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No. I’d been in my father’s office many times since he became too ill to write. I often borrowed books from his library when I wanted to read something he loved, to feel closer to the mind we were all losing.
I considered pulling over and reading the note to assuage my fears about its contents. But I couldn’t even fathom what message my father might want to convey to me in a secret handwritten note.
As I turned the steering wheel to pull my SUV into our garage, I caught a glimpse of the purple elephant tattoo on the inside of my forearm. Parking the car, I turned off the engine and stared at the vibrant, whimsical image. Vibrant and whimsical. The same adjectives could be used to describe my father.
My father loved having debates at the dinner table about the meanings of words. He once challenged us to consider whether common sense was called that because it was familiar and universal. Or was common sense a logical fallacy, because no one perceived anything exactly the same way as anyone else?
I still didn’t know the answer to that one. What I did know was that my father was right when he wrote that poem for my wedding eight years ago. We know the people we love far less than we think we do.
Marc’s car was already parked in the garage, which comforted me to know that he would be there to catch me if my father’s note should knock me off my feet. I grabbed my purse off the passenger seat and retrieved the folded piece of paper from the glove compartment. Stuffing the note back in my handbag, I quickly headed inside.
I found Marc in the nursery with an assortment of paint cans at his feet. On the far wall of the baby's room, he had painted the outlined beginnings of a mural. Clouds hovered above what looked like a hilly landscape. Nestled among the fluffy cloud-like shapes was the outline of a castle fit for a princess.
“Oh, my God,” I blurted out as I realized how blind I’d been.
Marc turned around at the sound of my voice. “I didn’t know you’d be back so soon. You weren’t supposed to see it until it was finished.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “You weren’t an architect.”
Marc’s face slackened as he seemed to understand the epiphany I was having.
“All those drawings of buildings in your dorm… They weren’t blueprints… They were your art.”
He closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh, thinking quietly to himself for a moment before he opened his eyes again. “Yes.”
That was it. Just one word. Yes. That was all he had to say.
“Why?” I whispered almost to myself. “Why would you hide that from me? I don’t understand.”
Marc looked down at the paintbrush in his hand and cursed when he realized he’d dripped onto the wood floor. He carefully rested the paintbrush on the rim of an open can of paint and reached for a roll of blue shop towels.
“Leave it, Marc.”
But he continued to tear off a few sheets from the roll.
“I said, leave it!” My chest heaved with every breath I took as I watched him drop the paper on the floor and rise to his feet. “Talk to me,” I pleaded.
He glanced at my round belly before he made his way toward me. “Let’s go downstairs and talk.”
I didn’t know if this was a stalling tactic, but I didn’t want to stand there and argue with him as the baby pressed against my bladder. So I followed him downstairs, where we both sat on a stool at the breakfast bar on the end of the marble island.
We sat in silence for a while until Marc finally looked me in the eye and said, “You learned my real name the day we applied for a marriage license, but I never told you why I was given that name.”
I shook my head, feeling more confused than ever. “I don’t understand. What does your name have to do with you being an artist?”
He stared at my belly for a long time as he pondered my question. “Because I was named after my father.”
“Was your father an artist?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, looking everywhere but my face. “My momma— My mother used to say I was just like him whenever she caught me drawing or coloring. So I always assumed he’d been an artist, but I didn’t know. I… I didn’t really know my father. Well… I didn’t know him as a father.”
This time I didn’t respond or prompt him with another question. Marc always complained when he was still practicing law how people had an innate desire to fill the silence, so much so they would often incriminate themselves while doing so. With this in mind, I waited. I would wait for the rest of my life if that was what it took to get the truth out of him.
“I knew him as…my grandfather.”
My limbs grew weak, and I imagined the color must have drained from my face. “Your father—I mean… Your grandfather…”
He nodded, rescuing me from having to say the words aloud. “I told you I lived a sheltered life before college, and that I didn’t want to talk about it,” he began, looking me in the eye again. “But the truth is…I wasn’t sheltered. I was hidden away.” He clenched his jaw so tightly, his lips turned white. “I was the dirty secret my mom didn’t want anyone to know about. And… And every few months, my grandfather would visit us. And I’d… I heard through the door. But I didn’t know what he was doing to her until I was older.”
