Jessica grips her knees, knocking Diana’s tissues to the ground. “It’s the kind of stupid stuff you do when you’re sixteen. If my parents or Grace and William had known, so what? I did exactly what they thought I would do: seduce the good boy everybody loved. A self-fulfilling prophecy, that’s all I was then. Maybe still am.”
She returns to tapping her cigarette pack against her wrist, putting a dull thud behind her words. “When we were done with our chores, we’d meet up in the hayloft, or Tom would take me for walks in the woods. We’d lie by the apple trees and talk about where we wanted to travel, what we dreamed about. No one ever listened to me like he did.”
Diana’s fingers locate her wedding and engagement rings on the chain around her neck, the jewelry warm and reassuring against her damp skin.
Jessica lights another cigarette, the smoke curling in the air. “There was this one day when Tom said he wanted to plan a romantic evening for me because I was special. He said that:I was special.”
Had Tom loved Jessica? Had he hoped for a future with her? There are so many questions to which Diana will never have answers.
“My parents called as I was heading out to meet him. I was still mad they’d sent me to Hamilton, and I’d been avoiding them. Grace didn’t like that we weren’t getting along and made me get on the phone.I don’t remember what we talked about, probably nothing important. The call made me late to meet Tom. I was worried he’d left, but I found him outside the barn, waiting for me.” Jessica smiles then, a woman remembering a teenage girl’s joy. “He grabbed me by the hand, and we ran through the apple trees to a pond, in the woods about a mile from the farm.”
The plastic crate presses against Diana’s buttocks and thighs, and a trail of sweat slides between her breasts.
“He’d brought me there before to swim and look at the stars. He’d have a backpack with beer and a map of the night sky.” Jessica doesn’t say the pond was where they met to have sex, but the way she pauses when she speaks, as if she’s editing herself, makes Diana believe they had. “We’d sit by the water and drink while he pointed out constellations I’d never heard of before. He’d tell me about the stories behind each one. The princesses and heroes and the gods who turned them into stars.”
Diana sees Jessica and Tom lose track of time out there in the woods, the cool water lapping against their bodies. When they climb out of the watering hole, their feet squish in the swampy grass along the edge, and heat swirls over their skin. With their hair dripping wet down their backs, Tom kisses Jessica, an ardent embrace that engulfs Diana with envy.
“I loved that spot,” Jessica continues. “I hated the pond, though. There were these plants that grew at the bottom and snagged your legs as you swam. I didn’t tell Tom they bothered me; I wanted him to like me, so I always followed him in. I’d stay at the surface and float along until he was ready to get out.”
“What does this have to do with the fire?” Diana is hesitant to interrupt this memory, but she’s concerned Jessica is drifting into sentimentality.
“Like I said, Grace and William didn’t know we were dating. Sneaking around made our relationship more exciting for Tom, I think.That’s why he waited for me in the barn while I was on the phone with my parents instead of knocking on the door.
“All these years, I’ve thought about the ways Tom and I could have prevented what happened.” Jessica ticks the options off on her fingers one by one. “If I’d never gone to Hamilton that summer. If Tom hadn’t worked for Grace and William. If we hadn’t slept together. If we hadn’t kept our relationship a secret. If we’d done something different that night, like go to the movies or visit his cousin at the diner. We had so many opportunities to make different choices.”
A list comes to Diana:How Could I Have Prevented Being Here Right Now?
I couldn’t have,she thinks.Maybe that’s one of the saddest truths of all this: Tom didn’t understand I loved him too much to let his secret go without answers.
Jessica holds her cigarette between her lips as she digs into her pockets. She produces a worn elastic hair tie and piles her curls into a tight bun. She instantly ages, giving the impression of being closer to the end of her story than to the beginning.
“We’d smoked in the barn before. It drove William crazy, but we knew how to safely put out the cigarette and stick the butt in the back pocket of our jeans so there wouldn’t be any evidence. That night, though, Tom wasn’t as cautious as he should have been.” She jumps up to kick stones against the trash cans and pace across the small space. “Tom’s cigarette started the fire. He didn’t mean for it to happen, but it made him responsible. Me too. I was the one who first smoked in the barn and got him to do it. That’s what he couldn’t tell you. That people died because of him. Because ofus.”
I owe it to you to tell you the kind of man I really was,Tom wrote.
Diana fights the instinct to collapse. Her body is heavy, and she struggles from the burden of staying upright, her head dipping down, and her shoulders curving inward. When she found Tom’s letter, she described it as a storm, splintering her into pieces. How right she’d been in that description.
Jessica stops in front of Diana, her hands out, her cigarette dangling between her fingers. “So, Tom’s wife, is this what you wanted?”
“I wanted the truth,” Diana says softly. “Is this it?”
“Yes, it’s the truth,” Jessica sneers, her bloodshot eyes narrowing. “You don’t believe me? You know, I didn’t have to come here and talk to you.”
Jessica wants Diana to attack, to distract her from the pain she’s carried all these years. To do that, though, will only make Jessica walk away, and Diana isn’t done asking questions.
“You’re right.” Diana keeps her voice calm and forces herself to sit up. “You could have ignored me, though I would have kept looking for you.”
“I heard those voicemails you left my parents. It sounded like you wouldn’t give up. That’s one reason why I’m here.”
“What’s the other reason? Or reasons? There must be more, or else why were you following me around?”
“I wasn’t following you around.”
Diana can’t help it, but she rolls her eyes. “Coming to my son’s basketball game and driving by my house in the middle of the night?Breaking into my house?What else would you call it? Maybe ‘stalking’ is a better word?”
“I just ... I just wanted to understand his life. If I saw where he lived and heard his voice, maybe he wasn’t really gone.”
“Hisvoice?” Diana inhales sharply. “Oh my God, I amso stupidnot to put all of this together.You’rethe one who’s been calling my house. Those hang-ups areyou.”
