Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

I cross to the bed where my laptop is sitting. I insert the USB key, click it open, and highlight the emails, my hand hovering over the Delete key. Erasing these will be like erasing part of myself, but I count to three quickly and do it. I pull the Band-Aid off. It stings, I’ll have moments of regret, but everyone has regrets.

Then I open my email, go to the draft section, find the email I wrote weeks ago, right after we imposed the deadline. It’s entitled, simply, Good-bye.

It contains the only poem I wrote about us, the one I read to myself on the plane ride to his funeral. It’s not any good. It’s not anything I would’ve published in any circumstances. But when the words come, and they come rarely now, I write them down. And when it came time to write this email, something I felt like I had to do in advance as part of my preparation, I thought of it and typed it out.

They’re the words I wanted to try to leave with Jeff at his funeral. The words no one but the two of us should see.

My hand hesitates. Shifting between wanting to send the email and erasing it. But I know what I have to do.

I hit Delete.

I have promises to keep.

And I will keep them, always.

Turns out that Tish’s room wasn’t just on the same floor as mine, it was next to mine. We shared a wall, and that Saturday night, after the maybe-okay-she-probably-was-flirting-with-me dinner partner, and too many glasses of wine, I lay on my back in bed listening to her move around her room: the TV turning on; her smashing into something and swearing loudly; running the water for a bath.

I turned on my own TV then. I had willpower, and I was exercising it, but every man has his limits.

When I was about to drift off into a wine-fueled sleep, I heard her door open. I sprang from my bed and pressed my eye against the peephole, fast enough to catch her walking past, her hair wet, wearing the kind of loose cotton clothing one might wear as pajamas, hugging a blanket to her chest.

I pulled on my jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed the bottle of wine I stole and the corkscrew from the prize pack. I almost forgot my room key, but remembered it right before my door clanged shut. Key in my pocket, I walked in my bare feet down the hall to the elevator.

Tish was nowhere to be found.

I waited thirty seconds for the elevator, and then I was in the empty bright lobby with one person behind the desk. Was I imagining it, or were the front doors still rattling in their hinges?

Outside, my eyes adjusted to the night, searching for movement. There. Something white in the dark, moving away quickly, a determined destination.

I followed her. I tried to walk casually, to make sure I didn’t spook her like a deer in the woods. She was heading toward the golf course. The sky was clear and full of stars, the air damp from the irrigation system, the grass wet and slick against my tender feet. The moon was rising in a sliver.

She walked through the first tee-box. She seemed to be almost running away, or maybe I imagined that because in this moment it felt like we were running away together.

She stopped on the other side of the ladies’ tee on the second hole and spread her blanket along the slope.

Then she whirled around and spoke into the night. “Why are you following me?”

I thought she sounded afraid.

“It’s me,” I tried to reassure her. “It’s Jeff.”

“I know who it is.”

“Oh, sorry, I—”

“No, it’s okay. You’re here now.”

She sat on the blanket. I hesitated for a moment, then followed her, setting the wine bottle down next to me. The corkscrew dug into my thigh, but I left it there.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked.

“Told you. Conjunction.” She pointed to the sky. “See that bright star near the crescent? That’s Venus.” I nodded. “Now look left. That fainter star’s Jupiter.”

“Neat.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not. Truly.”

She turned toward me. In the darkness I couldn’t tell if her face was registering annoyance or if she was trying to gauge my seriousness.

“I mean it,” I said. “Tell me more.”

She lay down, her legs straight below her, her arms at her sides. “If we had a telescope or binoculars, we could see Mercury too. And in a couple of months, Venus is going to traverse the sun, like an eclipse, and that’s really rare. It only happens twice every hundred years or so. Not again in our lifetime.”

I chuckled.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re cute.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. I like how enthusiastic you are about things.”

“I talk too much.”

“I like listening to you talk.”

“Okay,” she said, but then she fell silent while we watched the black sky and the bright stars.

I lay there, listening to her breathing, feeling the world spin underneath us, tilting as all the wine I’d drunk refused to release its grip.

After a while, I heard her shifting. I looked over. She was on her side, facing me, her hands tucked under the side of her face, her knees pulled up.

“This is…nice,” she said.

I moved so my position mirrored her own. “It is. It really is.”

“I’m glad I came.”

“Me too.”

I reached out and stroked the side of her face. She made a small noise—a gasp—but didn’t pull away. Her skin was soft and my brain was fuzzy, and the only thing I could think of was how her lips would taste.

I kissed her. Hungrily. Slowly. Her lips. Her face. Her neck.

I kissed her.

And she kissed me back.

Afterward, we lay wrapped in the blanket, our clothes scattered around us, loose limbed, our tastes mixed together, mixing with the night, mixing with the stars. Our foreheads were touching, our mouths inches apart, then together again, small kisses, resting against each other. My thumb rubbed little circles into the small of her back, and her hands rested on my waist, holding me inside her. She was warm, so warm, and the small beat of her pulse kept me hard enough to stay in place.

