Page 114 of Not a Word

I know her, he thought, but he couldn’t place from where.

Instead of asking Harry about his wheel alignment, he followed the woman to her car, an older-model Toyota. She was about to get inside when Brent said, “Excuse me.”

She stopped, looked at him blankly, said, “What?”

“I’m sorry, you just, when I saw you, I thought, I know you from someplace but I can’t quite—”

“Oh my god,” she said, looking at him. “You’re Brent Chartwell.”

He smiled. “Yes, that’s right. So we have met somewhere, and now you have me at a disadvantage because I can’t—”

“Leah,” she said. “Leah Kennard.”

It took him a moment. Then it was his turn to say, “Oh for heaven’s sake.”

And then he closed the distance between them and gave her a quick hug. “I knew it was you. I mean, I didn’t know it was you, but I knew—”

She laughed, though her cheek was still wet from that tear. “I get it! How have you been? How’s— How’s the family?”

What a loaded word, coming from her. This woman who made it possible for Catherine and him to start one.

“We’re good, we’re fine. And I guess . . . I don’t know whether anyone ever told you, but after all we went through, wouldn’t you know it, but Catherine became pregnant.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am, it’s true. So, two boys. Both grown up now, of course. Holden—your contribution, to put it mildly—and his younger brother, Reece.”

“So you didn’t name him Tom,” she said, a sad smile.

“No.”

“I understand, that’s okay. I just had to ask. And I have to apologize for that scene in there. This car, it’s all I can do to keep it together, and what they want to repair it, I just can’t—”

“Do you have time for a drink or something?”

That was how it started. Innocently enough. Coffee, a shared muffin, catching up. Who could have predicted how it would change his life, how it would change both their lives. And now here he was two years later, and he had come to care deeply about her, this woman who was the mother of his older son. Not only did he care for her emotionally, he had been, to some extent, caring for her financially.

Leah had been through some tough times, Brent soon learned. She was in the process of getting out of a difficult relationship. She’d lost one job, found another, then lost it, and was currently out of work, although not long after their first meeting she would get a job working reception in a medical clinic.

After that first coffee, he went back to the car repair shop and paid for her new muffler. “Least I can do,” he’d told her. “It’s nothing compared to bringing a life into the world for us.”

“I was compensated for that,” she said, insisting she would pay him back for the muffler. He said she could make it up to him if she let him take her to lunch.

One thing, as they say, led to another. Within two weeks, the relationship had become intimate. They would meet at her house, never his. There were no risks having sex at her place, given that she lived alone, although there had been a run-in with her former boyfriend when he’d come by, trying to patch things up.

She had so many questions about Holden. What he was like as a child, what his interests were, how he did in school. She wanted pictures. Brent still had plenty from when you took in a roll of film to be developed and got back an envelope stuffed with prints. “We have hundreds of pics we’ve never bothered to put in an album,” he told her. “I can slip a few out of there. Catherine will never notice they’re missing.”

Unbeknownst to Brent, Leah would take those pictures and edit them with a pair of scissors, cutting out other family members, leaving just Holden. She displayed them in a small album that she kept next to her bed.

They had been having their secret rendezvous for the better part of a year when Brent told Leah that Catherine had figured out what was going on.

“Oh no,” Leah said.

“It’s okay,” Brent told her. “Honestly, it makes my life easier. I mean, I’ll still keep the other phone, just for our exchanges, but the truth is, Catherine and I live pretty much separate lives these days. We long ago reached a kind of, I don’t know, accommodation. A way to carry on. She has her interests, I have mine. We live under the same roof, we keep tabs on each other, we probably still care about each other at some level, but it’s not . . . I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Why haven’t you ever divorced, or gotten a separation?”

“I guess we’re bound together by our pasts,” he said, offering little more by way of an explanation, and Leah didn’t push.