“What’s all this?” I ask, looking at all the food on the counter. There are Tupperware containers and take-out and Costco meals.
“The neighbors, your customers, people were dropping by all day,” Jack says. “Cheryl brought dinner.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Mom says, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. Kissing my cheek. “You get some good rest?”
“I slept for hours. I can’t think of the last time I did that during the day.”
“Like you passed out after studying all night for a college exam,” Emma says.
I give her a small smile. “I never went to college, actually.”
“Really?” She shrugs. “I met Henry in college.”
I stiffen again, looking over at my mom. The Ledger I knew never went to college; it’s one of the reasons why he struggled to get work. “You guys went to college together?”
“Yeah, Portland State. We met junior year, married my senior year. So I guess I met him after those early years when everyone was learning their limits.”
“I didn’t know he went to college,” I say slowly. “He never said.”
Emma’s eyes lift. “He hated it, if that’s any consolation. I mean, he barely finished his degree.” She licks her lips, as if debating what more to say. “He struggled a bit, I mean, with depression.”
Mom clears her throat. “Well, the Ledger we knew was very happy,” she says tightly and my heart hurts then, for her words — words that I know she’s only saying to protect me. Her loyalty lies with her daughter above all else.
Sure, Mom loved Ledger because I loved Ledger, but she has always had her doubts about him. His track record was messy — lost his job shortly after I got pregnant with the twins. Which I now realize was another lie. He didn’t lose it. His employer thought he was dead.
“I’m sure he was happy. How could he not be with a little girl like Tiny?” Emma says. I back away from the conversation and move to the living room to wrap my kids in hugs.
“You guys have fun with Grandma?”
Clementine smiles. “I jumped in the deep end!”
“With a life jacket on,” Benny says holding up a finger to clarify. “And we got ice cream cones. And we watched a movie on her iPad.”
“Wow,” I say, breathing in the sharp scent of chlorine and loving it because it tells me they had a good day. And right now, they need good. They need sunshine and ice cream and splashing and smiles. They need to believe that their life is not crashing around them, falling apart, into pieces that might never be retrieved. “Sounds like Grandma spoiled you.”
“Did Papa call?” Clementine asks.
“Not yet, sweetie,” I say just as Mom announces that dinner is ready, that we’re eating outside on the patio.
Jack is leaning his back against the edge of the couch, sitting on the floor. “Go wash up,” he tells them. They scramble away and he gives me a small smile, squeezing my knee. “You okay?”
While I slept, I had these dreams I can’t shake. “Remember Ledger before you got him the job at Grand Slam?”
Jack nods slowly. They met at the auto shop where Ledger was working part-time, finally getting some work. Jack had been coming in all the time for parts as he fixed up an old Challenger. “Why?”
“I just wonder… I mean, he was hanging on by a thread back then. Some days he wouldn’t get out of bed, could only work part-time because he couldn’t get himself together before noon. After that season passed, when he got on anti-depressants and got healthy, started working out, and got his CDL, he would never really explain what caused him to spiral so fast. I didn’t press him because I didn’t want to fight. But what if…”
Tears fill my eyes and I bury my face in my hands. “I think I never forced him to tell me because I was too scared of the truth. That he was unhappy because he didn’t want this life. This life with me.”
Jack pulls me into his arms and I let out the sobs I’ve kept contained all day. I know Mom and Emma have the kids outside, and so I take the time I need to cry. Because Ledger is my life and maybe it’s a life he never wanted. And if he never wanted it then what was the point? Five years of a charade where I did everything I could to keep my family together?
Five years when I thought I was fighting for my marriage and my kids and our future. But was I? Or was I fighting to keep a man who wanted to go?
The idea wrecks me, hurts in a way I’ve never hurt before. Because yes, I had a shitshow of a track record with men before Ledger, but those weren’t men who loved me. They weren’t men I fell in love with upon first sight. They couldn’t hurt me like this because they weren’t Ledger Stone.
Henry James.
I pull back from Jack, wiping my face, trying hard to find some shred of truth in my life.
“I loved him,” I tell Jack. “But could I have gotten this all wrong?”
My phone rings from the coffee table. I haven’t touched it in hours. I answer it, taking the call from Jordan Parrish, the state trooper I spoke with yesterday.
“Mrs. Stone? I have an update.”
“Okay,” I say, breathless. “And? Did you find him? His body?”
“There have been search and rescue crews on site all day, and as of now, there is still no body recovered, ma’am. We don’t belnieve there is any way he could have survived this crash.”
“But maybe you haven’t looked everywhere,” I say. “Maybe he was swept away in the river and got out somehow and—”
Parrish cuts through. “The most interesting part of discovery is the fact that there was no skidding on the road, no tire marks indicating that this was an accident. Nothing pointing to the possibility that Ledger Stone tried to stop the vehicle.”
“So there was no body and you think he meant to go over the guardrail into the gorge?”
Jordan Parrish clears his voice. “Yes, Mrs. Stone. I am calling to tell you that all evidence points to this being a suicide.”
Chapter Eleven
Every time I roll over, I find Tiny and Benny snuggled closer to me in my bed. I breathe them in, tears flooding my eyes, my body aching with exhaustion. It’s the same way I felt when the twins were born.
There had been so many sleepless nights, bouncing one baby to sleep, then the next. Pacing the hallway, whispering lullabies that were really my pleas to the universe. Sleep was my only mantra, my single wish.
Ledger wasn’t much use. He wasn’t a trucker yet, but he was in a dark place. And the anger I felt toward him claws at me now. Too familiar. It wasn’t fair that he got to fall apart when I was nursing babies around the clock and changing diapers when other girls my age were celebrating the fact that they were legally able to drink. I never had a rebellious phase — the only wet tee-shirt contests I could have entered involved breast milk leaking at inopportune times. Not exactly wild and free.
And I resented the way Ledger rolled over in the bed when I got up out of it to tend to a crying baby. I was angry over the weight of his depression that he carried everywhere he went while I was carrying our newborns.
It wasn’t fair to compare — now I know better, am more informed. He wasn’t doing anything to hurt me. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Back then, I just knew this: I was twenty-one years old and tied down in a way I never wanted.