Page 55 of Before the Storm

Cindy bowed her head thoughtfully. Tara wondered if she was thinking about Winnie, about the granddaughter she and Bob had never met.It’s too late for that, too, Tara thought darkly.

“You know your father was a marine,” Cindy said. “He joined ranks without asking me, and I was furious. I couldn’t understand why he’d do such a thing. We were in love. We had plans. He went away and then later was sent to Afghanistan after the Soviets invaded, and I had half a mind to divorce him.”

Tara felt as though she couldn’t breathe. Her mother’s eyes were fiery.

“Why didn’t you?” Tara asked.

“I was still in love with him. I thought it seemed terribly cruel to divorce him when he was fighting like that,” Cindy offered. “He wrote me several letters, trying to explain himself. But he never apologized.”

“You said he never apologized for anything.”

“That’s right,” Cindy said.

Tara was suddenly struck with the incomprehensible fact of her mother’s story. Even before she said it, Tara knew what was coming next.

“There was another man in my life when I met your father,” Cindy said. “His name was Philip, and he was everything your father wasn’t. He was very kind to me. He was very funny and had a way with words. I left him for your father because your father was dominant, strong, and passionate. More than that, I was just attracted to your father in ways I never had been before. I couldn’t ignore what my body was telling me. But when your father had been gone for a while, I ran into Philip at the grocery store and agreed to meet for a drink. Philip knew I was married, and I knew he had a girlfriend. But we began a very intense and brief affair. Maybe I’m supposed to say I regret that affair, but I don’t. Not for a second.” Cindy’s eyes filled with tears. “Philip was a beautiful soul, and I was so lonely during that time. Terribly so.”

“Why didn’t you leave Dad for Philip?” Tara asked.

“Philip wanted me to,” Tara admitted. “We had many conversations about it. He broke up with his girlfriend and was prepared for me to move in with him. I told him I didn’t want to stay in Nantucket because Bob would be coming back, and I didn’t know what he’d do to us when he found out. I didn’t know what he’d do to Philip. I figured he’d punch his lights out.”

“That sounds like Dad,” Tara admitted.

“Out of the blue one afternoon, your father was back in the kitchen of our house,” Cindy said. “He was sitting there, eating a sandwich and reading the newspaper. He nearly gave me a heart attack. I threw my arms around him because I hadn’t heard from him for a while and I’d been worried about him. The minute he had his arms around me, he whispered in my ear, ‘I love you, Cindy Lee. I love you to pieces.’ And I knew that something had broken in him when he was overseas. He would never be the same. And I had this strange sense that I needed to protect him from himself. I needed to help him heal. After that, I ignored Philip. I threw away his letters; I didn’t take his calls. I pouredmyself into helping Bob rebuild his soul after what he’d been through.”

“Did Dad tell you what happened over there?” Tara asked.

“He said he’d made a friend who’d died in front of him,” Cindy said tentatively. “He never went into any details about the accident or the attack or whatever it was. But I think whatever happened affected his hearing. He could no longer hear as well out of his left ear.”

Tara remembered that from her childhood. If she or Josie ever spoke to their father on his left side, he grew irate and annoyed, screaming at them to always speak to him from the right.

“Not long after your father got back to Nantucket, I realized I was pregnant,” Cindy said. “At first, I was overjoyed. For whatever reason, I assumed the baby was your father’s, and I thought this would be a brilliant way to start over. Your father was really happy, too. He was incredibly gentle with me, making me food, letting me sleep in, and even tending to a few chores around the house. He’d never done that before. But I decided to go to the first doctor’s appointment by myself. Maybe that’s proof of something. Perhaps a part of me had begun to doubt. That’s when the doctor told me I was nearly three months pregnant. That devastated me. It meant the baby was Philip’s and not Bob’s. If Bob paid close enough attention, he’d figure that out one day. All I could do was pray that Bob was too distracted with his fears, anxieties, and injuries to notice.

