Thought I Knew You (26 page)

I asked Sarah to keep an eye on the kids while Drew and I walked hand in hand in the surf. I leaned my head on his shoulder, sighing happily.

“I want this forever,” Drew said, pulling me to him, our hips bumping as we walked. “The girls, you, vacations, us being a family.”

I nodded sleepily, a tad drunk on the bottle of wine we polished off back at the blanket. He stopped and turned me to face him. His face was so serious, an expression I’d rarely seen.

“I mean it, Claire. I want…” He looked toward the black void of the water. “I want to marry you. Someday.”

I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say, except the truth. “I want that, too, Drew. But how? Greg won’t be declared deceased for another five years. The only way I could get married again would be to divorce him.” I took his hand and kissed his palm. “Can I divorce Greg if I don’t know where he is? I have no idea how that works. And to be honest, I’m not sure I could do it. I have to think about it.”

He pulled me into a hug and kissed the top of my head. “I’ll be patient, Claire. I will. Think about it, okay?”

I nodded and promised that I would. We stayed like that for a while, breathing together. We walked back toward the blanket in comfortable silence, lost in our own, surely similar, thoughts.

As we approached, Sarah waved. “I thought you guys sailed away,” she whispered.

The girls were each sleeping soundly. Drew carried Hannah, I carried Leah, and we made our way back to the house. After we tucked them in, Drew retired to bed, while Sarah and I sat out on the patio, talking and catching up.

“I’ve never seen you so relaxed. So happy,” Sarah observed.

“Oh, love, you should try it sometime. It really is the best drug.” I laughed.

“I guess so! You’re not the Claire I know, worried or anxious. You’re fun now,” she joked.

“Hey, I’m fun. Remember San Diego?” I pouted.

“I do. I still talk to Owen sometimes. And Will asks about you all the time.”

“Really? He was gawgeous!” I giggled. Will held a special place in my heart, my first and only foray into living single.

She nodded. “Yes, but you should see yourself now. You come alive when Drew’s around.” She swirled her wine glass. “I’m jealous.”

I looked up in surprise. Sarah, the self-proclaimed perpetual bachelorette, was jealous of me?

“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “Make fun of me. Go ahead. But you make me think about my life. I’m not getting younger. I won’t always have a date on Friday and Saturday nights. Right now, I make no more than three phone calls, and I’ve got a man to hang out with, and later, to keep me warm. I don’t want to go through life alone. So what happens when all my ‘Guy Fridays’ find wives?”

“So you want this? Marriage, kids, the works?”

She shrugged. “You make it look so easy.”

“With the right person, it’s a lot easier,” I agreed. I didn’t say the whole truth—that making a life together with the wrong person was like pushing a boulder up a hill. While making a life with the right person was like having a wheelbarrow instead of a boulder, taking turns pushing each other on the inclines. That was the thing I could not say out loud. Had life with Greg been akin to pushing a boulder? Was it possible to marry the wrong person when that marriage had produced two of the most beautiful children ever? Or what if there was no right and wrong person, just different people? If I could go back, would I have made a different choice? No, of course not. I would trade my happiness for Leah and Hannah. If I could reverse the events of the last two years, would I, and thus take away Drew? But then, Leah and Hannah would have their daddy. I couldn’t think about it; it made my head and my heart hurt. No clean answer existed. Instead of saying all that, I replied, “Nothing is ever easy, Sarah. If you wait for easy, you’ll die alone.”

When we finally trudged, half-drunk and very tired, to our respective rooms, I crept into bed, careful not to wake Drew. He stirred beside me, and his arm encircled my waist. I kissed his forehead. Silently, effortlessly, he slid my body under his, his hands in my hair, his mouth on my neck. I was instantly ready and clung to him, desperate from the alcohol and heavy conversation. Quickly, wordlessly, we made love. He tasted of sand and sweat, wine and butter. We pulled, scratched, rough and coarse, a confirmation of reality, erasing my inner hypothetical questions.

Afterward, I lightly stroked his back. We fell asleep, his arm curled around me, pulling me into the curve of his body, without ever saying a word.

