He wiped his eyes.
“I thought if I pulled away,” he said, “if I got cold, if I stopped kissing you, you’d get angry. You’d stop loving me. You’d want the divorce. And then it wouldn’t hurt so much when I left.”
I stared at him.
“You were trying to make me hate you,” I said.
“I was trying to make it easier for you,” Ryan said.
His voice broke.
“I couldn’t stand the idea of you on the kitchen floor,” he said. “Like Mom. Crying. Giving up your whole life to take care of me. Watching me forget you.”
He looked at me.
“I’d rather you hate me,” he said, “than watch me forget your name.”
Part Ten: What I Said
I didn’t say anything for a long time.
The kitchen clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. Upstairs, through the monitor on the counter, I could hear Lily breathing. Soft and steady.
I looked at the letter from the genetics clinic. At the divorce papers with his signature on every page. At the lease for an apartment across town.
At my husband. Sitting across from me at two in the morning, his face wet, his hands shaking.
Then I got angry.
Not a little angry. Angrier than I’ve ever been in my life.
“How dare you,” I said.
Ryan flinched.
“How dare you,” I said again. Louder. “How dare you decide that for me.”
“Hannah—”
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to talk right now. You’ve had five months to talk. Now I’m talking.”
He closed his mouth.
“For three months,” I said, “I thought you’d stopped loving me. I thought I’d done something wrong. I thought you were having an affair. I cried myself to sleep next to you every single night. I called my sister. I looked up divorce lawyers, Ryan. I looked them up.”
He put his hand over his eyes.
“I thought I was losing my husband,” I said. “And the whole time, you were sitting upstairs in the dark, planning to leave us. To protect me.”
I slammed my hand on the divorce papers.
“Without asking me,” I said. “Without once asking me what I wanted.”
“I knew what you’d say,” Ryan said quietly.
“Then why didn’t you let me say it?”
He didn’t answer.
“You didn’t get a choice,” I said. “When your mom didn’t tell you. You didn’t get to decide whether to get tested. Whether to have kids. Whether to plan your life around it. She decided for you. Because she thought she was protecting you.”
I leaned forward.
“And you were about to do the exact same thing to me,” I said.
Ryan stared at me.
I watched it hit him. I watched his face change.
He put both hands over his mouth.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Oh, God, Hannah.”
“Your mother was wrong,” I said. “She was wrong to keep it from you. And you were wrong to keep it from me.”
My voice broke.
“I’m not your mother,” I said. “And I’m not a girl you need to protect. I’m your wife. I stood up in front of a hundred and forty people and promised in sickness and in health.”
I reached across the table. I grabbed his shaking hands.
“I meant the sickness part too, Ryan,” I said.
Part Eleven: The Kitchen Floor
He broke.
He came around the table and knelt down on the kitchen floor in front of my chair. He put his head in my lap and cried like I’d never heard anybody cry.
I held him. I put my hands in his hair. I bent over him and held on.
We stayed like that for a long time. On the kitchen floor. At two-thirty in the morning. With the light on over the stove.
“I’m scared,” he said finally. Into my lap. “Hannah, I’m so scared.”
“I know,” I said.
“I’m scared I’ll hurt you,” he said. “Dad got so angry at the end. He’d yell. He’d throw things. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared I’ll forget Lily’s name,” he said. “I’m scared she’ll grow up with a dad who doesn’t know who she is.”
“Then we’ll make sure she knows who you are,” I said.
He lifted his head.
“How?” he said.
I wiped his face with the sleeve of his own sweatshirt.
“Those videos,” I said. “The ones you’ve been taking every day. All those recordings of her laughing. You’ve been making memories. For her. For when you can’t.”
He nodded slowly.
“Then we’ll make more,” I said. “Thousands more. You’ll write her letters. For every birthday. For her first day of school. For her graduation. For her wedding.”
I held his face in my hands.
“You’ll walk her down the aisle someday,” I said. “Even if it’s in a letter. Even if it’s a video. Even if I have to hold you up the whole way.”
“And me?” he said. “What about you? You’re thirty-two. You’ll spend your forties taking care of me. Feeding me. Changing me. Watching me—”
“Ryan,” I said.
He stopped.
“I’d rather have ten good years with you,” I said, “than forty years with somebody else.”
“And when it gets bad?” he whispered. “Really bad?”
I thought about it. I thought about the unit in graduate school. The videos my professor showed us. The patients in the late stages.
