His Wife Her Secret Their Regret novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Locks

Diana changes the locks on her own house and Delilah arrives with the baby and leaves a diaper bag with a mobile in it.

At six in the morning I walked out of the diner's back door and Dean's truck was gone from the curb.

I should have felt relief.

I felt tired, and I drove to Alder Street.

The house was my grandmother's, and her will had put it in my name and nobody else's.

Dean had painted the shutters green the year we moved in, and Wyatt had helped by painting the lower half of the porch rail and most of himself.

I stood on the walk and looked at it.

Connie's grandson was already waiting on the porch step with a box from the hardware store and a drill.

He was nineteen, and he did not ask me a single question.

"New deadbolts, front and back," he said. "Connie said you'd want them before breakfast."

"Thank you."

"She also said to tell you she'd kill me if I let anybody in."

I laughed for the first time since Sunday.

While he worked I went through the house with a laundry basket and a roll of garbage bags.

I took Dean's jackets, his boots, his razor and the stack of motorcycle magazines under the bed.

I did not throw them away.

I carried every bag to the front lawn and lined them up on the grass.

At ten past seven the locks clicked, and Connie's grandson handed me four keys.

"Two for you," he said. "Two spares."

"I only need one."

He shrugged and left them in my hand.

I was pouring my first coffee in my own kitchen when a car pulled up.

I knew the sound of it.

It was a small blue hatchback with a rattling muffler.

Through the window I watched my half-sister get out of the driver's seat.

She leaned back in and lifted out a car seat with a blanket over the top.

She was thinner than she had been a week ago.

She set the seat on the porch and rang my doorbell, and I stood in the hall with the door between us.

"Diana," Delilah said through the wood. "Please."

"Go home."

"I only want to say it to your face."

"You said it to my face yesterday, with a cake."

She was quiet.

Then I heard her crying, the small hiccuping crying she had done since she was six, when she wanted something and was afraid to ask for it.

I opened the door.

She stood on my porch with the baby asleep behind her, in a blue hat, and one fist curled up beside his cheek.

I did not look at him for long.

"Ask your questions," Delilah said. "I'll tell you whatever I can."

"How long?"

She put her hand on the door frame.

"It wasn't a plan, Diana."

"I asked how long."

"You should ask him."

"I'm asking you."

"Ask Dean," she said. "Please. I can't be the one."

"You were the one at the party."

"Vernon wanted the name said out loud. I never wanted that. I only wanted a little room for him in the family."

"You took a dead child's name."

"He was named for something real," Delilah said. "I swear it. I just can't say it in your doorway."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

She had our father's chin and our father's long fingers.

I could not find one soft feeling in me for her.

"You get one question from me before I shut this door," I said. "Do you love my husband?"

She blinked.

"I don't think I'm allowed to answer that."

"Then you've answered."

I started to close the door.

She said, "Then take this, Diana. It's yours."

She had already set a green diaper bag on the mat.

By the time I understood, she was back at the hatchback with the car seat on her arm.

The car pulled away.

Down the street, Dean's truck turned onto Alder and slowed.

He took in the bags, the new locks, and me in the doorway, and he stopped at the curb with the engine running.

I did not wave.

I picked up the diaper bag and carried it into the kitchen, because it was cold out and I did not want the neighbours to see me standing there.

I set it on the table.

The zipper was half open.

I unzipped it the rest of the way.

Under the baby wipes and the little socks lay a stuffed blue elephant on a wooden arm.

It had a brass music box in its stomach.

My hand went to my mouth.

It was Wyatt's mobile.

I had hung it over his crib myself, with a screwdriver, the week before he was born.

It had been in the garage, in a box marked WYATT, and the box was gone.

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