Acts of Contrition (34 page)

By ten o’clock the house is quiet, and Tom and I are sitting on the sofa, sharing a bowl of buttered popcorn.

“You know how it’s not fair to ‘shoot the messenger’?” I ask.

Tom chews the popcorn in his mouth, takes a sip of soda, looks at me squarely. “In this scenario, are you the messenger?”

“In the spirit of being one hundred percent honest and truthful and living in the light and not keeping secrets…”

“Mare,” Tom says, “what’s going on?”

“Landon James called today.”

“And what? You hung up on him, right?”

“I didn’t,” I say. “Because, as I’ve explained before, I’m wary of his motives with Sally and wanted to see what he was up to. Ever since he saw Sally at the Christmas parade nearly two years ago, he’s had a seed of curiosity planted in his twisted little brain.”

“He can’t see her again,” Tom says strongly.

“He knows that,” I say. “And lucky for us, he’s too selfish to jeopardize his career in order to take that risk.”

“So why was he calling?”

“He wants a photo of her.”

“He can go to hell.”

“I told him that, basically.”

“What else?”

“I told him to get a life of his own.”

“Do you think he’ll back off?”

“I think Landon has always wanted whatever was out of his reach. The more unattainable, the more desirable. I think now
that he has his senate seat—the thing that he wanted more than anything in the world—he has nothing to chase. And his curiosity has turned to Sally. He doesn’t really want her. He doesn’t know that,” I say. “He
thinks
he does, but the second he actually spent some time with her, it would just be a letdown to him, like everything else he’s built up in his mind.”

Tom smiles, shakes his head. “Sally could never be a letdown to anyone,” he says. “She’d blow his mind with how smart she is. She’d leave him feeling like a dope.”

“True,” I say, and smile at the pride I see in Tom’s face. “But he’ll never have that chance.”

“I think it’s time for the three of us to have a meeting,” Tom says.

I nod my agreement, but between my ears the sirens are blaring because I’m a lawyer, not a mediator, and in my court of law there are two parties, not three. In the decade that I’ve kept my secret, my terms have been absolute:
Tom, you belong here. Landon, you belong there.
In my quest to keep my worlds separate, I’ve erected a border and made certain the two sides did not share common ground. That perhaps Tom would claim a piece of Landon’s territory shook my every molecule. Even more disturbing was the thought that Landon might stake a flag in my and Tom’s territory.

Even so, I know that it’s time to come to the table.

A week later, I call Landon, tell him Tom wants to meet, and ask him if we could get together. “Somewhere private,” I say.

PART FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Lent

WE DECIDE TO MEET IN
a shaded picnic area at Rock Creek Park. I looked on a map and found a secluded location, but now—as Tom and I traverse a rickety rope bridge and walk along a burbling creek—I wonder whether Landon will be able to find us. We locate the picnic area, a set of tables covered by a rain shelter. I lean against the columned structure and wait, try to modulate my breath, steady my speech so that my voice doesn’t sound false; so that Tom doesn’t accuse me later of acting different in front of Landon. A few minutes pass, and then I see Landon coming from the opposite direction. I’m glad to know there is more than one way out.

“There he is,” I say to Tom, squeezing his hand. We watch Landon walk toward us, pressing his silky red tie to his chest. His wavy hair flops on his forehead. Makes me think of Sally.

“Landon,” I say. “Tom, Landon. Landon, Tom.” My voice is elevated, my speech quickened. There’s no way of acting normal in this situation.

Tom and Landon hold out their hands, shake.

“Did you find this place okay?” I ask. I detect a note of breathlessness to my voice, like I can’t pull in enough air. There’s not enough air in this park.

“No problem,” Landon says. “It’s nice to be out of the fishbowl for a few minutes.”

“I’m sure,” I say, a nervous laugh trickling out of my mouth. I force myself to stand still, to make sure I’m not shifting my hips, as Tom once accused me of doing. Tom and Landon stare at each other, both sizing the other up like dogs in an alley. I feel like I’m interrupting something private.

“I never meant your family any harm,” Landon blurts, as if he has been holding his breath and can’t take it another second.

Tom nods. “I believe that,” he says. “Other than the fact that you slept with my wife only weeks before we were married…”

A miserable laugh tumbles out of me.

