He was crying.
Not the way people cry in movies. Not neat tears rolling down his cheeks.
His whole body was shaking. His shoulders. His chest. He had his free hand pressed over his mouth so he wouldn’t make any noise.
On the screen, I could see Lily asleep on her back, her arms flung up beside her head the way she always sleeps. Ryan’s finger was in her little fist. She was holding on.
“I wish things were different,” he whispered.
He gently touched her little hand with his thumb.
“I wish I could stay,” he said. “I wish I could watch you grow up. Learn to walk. Learn to ride a bike. Go to kindergarten.”
His voice broke completely.
“I wish I could walk you down the aisle someday,” he whispered.
I was out of bed before I knew I was moving.
I walked down the dark hallway in my bare feet. The floor was cold. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.
The nursery door was open a crack. A thin line of light from the nightlight spilled into the hall.
Before I reached the door, I heard him.
Clearly. Not through the monitor. His real voice, just on the other side of the door.
“I have to leave,” Ryan whispered, “before your mommy finds out.”
Part Six: The Doorway
I stopped in the hallway.
I couldn’t move.
I have to leave before your mommy finds out.
My mind went everywhere at once.
Another woman. Debt. A crime. Something terrible he’d done. Something so bad he’d rather walk out on his family than let me know.
My legs were shaking. I put my hand on the wall to hold myself up.
Then I heard him again.
“I’m sorry, Lily-bug,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I hope someday you’ll understand. I hope your mommy finds somebody who can be there for both of you. Somebody who’ll be around.”
He took a shaky breath.
“Somebody who won’t forget your name,” he said.
Somebody who won’t forget your name.
That wasn’t what a man says when he’s having an affair.
That wasn’t what a man says when he’s in debt.
I didn’t know what it was. But I knew I couldn’t stand in that hallway one more second.
I pushed open the door.
Ryan looked up.
He saw me standing there in his old gray sweatshirt with the hole in the cuff. He saw my face.
All the color drained out of his.
“Hannah,” he said.
He tried to stand up. He forgot his finger was in Lily’s fist. She whimpered in her sleep and he froze, crouched halfway between sitting and standing, afraid to wake her.
He slowly slid his finger out of her hand. He stood up.
He wiped his face with both hands.
“How long have you been there?” he whispered.
“Long enough,” I said.
My voice was shaking. I didn’t care.
“Ryan,” I said. “What won’t I find out?”
He didn’t answer.
“What are you leaving before I find out?” I said. “What’s happening? Please. I’m begging you. Tell me.”
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he looked down at our daughter, asleep in her crib with her arms over her head.
“Not in here,” he said quietly. “Not where she can hear.”
Part Seven: The Kitchen Table
We went downstairs.
Ryan turned on the light over the stove. Just that one. The rest of the kitchen stayed dark.
He didn’t sit down. He walked to the hall closet by the back door. He reached up to the top shelf, behind the winter hats and the box of Christmas lights.
He brought down a manila envelope.
He set it on the kitchen table in front of me.
“I was going to give you this,” he said. “In two weeks. After Thanksgiving. I was going to leave it on the table and go.”
I stared at the envelope.
“Go where?” I said.
“I signed a lease,” he said. “On an apartment. Across town. By the hospital.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You were going to leave us,” I said.
“I was going to leave you,” Ryan said. “So you’d be free. So you could start over while you’re still young. So you wouldn’t have to—”
He stopped.
“Have to what?” I said.
He sat down across from me. He put his elbows on the table. He put his face in his hands.
“Open it,” he said.
My hands were shaking so badly I could barely get the clasp undone.
Inside, there was a lease. One-bedroom apartment. Hillcrest Towers. Starting December first.
There were divorce papers. Printed from a legal website. Filled out. Signed. Respondent: Ryan Thomas Mercer. He’d signed every page.
He’d given me everything. The house. The car. Full custody. He’d written in the margin, in his neat engineer’s handwriting: Visitation at Hannah’s discretion. Whatever’s best for Lily.
And underneath the divorce papers, there was one more thing.
A single sheet of paper. Letterhead from the University of Missouri Health Care. Department of Medical Genetics.
It was dated June fourteenth.
I read it.
I read it again.
I read it a third time, because the words wouldn’t stay still on the page.
Patient: Ryan Thomas Mercer.
Test: Huntington’s Disease — HTT gene CAG repeat analysis.
Result: Positive. 42 CAG repeats.
Interpretation: This result is consistent with a diagnosis of Huntington’s disease. Individuals with this result are expected to develop symptoms during their lifetime.
