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poor man, becoming a victim of the crossfire between the conservative congregation with more money, and the liberal one with the better building. The Seconders made a formal motion to fire him after a sermon on the Eye of the Needle, which seemed to imply rich people were less likely to impress God than the rest of His children. Two interim ministers had also been reassigned when they refused to abide by the session’s demand for prior approval of all sermon topics.
    I got the permanent job because the presbytery assumed that I, with my long experience teaching children in the primary grades, would be good at curbing temper tantrums. And I took the job only with the assurance that no one would be censoring my sermon topics.
    My contract didn’t exclude Chuck and his helpful emails, however.
    I also dashed off a quick e-note to Sarah at her camp, just saying I was straightening out some business out of town, and she could get me by email or on my cell phone. I was trying not to be a smother-mother, an overprotective busybody, so I had confined myself to one call and two emails a week. I also allowed myself ten-minute anxiety intervals every few days, when I gave into all the mommy-worries about the disasters that could occur because I wasn’t there—the drownings and the overdoses and the unprotected encounters with boys . . . I didn’t mention any of that, just told her that my cell phone would be charged and on every minute of the day and night.
    Then I sent another to Tom, telling him not where I was, only that I was safe. I didn’t want him calling me here, using that sweet Irish voice of his the way he always did whenever he remembered how well it worked with me. He could reply to my email if he had anything to say, like who that boy was, and how he came to be.
    But as if I’d opened a channel in my brain, I heard Tom’s voice, soothing and easy. Maybe I was overreacting. After all, if he was telling the truth about when this happened, we weren’t married—not even going together—when this child was conceived. Was he supposed to recount for me every date he’d had those few months we were apart? Maybe Brian’s existence was as much a surprise to him as to me. Maybe he hadn’t lied to me, hadn’t concealed a material fact, hadn’t concealed himself . . .
    But he had. I knew him well enough to know that while Brian’s appearance was a surprise, Brian’s existence wasn’t. Tom knew some woman somewhere had borne his baby—some woman who knew he’d married me before the baby was born, and thought it clever to name me as the mother. Or maybe it was a decision they made together, a cynical way to keep their identities hidden while still keeping that connection alive.
    He knew. I knew he knew. He knew I knew he knew . . . so why not admit it? Why hide it? The big secret was out.
    So why not just say her name? Maybe it was true, he didn’t know it. But then how did he learn about the boy? Maybe he was trying to protect her. Maybe he thought her spouse wouldn’t be as accepting as he thought I would be.
    Maybe her interests were still more important to him than mine—or his son’s.
    While I had the laptop open, I clicked on the calendar program and spun it back to 1991. I counted back from April nine months, or rather forty weeks, and got to late July. That was assuming Brian was the product of a full-term pregnancy.
    I closed the laptop and, after glancing out the window to make sure Mother was still gardening hard, I headed up to the attic. I found the box labeled “textbooks” in a corner of the attic, and kneeling on the dusty floor, I ripped the tape off the top. Inside were two stacks of black vinyl calendars—fifteen in all, I counted. I found 1991 right away, but 1990’s gold lettering had worn off the cover, and I had to open it to the first page to identify it. On impulse, I also grabbed up the two previous years, and slipped all the books into my canvas tote. I tried to close the box