“Other than that,” Tom continues, “I’m quite grateful to you. You made a promise to Mary—to stay out of her life—and you did for a number of years. You gave us Sally’s childhood, and for that I’m thankful. I’m sure that arrangement suited your lifestyle best, but I also believe that there must have been times when you doubted what you had done. I acknowledge that you must have struggled.”

I stare at Tom, have the urge to reach out and touch him, to test that he is real, because how could he—how could
anyone
—be so calm at this moment?

“I did,” Landon agrees, offering Tom a grateful smile, as if finally being validated. “I do.”

“But now you’re having a difficult time staying out of our lives.” Tom’s face remains unreadable, but his fists clench and open, clench and open. I imagine the unflappable look on his face now is exactly the look he had in the boxing ring.

“I know I should stay the hell out of your lives,” Landon says. “But as I’m sure Mary’s told you, I just can’t.…Sally’s in my head. I can’t get around it. I wish I could.”

Tom looks at him, long and hard, as though gauging the threat posed by this man’s admitted obsession with our daughter. And then he comes to a decision. “I think the point of today’s meeting,” Tom says, “is to establish some ground rules we can all live with.”

God, Tom is
good
at this: holding a meeting, setting an agenda. No wonder he manages a team of twenty engineers.

“I agree,” Landon says.

We all sit down at the picnic table. Tom and me on one side. Landon on the other. My handbag is sitting heavy and open at Landon’s end of the table. I watch him twiddle with the strap like he’s nervous.

“The first ground rule is for us to always put Sally first,” Tom says. “No matter what selfish motive we might have for something, we all need to agree that the only person who matters is the child. Agreed?”

“Of course,” Landon says.

“Definitely,” I agree.

“The second ground rule is that we must never threaten each other. Arguably, we all have something to lose here. We of course don’t want Sally learning the truth at a time other than our decided timetable. You, Landon, of course have your career to lose. The last thing a new senator would want is to be revealed as a man who fathered a child and then never saw her, correct?”

“Undeniably,” Landon says, his mouth moving in tiny, nervous twitches.

“And you wouldn’t want too much exposed about your father in Tucson,” Tom says. “About his finances…how he spends his money.”

My eyes widen as I stare at Tom, because whatever he’s alluding to is news to me.

Landon has paled. His mouth still twitching, he nods. It’s clear he understands Tom’s information. “I thought ground-rule number two was we don’t threaten each other,” he says.

Tom nods. “It’s important for us to understand one another from the start, I think. For us to agree that we all have skin in the game. None of us wants to live with a gun to the head, correct?”

“Yes,” Landon says.

“The third ground rule,” Tom says, “is that you—Landon—must not call Mary. When you call her, it disrespects our marriage and makes me angry.”

Landon’s face pulls tight. He diverts his eyes, fiddles with his tie.

“Okay, Tom,” Landon says.

“Let me just say it again: You calling Mary is bullshit. Don’t call her, Landon. Ever.”

“I won’t.” Landon’s eyes widen, like he knows the knockout punch is coming.

“Okay,” Tom says, something settling in him. When he speaks again, he does so almost gently. “All that said, Landon, I believe you when you say Sally is in your thoughts. I can see how she would be.”

Landon looks up at him, still shaking off the last series of punches. He seems confused by this detour in the conversation. “It’s…been hard,” he stammers. “Ever since I saw her at the Christmas parade. I…yes. I think about her a lot.”

“And yet you’re not ready to know her?” Tom says. “You’re curious, but you’re not ready to reveal yourself as her biological father. Is that correct?”

“I wouldn’t in any case without your and Mary’s permission, but even if I had it, I couldn’t,” Landon says. “Not now. Not in my position.”

Tom nods. “The way I see it, we have six years. You have a job to do as a United States senator during those six years and we have a family to raise—Sally especially, as she’s on the brink of being a teenager. I’m sure we have some challenging years ahead of us.”

“Okay,” Landon says. “So what are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that we table this discussion until then. Clearly, with this being a new situation for all of us, none of us can claim to have the answers right now. As time goes on, each of us will probably waver in our positions. Six years from now, Sally will be seventeen, on her way to college. Then we’ll gauge her emotional maturity, see if it seems to be a good time. It might be. It might never be.”