When we packed the van four days later, we were all five pounds heavier, tanned, and permanently slick with sunscreen. I was swearing off wine for at least a week, a bit embarrassed by the recycling bin at the curb as we pulled away. Sarah left the day after we got home, and after the unpacking, laundry, food shopping, and all the other miscellaneous chores that come from a restful week away, life returned to its normal rhythm.

Hannah and Leah had a month of day camp before returning to school. Leah was starting preschool; I could hardly believe it. Hannah would be in first grade.

Drew went into the city for a day to meet with a gallery owner and plan an opening. He had been uninspired lately and was going to stay overnight, stalking the parks and looking for unwitting subjects, or at least motivation. He claimed that living with me made him happy, and happiness made him lazy. He said he was too content to seek out the misery and sadness in society, and pictures of happy people didn’t sell as well, not to mention the great reduction in subjects.

I had the house to myself, which was a rare treat. I recalled the conversation with Drew on the beach. Sitting down at the computer, I did a quick Google search. After a few minutes of reading, I mulled over my findings. I could file for a divorce. Did I want to? I wasn’t sure. If something had happened to Greg, if he’d died, then clearly divorcing him would hurt no one. What about Hannah? Would she have to know? Would she even understand? Leah was too little. If Greg was missing by his own choice, then I should have no reservations about divorcing him. I couldn’t reconcile all my questions.

Dad always said that when life gets too complicated, start by asking yourself what you
want
. Define it in one sentence and work backward. I pulled out a piece of paper and asked myself,
What do I want?
Without hesitation, the answer came. I wanted Drew. Working backward, Drew wanted marriage. Would he stay without marriage? It was hard to say. Marriage acted like a glue when the rest of a carefully constructed life fell apart. It kept a couple together through hardships until they could rebuild. I didn’t believe in long-term relationships without marriage. Things wouldn’t stay blissful forever; life—messy, complicated, hectic, frustrating, and sometimes downright disastrous—would get in the way. That, I knew better than most. I picked up the phone and dialed my lawyer.

Divorcing a missing person was relatively simple and took less than a month. Half of our assets had to be placed in escrow until Greg was found or declared deceased. Everything else was mine. If I were to sell the house, I had to reserve half of the estate in the escrow account. I signed an affidavit that stated that I had attempted to look for the missing person by phone, street address, internet searching, and even social networking websites. Matt Reynolds signed a similar affidavit and appeared at a court hearing as a witness to our search. He provided a judge with an inch-thick case file, including his investigation leading to Lake Onodaga. The judge made his determination on the spot, and I went from a widow to a divorcee. I attended the hearing without Drew, by my choice, but when I got home, he held me gently, knowing that the ruling was bittersweet.

The divorce had to be publicly announced in three newspapers as part of due diligence. In the event that Greg was hiding in the next county over, the court had to be able to say he had been publicly served. I dreaded that, knowing it was always possible that my incredible story would be picked up and splashed across headlines, which would give everyone entitlement to an opinion. I had enough guilt and didn’t need more from public opinion, from people who didn’t know the facts. I waited, but there was no blowback.

Overall, the divorce had little impact on my day-to-day life. I felt slightly freer to plan my future with Drew, but since I had believed Greg to be dead for some time, that wasn’t an emotional freedom, but a legal one. We started to speak of marriage abstractly, the way people did when they first start thinking it was a real possibility, as in
Someday when we’re married…
I wasn’t sure when that day would be, but if there was one thing I’d learned, it was that life could sometimes change drastically from year to year. There was a certain wisdom in patiently waiting for life to happen. I planned on being a divorcee for a while before I became a wife again.

One Thursday, I sat at the kitchen island, lazily doing a crossword puzzle. In the back of my mind, I thought about being married again, about officially sharing my home, my finances, and my life with another person, as opposed to the separate-yet-equal life I was currently leading. The doorbell rang, interrupting my reverie. Drying my hands on a dishtowel as I walked down the hall, I tried to remember if it was time for Girl Scout cookie sales. I opened the door.

