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“Can you remember Mom?” I ask.
“Bits of her.”
“Well, I guess that makes us both luckier than Ella. She doesn’t remember Mom at all.”
“She was only three,” he reasons, and I nod my head. “Did Mom and Dad argue on the day she left?” he asks, like a thought has suddenly occurred to him.
“Not that I’m aware of. Mom had an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“I don’t know. I was reading in the library, you were playing in your room, and I think Ella was asleep. The next thing I knew, Mom was bundling us into a cab, and taking us to the hospital. She said she’d had an accident, and when we got there, a nurse took us all to a separate room. A while later, Dad arrived. He talked with the doctors for ages, and after that, he took us home.”
“Dad did?”
“Yeah. He said Mom needed to stay in the hospital overnight. The next day, she didn’t come back… or the day after that. When I asked him where she was, he said she’d left us, and she wasn’t coming back, and he told me not to talk about her again.”
Drew nods his head, like he’s remembering something, too. “I don’t have any memory of that whole hospital thing, but I do recall Dad would always refuse to talk about what happened that day.” That’s not strictly true. Dad mentioned Mom’s departure again. But that was much later, and there’s no way I’ll ever tell Drew about it. “What about the guy who stole all the money?” he asks.
“Ken Bevan?” I might have only been eleven years old when our mother left us, but that man’s name is permanently etched in my memory.
“Yes.”
“What about him? You’re not suggesting he and Mom were having an affair, too, are you?”
“How would I know? But don’t you think it’s odd that Mom left, and the CFO of Dad’s company was caught embezzling millions of dollars from right under his nose, all within the space of a couple of months?”
“In a six-year-old’s head, I can see how you could have joined the dots between those two events, but you’ve got them the wrong way around. Dad discovered what Ken Bevan had done and had him arrested at his family’s home late that summer. Mom didn’t leave until the day before Thanksgiving.”
“Oh, yeah… you’re right. I’d forgotten that.”
“I hadn’t. I’m not saying I don’t think there was a connection between what Ken Bevan did and Mom leaving, but it wasn’t the one you’re thinking.”
“What was it, then?”
“I’ve always thought that was the final straw for Mom.”
“What? Dad nearly losing everything? Was she really that fixated on money?”
“No. Not at all… not that I can remember. And that’s not what I mean. She’d put up with his moods, his crazy hours, his selfishness, his absence from the family home, and for all we know, his affairs, too. But his attitude over what Ken Bevan did, and the way it changed him… I think that was just too much for her. I think she faked the accident to get away.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He stares at me for a moment, like he’s struggling to take that in. “You’re not just saying that because it makes Mom look less guilty of abandoning her children?”
“No.”
He frowns. I might never have suggested this theory out loud before, but that’s only because he and Ella have never quite seen eye to eye with me about Mom leaving us. For that reason alone, we rarely discuss it. After all, it’s bad enough that we were ‘abandoned’, as they like to put it, without the three of us arguing over who did what.
“How did it change him?” he asks. “What was it about the episode with Ken Bevan that made Dad so different?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“Lucky you.” I shake my head and unlock my phone, tossing it to over him. “Choose a pizza, will you? And forget about Mom and Dad… and Doreen. Even if the two of them were having an affair, it’s not something we’re ever gonna be able to confirm.”