“When I was five or six months pregnant, I was at the farmers’ market with Bob, and we ran into Philip and his ex-girlfriend, who, I suppose, he’d gotten back together with. They both noticed how pregnant I was, and the girlfriend said something under her breath. Bob caught it and said something menacing, like, stay away from my wife. But that night, he disappeared and returned late smelling of beer. I gleaned laterthat he’d been at the local bar, asking around about what I’d been up to while he’d been away. He was always so scary, you know. And it didn’t take long for people to fess up what they knew. Because I’d planned to leave Bob, Philip and I hadn’t been careful about hiding our affair. We’d kissed all over town. We’d dined al Fresca. We’d lived. When Bob came home that night, he threatened to leave me. But I begged and pleaded with him. I told him I’d only ever loved him. I told him that the timing was just slightly off and that most people in Nantucket would probably just think the baby was Bob’s. But Bob was already packing up a bag. I was so utterly heartbroken. I threw up all over the bathroom due to stress. When I came out, I found Bob in a heap by the bed. He was crying, too. I realized then he didn’t have anyone else, either. His parents were dead. He’d been an only child. He’d lost his friend in the war. He needed me. He needed the baby. So I promised we could have another one immediately, just as soon as I was able to. I don’t know why he agreed. Maybe he regretted it later.”

Tara’s legs were about to give out, so she backed up and slumped into the sofa. She was exhausted. Cindy continued to stare at the photos of Bob on the bulletin board as though she wanted one of the versions of Bob to walk out and explain himself.

“Josephine was born looking too much like Philip, with Philip’s eyes and Philip’s hair,” Cindy explained tenderly. “Bob immediately rejected her and pestered me to get pregnant again as soon as I could. This was an incredibly lonely time for me. I was getting accustomed to motherhood. I was trying to carry Bob’s grief at not being the father and his rage at Nantucket gossip. Meanwhile, I knew people were talking terribly behind my back. After all, I’d been the one who cheated! I was devastated and felt so guilty and under-slept and awful. I asked Bob if we could leave Nantucket and start over somewhere, buthe said no. He said he’d come from a long line of Nantucketers and wouldn’t be chased off.

“Not long after that, Philip and his girlfriend left instead, and I’ve always wondered if Bob forced them to. Maybe he threatened them. I don’t know, and I’ll never know. But very soon, I was pregnant with you, Tara. And you were Bob’s shining star. You were his reason to keep hoping. While he ignored Josie, he celebrated my new pregnancy, cooked me elaborate meals, and told everyone how thrilled and in love with me he was.

“It was a new era for us. Bob named you after his mother, whom he’d loved so much, and he did everything he could to take care of you when you were born. This was a welcome relief. Josie needed more and more care; she felt neglected. She could always sense that Bob loved you more. I hated that, but there was nothing to be done about it. Bob wanted to get pregnant again shortly thereafter. He wanted to have more and more children. But for whatever reason, we couldn’t do it again. He was so in love with you that he didn’t care. And soon, time pulled us along. You were growing; you were impressive; you were strong. Josie was amazing, too, but your dad never wanted to hear about that. Maybe that’s why I never supported Josie the way I should have. I didn’t want to get caught by your father. I didn’t want to remind him of what I’d done.”

Cindy bowed her head. “I feel ashamed. So ashamed.”

Tara looked down at her hands. She remembered the immensity of her father’s love growing up. She remembered Josie telling her how “unimportant” she felt in their father’s and mother’s eyes. She remembered telling Josie that Josie was imagining things.

But it was plain as anything. Tara had been loved; Josie had been forgotten and neglected.

It wasn’t fair.

But it seemed that Cindy had really loved Bob. She’d loved him more than Josie.

In Tara’s mind, that made Cindy terribly selfish.

“I’ll never forget when Josie asked if she could go to college,” Cindy went on. “Your dad told her she could go if she paid for it. But why would she put herself in debt like that? Josie was despondent. She moved out to that little apartment after that and hardly visited us back at home. I think she sensed something was really wrong between the three of us and didn’t want to have anything to do with us anymore.

“But before we knew it, you were ready for university. Your father paid for everything, obviously. Nothing was too expensive when it came to his baby girl. But you were so wayward. You never knew what you wanted to do. Your father empathized. He told me how difficult it was to know anything about ourselves when we were twenty-one or twenty-two. I laughed at that; after all, I’d been that age when I’d had you and Josie. But your father wanted the world for you.

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