The Husband's Secret(155)

            But was Polly qualified? That was the question. Was any six-year-old qualified? Did she have the strength of character to live with this sort of injury in a world that put such value on a woman’s looks? She’s still beautiful, thought Cecilia furiously, as if someone had denied it.

            “She’s tough,” she said to John-Paul. “Remember that day at the pool when she wanted to prove she could swim as far as Esther?”

            She thought of Polly’s arms slicing through sunlit chlorinated blue water.

            “Jesus. Swimming.” John-Paul’s whole body heaved, and he pressed his palm to the center of his chest as if he were in the throes of a heart attack.

            “Don’t drop dead on me,” said Cecilia sharply.

            She pushed the heels of her hands deep into her eye sockets and turned them in a circular motion. She could taste so much salt from all her tears, it was like she’d been swimming in the sea.

            “Why did you tell Rachel?” said John-Paul. “Why now?”

            She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Because she thought Connor Whitby killed Janie. She was trying to hit Connor.”

            She watched John-Paul’s face as his mind traveled from A to B and finally to the horrendous responsibility of C.

            He pressed his fist to his mouth. “Fuck,” he said quietly into his knuckles, and he began to rock back and forth like an autistic child.

            “This was my fault,” he mumbled into his hand. “I made this happen. Oh God, Cecilia. I should have confessed. I should have told Rachel Crowley.”

            “Stop it,” hissed Cecilia. “She might hear.”

            He stood up and walked toward the door of the hospital room. He turned back and looked at Polly, his face ravaged with despair. He looked away, plucked helplessly at the fabric of his shirt. Then he suddenly crouched down, his head bent, his hands interlocked at the back of his neck.

            Cecilia watched him dispassionately. She remembered how he’d sobbed on Good Friday morning. The pain and regret he felt for what he’d done to another man’s daughter was nothing compared to what he felt for his own daughter.

            She looked away from him and back at Polly. You could try as hard as you could to imagine someone else’s tragedy—drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall—but nothing truly hurts until it happens to you. Most of all, to your child.

            “Get up, John-Paul,” she said without looking at him. Her eyes stayed on Polly.

            She thought of Isabel and Esther, who were at home with her parents right now. The siblings always got neglected when something like this happened to a family. She would have to make sure she found a way to be a mother to all three of her daughters through this. The P&F would go. The Tupperware would go. They didn’t need the money.

            She turned to look again at John-Paul, who was still hunkered down on the floor, as if protecting himself from a bomb blast.

            “Get up,” she said again. “You can’t fall apart. Polly needs you. We all need you.”

            John-Paul removed his hands from his neck and looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. “But I’m not going to be here for you,” he said. “Rachel will tell the police.”

            “Maybe,” said Cecilia. “Maybe she will. But I don’t think so. I don’t think Rachel is going to take you away from your family.” There was no real evidence for this, except somehow she felt, or she did for now, that it was true. “Not right now, anyway.”

            “But—”