Husband Faked His Death and Left Me, Now He Regrets It, Sorry, You Can Only Repent at My Grave novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gate
Geneva finds her parents alive at a toddler's birthday party and Stewart holding the cake, and walks in to ask for their ashes. Her father asks, "What ashes?"
On Sunday at four o'clock I stood at the end of my parents' street and watched my dead father blow up a balloon.
I had flown across the country with one duffel bag and a month to live.
I had come to find the place where my family was buried.
Instead there were pink balloons tied to my parents' mailbox.
There was a banner across the porch rail and thirty people in the front yard, holding paper plates.
My father stood on the lawn in his canvas work jacket, red in the face, tying off a balloon with thick fingers.
Three years ago I had taken the river road too fast on ice.
The car went into the river with my parents and my fiancé inside.
That was what I had been told, and I had believed it every day since.
I walked closer, along the neighbors' hedge, until I could read the banner.
HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY, JUNIE GENEVA.
My name was in the middle of it.
My mother came out of the house with a tray of cupcakes.
She was thinner and her hair was white now, but she was alive, and she was laughing at something the pastor said.
I put my hand on the hedge to stay upright.
On the porch table, between the lemonade and a stack of napkins, stood a framed photo of me.
It was my senior portrait, the one with the bad bangs.
A candle burned beside it in a glass jar, in broad daylight.
I didn't understand it, and I looked away from it.
The screen door banged again, and Stewart came out carrying a cake.
He was thirty now.
He had a line between his eyebrows that hadn't been there when I knew him.
The cake had a single candle shaped like a two.
Stewart set it on the table and I saw the gold ring on his left hand.
Then a blonde woman in a soft gray cardigan lifted a toddler off the porch steps and kissed the top of her curls.
It was Beth, my adopted sister.
The little girl had light brown curls and a dimple in her left cheek.
She put both hands on Beth's face and said, "Mama."
Stewart stepped up beside them and put his arm around Beth's waist.
Beth leaned into him without looking.
Everyone in the yard started to sing.
I stood behind the hedge with my mouth shut and my nails in my palm.
Three years.
For three years I had thought I killed them.
I had slept on a friend's couch in Tucson and counted other people's money for a living and not once let myself picture their faces.
I had not gone back to see a grave, because Beth had told me not to.
And they had been here, eating cake.
My fiancé had married my sister and given my name to their daughter.
I thought of the pills in my duffel bag and the doctor in Tucson who had said thirty days, maybe less.
I could have turned around.
I could have gotten back in the rental car and let them have the party.
So I opened the gate.
The hinge squealed, and thirty heads turned.
The singing stopped in the middle of a word.
My mother's tray tilted, and a cupcake rolled off it and landed frosting-down on the walk.
My father let go of the balloon.
It rose over the roof of the house and nobody looked at it.
"Geneva," Stewart said.
He said it low, and it came out as a question.
The cake knife was still in his hand, and it shook.
I walked up the path in my gray coat, past the pastor, past the neighbors, and stopped at the foot of the porch steps.
The toddler looked down at me from Beth's arms.
I looked at the framed photo with its candle and then at all of them.
"Hello, Dad," I said. "Hello, Mom. You look good for dead people."
Nobody laughed.
"I'm dying," I said, loud enough for the back of the yard. "I have about a month. I didn't come to fight."
My voice was steadier than I was.
"I came to bury you. I wanted to be next to you. Where are the ashes?"
My father took a step toward me, and his big hands hung open.
"Genny," he said. "What ashes?"
Beth was already coming down the steps with the child on her hip.
She was smiling and her voice was gentle.
She put her free arm around my shoulders, and she smelled like vanilla and hospital soap.
"Oh, honey, you're freezing," she said. "You must be exhausted. Come inside and we'll sort it all out."
Around us, thirty people were staring at me.
Beth was the only one who wasn't.
She was already steering me toward the house.
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