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She drinks her wine, slowly finishing it. “Can I get you more?” I ask.
“No. Thanks.” She leans over to set the empty glass on a side table. “What do you regret?” she asks.
The vastness of her question takes me aback, though it was fair for her to ask, a tit for tat. I’m quiet, musing on it, wondering how to respond. I could lie and say that I have no regrets, and she might believe me. But after everything that Nat has told me over these last few days, after how open and transparent she’s been, the least I can do is be honest with her.
I take a long sip from my wine. “I have regrets,” I say, lowering the glass, “but my biggest regret has nothing to do with Ben. A long time ago,” I confess, “I did something bad.”
Nat baulks, like she doesn’t think perfect Meghan Michaels could ever do anything bad, but I have. I have secrets just like everyone else. “What?”
“You’re going to think I’m a terrible person if I tell you.”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t ever think that.”
I swallow hard, afraid of how this might color her opinion of me. But Nat has told me so much and she’s been so open about her marriage to Declan. I know I can trust her with this, and it will be a relief to let it out, to unburden my soul of this secret I’ve kept for years.
“I’ve never told anyone about this,” I say. “The only person in the world who knows is me and, well, some pretty blond guy who bought me a drink at Guthries back in May of 2007.”
I don’t need to say more, to explain. Nat can do the math and see what I’m getting at, but I tell her anyway.
“It was weeks before Ben and my wedding. We’d had a fight. I don’t even remember what it was about anymore, but I remember that we both said some things we didn’t mean and, in retrospect, I got my first glimpse of the man he would one day become—thoughtless, touchy, easily provoked. I told him I didn’t want to marry him anymore and, at the time, I believed it. I was so angry and what made it worse, I think, was that Ben didn’t try and talk me out of it. He accepted it and said something very cavalier like how it was probably for the best. I went so far as to give him the engagement ring back. I called the banquet hall to see if I could get a refund on the deposit, which they declined because the wedding was weeks away. I was heartbroken,” I say. “I called friends then to see if they could hang out, to comfort me, but no one was free on such short notice, and so I went to a bar alone to wallow in self-pity and get drunk.”
“Guthries,” she says, and I nod. Guthries. This cozy little unostentatious bar off Addison, not far from where Sienna and I live now. I can’t walk by it anymore and not think of that night, though the memories I have are fragments only, disconnected pieces, and I don’t know for certain what’s real and what time and my imagination have only dreamed up.
He was cool, that I remember. Laid-back, humble and easy to talk to. I liked talking to him. I have no idea what we talked about, but there was an ease to him that made me feel at home.
We talked for a long time, sitting on stools at the bar, watching the sky darken out the window, turning from steel to purple to black like a bruise. At some point, he set his hand on my leg and my breath caught, watching his fingers twiddle with the gauzy cotton fabric of my skirt.
My heart sang when he slowly lifted his gaze to mine, when he leaned in to tell me about his apartment, which was just a short walk down Addison.
“It will be more quiet there,” he said, his breath hot on my ear. “I can’t hear you over all this noise.”
I knew he didn’t want to talk, but I said okay because I didn’t want to either.
He lived on the third floor of a midrise building. We took the stairs, holding hands, quietly climbing. Just inside his apartment, he pressed me against a wall and lifted my skirt to my waist. I don’t remember much after that, though I spent the night with him when we were through, sleeping beside him. He held me, his strong arms wrapped around me from behind, which I liked because even though I knew it was, it didn’t feel like a meaningless hookup.
The morning after, I awoke before he did, got dressed and slipped quietly out, pulling the door gently closed. I walked home as the sun was rising, a chill to the spring air. I knew I would never see him again, though I didn’t regret what had happened between us. Maybe some part of me already knew that something special had happened that night, something momentous, something that would stay with me for a lifetime to come.
Sometime later that day, Ben showed up unannounced at my apartment to apologize, accepting full blame and admitting that he had been an asshole and was completely in the wrong. I forgave him. We kissed and made up. I called the banquet hall to see if the room was still available, and it was. The wedding was back on. Three weeks later, Ben and I tied the knot.
Two weeks after that, I saw the two faint pink lines on a home pregnancy test. Ben and I hadn’t exactly been celibate and so the odds were fifty-fifty, but the guilt, the what-if—the possibility that the baby wasn’t Ben’s—weighed heavily on me. There was a short window where I could have confessed to what happened. We had, after all, been on a break and I’d done something rash, which Ben might one day understand and forgive me for.
But I didn’t tell him. I kept it to myself, and the window of opportunity closed.
After Sienna was born, I brought Ben’s toothbrush and her to a lab. I had them tested. They were not a match.
I vowed to never tell either of them, and, in time, I came to forget myself that they were not biologically related. I started to believe the lie that Sienna’s blond hair came from Ben’s mom. I told it so many times, eventually it just rolled off the tongue whenever someone pointed out the disparity between Sienna, Ben and me.
“I’m glad you told me. I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me,” Nat says now, and then she says softly, “But that was a long time ago, Meghan. What’s done is done. You have to forgive yourself and let it go. Ben got something special from this too—a daughter he loves.”
I nod. Nat is right. He did, when I think about it. If it didn’t happen like it did, Ben and I would never have had Sienna.
“I’m glad you’re here, Nat,” I confess, reaching for her hand. I don’t tell her this, but I’d been feeling so lonely since the divorce. With Ben gone, Sienna growing up quickly, and friends practically nil, it was only a matter of time until I was completely alone.
How fortunate it is, I think, that Nat and I came into each other’s lives at just the right time.
Fifteen
The Becketts push to ramp up security for Caitlin. They want someone watching her all the time, every minute of the day, now that they know an ex-con is looking for her. She’s far more vulnerable than other patients. Her life is at risk, they say, and maybe it is, though it’s just not feasible that an RN or a CNA can commit to standing guard in her room—we’re short-staffed as is, which is nothing new, though the shortage is worse now than ever before—and the hospital can’t pull a security guard from somewhere like the front desk or the ER, because they’re just as needed there and are equally in short supply.