“Someone may have heard that,” she said eventually, smiling against my lips.

I kissed her again. “Shh. Don’t worry. No one heard.”

“The birds did. And the stars.” She let out a sob, then caught it. I felt a few tears fall against my cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Tish. This is my fault.”

“That’s not why I’m crying.”

“Why then?”

“Because I feel so happy. And I know I’m never going to feel this way again, and that makes me sad.”

“Do you want to? Feel this way again?”

She pulled my hips closer and it was my turn to gasp. “Of course I do. But, we said…we said we wouldn’t. We shouldn’t have done this. We can’t.”

“We can’t,” I agreed, though maybe she’d been asking a question. “A one-time thing.”

“Yes.”

Her hands moved to my face, forcing me to look her in the eyes I was already lost in.

“We can’t tell, okay? We have to…this has to be our thing. Ours.”

“Yes.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise,” I agreed.

Once again, thank you to my constant earliest reader, Katie, for giving me the courage to go on when it would’ve been easier to stop.

To my agent and friend, Abby Koons, for telling me this book wasn’t good enough until it was. I am always listening, even when you think I’m not. And to the whole team at Park Literary for making it possible for me to keep writing books.

To my editors at HarperCollins Canada, Jennifer Lambert and Jane Warren, for being there from the beginning of this one and encouraging me to continue. And for that great lunch in Toronto, where we worked the last third out. And to my U.S. editors, Liz Egan and Katie Salisbury for their valuable input.

To the writers in my life, particularly the members of the Fiction Writers Co-op, for being a source of information, a circle of trust, and a constant support system. And to Shawn Klomparens, whose own words made me want to do better this time around.

To Nancy Tan for copyediting this book with a fine hand. Any mistakes that remain are mine. To the whole team at Amazon/New Harvest for giving this book a chance at an American life.

To my friends Tasha, Phyllis, Janet, Tanya, Eric, Presseau, Candice, Kevin, Lindsay, Marty, Annie, Phil, Christie Brown, Patrick, Sara, Dan, Katie, Stephanie, Thierry, Amy, and Olivier, what would I do without you?

To the many readers who’ve taken the time to write me or connect with me on Facebook and Twitter, your kind words mean more than I can say. And to all my readers, for making this fourth (!) book possible.

And to my family: Mom, Dad, Cam, Scott, Owen, Liam, Mike, Katherine, Alex, William, Jennifer, Michael, my amazing grandparents Dorothy and Roy, and David. Your love and support help get me through.

1. Claire and Seth must cope with Jeff’s sudden disappearance from their lives, and they are obviously in shock at the news of his death. Do you think it is more difficult to cope with a loved one’s death if it’s sudden than if you have had the chance to prepare yourself for their passing, as in the case of a prolonged illness?

2. Although Jeff is one of the narrators of the novel, he cannot answer any of the questions Claire is left with after he passes. How do you cope with unreconciled questions about someone you love after they are gone? Do you think Claire finds any amount of peace after visiting Tish?

3. Claire’s family takes an active role during her bereavement—her parents, her in-laws, her sister, and even her brother-in-law surround and support her—while Tish must face the true extent of her grief alone. Have you ever had to hide the extent of your feelings from the closest people around you? Did you end up confiding in someone?

4. Is Jeff’s pre-funeral a grim foreshadowing of his future, or just a cruelly ironic coincidence? Do you agree with Claire that “if you [are] prepared for the worst, you might make it come true”?

5. Throughout the novel, it appears that Jeff and Tish’s affair begins as an emotional attachment rather than anything physical. Is having an emotional affair as damaging to a relationship as a physical one? Is it possible to be in love with more than one person?

6. Jeff and Tish agreed to put a deadline on their relationship, after which they would no longer contact each other for the sake of their respective families. Have you ever had to end a relationship you really wanted to continue?

7. In the end, Tish holds true to her pact with Jeff to keep what happened between them a secret. Do you think it is selfish of her not to tell grieving Claire the truth? Do you think it is better for Claire not to know?

8. Do you think Claire is justified in going through Jeff’s emails once she becomes suspicious of his relationship with Tish? Would you feel comfortable if someone close to you had access to your cell phone or computer?

9. Do you think Claire’s past relationship with her husband’s brother provides Jeff with some amount of justification for his affair with Tish, or contributes to its development? Do you think Jeff is truly reconciled to the idea of Tim and Claire’s relationship?

10. Tish and her daughter, Zoey, are both intellectually gifted individuals, and they also end up sharing anxiety about performing in front of an unseen audience. Does this factor in to larger issues in the novel surrounding the idea of being observed and judged by others? How important are other people’s opinions of you, and of your relationships?