Chapter 2 - The Photograph Behind the Toolbox
I thought I had misheard her.
“His father?”
Natalie nodded.
I pushed the phone records away.
“This is not the time to invent a family mystery.”
“I’m not inventing anything.”
“You lied to me for eight years.”
“I know.”
“You expect me to believe you were secretly investigating Ryan’s father?”
“No. I expect you to be furious.”
“At least we agree on something.”
Natalie pulled her phone from her bag.
“There’s a photograph I need to show you.”
I did not want to see anything.
She put it on the table anyway.
The image showed three young men standing beside a motorcycle outside a service garage. Ryan was maybe nineteen. Beside him was his uncle Peter. The third man was older, broad-shouldered, dark-haired.
Ryan looked exactly like him.
“Who is that?”
“Thomas Vale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Natalie zoomed in.
“He owned Vale Performance. The garage where Ryan worked before college.”
“So?”
“So Thomas died eighteen years ago.”
I stared at her.
“And you think he was Ryan’s father?”
“I don’t think. I found letters.”
“How?”
Natalie wiped her face.
“After my dad died last year, I cleaned out his storage unit. There was a toolbox from the old garage. My dad and Thomas were friends. The bottom drawer was jammed. When I forced it open, I found letters addressed to Diane.”
Ryan’s mother.
My skin went cold.
“What did they say?”
“That Thomas believed Ryan was his son.”
“Believed?”
“He and Diane were having an affair when she got pregnant.”
I looked at Natalie.
“And Ryan knows?”
“No.”
“Then why were you calling him?”
“Because I didn’t know what to do with the letters. I started asking questions without telling him why.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“You call a man forty-seven times to avoid telling him something?”
“He was having panic attacks.”
That stopped me.
Ryan had never told me.
“About what?”
“The accident.”
I stared.
“What accident?”
“The motorcycle wreck.”
“He doesn’t have panic attacks.”
Natalie looked sad.
“He does.”
“How would you know?”
“Because he called me after one.”
There it was again.
Intimacy.
Maybe not sexual.
Still betrayal.
“So my husband was having panic attacks and called you.”
“Yes.”
“Not me.”
“Yes.”
“And you thought that was acceptable.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I was there the night of the accident.”
The room went quiet.
Ryan had always told me he wrecked alone after losing control in the rain.
“You were there?”
“In the car behind him.”
I felt dizzy.
“What else don’t I know?”
Natalie cried harder.
“Too much.”
The front door opened.
Ryan.
Natalie stood so quickly her chair scraped backward.
He entered the kitchen and stopped.
His eyes went from her to the photograph.
Everything left his face.
“Where did you get that?”
Natalie whispered, “Ryan—”
He crossed the room and snatched the phone.
“Where?”
“My dad’s storage.”
Ryan looked at the image again.
His hand shook.
I said, “Who is Thomas Vale?”
Ryan set the phone down very carefully.
“Nobody.”
Natalie said, “That’s a lie.”
He turned on her.
“Shut up.”
“Ryan.”
“I said shut up.”
I stood.
“Don’t speak to her like that.”
He looked at me.
“You have no idea what she’s doing.”
“I have no idea about most of my marriage apparently.”
Ryan rubbed his mouth.
“Claire, this has nothing to do with us.”
“You dated my best friend for a year.”
He went pale.
Natalie closed her eyes.
I watched him process which secret had already surfaced.
“You told her?”
Natalie whispered, “She figured it out.”
I laughed bitterly.
“No, Natalie. You told me where his scar was.”
Ryan looked like he might be sick.
I said, “Did you both think I was too stupid to ever notice?”
“No,” Ryan said.
“Then what?”
“We were afraid you wouldn’t marry me if you knew.”
The honesty hurt more than another lie.
“You decided for me.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
He stepped forward.
“Claire, Natalie and I were over years before you and I started.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I pointed at the phone records.
“You built a private world inside my marriage. Maybe you didn’t sleep together. Maybe you did. Right now I don’t know what I believe. But you were having conversations you hid from me, about your health, your past, your family, things a wife should not have to learn because her friend got drunk.”
Ryan sat down.
For the first time, he looked ashamed.
“I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Weak.”
I almost laughed.
“You let me think I was crazy instead.”
He looked up.
“That was wrong.”
“Yes.”
Natalie picked up her bag.
“I should go.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
She stopped.
“If there are more secrets, they come out now.”
Ryan’s jaw tightened.
Natalie looked at him.
“Tell her.”
He stared at the floor.
“Tell me what?”
Nobody answered.
I felt dread spread through me.
Finally Ryan said, “The accident wasn’t an accident.”
I did not answer immediately.
Outside, a lawn mower started somewhere down the block. The ordinary sound felt offensive.
Ryan looked at the floor.
“For years, I told the short version because the long version made people ask questions I couldn’t answer.”
“So you gave me a version where you were unlucky instead of involved.”
“Yes.”
Natalie whispered, “Claire, he was twenty-one.”
I turned to her.
“Do not rescue him from this conversation.”
She nodded and went quiet.
Ryan rubbed the scar through his shirt as though his body remembered what his mouth did not want to say.
“I woke in the hospital with six broken ribs and that cut down my hip. My mother was there. Natalie’s dad was there. Nobody would tell me where Thomas went.”
“And you accepted that?”
“No. I asked for months.”
“What did they say?”
“That Thomas left town.”
“Did you believe them?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
He looked at me.
“Later they found him dead.”
The kitchen suddenly felt much colder.
May you like
I pulled out a chair and sat again.
“Then start at the road,” I said. “And this time, don’t skip the part that makes you look bad.”
