Page 112 of The Singing Trees
Long after the birds were gone, he seemed to figure it out. Taking fistfuls of his shaggy hair, his elbows splayed out like wings, he said, “You’re talking about Thien.”
“Ah, his memory comes back,” she replied with dark sarcasm. For a second, she’d thought he might have actually been innocent, as if someone had doctored the photo, and she’d actually let herself taste what it was like to love him again. But only for a moment, and now she was close to asking him to leave. Then again, she couldn’t wait to hear his excuse—or his lie. He was more like his father than she had ever thought. Might as well satisfy her curiosity before they said goodbye forever.
He inched to the edge of his seat. “That kiss—”
“That’s the one.” She’d been so worried that she’d done something wrong, but at that moment she felt more than justified in keeping his daughter from him. He’d wronged Annalisa, and unforgivably so.
With his eyes boring into her, he said, “It’s not what you think. I swear to God.”
Her jaws tightened as she looked for any evidence of further lies on his face. She noticed the faint scratch under his eye that he’d had in Hawaii, and she remembered how much he’d loved her then. What did he mean, it wasn’t what she thought? A kiss was a kiss. Wasn’t it?
He clasped his hands together and met her eyes. “There was a journalist named Jimmy that followed our platoon for a while, and he had a crush on this girl named Thien, who worked at a restaurant at Long Binh Post, the base where I was stationed for a while. He’d talked her into sitting down with us, and he was taking pictures of her. She was next to me. To make him jealous, she turned and kissed me. It wasn’t even a thing, I swear to God.”
She couldn’t let him off the hook so easily. These were the same lies her father had told, and her mother had gobbled them up. “Whata convenient story, Thomas.” She was amazed at how angry she still could get after this long. “So you sent your family the picture and told them, ‘Hey, guys, this is some random girl and me kissing? Hold on to it for me.’”
He shook his head so hard it might fall off. “No, Jimmy offered to send a bunch of us his shots, from, you know, three weeks of running with us. I gave him our address back in Davenport.”
Though she wasn’t sure what she believed, he seemed to have an answer for everything. Had he been prepping this lie for years? Or on the drive up? Or had she made some sort of mistake? He’d earned her trust and love like no one else on earth. He’d never lied to her. As questions pounded down on her, she started to come around to the possibility that he was being completely honest and thatshewas the one who’d messed up.
He kept moving toward her, like he might fall off the chair. “Look, Anna, this is all wrong. Is this why you left me? This picture?”
She repeated herself with frustration. “Your mom said you were bringing her home, that you’d fallen in love.” It was already clear, though, that he hadn’t done that; she was just rambling, drowning in quicksand.
He shook his head, as confused as she was. “I don’t believe my mom would have done that. I’ve never mentioned Thien to my mother, or anyone. She wasn’t anything, a girl who used to bring us Cokes. I barely remember that day. Or her.”
Annalisa threw her hands up and then dropped them on her lap. “I saw the picture. I read the letter, signed by your mom. She said Linh, not Thien. I’d rather you leave now than continue lying to me.” But he wasn’t lying, was he? He’d never given her any reason to think he was lying about anything.
Leaving the chair, he moved to his knees and took her hand. “On all that I am, I swear to you, Anna. That kiss was nothing I wanted. She caught me completely off guard, and there was nothing betweenus. Jimmy was the one that was into her.” He paused and stared up to her with pleading eyes. “I proposed to you. You were my everything.”
His words came out dense with truth. All these years. He was out of her life for all these years, and for what reason? Nothing made sense, but she was starting to think that this was all her fault, them not being together. Celia not having her father.
Trying to hold it together, she asked, “So your mom lied to me?”
“I don’t know what’s going on.”
Annalisa looked down to the beach.
At their daughter.
What was happening?
She couldn’t have felt any worse inside. It was her own weakness and distrust in people that had done this, and here he was, the man she loved, holding her hand and looking at her innocently. Was it possible they could have been together all along, she waiting for him when he landed like one of the women holding theWELCOMEHOMEbanner in her painting? It didn’t matter now, either way. She’d destroyed any chance they had for redemption when she’d chosen to hide Celia from him. He would never forgive her for that.
Thomas finally let go of her hand, and she feared he might never touch her again. “I’ve been a wreck for years. Are you kidding me? I never would have cheated on you. You’re the reason I made it home from ’Nam. My heart was broken when my parents told me you’d moved on.” His eyes watered as he looked at her with more love than she could handle. “I’m still broken.”
The first tears escaped her eyes, sliding down her cheeks. He was still on his knees, and she wanted to grab him and pull him up, to let him know that he’d done nothing wrong, but she felt unworthy of him now. She was a dead woman walking, a prisoner about to pay dearly for the crimes she’d committed, and she had no right to act otherwise. She’d hidden a child from this poor man, this guy who’d done nothing but love her from the moment they’d met.
As though an idea had come to him, he pressed up to a stand. “I’d like to call my mom, Anna, and get to the bottom of this. Why don’t you come inside with me? We can call her together? I need you to know I’m not lying.”
She didn’t want to lose him now, and every second raced toward the end. She’d been wrong to think he’d cheated, and if she hadn’t kept Celia from him—if she had only given him the trust that he’d earned, then they would have a chance to reclaim lost time. Helping Walt turn back time might have been possible, but she couldn’t turn it back for herself.
On the verge of collapse, she struggled to say, “Go call her. I just need a few minutes to sit with all this, okay?” She told him the location of the phone. Anything to get him away for a second so that she could figure out how to respond, how to tell him the truth.
He nodded with an optimism that she would soon crush. “Let’s figure out what’s going on. Maybe this can all be worked out. Just let me get to the truth.” With that, he started back inside.
The truth,she thought.The truth will destroy us all over again.
She almost stopped him, saying that he didn’t need to call her, that she believed him, that the truth stood next to her like an executioner with a raised ax.