“And now?” Landon wants to know.

“And now,” Tom says, “we’re willing to post photos of Sally on Facebook for you to see. A number of times a year, so that you can see what she’s up to. So that you can follow her growth.”

Landon sits back as though stunned. “You would do that?” he asks, and when his voice cracks and his eyes well with tears, I look away because seeing him cry is going to make me cry, too.

“Yes, Landon,” Tom says. “We’re willing to do that. I would suggest—from a security standpoint, seeing that it’s my line of work—that you not comment on the photos. That might pique a curious hacker’s interest.”

“I won’t,” Landon says. “I’ll just look.”

Tom stands up, pulls out his business card, and hands it to Landon. “Send an e-mail to me at the address on this card, and
I’ll let you know which Facebook page to submit your friend request to. And if you need to get ahold of us, call me, not Mary. She’s no longer your friend, Landon. She’s my wife. I need for you to respect that. If you do, I’ll be more than fair. We’ll work through this together.”

Landon stands, wipes his eyes, and holds out his hand for Tom to shake. “I’m grateful, Tom. I’m truly grateful.”

“Okay,” Tom says. “Let’s all get on with our lives now.”

We watch Landon walk away. When he’s gone, I turn to Tom, fall into his arms, and kiss him on the mouth. “I love you,” I say. “I love that you are calm and even and reasonable and capable of making anyone—even Landon James—feel better for knowing you. I love the way you handled that. I love that you made it a win-win for everyone. I love…I just love you, Tom.”

He nods but takes me by the arms and moves me away from him. “I love you, too, Mare,” he says, his eyes drilled into mine, “but this isn’t a done deal. I am now complicit in this deception, and whether I wanted that burden or not, I now carry this truth—this truth that Sally doesn’t know—along with you and Landon. I don’t like it. I don’t like that she believes one thing but the truth is something else.”

“But
you
are her truth,” I say. “A father is the person who raised her. How would it be different if she were adopted? What does the DNA have to do with it?”

“Nothing,” Tom says. “All I’m saying is that we’re not finished with this business. At some point we will need to make the decision to either tell Sally who her biological father is or make the decision to keep it from her.”

As we stand and prepare to leave, we see Landon walking back in our direction. Tom and I look at each other questioningly, then back to Landon as he reaches us.

“I slipped a bookmark into your purse,” Landon says. “For Sally, because she likes to read.”

I open my handbag and dig around until I feel something thin and stiff. I reach for it, peer into my bag. Laminated in plastic, it’s a picture of the Library of Congress. Down the length of it is a list of great American authors: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Frost, Hawthorne, Hemingway. A tassel in blue and red springs from the top like a firecracker. I exhale slowly, rub my thumb smoothly across it.

“I’m grateful for our deal,” Landon says. “I don’t want to start out on the wrong foot. I don’t want to sneak anything, even a bookmark in Mary’s purse.” The entire time Landon is looking at Tom, not me. Landon admires Tom’s strength, I know from experience, because the times when I was strong were the times when Landon wanted me the most.

“We’re square,” Tom says, and in unison they nod at each other, until Landon finally turns and walks away.

Tom reaches for the bookmark and we start down the path. When we pass by a trash can, he tosses it in.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Grace

ON PALM SUNDAY WE SIT
for one of the longest masses of the year as the priest and congregation work their way through the Passion of Christ. Ironically, it’s Emily’s favorite. She sees it as a script, a play with parts, and is thrilled when the crowd gets to pipe in with its condemning voice: “Crucify him!” Sally’s fooling with the strip of palm she was given as we came in. Each year she tries to remember how to fold it into a cross, some origami procedure I vaguely remember from my childhood. I watch her brows knit together, her chin jut defiantly, and now that the truth is out, it almost seems unreal that I kept the secret for as long as I did; that Tom never looked at his oldest child and saw the resemblance to the man I’d known for a decade. But why would he? Why would any of us see something we weren’t looking for? Why wouldn’t we see only the things we wanted to see: her amber hair, her athleticism, her stubbornness—all just like Tom’s.