“Hi, Matt. Did we have a meeting today? I must have completely forgotten.” I turned to walk back down the hall, then I realized we couldn’t have a meeting. Our last meeting had been three and a half months ago, in May. We wouldn’t meet again until—I did the math—November.

When I turned back, he still stood in the doorway. “Claire, can we come in?” he asked, his face unreadable.

We
? I noticed a tall, gangly man behind him. He wore a navy blue suit and had a mustache and wire-rimmed glasses. I tried to place him and failed.

“Sure, come on in.” My breath caught. Had there been a development? For one split, awful second, I fervently hoped they had come to tell me Greg was dead. The room began to spin. I studied Matt’s face, and suddenly, I knew. “Matt, what’s going on?”

He motioned me into the living room. “Claire, please, sit down, okay?” His hand felt heavy and warm on my back. He was being too nice, too gentle, the way a person acted when he was about to shatter someone’s world.

I sat.
Please, just say it.

“Claire, we found Greg.”

The room tilted. The last thing I heard before my world went black was, “He’s alive.”

Chapter 32

W
hen I came to, Matt
stood over me, concern creasing his brow.

He helped me up, then brought me a glass of water. He gestured at the tall thin man behind him. “Claire, this is Detective Ron Ferras. He’s from the Toronto police department. Greg is in Toronto, in Canada.” He waited for me to nod. “He’s in a federal care facility. Two years ago, Greg was mugged in downtown Toronto. Whoever mugged him then also pushed him off the curb in front of an oncoming car. The driver of the car called 911. He was taken to St. Michael’s Hospital, where he received treatment for nine months.”

The questions formed faster than I could ask them, as if I had lost the ability to speak. Why was he in Canada? Nothing made sense.

He continued, “When he remained in a persistent vegetative state, he was transferred out of the hospital and into a rehabilitation facility. That’s where he has been until six months ago.”

I had been staring at my hands, numbly. But at that, my head snapped up, and I met Matt’s eyes. I saw sympathy, apology, and something else. Pity?

“What happened six months ago?” I asked.

“He woke up.”

On Saturday, two days later, I sat in the front seat of Matt Reynold’s Suburban. Drew stayed home with the girls; we hadn’t told them anything. Until I knew what we were up against, I wanted to keep them innocent for as long as possible. The last two days had been awful. Drew and I did not speak much, my silence from shock, his from terror. I had nothing in me to reassure him, as I put on a performance every minute of every day for Hannah and Leah.

Three times, I had to ask Matt to pull over while I retched on the side of the interstate. The trip was eight hours long, and I was prone to motion sickness, which seemed to be exacerbated by fear. I called Mom twice to check on Hannah and Leah. She asked very few questions, just if I was all right.
I’ll never be all right again
.
Why was Greg in Canada?

I had a sudden thought. “You said there was an alert on Greg’s passport. Why didn’t it work?”

Matt tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “He may have gone into Canada before we activated the alert. We did pull border control records at the time, but customs doesn’t scan everyone’s passport. Canada is a bit more… lackadaisical in their border control.”

“I just thought… since 9/11… governments were tracking who was going in and out. Seems paranoid, I guess.”

“No, I think it’s a common misconception.”

When we crossed the border into Canada, we were waved through without so much as a glance. Matt raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say,
See?
I called Drew to tell him we had crossed the border.

As we exited the highway, going into Toronto, Matt explained, “We’re going to a rehab facility. It’s like a nursing home. We’ll speak to Greg’s doctors and his therapists first. He has several of each. Greg spends six to eight hours a day in this facility, but he lives in a community home. It’s a transitional place, like a halfway house for the brain injured.”

“What does ‘brain injured’ mean?” I asked, feeling stupid.

“That’s Greg’s current diagnosis. I’m sure it’s more complicated, but basically, when he was hit by the car, his head was struck with such force that his brain was severely damaged. In many cases of traumatic brain injury, a vegetative state aids with healing. It’s the body’s way of shutting down to the most basic levels, like hibernation. Healing of the brain is the hardest, most arduous and slowest process the body can do.”