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But then I would have felt guilty. And that path just doesn’t feel right. I couldn’t live with him never knowing, seeing that this is his child too. So hopefully, I can help him see my point of view, although based on the look on his face right now, Marcus isn’t going to budge.
I sigh. “I think you should go.”
“No,” he growls. “I need to tell you everything, but you need to be patient. I have to find the right words.”
Great. He’s really trying to play this imperfect Jane card? As if I want to hear him trash my sister – his wife – just to prove he deserves a chance to be a father. No way. Janie is dead. I won’t let this man tarnish her name. I can’t believe I even let him touch me. Clearly I’m a bad judge of character.
“You have to go, Marcus.”
I stand, but he gently grasps my arm and pulls me back down. He kisses my cheek and takes another deep breath.
“Jane wasn’t perfect,” he says quietly. “I loved her. You should know that because it’s important. I loved Jane no matter what she was going through. But she was going through a lot.”
My mind is telling me to run, to ignore what he’s saying and hold onto the perfect picture of Jane I have in my head. But my heart wants to stay beside Marcus on the couch and never leave him.
“She was sick,” he continues. “Jane had an eating disorder. I looked it up once. I think she had the binging and purging type of anorexia. No doctor ever diagnosed her. I practically begged her to go see someone, anyone, but she refused. We’d been fighting about it a lot in the weeks before she died. Thankfully, the day she died had been a pleasant one. We didn’t argue like we had been, nor did I catch her running to the bathroom. I’m glad because I wouldn’t want my last memory of Jane to be of us fighting over her disorder again.”
I want to tell him he’s full of shit, but I can’t. What he’s saying feels true on a subconscious level. Although Jane never talked about it, when we shared meals, she barely ate. Most times, my sister just said she wasn’t hungry as she slurped at a Diet Coke. But sometimes I’d catch her looking enviously at my pastrami sandwich, and feel a weird twinge in my heart. Was Jane suffering from an eating disorder? And a serious one at that?
Marcus takes a hold of my hand, gaining steam. “I don’t know how long she was sick. I think it started before we got together, but it kept getting worse. In the last year I rarely saw her eating anything. What she did eat was down the toilet within minutes. It was terrifying, but I loved her. No matter how many times she hurt herself in this way, I truly loved your sister.”
I squeeze his hand, urging him to continue. My heart beats loudly in my chest. The tears I was crying over the baby are now spilling because of my sister. A stranger, according to Marcus’s words.
“She never wanted you to know. We fought about that, too. I thought that if you knew you could help her to get the help she needed. At the very least, you’d be someone she could talk to about why she felt like she had to eat and throw up. Why she so desperately wanted to be skinny. But she made me promise I’d never tell you. I’m breaking that promise now because I think you deserve to know that Janie wasn’t the perfect woman everyone makes her out to be. But that doesn’t make her any less Janie.”
This is overwhelming. My stomach churns. Jane hated her body so much that she couldn’t put food into it? I search my memory for times that I saw Jane eating so that I can tell Marcus that maybe he’s exaggerating, but I can’t think of a single meal where Jane finished her plate. She usually pushed things around at Sunday dinner until everyone else was through. I thought she was shy about eating in front of us, or maybe she hated our mom’s cooking. That wouldn’t be too surprising because Mom isn’t exactly a great cook.
But it never occurred to me that my sister was sick.
I’m a terrible sister. And now I’m pregnant with her husband’s baby. What kind of person does that make me?
I collapse into Marcus’s waiting arms. He pulls me tightly against his chest and strokes my hair as I cry.
“I’m sorry, Kelsey. You deserve to know.”
It takes me a few minutes, but I calm down. I accept what he’s saying. Deep down I knew there was something off about Jane, but I never in my wildest dreams thought it could be something so extreme. My heart breaks for the parts of my sister I never knew. And I hope that wherever she is now, she’s free of what haunted her in life.
