Chapter 12 - What Each of Them Was Protecting
They went back downstairs.
No one suggested dinner.
The receipts lay on the kitchen island.
Delaney stood opposite Grant.
“You lied to me while Mom was alive.”
“Yes.”
“Not about the separation. About where you were.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because every time I tried to tell you something was wrong between your mother and me, you panicked.”
Delaney recoiled.
“So this is my fault?”
“No.”
Grant shook his head immediately.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then say what you mean.”
He looked exhausted.
“I was a coward.”
The words landed without drama because they were true.
“I wanted your mother to have the separation she needed, Marissa to have the relationship I was starting to want, and you to keep believing your family was intact.”
“You wanted everything.”
“Yes.”
“And everybody else paid for it.”
Grant nodded.
Marissa stood by the sink.
Delaney turned toward her.
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“What were you protecting when you threw Mom’s picture away?”
Marissa looked toward the living room.
“My marriage.”
“How does humiliating me protect your marriage?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then answer.”
Marissa gripped the edge of the counter.
“Every time you came here, Grant became somebody else.”
Grant frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“He apologized for laughing too much. For traveling with me. For changing furniture. He’d look at you and become guilty all over again.”
“That wasn’t Delaney’s fault.”
“I know that now.”
“No,” Delaney said. “You knew it then.”
Marissa looked at her.
Delaney continued.
“You just couldn’t fight Mom, so you fought the person who still loved her out loud.”
Marissa looked away.
“That was easier.”
The honesty surprised all three of them.
Grant stepped toward Marissa.
“I made you compete with a memory.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t excuse what you did to Delaney.”
“I know.”
“And what happened in the living room—”
Marissa touched the fading mark on her cheek.
“You mean you hitting me?”
Grant stopped.
Delaney did too.
Until that moment, they had treated Grant’s slap as part of his defense of Delaney.
But it had still been Grant hitting his wife.
Grant lowered his eyes.
“You’re right.”
Marissa’s expression shifted.
“I grabbed Delaney first. I shoved her. I was wrong.”
She looked at Grant.
“And you were wrong too.”
He nodded.
“Yes.”
Nobody walked away absolved.
That became the first useful thing that had happened.
Marissa finally said, “I’m staying with my sister.”
Grant didn’t stop her.
Before leaving, she looked at Delaney.
“There’s one thing of Elise’s I never threw away.”
Delaney stiffened.
Marissa went to the desk and removed a small address book.
“She gave this to me the week before she died.”
“Why?”
“She wanted me to call someone.”
“Who?”
Marissa handed it over.
“Your aunt Diane.”
“And say what?”
May you like
Marissa’s eyes filled.
“To tell her Grant still hadn’t told you the truth.”
