Part 15
Part 15 of 27 of Eleven Years of Thursdays by Helen Abbott
Tom put the bank statement on the counter on a Sunday night, between Nora going up and the dishwasher finishing.
He didn’t slide it at me. He set it down and squared it, and then he stood on the other side of the island with his arms folded, and I understood that he had been holding this for a while and had planned where to stand.
“Four hundred dollars,” he said. “Cash. September ninth. October seventh. November fourth. Three hundred in August.” He tapped it once. “And you’ve taken a personal day every Thursday since the first week of September.”
“Tom.”
“I want to say this part first.” His voice was very level, and that was how I knew. “Whatever it is, I’m not leaving. I want that on the table before you say anything, because I don’t want you deciding what to tell me based on what you think happens after.”
And that is my husband, entirely, in four sentences.
I sat down on the stool.
Then I told him. All of it, in the wrong order, starting with Ray Kozak and going backward and sideways, the notebook, the cookies from a different county, Dr. Feld, the folded photograph, the fingers on the door frame. It took about forty minutes. He did not interrupt me one time, and at some point he came around the island and sat on the stool next to me instead of across from me, and I noticed him do it and I have never loved him more than in that second.
When I finished he was quiet for a long time.
“Say something,” I said.
“I’m trying to figure out which thing to be.”
“What are the options?”
“Right now it’s about six.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “Okay. First one. Your brother is alive, and that’s, Claire, that’s the best news anybody’s ever told me in this kitchen.”
I started crying, which I had not done during any of the forty minutes.
“Second one is I’m going to be angry at your mother eventually and I don’t want to do that in front of you tonight.” He got the paper towels because we have never once had tissues in this house. “Third one is I’m scared about what this costs and I’m going to be practical about it later and you’re going to hate me a little bit for it, and I’d rather warn you now.”
“And the others?”
“The others are about you.” He handed me the paper towel. “You lied to me for three months.”
“I know.”
“I’m not making it a bigger thing than it is. I know why. I’m saying I need you to hear that you did it, and that you did it easy, and that it scared me to find out how easy.”
The dishwasher clicked over into the dry cycle.
“There’s one more,” Tom said.
“Okay.”
“It’s a question and I don’t think you’re going to like it.” He waited until I looked at him. “Your dad. Gil. Did he know?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“He died in 2018,” I said. “She found Danny in 2015. That’s three years, Tom, of course he didn’t know, she wouldn’t have, she couldn’t have looked at him every day and, no.”
Tom didn’t say anything.
“He didn’t know,” I said again, and I heard my own voice do the thing it does when I am telling somebody something I have not checked.