His Wife Her Secret Their Regret novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Name on the Banner
At Delilah's baby party Diana reads the name on the banner, learns her husband's son has her dead son's name, and takes off her ring.
The banner went up over the clubhouse bar at four o'clock on Sunday, and everyone in my husband's motorcycle club stood under it with a phone in their hand.
I came in late from the clinic with my coat still on.
In my coat pocket was a folded sheet of paper that I had planned to hand to Dean after dinner.
My husband stood by the cake table with his arm around my sister's shoulders.
Dean had told me three weeks ago that I didn't need to go to the hospital when she gave birth.
"It's too soon after Wyatt, Di," he'd said. "I've got her. You've done enough for Delilah."
I had thanked him for that.
Now my half-sister held a baby in a blue knit hat and smiled at me across the room.
Her name was Delilah, she was twenty-six, and she had told everyone the father was a guy from the truck stop who had left town.
"There she is," Connie called from the kitchen door. "Come hold him, Diana."
"I'll wait for the toast," I said.
Vernon Ruskin, Dean's father and the president of the club, tapped a fork against a glass.
Somebody handed me a flute of champagne, and I passed it to the man beside me.
I kept my hand in my pocket, on the paper.
"Thirty years I've watched this club grow," Vernon said. "Today it grows by one more. Welcome to the world, Wyatt Dean Ruskin."
The banner had the name in blue letters, three feet high.
Phones lifted all around me to film it.
I read the letters once and then I read them again.
Wyatt was my son.
Wyatt had died at four years old, twenty-two months ago, in a hospital eleven miles from this room.
His name was on a headstone in the cemetery behind the church, and Dean had it tattooed on his forearm.
Dean's forearm was around Delilah.
The clapping went on a moment too long, and then it thinned out, because people had started to look at me.
I walked up to the cake table.
"Why does he have Wyatt's name?" I asked.
Delilah looked at the floor.
"Diana," Dean said quietly. "Let's go outside."
"Why does that baby have your last name, Dean?"
My husband's face went blank.
He put his hand over the back of his neck, and he would not look at me.
Then he made himself.
"He's mine," Dean said.
Nobody in the room said a word.
Delilah started to cry. She pulled the baby tighter against her chest, and he began to fuss.
"Di, I'm sorry. He's my son."
I took one step backward and hit a folding chair.
"How long?" I said.
Dean looked at his father.
Delilah looked at Dean.
Vernon looked at his beer.
"How long?" I said again, louder. "Which of you is going to tell me?"
Connie came out of the kitchen with a dish towel in her hands and her mouth shut tight.
She didn't look surprised.
I turned in a circle and counted the faces, thirty patches and their wives, and not one of them looked surprised.
"Everybody knew," I said.
A woman by the door put her phone down.
Another one kept filming.
I looked at the banner one last time, at my son's name in blue.
Then I pulled my wedding ring off my finger.
It stuck at the knuckle, and I had to twist it.
The whole room watched me do it.
There was a cake on the table, white frosting with a little blue train on top, and a knife in it.
I set the ring on the frosting, right next to the train.
"So I'm done," I said.
Dean grabbed my arm. "Di. Don't do this here."
"You did it here."
I pulled free and walked out through the hall, past the pool table and the wall of photos where Wyatt in a tiny leather vest was still hanging in the third row.
I did not take it down.
I would come back for it.
The parking lot was cold, and my keys were already in my hand.
I got the car door open before Dean reached me.
He put his palm flat on the roof and stood between me and the road.
"Di, I was going to tell you," he said. "I told Delilah to wait until you were ready."
"Ready for what?"
"To hear that I have another son."
I looked at his hand on my car.
His wedding ring was still on it.
I put the key in.
"Move your hand, Dean."
He did.
I drove out of the lot with one hand on the wheel and the other on the paper in my pocket.
He had planned to tell me, and he had planned for me to be ready, and nobody had ever asked what I would be ready for.
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