“Then we’ll get help,” I said. “Real help. Not just me on the kitchen floor. Home health aides. Support groups. Respite care. Whatever we need.”
I looked at him.
“Your mother did it alone,” I said. “Because she kept it a secret. Because she was ashamed. She never asked for help.”
I held his hands tighter.
“We’re not going to do it alone,” I said. “And we’re not going to keep it a secret.”
Part Twelve: The Baby
Then I asked the question I’d been afraid to ask since I saw the letter.
“Ryan,” I said. “What about Lily?”
He went very still.
He’d been holding it too. I could see it on his face. The thing he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud.
Fifty percent.
Our daughter had a fifty percent chance.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I’ve thought about it every single day since June.”
He looked toward the stairs.
“That’s why I couldn’t look at you,” he said. “Every time I looked at you holding her, I thought, I did this. I gave it to her. Maybe.”
His voice broke.
“I gave our baby a coin flip,” he said.
“You didn’t know,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ryan said. “It’s in her. Or it isn’t. Nothing I do can change it.”
I held his hands for a long time.
“Ryan,” I said. “Can we test her?”
He shook his head.
“Not until she’s eighteen,” he said. “That’s the guideline. The genetic counselor told me. It has to be her choice. Her decision. Nobody can make it for her.”
He looked at me.
“Not even us,” he said.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I said. “We’ll let her choose. When she’s grown. We’ll tell her the truth. Not when she’s eighteen. When she’s little. Little by little. So it’s never a secret. So she grows up knowing.”
“Like Mom should have done for me,” Ryan said.
“Like your mom should have done for you,” I said.
He was quiet for a long time.
“And if she has it?” he whispered.
I thought about it.
I thought about our daughter upstairs. Seven months old. Arms flung over her head. Holding her daddy’s finger in her sleep.
“Then she’ll have a father,” I said, “who knows exactly what she’s going through. Who’ll be the first person to tell her it’s going to be okay. Who’ll leave her letters about how to be brave.”
I squeezed his hands.
“And she’ll have a mother,” I said, “who already knows how to love somebody with Huntington’s.”
Part Thirteen: The Divorce Papers
Before we went back upstairs, I picked up the divorce papers.
Every page. Every signature. Visitation at Hannah’s discretion. Whatever’s best for Lily.
I held them over the kitchen sink.
“Ryan,” I said. “Hand me the lighter. The one for the birthday candles.”
He looked at me. Then he went to the junk drawer. He found the long red lighter we’d used for Lily’s half-birthday cupcake in September.
He handed it to me.
I lit the corner of the first page.
We watched them burn in the sink. Every page. His signature curling black at the edges. The lease for the apartment at Hillcrest Towers.
When the last page was ash, I ran the water.
“Call the apartment place tomorrow,” I said. “Tell them you’re not coming.”
“There’s a two-hundred-dollar cancellation fee,” Ryan said.
“Pay it,” I said.
He laughed. Just a little. The first real laugh I’d heard from him in five months.
I picked up one more piece of paper from the table.
The letter from the genetics clinic. Positive. 42 CAG repeats.
I didn’t burn that one.
I folded it carefully. I put it back in the envelope.
“This one we keep,” I said. “This one’s the truth.”
Part Fourteen: Upstairs
It was almost four when we went back upstairs.
We stopped at the nursery door.
Lily was still asleep. On her back. Arms over her head. Her stuffed giraffe was wedged against the crib bumper.
Ryan stood in the doorway for a long time, watching her breathe.
Then he went in. He knelt down beside the crib. He reached through the slats and put his finger in her little hand.
Her fingers closed around it. In her sleep.
I knelt down beside him.
“Lily-bug,” Ryan whispered. “I’m sorry. I said something to you earlier that wasn’t true.”
He stroked her knuckles with his thumb.
“I said I had to leave,” he whispered. “I don’t. I’m staying. I’m staying for as long as I can.”
His voice broke.
“And your mommy already found out,” he said. “And she’s staying too.”
I put my hand on his back.
We knelt there together on the nursery floor until the window started turning gray.
Part Fifteen: Marianne
Three days later, we drove to Jefferson City.
To see Ryan’s mother.
Marianne lives in a small brick house with a carport and a bird feeder in the front yard. She’s sixty-seven. She retired from the post office ten years ago. She volunteers at her church and plays bridge on Thursdays.
She opened the door and saw Ryan’s face.
She knew.
I watched it happen. Her face went white. Her hand went to the doorframe.
“Beth told you,” she said quietly.
