Diana crushes her hands together so she won’t be undone by Jessica’s memory. She pictures it all: the breeze sweeping the bird through the barn; dust gliding along the sunlight; the rough, splintery wood of the shovel handle in her hand. She sees Tom, not yet the man she will love but on his way to that person, to that future with her.
“Tom stood next to me, staring at that damn bird. I remember the sweat trickling down the side of his face. He wiped it away and turned to me. He tasted like salt. I remember that.” Jessica pulls a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and taps it against her wrist.
Diana licks her lips, and salt is on her tongue. The stale-beer odor of the bar is replaced with the loamy smell of dirt and hay and horses. She’s lightheaded and eager. She hadn’t expected Jessica to make Tom come alive like this.Tell me more,she thinks.
Instead of more, though, Diana is jarred back into her chair by Fiona’s return to their table. “You can’t smoke in here,” she says. Fiona picks up the plate and glasses, her eyes on Jessica.
Frowning, Jessica stuffs the cigarettes into her pocket and strides to the bathroom.
“She can smoke in the parking lot,” Fiona continues. “Just pay your tab first.”
Standing at the bar, distracted by Jessica’s description of Tom, Diana is unable to accurately calculate percentages and leaves an extravagant tip for their order of carbonated beverages and french fries. Fiona reviews the receipt and disappears through the swinging doors. The beer-drinking man ignores Diana, his eyes on his rapidly emptying glass.
Diana contemplates the door to the women’s bathroom. Should she go in and check on Jessica? While Jessica said she’s clean, she also mentioned she was worried about holding on to her sobriety. Diana should have expected this and asked Andrea for guidance. Her sister’s medical training would have been helpful today.
No matter what’s happened, Diana needs her sister. She will make things right with Andrea when she gets home. It’s time.
The bathroom door flings open, and Jessica emerges. When she doesn’t see Diana at the table, confusion—and perhaps disappointment—ripples across her face.
“I paid our bill,” Diana says, waving. “Do you want to go outside? We can talk while you smoke.” Diana isn’t confident being alone with Tom’s ex is a good idea, but she has to take that risk if she wants to hear Jessica’s story.
Jessica nods and opens the door with her hip.
Once outside, Diana stops, holding her face away from the sun to let her eyes adjust. It’s then she spies a gleaming copper penny on the ground. She thinks of Phoebe and the pennies she hid inside Bear Bear.A message from Tom,she said. Maybe it is. Diana bends down to pick up the coin, holding it between her fingers, the metal hot with sunshine, before dropping it into her purse.
Chapter Thirty-Two
With Diana close behind, Jessica trudges through the parking lot and around a cluster of beat-up garbage cans to the rear of the bar. She selects a plastic crate from a stack along the chain-link fence and drops it next to the back door, where it clatters to the ground. She sits, stretching her legs out onto the gravel, and lights up a cigarette. “I gave up drugs and alcohol, but I can’t quit cigarettes. I’ve tried, believe me.”
The air here smells musty and pungent, making Diana gag. Thinking wistfully of their scarred wooden table inside Fiona’s, she grabs a crate and places it next to Jessica, away from the smoke but close enough to hear.
After Jessica takes a long drag and exhales, she addresses Diana. “Why did you want to talk to me?”
“Tom left me a letter to read after his death, and in it, he says he did something criminal, something terrible,” Diana says, impressed with her ability to keep her voice steady. “I think it’s connected to Grace and William’s fire and that you have the details.”
Jessica removes her cigarette from her lips. “So he wrote you a letter.”
Diana straightens, her body in a tight line. “You know about the letter?”
Jessica taps ash onto the ground, barely missing her foot. “Like I said, Tom didn’t really talk about you. There was one time when hesaid he’d tried to tell you all of this but couldn’t do it. A letter, I said. Write her a letter.”
Since finding that letter, Diana has pictured so many scenarios about her husband’s past; that he had a secret relationship with Jessica, and followed her advice, wasn’t one of them. This startling truth chisels its way through her protective outer shell, cutting into the soft parts she tries to protect. She presses her fingernails into her palm to keep from lashing out, and her skin puckers under the pressure, dark-red half-moons arcing along her lifeline. “When did you tell him this? How often did you see him?”
Jessica glances across the trash cans and back toward the front of the bar, shame coloring her cheeks. “We met up every couple of months. It started when we bumped into each other in the courthouse.”
“You met every couple of months? Forthirteenyears?” Diana is certain she’s going to vomit. The heat, the trash smells, the cigarette smoke, Jessica telling her she and Tom were in touch all this time—it’s too much. To avoid thinking about the bile burning her esophagus, Diana imagines leaving this place. She sees herself jump up and race to her car, jamming the key in the ignition and driving far away. She feels the weight of her keys in her hand and the pressure of her foot on the gas pedal.
“I told him to tell you about me,” Jessica says defensively, interrupting Diana’s daydream.
Diana tries a new tactic, putting aside Jessica and Tom’s relationship for the moment. “I saw Grace. She hasn’t been able to move on from William’s death. She can’t get resolution without you, Jessica.”
At Grace’s name, a noise comes out of Jessica that sounds like glass shattering, abrupt and stinging. The sobs that follow are aching and full of hurt.
I’m close,Diana thinks.I’m almost there.She removes tissues from her purse and gently lays the packet onto Jessica’s knee. “Please tell me what you know.”
Several minutes pass before Jessica speaks. “My parents sent me to my aunt and uncle that summer because they didn’t want me around my younger brothers and sisters. I was trouble, they said.” Her raspy voice grows brittle. “I could tell by the way Grace and William talked to me, the questions they asked, that they thought I was trouble, too. They wouldn’t have liked it if Tom and I were involved. They would have been afraid a relationship with me would mess him up.”
Jessica scrubs at her eyes, and makeup streaks across her cheeks. Her cigarette is forgotten, crushed under her shoe. “So I slept with him. Our first time was in the hayloft in the barn. He kept asking if I was sure. Didn’t I want to wait to go someplace nice? I didn’t care. I wanted to make a point. Not to Tom. To my parents, to everyone.”
