Chapter 2 - How Long Have You Known?
There are sentences that end a conversation.
There are others that divide your life into before and after.
I looked at Tony and realized I had just heard both.
“How long?”
He glanced at Dakota.
“Jennifer, this is more complicated than—”
“How long have you known?”
He sat on the edge of the sofa without being invited.
“About Dakota specifically? A little over a month.”
“Specifically.”
The word tasted bitter.
Dakota stood beside the window, giving us space without leaving me alone with him.
I was grateful for that.
“What did you know before a month ago?”
Tony rubbed his hands over his face.
“Your mother told me there had been an adoption.”
The room became perfectly quiet.
“When?”
He didn’t answer.
I watched his eyes move toward the floor.
“When, Tony?”
“Before we got married.”
Twelve years.
I had spent twelve years sleeping beside a man who knew my daughter might be alive.
Twelve years letting him hold me on September fourteenth.
Twelve years believing he understood why certain hospital scenes made me leave movie theaters.
I remembered our second anniversary. I had cried in the grocery store because a little girl with green eyes dropped a birthday cupcake.
Tony had taken me home.
He had made tea.
He had known.
I stood too quickly and had to steady myself against the chair.
“Don’t touch me.”
He had already started reaching.
His hand fell.
“Ruth said you knew about the adoption originally. She said the delivery had been traumatic, that afterward you refused to acknowledge what happened. She said talking about it would hurt you.”
“So you asked me?”
He closed his eyes.
“No.”
“You asked a doctor?”
“No.”
“You asked anyone who wasn’t my mother?”
“Jennifer—”
“You watched me grieve.”
His face crumpled.
“I know.”
“No. You watched me grieve and decided that was easier than asking one difficult question.”
Dakota quietly set a glass of water on the table beside me.
Tony looked at her.
“You weren’t supposed to do it this way.”
She straightened.
“I wasn’t supposed to need a deadline.”
For the first time, I saw anger break through her nervousness.
“I contacted you because I thought you could help me reach her gently. You told me she was fragile. You told me you needed time. Then you stopped answering my messages.”
I turned toward her.
“The coffee?”
Color rose in her cheeks.
“The first time, I was trying to find the courage to speak to him. After that, it became the only time he would talk to me privately.”
“You could have knocked on my door.”
“I know.”
Her eyes shone.
“I should have. I was afraid you already knew about me and didn’t want me. He kept saying he had to prepare you.”
Tony started to speak.
Dakota lifted a hand.
“No. You don’t get to explain my fear for me.”
I looked around her small living room.
The packed boxes. The carefully arranged photographs. The folder she had probably opened a hundred times.
“How did you end up across the street?”
“My job transferred here in January. I was looking at rentals when the investigator found your address. This house was available.”
“You moved here to watch me?”
“To meet you,” she said. “But I understand how it feels now. I should have introduced myself honestly.”
It was an imperfect answer.
It was also the first answer that morning that didn’t try to make my feelings disappear.
I picked up my purse.
Tony stood.
“Where are you going?”
“To find out what happened to my child.”
“Let me drive you.”
“No.”
“Jen, please. We need to talk.”
“We just did.”
I turned toward Dakota.
“Would you be willing to do a test through a proper laboratory?”
“Yes.”
“And will you send me copies of everything you have?”
“All of it.”
I took her number.
My fingers shook so badly that she offered to type it herself, then waited for permission before touching my phone.
At the door, Tony tried one last time.
“I was trying to protect the life we built.”
I looked at the man I had trusted with my most private sorrow.
“You built it around something I didn’t know.”
Outside, the neighborhood had continued without us.
A delivery truck rolled past. Someone started a lawn mower. Across the street, my kitchen curtains moved in the heating vent.
Our home looked exactly as it had an hour earlier.
I wondered how many terrible things could hide inside a beautiful, ordinary house.
Then I called my mother.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Jennifer? What’s wrong?”
I watched Tony standing in Dakota’s doorway.
“Tell me where my daughter is buried.”
May you like
My mother stopped breathing.
And this time, I waited.
