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possible.
Why can I remember that, but I can’t remember why I was driving on that road last night?
I hold onto the memory of the newspaper clipping under my bed, hoping other memories will fill themselves in around it, like colors bleeding on a canvas. But nothing else comes.
Still, I have to believe I’m capable of the impossible. I’m going to get back to the city without a phone or a working car. I will find a way, or I will die trying.
Secret Machinations
Eleven months earlier
The Skyline Bar & Grill was a place my sister Lina and I often frequented in high school. She would drive us there in the old Nissan Maxima my father bought her when she turned sixteen. I didn't get my driver's license until after I graduated from college—another thing Lina and I agreed we should do together. My parents were not exactly happy when we both moved five hours away to attend Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Two years older than I was, we were only one grade apart after I skipped the fourth grade. Despite my academic success, Lina was always the practical one between us. While she studied economics at CMU, I majored in cognitive science.
I had an insatiable thirst to know the secret machinations of the human brain. I would come to regret my choice in major when my father was diagnosed with dementia last year. The unfortunate consequence of my studies being I understood better than anyone else what he was going through.
Lina pulled her curly brown hair into a low ponytail while we both perused the menu as if we didn’t know the restaurant’s offerings by heart. “How did the Christmas party go?”
I felt a sharp twinge in my chest at the mention of Marc’s office party. “Oh, you know, we…didn’t go,” I replied as I looked up to see her reaction.
She scrunched her sparse eyebrows together. “You told him?”
It seemed like an innocuous question, but there were two very significant things she could be inquiring about. She might have been asking if I’d spoken to Marc about giving up his partnership at the legal firm he’d started with his best friend Wyatt Quinn six years ago. It was also possible she was asking about the secret thing I found inside a drawer of my husband’s desk.
Marc had always kept a mental truckload of secrets, but it was no secret that he was good at everything. In college, he graduated top of his class with a degree in architecture, only to apply for law school upon graduation. Marc had always been honest about his change of major. He did it for me. What he refused to talk about was why he chose to major in architecture as an undergrad, or anything about his life before we met.
When he assumed I’d rather marry a lawyer than an architect, I realized he obviously didn’t know me very well. Nevertheless, he was willing to do whatever it took to get me to take him seriously. And according to Marc, he wanted to put a ring on my finger the moment he set eyes on me across a hazy living room at a college kegger. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so convinced he was right for me.
Marc was different than all the other guys I’d met at CMU. Arrestingly handsome and inordinately polite in his approach, he didn’t seem at all interested in getting me drunk. Marc actually seemed determined to have a meaningful conversation with me despite the noisy party atmosphere. When he asked me to join him in the backyard, I hesitated. Lina and her boyfriend Jay were nowhere in sight, and I didn’t recognize Marc from any of my classes. But something about the softness in his blue eyes convinced me he was a harmless, gentle soul.
I was right.
That first night together became a sort of pattern. A metaphor for what we would become. We could love each other in the silence of that quiet backyard and in the chaos of the party. We could hear each other through the noise and find each other through the haze.
Always.
“No, we didn’t talk about him quitting the firm,” I replied, closing my menu. “We talked about other stuff. It was… It was good… Better than usual.”
Lina’s green eyes narrowed as she considered my words. “Good? It was…good? You sound like you’re describing sex with your ninety-seven-year-old husband.”
I rolled my eyes and tried not to laugh. “Please don’t put those kinds of pictures in my head.”
She shrugged. “Fine. I’m glad you two talked.”
“Please don’t hold back,” I replied, stiffening my shoulders as I readied myself for a character assassination. “Go ahead and say what you’re thinking.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Not jumping in that snake pit.”
I let out a deep sigh and leaned forward as I tucked a long piece of wavy brown hair behind my ear. “I know I should have talked to him about leaving the firm and the…” I said, lowering my voice so as not to attract attention to me or my swollen belly. “But we’re both hurting right now. And he’s finally starting to open up. I don’t want to be the pushy, demanding wife.”
Most people wouldn’t understand how I could be with a man who was so secretive about his past, much less stay married to him for more than eight years. That’s because most people couldn’t understand the connection Marc and I had. I knew every married couple must feel as if they were special, more in sync than other couples. But for Marc and me, it was true.
