If missing her marriage wasn’t challenge enough, she was losing her mother and possibly gaining a brother. All in one day. Just how many people in her life lived in such secrecy? How had her mother, her best friend since birth, never let it slip before? And why hadn’t she? She should have known that Anna wouldn’t consider it shameful or embarrassing to have a child while not married! Even twice!
She reminded herself that perhaps it was a delusion born of dementia, and that was somehow more painful. And she fell into hard sobs, still sitting in the car. She had cried for her lost husband before now, but most of that had been the self-pity side of grief, missing him and feeling alone, anger with him for leaving her to deal with everything, craving just one more discussion about what was wrong with them now. And of course she wondered if he was planning to come home from his adventure and tell her about Amy and his first grandchild. He had said he wanted to have a serious talk.
Her kids were having a very hard time with Chad’s death—Jessie was angry, Michael was devastated and Bess seemed to have withdrawn even more than usual. Of course, Bess was in law school, a perfect excuse to avoid the whole group dynamic, but Anna worried about what was going on in that head of hers. She was the quietest and perhaps emotionally the most vulnerable.
She moved into the house, sweating from being closed in the steamy garage. She mopped her face and threw a fistful of soggy tissues in the trash can. The tears kept coming with the occasional hiccup or small gasp. Her face was wet and hot and it felt like there was no end in sight and she didn’t know where to turn.
She felt she had put all her emotional energy into trying to figure out who she was supposed to be now that she was no longer Chad’s wife and these other issues had come up, issues that would complicate what was left of her family even more. Untangling all of this and putting things back together was going to be harder than ever. Her brain was sludge and she couldn’t make a bit of sense of anything. Was I the wife betrayed and left behind or the wife who failed? Was I the sister who never knew it, was I the daughter who never heard the truth about her family? My life was built on so many lies. My mother was devoted to me and I thought she told me everything, no matter how hard the truth was, but apparently that was not the case. And my husband...?
She couldn’t believe the irony. Her birth story mirrored Amy’s. Her father was a married man who obviously wasn’t committed to either his wife or his mistress, and Chad had done the very same thing. And yet she wondered why? He said he wanted to talk when he returned from his trip and she’d assumed their marriage was over. Why didn’t he tell her the truth? She drew in a jagged breath. Did he ever love me?
Her phone chimed and she saw that it was Joe. She thought about letting it go to voice mail but instead she answered and blubbered. In her head she was making perfect sense but into the phone she was just tossing out random words like lost my mother, and Chad’s secret family, and I just don’t think I can take much more. Finally she said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t talk about it now. I’m at the end of my rope.” She was still crying, sounding a bit out of control.
“Anna, where are you?” Joe asked.
This was personally so humiliating. She never fell apart. She argued emotional and complicated cases all the way to the Supreme Court and never caved into tears. Even Chad had rarely seen her cry and never like this. And it just wouldn’t stop.
She disconnected. She would call him back after she got control and could actually speak. She turned off her phone. After about ten frustrating minutes, she stripped and got in the shower, letting the warm water run over her while she cried.
Joe had been visiting his daughter, Melissa, and on his way home when he passed the Mill Valley exit he thought of Anna. It had been almost a week since he had talked to her. He pulled up her number on the dashboard and called. The connection wasn’t very good, what with the freeway and engine noise, but even so he could tell she was crying. The gist of what she was saying was that her mother had died and she didn’t want to talk because she was at the end of her rope. Then she rang off.
He tried calling her back straightaway but his call went directly to voice mail. He drove probably five miles before he decided to go to her house to make sure she was okay. When he thought of all she’d been through lately, his feeling about that brief exchange was not good. He hadn’t ever thought of Anna as depressed or suicidal—she was the most stable and capable woman he knew. But as he drove toward her house, he became more desperate. He hadn’t been in touch with her for several days. What if she’d spiraled downward and he missed the signals, having been out of touch.