“Yes,” she said.
“The first time, she asked general questions.
The second time, she said she was waiting on someone to do the right thing.
When she came back in March, she said she was done waiting.”
I sat there and let that sink in.
Marissa had been waiting on Quincy.
And Quincy had kept her waiting.
“Did she seem angry?”
I asked.
Denise hesitated.
“She seemed tired,” she said.
“More than angry.
She said she needed proof so that the father couldn’t keep changing his story.”
I thanked her and left.
On the sidewalk outside, I stood in the sun and tried to piece it together.
Quincy had told Marissa he would tell me.
He had told Eli I was coming to meet him.
He had told me nothing.
He had been telling all of us a different story, and he had been counting on us never to compare notes.
That was the part that made me angriest.
Not the affair.
Not even the child, exactly.
The way he had managed us.
The way he had kept us all in separate rooms so he could be a different man in each one.
My phone rang just as I got to the car.
It was Marissa.
I almost didn’t answer.
“Hester,” she said when I picked up.
Her voice sounded raw.
“I’m sorry to call you like this.”
“What is it?”
She took a breath.
“Eli wants to meet you,” she said.
“He’s been asking about you.
He knows who you are.
He knows about you and Quincy.
And he’s been asking why you never came.”
I closed my eyes.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to come,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
“I told him that.
But he’s eleven, and he doesn’t understand how adults can be so stupid.
He just knows his dad promised him something and it didn’t happen.”
“Marissa—”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” she said.
“I’m not asking you for anything.
I’m just telling you that he wants to meet you.
And I think he deserves to.”
I stood there in the parking lot with the phone against my ear.
I thought about the birthday cards in the shoe box.
I thought about the boy who had been told I was coming.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“I’ll come,” I said.
“Not for Quincy.
Not for you.
For him.”
Marissa was quiet for a moment.
“Thank you,” she said.
I hung up and sat in the car for a long time.
I wasn’t doing this for my husband.
I was doing it for a boy who had been promised something by a man who never kept his word.
And I was doing it because I was done letting Quincy decide what I knew and when I knew it.
Chapter 7 – The Boy Who Called Me by My Name
Marissa called me on a Thursday afternoon, and her voice was careful, like she was walking on glass.
“Eli asked about you again,” she said.
“He wants to meet you.
I told him I’d ask.
If you don’t want to, I understand.”
I stood in my kitchen with the phone against my ear and my hand on the counter.
I didn’t want to meet the child.
That’s the truth.
Every part of me wanted to hang up and pretend the last week hadn’t happened.
But then I thought about the birthday cards in the shoe box, all those years of a boy waiting for a father who kept promising things he never delivered.
“I’ll come Saturday,” I said.
“Not for Quincy.
For Eli.”
Marissa’s apartment was on the second floor of a building with a broken elevator, and I climbed the stairs slowly, holding the railing.
She met me at the door and stepped aside without a word.
The boy was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of lemonade and a deck of cards, and he looked up at me with Quincy’s eyes.
Same color.
It was like looking at a photograph of my husband when he was young.
“You’re Hester,” he said.
“I am,” I said.
“Dad said you weren’t ready to meet me,” he said.
“He said you needed time.”
I felt my jaw tighten, but I kept my voice even.
“That wasn’t true,” I said.
“I didn’t know about you.
Not until last week.”
Eli looked at his mother, and Marissa looked at the floor.
“I told him that wasn’t right,” Marissa said quietly.
“I told him he should have told you years ago.”
Eli shuffled the cards and dealt them out like he’d done it a hundred times.
“Do you know how to play rummy?” he asked me.
“I do,” I said.
“My son taught me.”
“You have a son?”
“Marcus.
He’s twenty-seven.”
Eli’s eyes went wide.
