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never existed.
    At least I had my locket as proof that he had.
    Later that night, as the children slept in their beds, I climbed into Mary’s tree house with the portable video baby monitor, threw myself into a corner, and sobbed myself to sleep. I dreamt of Carl: that he had his arms around me, but try as he might, he couldn’t keep me warm. Even though Trisha slept through the night, I woke up at sunrise, shivering under Mary’s old baby blanket.
    Before going inside, I scattered his ashes on the wisteria vines that grew along our back picket fence.

    I kept my word to Ryan. If anyone asked–even the kids–certainly Carl wasn’t missing, let alone dead. He just wasn’t … around.
    Oh sure, it would have been easier to do as Ryan had suggested: say that Carl and I had separated, and that the divorce would be final any day now.
    But I just couldn’t do it. Because the truth is Carl loved me too much to have left me, unless our lives were at risk and that was the only way he could protect us. If he hadn’t been blown away, I know in my heart that, in time, he would have reached out to me…
    And no one will ever convince me otherwise.
    So yes, I swore to protect him, too. Or at least his memory.
    The fairytale I concocted was that he was overseas, on loan-out to his company’s most important client. “He was home last weekend but just for a day or two. What, you didn’t see him? I know he stopped by the club. The kids and I are flying over there sometime this summer. He’s shopping for apartments for us, in Paris. But I get the final say…”
    Then I’d laugh and change the subject. Most of the wives in the neighborhood were pea green with envy: a husband with a very important job that involved international travel, and a second home in Paris!
    In other words, a husband who paid the bills, but kept out of your hair.
    Within six months, the “business trip” line had worn thin with the kids. At the ages of seven and five, they were used to his extended business trips. But in the past he was never gone more than a few weeks at a time, then home for at least three or four days before taking off again.
    Because they loved him so dearly, they missed him terribly–and cried themselves to sleep more and more often. For me, that was the most difficult part of the charade. Apparently their tears were hard on Aunt Phyllis, too. One night when she babysat while I went to their elementary school’s open house, she plopped them down and told them to wipe their tears for good because their father was never coming home to them.
    That he had left us. No, that he left me.
    When she told me what she had done, I went ballistic. “My God, Phyllis, why would you say that?”
    “It’s true, isn’t it?” She had tears in her eyes, but still she held her chin up defiantly.
    Well, yes, as far as she knew, it was. Unlike the kids or the neighbors, Phyllis never accepted my “extended business trip” excuses for Carl’s absence. At the same time, I had to keep my promise to Ryan, although a husband leaving his wife and family for another woman was the most logical answer.
    “Donna, honey, did you know they say they’ve forgotten what he looks like? Well, I for one am glad. Hell’s bells, he doesn’t deserve to be remembered, after what he’s done to you!”
    She was only saying it because she loves me. Still, it hurt like hell.
    More so because I knew how much he’d loved me, too.
    From then on, whenever Jeff or Mary got mad at me, they gave me a look that said, “I wish he had taken me with him, because I don’t like you, either.”
    Once, when Mary said as much out loud, I resisted the urge to slap her. Instead I drove out to the beach, where I stayed for hours and cried. When I came back, Mary, filled with remorse, had already made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids’ dinner, and had bathed Trisha and put her to bed. Then she and Jeff had cleaned up the playroom as penance for breaking my heart.
    Of