Chapter 2 - MY SISTER ARRIVED WEARING HIS COLOGNE
Lauren came to the hospital thirty minutes later.
She rushed down the corridor wearing black leggings, a long wool coat, and no makeup. Anyone looking at her would have seen a devastated aunt pulled from bed by terrible news.
I saw the damp ends of her hair.
I saw the hotel key card sticking out of her coat pocket.
And I smelled Garrett’s cologne.
“Where is Ethan?” she asked.
Garrett stepped between us. “Lauren, don’t.”
She looked at him, then at me.
“What happened?”
“You were with my husband while my son was dying.”
Her entire body went still.
“Clara, that isn’t—”
I held up the photograph.
She stopped lying.
Lauren sank into a chair and covered her face. Garrett remained standing, as if sitting would make what they had done too real.
“How long?” I asked.
Neither answered.
“How long?”
“Fourteen months,” Garrett said.
Fourteen months.
During those months, Lauren had driven me to Ethan’s oncology appointments. She had sat beside me while Garrett claimed he was traveling for work. She had brought casseroles, folded Ethan’s pajamas, and slept in our guest room when I was too exhausted to be alone.
She had watched me cry over a husband who was supposedly becoming distant because he could not handle our child’s illness.
Then she went to his hotel room.
“Why?” I asked her.
Lauren lowered her hands.
“It didn’t start the way you think.”
“It started with my husband.”
“You had shut everyone out.”
I stared at her.
“My son had leukemia.”
“I know.”
“Then you know why I wasn’t worried about your loneliness.”
Garrett moved closer. “This is on me.”
“No,” Lauren said sharply. “You don’t get to make me look like some woman you seduced.”
Even then, they were fighting over who controlled the story.
My mother arrived before sunrise.
Diane Hayes walked into the family room, saw Lauren crying, and immediately wrapped her arms around her.
Not me.
Lauren.
“Mom,” I said, “she’s been sleeping with Garrett.”
My mother closed her eyes.
That was all it took.
“You knew.”
“Clara, this is not the time.”
“You knew.”
She lowered her voice. “Lauren told me three months ago.”
“And you said nothing?”
“Ethan was so sick. I couldn’t add another crisis.”
“So you let my sister sit beside me in the hospital while she was having an affair with my husband?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
The words made Lauren begin crying harder.
My mother turned toward me with the exhausted expression she had used since we were children whenever Lauren created a mess I was expected to understand.
Lauren had always been the fragile one.
When she dropped out of college, we called it anxiety. When she borrowed money and never repaid it, we called it struggling. When she missed my wedding because her boyfriend ended things, my mother asked me to forgive her before I returned from my honeymoon.
I was the older daughter.
I was supposed to manage pain without making the family uncomfortable.
“Ethan died asking for his father,” I said.
My mother’s face changed.
Garrett sat down hard.
Lauren whispered, “No.”
“Yes. He asked if Daddy was coming, and I promised him he was.”
Garrett bent forward and covered his mouth.
I felt nothing watching him cry.
“While he waited,” I said, “the two of you were checking into a hotel.”
Lauren stood and reached for me.
“Clara, I loved him too.”
I stepped back.
“Do not use love to describe what you did.”
“We never meant for Ethan to be hurt.”
“You didn’t have to mean it. You simply had to keep choosing yourselves.”
My mother began to speak.
I turned toward her.
“If you defend them one more time, you will leave this hospital with them.”
She stared at me for several seconds.
Then she picked up her purse and walked out beside Lauren.
Garrett remained in the chair.
“I want to see my son.”
“No.”
“Clara, I’m his father.”
May you like
I looked through the glass panel toward Ethan’s room.
“You had eighteen chances to be his father tonight.”
