Chapter 2
Kellan called before I could pull out of the cemetery.
His name lit the dashboard. Hadley jerked as if the ringing came from inside her coat.
I answered on speaker.
"Tamsin? Thank God. I just got through the backup. Where are you?"
His voice was breathless in exactly the right way. Eleven years of marriage, and I had never known how easily he could manufacture panic.
I looked at Hadley. She shook her head hard, begging me not to expose her yet.
"We left," I said.
"Already? I drove to the cemetery entrance. I must have missed you."
In the live video, a paper bracelet from Redfern Lanes had been fastened around his wrist. If he was still wearing it, a child could have caught the lie.
"Come home," I said.
"I need to stop by the school and—"
"Come home, Kellan."
I ended the call.
Hadley stared at me. "Are you going to tell him I showed you?"
"Did he threaten you?"
"No. He didn't have to."
That answer frightened me more than a threat would have.
On the drive home, she told me about the Fourth of July. I had been at hospice because Mom's fever spiked. Kellan claimed he was checking sound equipment before the town fireworks.
He left his tablet unlocked on the couch. An email popped up from Ainsley with a picture of Tobin at urgent care, an oxygen mask over his face.
"I asked who they were," Hadley said. "Dad told me Ainsley was somebody he knew in college. Her husband died, Tobin has asthma, and they needed help sometimes."
"And you believed that?"
She turned on me so fast her seat belt caught.
"I was fifteen. He was my dad. Yeah, Mom, I believed him."
Shame cut through my anger.
"You're right. I'm sorry."
She picked at a chipped spot in her black nail polish.
"Later I saw messages. Rides to soccer. A doctor appointment. He said he was trying to be a decent person and you would understand after Grandma got better."
Mom had not been going to get better. We all knew it. Kellan had used hope as a gag and tied it around our daughter's mouth.
At home, foil-covered casseroles filled the refrigerator. Sympathy cards leaned along the mantel. Somebody had left a tray of cookies shaped like autumn leaves, and one had broken cleanly down the middle.
Hadley took it, bit off one corner, then set it back on the tray.
"I feel sick."
"Go change. I'll handle him."
"No."
"Hadley—"
"I said no." Her voice shook. "He'll make it sound nice. He always makes it sound nice, and then I start wondering if I'm the awful one."
She sat on the bottom stair in her funeral dress and waited.
Kellan came in twenty-three minutes later.
His tie was loose. There was green icing on the edge of his cuff, and his suit smelled like pepperoni and the lemon cleaner bowling alleys use on rented shoes.
He stopped when he saw us.
"I went to the cemetery. Nobody was there."
Hadley made a strangled sound.
Kellan's eyes flicked to her. "What's wrong?"
I held up her phone with the birthday video paused on his face.
For one second, nothing moved.
Then he exhaled and set his keys in the bowl as carefully as if this were a disagreement we could keep from spilling.
"I can explain."
Hadley stood. "You were still lying in the car."
"I panicked."
"You had time to wipe frosting off your face first."
He looked at the stain on his cuff and rubbed it with his thumb.
That tiny movement broke something in me. My mother had been buried less than an hour, and my husband was worried about icing on his funeral suit.
I crossed the room and slapped his hand away from the fabric.
"Don't. You don't get to clean that up."
His face hardened. "Tamsin, I know today was terrible."
"Do not tell me what today was."
"I meant to make both. The party started at ten-thirty. I thought I could stay for cake and still reach the church before the service ended."
"Before it ended? You were carrying her casket at the beginning."
"Quentin was there. Your dad was there. You had half the town around you."
Hadley whispered, "Oh my God."
Kellan heard himself too late. He dragged a hand over his mouth.
"That's not how I meant it. Tobin looked at me last month and asked if I was going to disappear on his birthday like every other man who promised his mother something. I couldn't do that to him."
"So you did it to us."
"I was trying to keep one promise."
"You made one to Grandma," Hadley said.
He took a step toward her.
"Hadley, this is between your mother and me."
She backed onto the stairs. "No, it isn't. You made me lie too."
"I asked you to give me time."
"You told me Mom might fall apart if I told her."
"She was sleeping in a hospice chair. She hadn't eaten a real meal in weeks. I was scared."
I wanted to throw something. I wanted every framed family photograph to hit the wall hard enough for him to hear glass break around the version of himself he still believed.
Instead, I pointed toward the study.
"Show me."
"Show you what?"
"Whatever you have been hiding. Messages. Schedules. All of it. Right now."
"Not in front of Hadley."
"You did it in front of her for three months."
He hesitated, then brought his work bag from the study. Beneath school forms and sheet music was a spiral notebook filled with pickup times, soccer practices, an asthma appointment, and Tobin's birthday circled twice.
Six months of another life sat in Kellan's neat handwriting.
Hadley read over my shoulder.
"You missed my spring concert for his doctor's appointment."
"He couldn't breathe. Ainsley was alone."
"You told me a student's mom had a breakdown."
"I couldn't explain yet."
"You could always lie, though."
Kellan shut the notebook.
"Enough."
I pulled it back from him.
"No. You don't decide when enough begins."
His jaw tightened. The gentle teacher voice disappeared.
"You want the truth? Fine. You had your whole family with you today. Tobin had one person who promised to show up."
"Why you?"
The room went still.
Kellan looked at Hadley, then at me.
"Because Tobin is my son, Tamsin. My biological son."