If Only I Had Told Her(90)

“For the record,” I whisper, “he loved that stupid fucking car.”

“At least I did one thing right,” he says.

My laugh makes the tears spill but also stops more from forming. I touch my fingertips to my eyes for the sake of my mascara and look back at John. The gentle concern on his face almost melts my resolve to continue to hold him to the fire.

“I know there’s still so much to talk about, but can I ask you how you’re feeling? Is everything going okay with the…”

“Tomorrow is the big ultrasound,” I say. “The one where they make sure the baby has everything it needs to be viable.”

“Are you going to find out the sex?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided.” I remember that information like this is supposed to be part of a financial agreement between us, and I try to get us back on track. “So in addition to the car, every time you felt guilty, you were putting money away in Finny’s name?”

“Yes. I have documents here with me if you want to look over—”

“Last Thanksgiving, you had Finny over to meet your wife and daughter, but then you disappeared again. What happened with that?”

“He didn’t tell you anything about it?” he asks.

“No. Somehow I’d known the hurt was too much for me to touch, and so I’d never asked.”

This time, John takes a big gulp of his drink before he answers me.

“My ex-wife had always known about Phineas. I think she thought of him as an amusing anecdote from my playboy days. But when she saw us together, it became real to her.”

I can only imagine the shock it would have been to see Finny and John standing together, to see a youthful version of her husband sitting at her table, next to her daughter who she’d thought of as an only child.

“What happened?”

“She was”—he takes another small sip from his glass and sets it back down on the tablecloth—“cold to him is I suppose the way to describe it. She went out of her way to word things so it was understood that she and Stella and I were the real family. And I did nothing, Autumn.” His gaze is firm as he admits it. “I should have done or said something, at least to him alone. But the marriage was already half-dead, and I was envisioning losing my second child by trying to reconnect with my first, and I—”

The waitress appears with our salads. Mine is seaweed and shavings of cucumber, which looks like a pile of green spaghetti. John’s salad is red somehow. I find myself ordering both steak and lobster and wondering if the waitress will faint if I ask for a doggy bag at the end of the meal. Before she leaves, she asks John if he would like another martini. He hesitates and says no but to ask again after the entrées have arrived.

After she leaves, we look at each other. Our conversation was interrupted at a point where it does not need to be continued. We both know how he abandoned Finny again. We both know he didn’t attend graduation or reach out all summer. We both know how the story ends.

“I don’t want to feel like I’m selling my child to you,” I finally say.

He closes his blue eyes and nods. “The more I think about it, the more I see how it was a desperate and manipulative move, Autumn. To dangle money that by rights should belong to your child anyway. That’s why I brought the papers today. The money is yours and the baby’s, even if you choose to never see me after this.” He takes a briefcase from under the table and pulls out a manila envelope and sets it on the corner of the table.

“Thank you,” I say. I’m still unsure whether I can trust him. Perhaps this is still a manipulation.

“Whatever you can give me,” he says, “I’ll take it. And if you never want me to know your child, I’ll accept that. All I ask is that today, you stay for this lunch and tell me about my son.”

“Tell you about Finny?”

He swallows, and his eyes are beginning to look wet.

“I’ve been meeting with different people who knew him. I’ve been taking notes and even recording some of the conversations. I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with his soccer coach and a couple of his teammates.” He reaches back into the briefcase and pulls out a much larger file that he opens and flips through. “I’ve met with teachers, some from all the way back to elementary school, who’ve given me insights into his character. There’ve even been classmates and parents who’ve started reaching out to me with stories, and then Sylvia Whitehouse and I—” He glances up at me.

“How is she?” I ask.

“Healing,” he says. “I hope you know she hopes the same for you.”

“I’m honestly surprised that she doesn’t hate me,” I say. “It seems like she should.”

“She is incredibly mature beyond her years,” John says. “She told me that she understood what I meant about looking back and knowing I was lying to myself about Phineas, because when she looked back, she always knew she was standing in the way of you two.”

“If you see her again, tell her that we were standing in our own way. And I’m glad to know that she’s healing.”

He nods, and I can see that he’s wondering whether he’ll ever see me again.

“I’m going to need those stories that you’re collecting,” I tell him. “And Jack’s been working to get all sorts of pictures from people. Maybe we could put them together as a book for the baby.”