FOURTEEN

It was March. There was a huge fuss at the funeral. Trip was there, surrounded by his whole family, but there were so many people there who demanded Annaliese’s attention that he couldn’t get near her for longer than a few minutes.

At her house after the funeral, he came with his family. But once again, Annaliese was thronged by people who had to tell her one last story about her mother as their way of saying goodbye before they left.

By the time all the mourners had gone, all of Trip’s family had gone too, but he stayed. Annaliese was not concerned about what her father thought of her and she took Trip to her bedroom. They didn’t talk. Trip took her black clothes off her, pulling them over her head, and comforted her like an adult.

When she woke up in the morning, he was gone.

At the breakfast table, her father said that he had seen Trip leave that morning. “Was everything okay last night? Were you really upset? Is that why he stayed?”

Annaliese gave a shadow of a smile. “Daddie,” she said softly. “I’ve been married to Trip for over five years.”

He gasped. “Legally?”

She nodded. “Legally.”

He threw down his napkin. “Why have you been living here?”

She put a hand to her forehead. “You know why. Because mom wouldn’t listen to me. Her and her damn arguing. Her lawyering. You knew I had to be a lawyer or she would never give me and Trip her blessing. I didn’t tell her we got married. If I had, I thought she’d force me to get a divorce.”

He nodded. “I see your problem. I’m sorry. I couldn’t talk her out of it. She just said she knew what was best and I should back off. She felt that way because I was her fourth husband.”

Annaliese stared. “What?”

“You know, she didn’t actually get her law degree until she was thirty-eight. In her twenties, she was married to a country boy and when she only had miscarriages, he dumped her stuff out on the lawn. Husband number two was a white-collar worker, but he was unfaithful. It was pretty tough on her when she had miscarriage after miscarriage and he was off doing whatever, whoever. She stayed in that marriage for eight years before getting up the courage to leave him. Then she was married to Clement.”

Annaliese nearly died at that announcement. “Trip’s Uncle Clement? If they were married, why did you let her visit him all those Sundays for all those years?”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

He chuckled with a twinkle in his eye. “It didn’t matter. I wasn’t concerned about them having an affair. When they were together, he wouldn’t let her even try to get pregnant. He didn’t want any of those bloody messes on his watch. Instead of letting her drive herself crazy over motherhood, he convinced her to go to law school. I’m not sure if she would have made it through if he hadn’t held her hand, but he wasn’t dependable enough for her in other ways. He didn’t want her to adopt because I don’t think he enjoyed a single child until Trip was born. If you came over, he had an excuse to invite Trip to the house. I don’t think any sight in the world made him happier than Trip sitting in his library with a pretty girl sitting across from him. He had such high hopes for Trip. That Trip would lead the life he couldn’t, or wouldn’t.” Her father sighed and scanned his memory. “The truth is… I’m not sure if your mother and Clement were legally married. She had so much shame about the things she had done wrong in her life, she may have just said they were. It didn’t really matter to me.”

Annaliese felt like screaming. “She could have told me all that. Like the daughter of an overdosing drug addict wouldn’t understand mistakes.”

“Hmm…” he said softly, rolling over what his late wife never said in his mind. “She thought it was her responsibility to make sure you had something more… something better. Her life never really improved until she graduated from law school. Your real mother expressed a similar sentiment in her last letter. She wanted better for you. My wife became obsessed with keeping that promise. Did she keep it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I have to go to law school to live happily. There are tons of people who have never gone to law school who find a way to live in this world.”

“Well, you certainly don’t have to finish law school to make me happy. You can move in with Trip tonight with my blessing. He’s doing well. I don’t mean to do this immediately, but I was thinking that I’d like to collapse this house in the next few years.”

“Where will you go?”

He looked around at the empty six-bedroom house that surrounded them. “Somewhere smaller.” He leaned forward and patted her hand with his warm one. “The point is that you don’t have to stay here. I’m over seventy and I don’t need a place this big. A six-bedroom house is a lot for a family who only had one daughter, but I think that your mother thought this house was full with only you in it. It’s because you filled her heart.”

Annaliese let the tears spill down her cheeks and her father held her.

When the moment had lapsed, Annaliese called Trip. There was no answer, but she left a message that she had spoken to her father and she needed to talk to him. She went to her room and started boxing up her things, so she could do exactly as her father said and move in with Trip that night.

Except, he didn’t call her back.

By the time he did call her back, two days later, she was rethinking the whole thing. He was sorry, but his phone had been on the fritz and he had been very busy with work and family problems. He was coming by the house. In an absurd panic, she fled the house and even though he waited, she didn’t come back until he had gotten fed up and gone home.

No matter what misunderstandings were plaguing them, they needed to talk. They were married! Annaliese called him. No answer. She left another message, apologizing like a preteen about her lack of communication.

He called her back, but she heard a woman laugh on the other end of the line, went temporarily insane, and hung up. He called her back a second time, but she was too scared to answer the phone. What if he told her that he’d found someone new? They’d been apart for months.

That was the state of things when she saw him at the dinner party, couldn’t bear to see him and had to leave.

It was still the state of things when she asked him if he was seeing someone else as they played chess in his new library—the same one from their shared past.