He Thought I'd Forget novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Sister

Clark drives Leona to Bellevue, where Jeanine is alive and has six years of returned cards, until blue lights fill the street and Byron is on the porch with two officers.

Clark didn't ask a single question.

He took his keys off a hook by the door and held out his hand for the suitcase.

"Car seat?" he said.

"It clips off the stroller."

"Then go get it. I'll warm up the truck."

I crossed the hall back into 4D and unclipped the seat with shaking fingers.

The condo looked exactly the same.

The Thai food was still on the counter with the lid peeled back.

I left it there.

Clark's truck smelled like cedar and coffee.

He buckled the car seat into the middle of the bench.

"You have kids?" I asked.

"Nope. I watched a video just now while the engine warmed up."

Davey grabbed his beard and pulled.

Clark let him.

"He's strong," Clark said. "That's going to be a problem for me."

We pulled out past the doorman's desk camera and onto Fifth Avenue.

Nobody followed us.

I kept checking the side mirror anyway.

"How many times did I really introduce myself?" Clark asked at the first red light.

"I counted in the book. Four hundred and eleven."

"That's lower than I would've guessed."

"I didn't always write it down."

He laughed once, quietly, and then he didn't say anything else for a while.

It was a good quiet.

I took out the top birthday card and read the return address under the streetlights.

A street in Bellevue I didn't know.

I had grown up in Bellevue.

Jeanine must have moved.

Or I had forgotten that too.

It was almost midnight when Clark parked in front of a narrow brick house with a plastic tricycle on the porch and a salon chair in the front window.

The porch light was on.

I sat there with my hand on the door handle.

"Want me to come up?" Clark said.

"Yes."

He carried Davey in the car seat.

I rang the bell.

Nothing happened.

I rang it again, longer.

A light came on upstairs.

Feet thumped on the steps, and somebody yelled, "If this is about the dog, it wasn't my dog!"

The door opened on a woman in a giant men's T-shirt with platinum hair sticking up on one side.

Big hoop earrings, even at midnight.

My eyes. My mother's chin.

She looked at me.

Then she grabbed the doorframe with both hands.

"Lee?"

"Hi, Jeanine."

"Lee." Her voice cracked right down the middle. "Oh my God. Oh my God, you're here. Are you here? Is this real?"

"He told me you were dead."

Jeanine made a sound I'd never heard a person make.

Then she pulled me off the porch and into her arms so hard my feet left the mat.

She smelled like hairspray and fabric softener.

She was crying into my neck and swearing at the same time.

"Dead. He told you I was dead. That son of a..."

"Language," said a small voice from the stairs.

Two kids sat halfway down in pajamas.

A girl about twelve with her mother's hair, and a boy about nine holding a flashlight.

"Is that Aunt Leona?" the girl whispered. "The one in the pictures?"

"Yes," Jeanine said. "Go back to bed."

Nobody moved.

The boy pointed the flashlight at Clark.

"Who's that?"

"That's Clark," I said. "He drove me."

"Are you her husband?"

"No," Clark said. "I'm the guy across the hall."

"Oh." The boy thought about it. "Cool truck."

Jeanine finally saw the car seat.

Davey was awake and blinking at her.

She put both hands over her mouth.

"That's him? That's your baby? I didn't even know his name."

"Davey."

She knelt on the porch boards in her T-shirt and touched one of his socks.

"Hi, Davey. I'm your aunt. I've been trying to get to you since before you were born."

Inside, the kitchen was yellow and full of school papers.

Jeanine put the kettle on and didn't make any tea.

She went to a closet and came back with a shoebox.

She dumped it out on the table.

Envelopes slid everywhere.

Christmas cards. Easter cards. A card with a cartoon turkey on it.

Every one was stamped "Return to Sender" in that square printing.

"Six years," Jeanine said. "He sent back every one except the birthday cards. I thought maybe you were reading those."

"They were in his desk," I said. "Unopened."

She sat down hard.

Then she took a folded paper off the fridge, under a magnet shaped like a pair of scissors.

A court order.

Byron had gotten it six years ago.

It said Jeanine Hatherly's visits caused "acute episodes of distress" in the patient, and she was to stay five hundred feet away.

"He brought a stack of reports," Jeanine said. "Big words. His name on every one. The judge looked at me like I'd been hitting you."

"Did you?"

"I yelled at him in the hospital parking lot. Once. Loudly."

That sounded like her.

I laughed, and then I was crying, and then she was too.

Clark stood by the back door holding Davey, who was asleep on his shoulder now.

He was pretending to read the fridge.

"I'm staying," I said. "Here. Tonight. As long as you'll have us."

"Forever," Jeanine said. "You're staying forever. I'll put a bed in the salon."

"Mom," the girl said from the doorway. "There's a police car outside."

Blue light swept across the yellow kitchen wall.

Then a second car pulled in behind it.

Clark moved to the window.

His jaw went tight.

I went and stood next to him.

Two officers were coming up Jeanine's front walk.

And between them, already on the porch steps, in his good navy coat, was my husband.

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