Eight Hundred Grapes

He paused. “Five days after I proposed to you,” he said. “Timing’s a funny thing, isn’t it?”

That was five months ago. Ben had proposed to me during a trip to Paris. He had known about Maddie for five months? That was longer than he had said yesterday. Had time collapsed for him? His engagement, the realization that he had a little girl. Everything melding into one long day. On one side there was our life, which we considered happy. On the other was this brand-new blessing, which could tear that life apart.

“I started to tell you that very night, but you were working late on the Porter case. And when you came in, you said, and I remember, get me a bottle of B-Minor and don’t say a word until I’ve had half of it. You fell asleep after half of it.”

“So it’s my fault?”

“No, I was just trying to pick a time that it wouldn’t hurt you.”

“What happened?”

“You have this wide-open face. And we were having so much fun planning the wedding, getting ready for London.” He paused. “And then I guess I couldn’t find a time that seemed like it wouldn’t hurt you.”

I took a breath, softened to him. He probably should have stopped talking then. But he didn’t. We never stopped talking, did we? It was what allowed us to say the thing that stuck. In the moment before we said the wrong thing.

“I know it’s hard to understand why I kept Maddie from you. But it’s hard for me too. It’s hard to understand why Michelle kept Maddie from me for so long.”

“Doesn’t it make you mad, Ben?”

“It makes me fucking furious and it has been rather difficult for me to deal with.”

Which was when I remembered seeing them on the street, Michelle’s hand on Ben’s back. He didn’t look furious.

“I look at Maddie and I think, regardless of what Michelle did, I don’t want to lose another second with her.” He paused. “And I’m grateful to Michelle that she did tell me.”

He cleared his throat.

“And now I’m telling you. I love you. And I’m going to do whatever I can to make things right for us.”

I could hear how much he meant it—and I felt myself moving toward him, toward understanding. Which was when he started to talk again.

“Let’s figure out how to get past this. I didn’t do anything intentionally deceitful. It’s not like I was unfaithful,” Ben said.

Unfaithful. What a choice of word. As if there were one way to make someone lose faith. Adultery. That was Ben’s measure of what was unforgiveable. It was what my mother was doing—with an impotent man. It was what my good brother was running away from so he didn’t allow himself to do it to my other brother. Ben wasn’t guilty of that. Except weren’t there other unforgivable things you couldn’t turn back from?

Last week I had known Ben. I had trusted him to tell me the truth, to ask me the questions that made me feel like I was moving closer to the truth. That was the trust between us.

“You still there?” he said.

I told him I wasn’t.

Then we got off the phone.

I went downstairs and made a cup of hot water with lemon, then I went upstairs and into Finn’s room, but it was dark. Maybe he was still at the bar. Either way, he wasn’t there now—his bed made, his bag on top of it.

I moved down the hall. There was a soft light coming from Bobby’s room. Margaret and Bobby in there together—reading, talking softly. They didn’t look unhappy. They looked comfortable.

That left my parents’ bedroom. The door was wide open. The door was never wide open when we were children—the bedroom was my parents’ sacred space, none of us daring to enter.

My mother was already in bed, her curls swept back off her face. Her radio was playing softly—a twin on either side of her, both of them sleeping. She put her finger to her mouth. “Whisper,” she said. “And tell me you have wine in that mug.”

“No, hot water and lemon. Do you want a little?”

“Only if the hot water and lemon magically turns into wine.”

I nodded and took a seat on the edge of the bed, motioning to the twins. “Are they sleeping with you?”

“They are sleeping with me,” she said. Her voice low, like in demonstration.