath mat and the newspaper she’d dropped on the floor. Her champagne-colored nightgown stuck to her curves, her bottom resting against Tom’s stomach.
He nibbled at her ear, making her laugh, and turned her over. His expression was serious, his eyes half closed, and she placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. He tasted like cigarettes, acidicand ashy. He peeled the nightgown down to her waist, kissing her as he went, nudging it off her body.
Diana still remembers that nightgown, wet and silky, against her skin.