My stomach turned as I imagined a father taking advantage of his own daughter. But my revulsion quickly turned to heartache, and my eyes stung with tears as I imagined how Marc must have felt, believing his mother was so ashamed of his existence. To feel like a monster hidden away, himself punished for his grandfather’s sins.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, shaking my head.
“Don’t apologize.”
“No, I have to. I’m sorry I ever made you feel guilty for keeping that from me.”
“Don’t apologize, Cass,” he replied firmly.
“I was the one who kept pushing you. You did nothing wrong.”
His gaze fell to my protruding belly again. “Yes, I did.”
I reached for his hand, but he pulled it away. “You did nothing wrong.”
He shook his head. “I’m the reason we lost the babies.”
I gasped as I realized why he’d always blamed himself for my lost pregnancies. He thought he was passing on some kind of genetic defect. “Oh, my God. Marc, none of those were your fault.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” I said, grabbing his smooth jaw to turn his face toward me. “We had genetic testing to rule out chromosomal abnormalities, and everything was fine. You saw the test results for yourself. None of those were your fault.”
His eyes were focused on my mouth. “They said the genetic testing couldn’t detect one hundred percent of all genetic abnormalities. I know it’s my fault. And I am a monster. I should have told you instead of watching you go through that over and over again.” He looked up and locked eyes with me. “You deserve so much better than the life I’ve given you.”
I shook my head as tears spilled over my cheeks. “No. I wouldn’t trade the life you’ve given me for all the babies in the world.” I reached up to wipe a tear from his chin. “I would relive the pain over and over again as long as we always ended up together.”
He was quiet for a long time before he responded. “But that’s not it,” he said, staring at my stomach again. “I… I killed my grandfather.” He waited a while before he looked up to see my response. “I killed him. He was… He was raping her again, and I was eleven years old. Old enough to know what he was doing… So I went to the shed where we kept the hunting rifles, and I grabbed a Remington 870. Pocketed some buckshot. Blew off the lock on Momma’s bedroom… He was naked, and she was facedown on the bed, her dress pulled up so high it covered her head… He ran at me and knocked the gun out of my hand before I could load another round… He beat me good… And as I laid there in a pool of my own blood from the teeth he’d knocked out of my mouth, he picked up that shotgun and pointed it at my head.”
I knew whatever else had happened that day, it hadn’t ended with Mar
c’s death because he was sitting here telling me the story. But my stomach was still in knots, anticipating what other atrocities this man had visited upon him.
“He grabbed one of the rounds I’d dropped on the floor and loaded it into the magazine. As he pulled the pump slide, I curled up into a ball and covered my head with my arms. And I prayed. When I heard that blast, the world went bright white, and I felt as if I was floating. I thought, ‘This is what it must feel like to be dead. I’m dead.
“But the thud that followed that gun blast didn’t come from me. I opened my eyes and saw my grandfather lying right next to me with blood streaming out of his ear. My mother used the handgun she kept in her nightstand to save my life.”
I slid off the stool and positioned myself between his legs so I could get close enough to wrap my arms around him. “You didn’t kill him,” I murmured. “You were a child. You are nothing like him.”
“I wanted to kill him,” he said, his voice breaking under the weight of his perceived guilt. “I wanted to watch him take his last breath. That’s a monstrous thing to want.”
“You wanted to protect your mother. Even after she made you feel ashamed of yourself. There is nothing monstrous about that. Please believe me, Marc,” I said, pulling away so I could look him in the eye. “You are the kindest, most gentle man I’ve ever known.” I continued despite him continuing to shake his head. “The way you were there for my parents when my dad got sick… That’s not something a monster would do.”
“I didn’t do anything extraordinary. I…” His voice trailed off as he seemed lost for words, or lost in thought, which gave me a moment to intercede.
“My father left me a note,” I said, reaching for my purse, which I’d left on the kitchen island. Digging around inside, I came up with the folded piece of paper I found in the basket of coffee beans. “Should I read it?”
