Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 20: Now

The house feels dead when I return. I step inside the back door and tentatively come into the empty kitchen. Lines of moonlight cast stripes across the wall through the window blinds, highlighting the mites of dust that linger in the empty air. The laundry from the morning is folded neatly and stacked on one of the chairs.

Owen is gone.

I feel his absence immediately, everywhere. It's not the same absence as when he's at the office, or out running errands for a couple of hours.

He is not gone in a way that ends.

Reaching the head of the table, I notice something I didn't see before: a notecard has been propped up on top of the pile of folded laundry. It is creased down the middle and standing on its edges, forming a little tent that bears news I don't want to read.

I reach down and pick it up, wishing I didn't have to. Owen's careful printing glares back at me in blue ink; I try to will my brain not to read the meaning in the words, but it's hopeless. His note is brief:

I'm sorry to leave you with Thomas but I can't be in this house. I hope you understand.

Love,

O

I sit down on the chair behind me, hard.

He couldn't even sign his full name.

The vagueness of his note infuriates me, but at the same time, I do understand.

Really, it comes down to Owen Then and Owen Now. Then, even with all the circumstances surrounding my pregnancy, Owen was my best friend. He listened to me, held me, and supported my decision-making the best way he knew how, for the most part.

Now, after Thomas's birth, he's been different. And I've been different, too.

We used to like to sit in silence together. Now, it seems to make him uncomfortable and he leaves the room as soon as he has an excuse. But I don't know what to talk about with him anyway. It's not that I haven't been interested in Owen and whatever's going on in his life, necessarily; I just haven't been interested in much of anything at all.

Well, that's not true. Recently, I've been preoccupied with getting to the bottom of how my baby ended up in the Dolans' shed in the middle of the night, and how I got shut inside there with him in the dark. And with why my missing earring was hidden out there in the dirt.

Owen doesn't want any part of solving that mystery. In fact, whenever I bring it up, he just seems to pull away from me even more. Inviting Diana to live with us was supposed to help, I think, but it has only ended up making things worse. Her presence is just another knot, pulling the tension in the house tighter and tighter.

Both of them have been purposefully avoiding me. I can't really blame them. It's not as if I'm exuding positive energy these days, and I know that whatever this is – this bone-deep, sucking darkness that's always lurking at the edges – just looks like laziness from the outside.

Then there's the fact that even before Sadie came to visit, I told Owen that I would focus on our relationship and on taking care of Thomas. I promised him that, but I haven't followed through at all.

I let him down.

The weight of this realization sinks deep into my stomach. I let him down, and really, both of us have been letting each other down for months.

We've been drifting past each other through the rooms of our house, lying in bed next to each other sometimes, but falling asleep and waking up alone. I can't remember the last time we snuggled together on the davenport in the parlor. And if I am being honest with myself, it hasn't been hurting me as much as it should.

But this hurts. This feels final.

I look back to the pile of laundry where I found the note. There, resting on top of a neatly folded cotton sweater is Owen's silver wedding band. He's been wearing it around his neck for months, but now the silver chain it was hanging from is nowhere to be found. He had started wearing it that way because, I overheard him tell Diana once, it was closer to his heart around his neck than on his finger.

Even then, though, we both knew it was really further away.

The dull silence in the kitchen is broken by Diana's footsteps coming down the stairs and across the front entryway. She must have gone up to take a nap when she got home with Thomas, and she's just now waking up.

Quickly, I grab Owen's ring from on top of the laundry pile and slip it around my own thumb. It fits, snugly, just below the knuckle.

The light over the kitchen table flicks on.

Despite the humiliation that sears the back of my neck and fills my throat, my body is rooted to the chair. Owen's note lies unfolded, exposed, in the center of the kitchen table. There is no hiding it. Diana will know that I've read it and I just cannot bear to meet her eyes.

But when I look up, she doesn't seem to be expecting anything of me. She stands stoic, her arms limp at her sides and her face expressionless, staring at the piece of paper. I watch her eyes; they don't move back and forth across the words.

She has read it once and that was enough.

I'm sorry to leave you with Thomas but I can't be in this house. I hope you understand.

Suddenly, rereading his words, it dawns on me that Owen didn't write, "Dear Julie" at the top of his note.

What if Diana assumes the message is intended for her?

By way of explanation, I say far too loudly, "He left his wedding band with that note for me." As if that makes any of this better. Offering this information to her makes me feel pathetic. My husband has abandoned me with a child I never wanted and here I am, searching desperately within this last, callous gesture for a modicum of love.

"I understand," is all Diana says, still not looking up. Then she clears her throat solemnly, gathers the pile of laundry from the chair, and leaves the room. I hear her footsteps padding upstairs to put away the folded clothes.

Part of me is shocked at her refusal to even comment upon what her son has done to me, and I guess what he's done to her, as well. After all, Diana is the one who has been bringing Thomas with her wherever she goes in his little baby sling. What will she do now? Does Owen think we're going to live here together?

Whatever we decide to do, Diana will probably just expect me to go around acting as if everything is all right, as if Owen is still here and she and I and Thomas are still part of a family. Because that's how Diana handles tragedy: she locks it up as carefully as she can to make sure it never escapes. And now she is retreating back upstairs without even peeking into the parlor to check on the baby.

When the downstairs is quiet again, I rise unsteadily from the chair. Owen avoided confrontation by bailing on us abruptly during Diana's nap, while I was outside in the rain. So when will I even talk to him again?

Just this morning, Owen was the furthest thing from my mind. Now, in his deliberate absence, he seems to be everywhere.

I can see him standing at the coffee maker, smiling carelessly and sharing his opinion of the daily news as he fills our mugs. First he prepares mine, with one scoop of sugar and two dollops of whole milk. Then he pours his, black, and carries them both over to the table where I am waiting, excited to be near him. I can almost smell his morningness in the space beside me.

But he is not there.

Nor is he in the parlor, feeding Owen in the rocker on the other side of the cold fireplace; although for a long, terrible moment I allow myself to imagine that he is. I allow my feet to carry me, hopeful, across the entryway to the parlor threshold. Thomas sleeps sprawled on his back in the crib, his belly contentedly rising and falling.

But the room is dark and Owen is gone.