The night his mother died, I woke from a dream with tears in my eyes. And I’d never met her. The day Lina called me at home to convey the news of my father’s diagnosis, Marc walked through the front door no more than three minutes after I ended the call. He’d left work early because he felt he needed to be home.
I truly believed that even if our marriage didn’t survive, our connection—worldly or not—always would.
Lina flashed me a tight smile. “You’re right,” she replied sympathetically. “You don’t want to seem demanding. God forbid a wife should demand to know her husband,” she said in the most and least sarcastic way possible. “That’s why I won’t mention it again. I just have one teeny, tiny question.”
I looked her in the eye for a long moment. “What?”
“If it were Dad,” she began, meeting my gaze straight on, “would Mom have let him give up writing to become something more practical like a lawyer?”
A swell of emotions surged inside me, making my eyes sting. “That’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s harsh, but it’s the only comparison I know you’ll understand.”
I took a few deep breaths to hold back tears as I considered a world where my father had never written a single book. A world where he'd never touched the life of a single lonely child; or never helped a tired parent put their child to bed. My father’s love of writing defined him. It was the reason his dementia diagnosis hit the family so hard. We knew it would destroy him to have to give up writing.
Initially, I had taken small comfort in knowing it would be another two to four years before my father’s symptoms would keep him from doing what he loved. But the disease seemed to progress unusually fast in his case. At least, it seemed rather quick compared to what I remembered from my coursework at CMU. I hadn’t remained in the field of cognitive science after graduation.
“When are you going to tell him you found the journal?” Lina finally asked the question she really wanted to know the answer to.
I shook my head. “I can’t. It’s a total violation of trust. If he finds out I was snooping around in his desk, he’ll think I’m crazy.”
If Marc knew I’d found and read his private journal, our next trial separation might last forever.
We were so young when we moved in together. I was twenty-one years old when Marc decided to change his career track to the legal field. I didn’t have a whole lot of life experience. I assumed he had the potential to be a great architect from all the blueprints and drawings I saw in his dorm when we were dating. Still, I was no expert on architectural design. I thought his decision to pursue a career in law—though he claimed he did it for me—was probably just a simple change of heart, something normal people had all the time.
Granted, I didn’t know much ab
out normal people. Certainly, no one could consider my parents or siblings normal. After all, I was the one who graduated with a degree in cognitive science, then decided to become a kindergarten teacher.
So when Marc told me he’d been accepted to law school, I cheered him on. I used my trust fund to pay the rent in the tiny studio apartment we lived in for three years. He helped me study for my teaching credentials, and I helped him cram for the bar exam. On the day of the test, I stayed up with him until five a.m., making coffee and cookies and chatting between bouts of studying to help him stay awake.
I never once thought I was hurting him by encouraging him to become a lawyer. Until a few weeks ago, when I found a secret journal Marc had been keeping.
I shouldn’t have read it. But if I hadn’t, I would never know how a large part of Marc died when he put down his sharp drafting pencil and picked up an even sharper lawyer’s tongue. Just as a part of my father died when he was diagnosed.
Lina cocked an eyebrow. “How long have you two been married? Eight years?”
“Six.”
She shook her head. “If he doesn’t know you’re crazy by now, then you two are truly doomed.”
I rolled my eyes. “He hasn’t been acquainted with this level of insanity yet.”
Lina’s eyes swam with pity. “If you let this fester any longer, this and the baby stuff is going to tear you guys—”
“I know exactly what this is doing to us,” I replied, cutting her off as I watched our waitress make her way toward us with a notepad in hand.
Anytime Lina brought up my failed pregnancies, I got defensive. How could I not?
My sister had three beautiful children, twin boys and a girl. Eight-year-old Heath and Henry were carbon-copies of Lina; tall, headstrong, and athletic. My four-year-old niece, Helena, was a lot more like her Aunt Cassidy. She was a bit shy until you brought up the subject of something she loved. Then, she’d talk your ear off about all the animals she’d seen at the zoo or the toy crime scene investigation kit her parents bought her.
