When his lips touch mine, it’s as if no time at all has passed, like we never lost one another. It feels like coming home, I think, realizing with a shock just how much I’ve missed the taste of him, the feel of his arms around me. But how is that possible? How could I have forgotten this . . . heaven? An image flickers behind my closed eyes, of tangled limbs and rumpled blue sheets, of bodies fitted close, straining and sheened with sweat. It’s been so long. It’s been forever. And yet it’s been no time at all. Only yesterday.
I melt against him, surrendering to the familiar, aware that it’s a mistake, that in a moment it will all come apart. Again. And this time there will be no confusion about who’s responsible. The thought hits me like a dash of icy water and I push away from him.
“Hemi . . . wait.”
He steps back awkwardly. “I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “Please don’t say that. I don’t want you to be sorry. And I’m afraid you will be. There’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
He says nothing, his expression guarded as he waits for me to continue.
“Before, when you asked if Ethan knew about us, I said he knew everything—even things you don’t. You didn’t ask what things.”
I pick up his glass and put it back into his hand, then move to the piano. Zachary looks back at me from his heavy black frame. I wish there had been time to tell him this was happening, but I didn’t know myself. I trust he’ll forgive me.
Hemi is beside me now, his eyes full of questions as I turn to face him with the photo. I search for words to prepare him for what he’s about to hear, but there aren’t any words. Not for this. Instead, I put the frame into his hand and wait.
He stares at it, his face blank at first, uncomprehending. “What is this . . . Is this . . .”
“His name is Zachary,” I say quietly.
“Zachary.” He says the name slowly, rolling it around in his mouth, testing it for familiarity.
“He’s ours,” I say at last. “Yours and mine.”
The truth seems to dawn then, as if he’s just been shaken from a long sleep. “You’re saying . . .”
“I’m saying we have a son, Hemi. And that I kept him from you. I told everyone he was adopted, but he’s mine. And yours.”
I brace for the wave of outrage I know is coming. Instead, all expression drains from his face, replaced by the awful blankness of incomprehension. He says nothing, his eyes locked on me as he struggles to process my words. I square my shoulders, forcing myself to hold his gaze as I go on. “I didn’t know I was pregnant until I got to California, and by then I had no idea where you were or how to find you.”
His expression hardens, gelling into something smooth and impervious. “Did you even try?”
“How? You were off playing war correspondent.” The words leave my mouth before I can check them, an excuse I have no right to make. He’s not wrong. I could have found him if wanted to. I chose not to look.
“And later? After the war?” He’s bristling now, his words gathering force as he registers the enormity of my transgression. “Dickey knew how to find me. You had him send me a book, remember? One, I’d point out, that omitted any mention of my son.”
I nod, blinking back tears, the lump in my throat too large to allow a reply.
“And the day you and Dickey were meant to have lunch. I suppose we know why you bailed the minute you found out I was at the restaurant. And to top it all off, there’s the fact that for nearly two decades, my face has been in just about every bookstore window in the country. Please don’t tell me you didn’t know how to find me, Marian. You’ve had forty-three years to find me. All you had to do was pick up the phone.”
I’ve prepared myself for his anger, but not for the raw anguish I hear in his voice, the pooling of tears in his eyes. “Hemi . . .”
He turns away from me, stalking to the other side of the room, then wheels around to face me. “You really hated me that much?”
“I never hated you. I wanted to. I tried to, but I couldn’t.”
“You kept a child from me. Our son! How could you?”
And there it is. The question he posed to me all those years ago, scribbled on the title page of Regretting Belle. Only now it means something different, something unfathomably worse. “You broke my heart,” I reply raggedly, knowing it isn’t enough, knowing there will never be enough words to fix this. “When you left, and then when the story appeared in the Review, I couldn’t believe you’d actually done it.”
“I hadn’t.”
“I didn’t know that then. How could I?”
“So you felt justified in depriving me of my child.” He raked his fingers through his hair, the gesture so familiar it makes my chest hurt. “Christ. He’s forty-two years old. A grown man. And I missed it all.”
I blink at him through a scrim of tears, searching for something else to say. “I’m sorry, Hemi. So incredibly sorry. From the moment Zachary was born—every moment of every day for the last forty-two years—I’ve looked at him and seen your face. The man who promised to love me forever, then disappeared without a word. I told myself a man who could do that . . .” My voice breaks and I gulp back a sob. “You would have come back, Hemi, but you would have resented me for it. Enough to eventually leave us both. It’s one thing to walk out on a grown woman. It’s another to do it to a child. I couldn’t risk that happening to Zachary.”
“That’s who you thought I was? A man who’d turn his back on his own child?”
“I had no idea who you were—or what you would do. As far as I knew, you had betrayed my confidence and gone back on your word. But I would have forgiven all of that. What I couldn’t forgive was you walking out of my life without a word, as if I’d been nothing to you. I’ve seen what happens when a man loses interest in his wife—and what happens to the children when he does.” I close my eyes as a fresh round of tears threatens. “I didn’t know how to trust you again.”
The silence that settles between us is unbearable, as if all our memories together have been swept away, leaving only this terrible new reality. Hemi stands with his shoulders bunched, his face a mix of shadow and sharp angles as he stares at the photo of our son. Finally, he looks up, pinning me with his sharp blue gaze.
“Last night, at the bar, when you said you did what you had to, that you . . . got on with your life. This is what you were talking about. Raising our son. Without me.”
I force myself to meet his eyes, eyes so filled with pain they tear at my heart. “I’m so sorry, Hemi.”
“Did Dickey know?”
I nod. “Zachary has always been you to a T. We fought about it constantly. He thought you should know. I thought it was none of his business. We had it out once and for all after the business with the lunch. We never spoke again.”
“You were so determined to keep him from me that you severed ties with your favorite nephew? Because he thought I deserved to be a part of my son’s life?”
How can I make him understand? What I felt. What I feared. Not just for me but for my children and the life I’d carefully built for them. “I couldn’t let you back into our lives, Hemi. Not like that. Weekends and holidays and every other summer. Splitting the cost of music camp and bumping into one another at recitals. Polite strangers who happen to share a son. And there was Ilese to consider. What would it have meant for her?”