Part Eight: Huntington’s
I looked up at my husband.
He was watching me. His eyes were red and wet. His hands were folded on the table like he was waiting for a verdict.
“Ryan,” I said. “What is this?”
“You know what it is,” he said quietly.
I did know.
Not because I’d ever studied it. Because of my job. Speech therapy. I’d learned about Huntington’s in graduate school. A unit on degenerative neurological diseases. The ones that take away your ability to speak.
It’s genetic. It runs in families. If one of your parents has it, you have a fifty percent chance of having it too.
It usually starts in your thirties or forties. Small things at first. Mood changes. Forgetfulness. Clumsiness.
Then your body starts moving on its own. Jerks. Twitches. Your memory goes. Your speech. Your ability to walk. To swallow. To think.
It takes ten to twenty years.
There’s no cure.
“Your father,” I whispered.
Ryan nodded.
Ryan’s father, Tom, died when Ryan was nineteen. I never met him. Ryan’s mother, Marianne, always said he died of early dementia. A rare kind. In his fifties.
Ryan never talked about him much. He’d just say his dad got sick when he was in middle school and spent the last years of his life in a nursing home in Jefferson City.
He’d say it like it was a story about somebody else.
“It wasn’t dementia,” Ryan said.
He was staring at the table.
“Mom told everybody it was dementia,” he said. “For twenty years. Even me. She said it was a fluke. Something that just happened to him. She never said the word Huntington’s. Not once.”
He swallowed.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “Hannah, I swear to God, I didn’t know. Not until June.”
“What happened in June?” I asked.
He took a long breath.
“Aunt Beth called,” he said.
Beth is Ryan’s father’s younger sister. She lives in Springfield. We see her at Christmas sometimes. She’s funny and loud and sends Lily outfits with too many ruffles.
“She called me at work,” Ryan said. “A week after Lily’s three-month checkup. She said she’d just been diagnosed. She said she’d been having tremors in her hands for a year. She said she’d finally gone to a neurologist.”
He looked at me.
“She said, Ryan, honey, it’s what your daddy had. It’s Huntington’s. Your mother never told you, did she?”
“She said she’d been begging Mom for twenty years to tell me,” Ryan said. “So I could decide whether to get tested. So I could decide whether to have kids.”
He looked toward the stairs. Toward the nursery.
“Mom said no,” he said. “She said she didn’t want me to live my life afraid. She said maybe I didn’t have it. She said not knowing was better.”
“And you got tested,” I said.
“The next week,” Ryan said. “I didn’t tell you. I told you I had a work conference in Jefferson City. I drove to the genetics clinic at the university instead. They drew my blood. I sat in my car in the parking garage for two hours afterward.”
He looked at the letter in my hands.
“The results came on June fourteenth,” he said. “I opened them in my truck. In the parking lot at work.”
June fourteenth.
I remembered June fourteenth. It was a Friday. He came home late. He didn’t kiss me. He went straight upstairs to the nursery and sat in the rocking chair in the dark.
That was the first night.
Part Nine: Why
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer.
“Ryan,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked up at me. His face was wet.
“Because I watched what it did to my mother,” he said.
“I was eleven when Dad started getting sick,” Ryan said. “It started with his temper. He’d get angry at nothing. Then he’d forget things. Then he’d drop things. His hands would jump around on their own. He’d trip walking across the kitchen.”
He stared at the table.
“By the time I was fifteen, he couldn’t work,” he said. “By the time I was seventeen, Mom had to feed him. Dress him. Help him to the bathroom.”
He swallowed.
“She was forty-three years old,” Ryan said. “And she spent every single day for eight years taking care of a man who didn’t know who she was anymore.”
“I’d come home from school,” he said, “and she’d be sitting on the kitchen floor. Crying. While Dad was in the other room shouting at the TV. She never went anywhere. Never saw her friends. Never did anything for herself. She gave up her whole life.”
He looked at me.
“When he finally died, she was fifty-one,” Ryan said. “And she looked seventy.”
“I’m thirty-four,” he said. “Dad started showing symptoms at thirty-nine. The doctor said I’ll probably start around the same age. Maybe earlier. Maybe later. Nobody knows.”
He looked at me.
“Five years, Hannah,” he said. “Maybe less. Then it starts. And it doesn’t stop.”
“So you decided to leave,” I said.
“I decided to set you free,” he said. “While you’re still young. While Lily’s too little to remember me. While you can still find somebody else.”
